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THOUGHTS
ON THE
INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
r
- ft. d
By THOMAS
3 .
k O'f-i L
HODGKIN, Jun.
-to h
A
Newc astle-upon-Tyne.
fe’'”
few 1
LONDON:
ALFRED W. BENNETT, 5, BISHOPSGATE STREET, WITHOUT.
1865.
Printed for private distribution.
�PREFATORY
NOTE.
The Author of this little Essay has supposed himself to be
addressing those who are either themselves troubled with doubts
on the subject in question, or are frequently brought in contact
with the doubts of others.
He does not desire to be read by
the perfectly untroubled Believer in the Inspiration of the
Bible, to whom any discussion of the subject will probably
bring more pain than profit.
�I
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
I.—Introduction
......
II.—Objections to Divine Origin
Scripture
.
.
III. —Degree
of
and
.
Authority of
.
. .
Accuracy of Definition which
we
1
2
5
HAVE A RIGHT TO EXPECT ....
IV. —Theory of Verbal Inspiration .
.
.
.
9
V.—Existence of Human as well as Divine Element
in the Bible
.....
10
VI.—Analogy of Two-fold Nature of Man .
VII. —Scientific Difficulties
VIII. —Practical Conclusions
14
....
.
20
.
37
.
.
.
��THOUGHTS
ON THE
INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
I. “ The judgment,”—says Dr. Newman intr0(juc„
in his famous Autobiographical Polemic, tion.
—“ which experience passes on establishments or
education as a means of maintaining religious truth
in this anarchical world, must be extended even to
Scripture though Scripture be divine. ... A
book after all cannot make a stand against the wild
living intellect of man, and in this day it begins to
testify as regards its own structure and contents to
the power of that universal solvent which is so suc
cessfully acting upon religious establishments.”—•
Apologia pro Vitd Sud, 381-2.
Differing as I do by nearly the whole horizon of
Christian thought from almost every argument and
inference of the Apologia, I feel nevertheless that
there is a truth in these words, and I think that no
attentive observer of the signs of the times would
dare wholly to deny them. It is, and true men are
bound to confess it, a day in which questions as to
n
�2
THOUGHTS ON THE
the authority of Scripture are, not indeed pushed
further, but more widely prevalent than has probably
been the case in any preceding epoch of Christianity.
But if we believe that 11 there has no temptation
taken us but such as is common to man,” that this
difficulty has been not without Christ’s own permis
sion suffered to beset the present generation of His
Church, whose strength to resist it He alone could
measure, and that “ God is faithful who will with the
temptation also make a way to escape that we may be
able to bear it,” it is surely the wisest course, and
that most truly honouring to Him, to go boldly for
ward in such strength as He may give us, to meet the
difficulty, rather than ostrich-like to hide our heads
in the bush of Ecclesiastical Tradition, declaring
that we cannot see the difficulty and therefore no
such difficulty exists. Of course I am not going to
attempt within these narrow limits any regular and
systematic discussion of a subject so vast as well as
so momentous. All that I hope to do is to gather
up a few scattered fragments of thought which
reflection has sometimes found remaining on the
field of Controversy.
II. Let me state as briefly as may be
what appears to me to be the kernel of the
modern objections to the Divine origin
and Divine authority of the Scriptures.
Objections
Originand
Authority
ture.CUP'
“ They are not one book,” it is argued, “ but
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
3
many, written at far distant epochs of time, under
widely differing circumstances, only collected into
one volume, or rather into two, by Jewish Scribes
and Christian Fathers.”
“ Do you mean,” it is asked, “ to claim a sort of
a Papal infallibility for these compilers of the Sacred
Volumes, to assert that they could distinguish with
unerring wisdom between the writings inspired of
God, and those penned without supernatural assist
ance by merely devout but uninspired men ?”
“ And to come to the test of facts, are all the
books included in the Canon superior to all the
books excluded from it ? Can you frame any theory
of Inspiration which shall account for the books of
Esther, and Canticles, and the genealogies at the
beginning of Chronicles being admitted into ‘ an in
spired volume,’ from which Ecclesiasticus and
Wisdom are shut out ? Are the greetings in St.
Paul’s epistles and the message about the forgotten
cloak at Troas, the direct utterance of the Holy
Spirit, while the Epistle to Diognetus, the Dies Irae,
and the ‘ Rock of Ages,’ are the work of man’s un
aided intellect ?”
