The variation of the different parts of the Bible in
literary quality, in evidential value for history and in spiritual
significance, are at last being freely recognized outside the study and
the lecture-room. Men are ceasing to regard the Bible as a series of
legal enactments or common-law precedents of equal authority. This is
leading to a revision of inherited traditions, that were based on a view
of the Bible which is no longer tenable. In general this development
favours a more modest assertion of one's own beliefs and a more
charitable consideration of other people's. When we continue to differ,
we differ with a more sympathetic understanding of those from whom we
differ.
It is impossible to trace here in any detail the influence of the
critical movement on traditional beliefs or even on the conception of
authority in religion. It may, however, be worth while to point out that
the psychological study of religion has tended to broaden sympathy by
promoting the frank recognition of the varieties of religious
experience. More allowance is made for temperament, and there is less
anxiety to force all spiritual life into the same mould or scheme. The
sacramentalist and the non-sacramentalist, the mystic and the
intellectualist, the man of feeling and the man of action, those who
experience sudden changes and those who are the subjects of more gradual
growth--each receives his due, and neither need despise the other.
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