But the one great
point which he had pledged himself to prove he did _not_ prove. It could
not be proved. It was not true. So that though he won a substantial
victory; he sustained a logical defeat. And if he had been twenty times
more learned, and twenty times more able than he was, he would have been
defeated. If a man attempts the impossible, failure is inevitable; and
if he has a skilful, wary, and able opponent, his failure will be seen
and felt, even by his most ardent friends, and greatest admirers. And so
it was in the case of Dr. Berg.
But the error was not his alone; it was the error of his friends; the
error of his patrons; the error of his times. What learning, and talent,
and zeal, and skill in debate, considerably above the average of his
profession, could do, he did; and that was a good deal: and his failure
was chargeable not on himself, so much as on the faulty theology of the
school in which he had been trained, and to which he still belonged.
So far as the general merits of the Bible were concerned, I was in the
wrong. But the fact was not made so plain, so palpable to the audience,
as it should have been, and as it might have been, if I had had a wiser,
a warier, and an abler opponent, and one who had no false theory of
Bible inspiration or abstract perfection to defend.
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