“ Then, again, as to errors of transcription and
translation. In the face of the vast variety of Texts
both of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, you can
not maintain that the miracle of a constant succes
sion of infallible transcribers has been exhibited to
the world; and the merest beginner in the study of
b 2
�4
THOUGHTS ON THE
the Originals at once discovers evidences of imper
fection in the English version, and probably in other
versions besides. Does not this prove that until
our palaeographers are all agreed upon a Text of the
whole Bible (which is not likely to come to pass for
centuries) and our scholars upon a translation of
that Text (for which our country may wait some
centuries longer) we shall not have a book, if the
Church ever had one, which can claim to speak to
us authoritatively as the written word of the Most
High ?”
Then besides all these a priori objections, it is
said, “ Have we not in the want of scientific accuracy
exhibited by the writers of the Scriptures, as to
points astronomical, geological, and physiological,
sufficient evidence that they were not infallibly
guided by the Omniscient Creator of the Universe ?
And as the strength of a fortress in war is equivalent
only to the strength of its weakest point, even so
here does not one admitted error in the Scriptures
bring the whole fabric of their Divine authority to
the ground ?”
“ To sum up all these arguments in one; there is
evidence of man’s handiwork in their original com
position, there is necessity for man’s handiwork in
their transmission to us, and it is only that wThich is
unmixedly Divine, or in which the Divine can be
marked off from the human element with mathe
matical precision, that can command our obedience
or escape our criticism.”
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
5
III. Before replying in detail to any of Degree of
the objections thus urged, I wish to notice accuracy
of definione error from which I think most of them tionwhich
we have a
derive their chief strength and nourish right to
ment. I call it an error; and such I fully expect.
believe it to be, yet I admit that it is one extremely
natural to the human intellect. It is the tendency to
over estimate our powers of definition and to demand a
degree of accuracy in it greater than the subject matter
in hand admits of. The fact is, that all reasoners are
more or less influenced by the triumphs achieved by
Definition in the science of Mathematics. In that
one science, as we all know, the conceptions with
which it deals having been first rigorously defined,
or marked off, from all others—so that there can
never be any confusion, mathematically speaking,
between a circle and the most circular ellipse, or
between the sine of an angle and its tangent—every
conclusion follows from the premisses with such
undeviating certainty that “ mathematical exacti
tude ” has passed into a proverb. But, however
great the desire of the intellect may be to see equal
certainty attained in the moral sciences, we all of
us know that it never has been, and most of us
believe that it never will be arrived at in our present
state of being. Moral certainty is that upon which
*
* Compare Aristotle’s prelude to the Nicomachean Ethics,
where he says, “ Our argument will have been sufficiently suc
cessful if it shall have been treated with as much accuracy as
�6
THOUGHTS ON THE
we are compelled to act, and this, though abundantly
sufficient for our needs, is not as absolutely irresist
ible by the human mind as mathematical certainty.
I may feel, for instance, fully persuaded that some
one whom I have known and honoured and closely
watched through a long course of years, could not
be induced to commit a dishonest or dishonourable
action, and on the strength of that assurance, I may
cheerfully risk every shilling of my substance: yet
I cannot say that the possibility of his so transgress
ing is as absolutely inconceivable to my mind as the
possibility of 6 and 5 making 12, or of two right
lines enclosing a space.
This is of course a very old though necessary dis
tinction between the pure and the mixed sciences—
between Geometry, for instance, on the one hand
and History on the other; but what I wish at
present especially to insist upon is, the absolute and
inherent difference between all the definitions with
which the moral sciences are conversant, and the
definitions of mathematics. Try to frame a definition
which shall include with mathematical accuracy, all
honest men, and shall exclude with equal rigidity
all dishonest ones, and you at once feel the difficulty.
Mark off the Sane from the Insane as Euclid sepa
rates Right Angles from Oblique, and test your defithe subject matter admits of: for the same degree of accuracy
is not to be expected in all arguments any more than in all
handicrafts?’
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
7
nition as he does his through several hundred propo
sitions of unquestionable truth, one( following irresis
tibly from another, and you will have a right to claim
the very highest place among -the monarchs of the
mind. Again, has any one really ever framed a per
fectly satisfactory definition, after the mathematical
model,—including everything that is essential, ex
cluding everything that is extraneous,—of Man him
self. Even as to his bodily organization, does not
Science confess some difficulty in so describing it as
to shut out the highest anthropoid apes, while em
bracing the most degraded races of Australia, of Lap
land, of Ceylon. It will no doubt be replied, that the
Divine endowment of reason is his proudest and most
distinguishing characteristic. But how shall this
endowment be so defined as to separate it from the
marvellous instincts of the Ant, the Elephant, the
Shepherd’s Dog, on the one hand, and yet not to shut
out the Cretin, and the Idiot on the other, from the
privileges of that manhood, which degraded as they
are, we do not deny them to possess ?
