12 MARCH 1948, Page 5

The Bishop of Birmingham's book, The Rise of Christianity, has

brought him under criticism much less as a heretic than as a back- number in the matter of Biblical scholarship and archaeological dis- covery. I take the following from a sermon by Dr. George Macleod printed in the last issue of The Christian News Letter: "It is ten years ago since a clergyman of the Church of England said to me: ' The trouble about Barnes is that he is using the discredited science of his grandfather to refute the discredited religion of his grand- mother.'" The intervening decade doesn't seem to have helped