Hegel-Darwinian-Wellhausen school. His method of attack was to state
baldly the destructive conclusions of that school--that most of the
books of the Old Testament are literary frauds, intentionally
misrepresenting the development of religion in Israel; that the whole
Mosaic code is a later fabrication and its claim to have been given in
the wilderness an historical falsehood. From this he deduced that a mere
glance at the Bible, as the higher critics explain it, must convince the
earnest Christian that he can have no share in their views. "Deprive
Christianity of its supernatural basis," he said, "and you would have a
mere speculative philosophy. Deny the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden,
and the Atonement becomes meaningless. If we have not incurred God's
wrath through Adam's disobedience, we need no Saviour. That is the way
to meet the higher criticism," he concluded earnestly.

As the only rule of the association was that no man should talk long
upon any matter, Floud, the fiery and aggressive little Baptist,
hereupon savagely reviewed a late treatise on the ethnic Trinities, put
out by a professor of ecclesiastical history in a New England
theological seminary. Floud marvelled that this author could retain his
orthodox standing, for he viewed the Bible as a purely human collection
of imperfect writings, the wonder-stories concerning the birth and death
of Jesus as deserving no credence, and denied to Christianity any
supernatural foundation. Polytheism was shown to be the soil from which
all trinitarian conceptions naturally spring--the Brahmanic,
Zoroastrian, Homeric, Plotinian, as well as the Christian trinity--the
latter being a Greek idea engrafted on a Jewish stalk. The author's
conclusion, by which he reached "an undogmatic gospel of the spirit,
independent of all creeds and forms--a gospel of love to God and man,
with another Trinity of Love, Truth and Freedom," was particularly
irritating to the disturbed Baptist, who spoke bitterly of the day