If the difference lie in the Faculty of Speech, the
Parrot is included and the Deaf Mute excluded ; if
in constructiveness, the Beaver is the rival of Man,
if in political organization, the Bee is his superior.
Progress and the power of discovery might serve
well enough to mark off the civilized races of the
world from the brute creation; but even among.
these there are individuals for whom they would not
�8
THOUGHTS ON THE
avail, while to many of the more degraded races of
the world, to the Australian, the Esquimaux, and the
Hottentot, they would be as inapplicable as to the
lowrer animals themselves.
I will not multiply instances: the every day
experience of my readers will at once suggest num
bers of cases in which our intellects are confessedly
unable to define with any approach to mathematical
accuracy, existences and ideas, which, nevertheless,
we are obliged to accept undefined in the course of
our daily lives. For this is after all the great point.
The distinctions between Honesty and Dishonesty,
between Sane men and Lunatics, between Man and
the Lower Animals, are distinctions, which, however,
impossible to express in perfect scientific definitions,
we must accept and act upon now, if we would not
bring ourselves into evident, perhaps, fatal collision
with the laws by which this world of ours is governed.
Imagine a man accused of murder pleading before a
jury that the deed was done in revenge for the death
of a favourite dog, bringing forward proofs of its
sagacity, contrasting its intellect favourably with
that of his victim, and so arguing that the death of
the brute justified the murder of the man, “because
no satisfactory definition of the distinction between
man and the lower animals had yet been given.”
We know what the fate of such a man would be :
but is not his conduct similar to that of the Ration
alist who refuses attention and obedience to the re
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
9
vealed will of God, because he has yet met with no
thoroughly satisfactory Definition of Inspiration ?
IV. The error of which I complain may Theory of
be traced in the reasonings of some of Ration"
the defenders of the Divine Authority of
the Bible, as well as in those of its opponents. In the
former, it has produced theories of Literal, or of
Verbal Inspiration, and statements which appear to
amount to this, that every word and every letter in
the original Hebrew and Greek Manuscripts of theBible, was as directly the work of God as the Ten
Commandments written by the Divine finger on the
tables of stone. If the authority for such very
rigidly enunciated propositions be demanded, we are
generally met not so much by references to Scripture
itself, as by a priori arguments as to what a Divine
Revelation ought to consist of, and still more often
by the favourite counter-question, “ Where will you
draw the line ?” “ If any human element be admitted
to exist in the Scriptures, one man may reject one
portion pnd another may disbelieve another: the
door is opened to endless questionings and to bound
less infidelity.
Unless every letter be equally from
God where will you draw the line ?”
To this I would reply in all sincerity, “ I do not
know. Our business as men is not to draw lines nor
to frame mathematically exact definitions of spiritual
existences, nor, especially in the matter of Divine
�10
THOUGHTS ON THE
Revelation, to be wise above that which is revealed.
But our business is to accept the great facts of this
world in which God has placed us, as we find them,
to conform ourselves to his laws as far as he has
explained them to us, though we may feel that we
understand them very imperfectly, and to receive
humbly the dispensations of his Providence, though
the chief of them, such as Life and Death, Health
and Disease, the Increase of the Ground, and the
Workings of the Brain, be matters dimly compre
hended by us, and which the wisest men feel it the
most hopeless to define. Far more then in the
Kingdom of his Grace should we sit as little children
in our Father’s presence, content to learn what he
is disposed to teach us of himself, just as he teaches
it to us, and not on any other plan or out of any
other lesson-book, which we in our ignorance may
fancy more worthy of his Omniscience.”
V. And thus looking at the subject, Existence
and endeavouring to sav concerning the
Human
°
°
as well as
Bible no more (and no less) than it says .Divine
concerning itself, we shall find ourselves
constrained to admit the presence of a Bible.
