I Enter upon this investigation with no lightness of heart, with no emotion of pleasure; but none the less do I enter upon it undoubtingly as upon a duty that needs to be done. For a quarter of a century I have been trying to find out what is most needed in the religious world, to promote a free, pure, and devout search after truth, and I have come to the conclusion that the first thing to be done is to emancipate the human mind from the strange delusion that the Bible is the perfect, authoritative, and final "word of God." How that delusion stands in the way of seekers after truth, how it hinders honest inquiry, how it separates those who would otherwise be like-minded, how it gives a fictitious and unnatural life to palpable superstitions, how it tends to bring Religion itself into contempt, and to cloud the very face of God, I shall presently point out: here, I 'only say that it is high time it came to an end.

It will give pain to many to have this said, but the "plain truth" must now be told. What then? some may say, have we not been having the "plain truth" all along? I answer;—Not often, if at all: partly because the truth has not really been known, and partly because a variety of considerations have kept many public teachers from speaking out on this subject. Some of these considerations deserve a little sympathy and even respect, while others call for neither.