For it is one thing to consider every word of a book as the word of God or gods, and another thing to consider it simply as the work of men like ourselves.

Naturally we should think it our duty to suppose the work of a divine being perfect in itself, and to imagine beauty and truth where neither really exists.

The wonder of the English Bible can really be best appreciated by those who, knowing it to be the work of men much less educated and cultivated than the scholars of the nineteenth century, nevertheless perceive that those men were able to do in literature what no man of our own day could possibly do.
Of course in considering the work of the translators, we must remember the magnificence of the original.

I should not like to say that the Bible is the greatest of all religious books.

From the moral point of view it contains very much that we can not to-day approve of; and what is good in it can be found in the sacred books of other nations.