A careful and thorough exegesis will show the hollowness of this justification.
Very often, if not most frequently, it cannot be doubted that the occult religious significance depends on an artificial exegesis; but there are also poems of Hafiz, Saadi, and other writers, religious in their first intentions.
He also published works on the Last Days of the Life of Jesus, on Judaism in the Time of Christ, on John of Damascus (1879) and an Examination of the Vatican Dogma in the Light of Patristic Exegesis of the New Testament.
It contains lyrical and ballad poetry, specimens of early exegesis and commentary, lives of the saints, collections of edifying anecdotes and of the now well-known Jatakas or Birth Stories.
He was one of the first to see that for Biblical exegesis it was necessary to reconstruct the social environment of olden times, and he skilfully applied his practical knowledge of statecraft to the elucidation of the books of Samuel and Kings.