Human as well as of a Divine element; even in the
primary copies, the absolutely pure and unmodified
text of the Holy Scriptures. God might have writ
ten his message in characters of fire upon the mid
night sky, or graven it like the story of the conquests
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
11
of an Assyrian King upon rock-tablets in a Syrian
desert: though even then some human element would
have existed in the construction of the language
whose shackles the Divine message must still have
worn. But there is infinitely more of condescension
and of loving-kindness shown to us in the actual Bible
than would thus have been manifested. That book is
emphatically God’s message to man conveyed through
men. The one great subject with which the whole
of it is concerned, the one miracle of miracles to
which the Old Testament points prospectively, of
which the New Testament tells triumphantly, is the
Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, and hence
arises an especial fitness in the fact that the message
telling of him has also a human vesture, so to speak,
with which it is arrayed. If I may be permitted
to use the words, I would say that as “ the Word
took flesh and dwelt among men,” even so, the
written word, the message of God, became a book
and was written by men, and has been subjected to
all the misunderstandings, and scoffs, and cavilling
criticism of an unbelieving world, even as He
was exposed to the questionings of Jewish High
Priests and the insults of the Roman soldiery.
*
Throughout its course the history of Revelation as
of Redemption is one of infinite condescension in
* This similitude between Christ and the Scriptures is beauti
fully illustrated by Adolphe Monod in two of his death-bed
discourses. See Adieux d’Adolphe Monod Discours 20
*
�12
THOUGHTS ON THE
the Creator towards his creature: and I repeat it
is God’s message to man through his fellow-men.
As examples of this human vesture in which the
Divine message has clothed itself, I may refer to
the differences of style between different Prophets
and Apostles.
The stately march of Isaiah’s
prophecies, the plaintive flow of Jeremiah’s life-long
grief, the daring flights of the ecstatic spirit of
Ezekiel,—we all admit that here are diversities of
natural character, and most of us will agree that
these diversities in the instruments are human,
though the one Spirit which breathes through them
all is Divine. So too with the contrast between the
logical acuteness and Rabbinical learning of St.
Paul, the simple earnestness of St. Peter, and the
wonderfully varied melody drawn from one word
“ Love,” by “ the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
So too in even greater degree with the trifling
discrepancies in matters of detail between the four
Evangelists. It is an old but true remark, that these
little divergencies, by removing all suspicion of
conspiracy between them, render the general con
vergence of their testimony all the more valuable.
But in so saying, we at once admit that the
Evangelists are in part at least to be listened to as
men, truthful but finite men recording the wonder
ful works which they had seen, not as mere
amanuenses of the Omniscient Spirit.
These varieties of character, these little diver-
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
13
gencies of detail, may probably belong to what I
have called the human garment of the truth. So
may the strong Oriental hyperboles which we at times
meet with, the artificial construction of the Psalms,
the omission of a few links from a genealogy, or here
and there the possible misstatement of a number or
misquotation of a date. But I feel persuaded that
that human element does not include any the slight
est trace of conscious inaccuracy or
*exaggeration,
that it has not introduced into the Scriptures one
atom of that pious fraud which in majorem Dei
gloriam would chronicle events that never happened,
nor leavened it with one grain of the spirit of
mediaeval miracle-mongers. The God from whom
that message comes to us is a God of Truth, and I
am persuaded that his servants the Prophets were
kept by Him ever in remembrance of this fact, and
that “ no lie is of the truth.” I feel bound therefore
to yield entire and substantial belief to the miracles
recorded in the Bible,---------------------------------------To-every miracle therefore recordod-b^H-homywe
yield entire-and -subotantial-bekef, however little in
accordance wfith the technicalities of our modern
Science be its manner of describing them. In the
“hard sayings,” both of the Old Testament and of the
New, I am content to recognise difficulties arising
from the imperfections of human language, or the
conditioned character of all our knowledge, diffi
culties which shall all vanish away in the light of
�14
THOUGHTS ON THE
Eternity. And above all, when they tell me anything
concerning the nature of God, the ruin wrought in
our hearts by Sin, the plan of our salvation through
Christ, the power and malice of our soul’s great
Spirit-Enemy, there is no limit to the unquestioning
reverence and submission with which I rejoice to
listen to that which is, I am persuaded, not the word
of men but the written word of God.
VI. To some doubting minds, I am
Analogy
well aware, this recognition of a twofold of twofold
element in the Holy Scriptures will appear Nature of
Man.
an unsatisfactory conclusion. They will
say, “ Either claim Divine authority for every word
or else admit that it is purely human. If it be as
you say, a Divine message in a human clothing, it
is the external part, the mantle of humanity, alone,
which we can apprehend: the spirit within—suppos
ing it to' exist—must remain incapable of being
understood by us, and therefore as far as we are
concerned, might as well be non-existent. And
besides all this, is the old and ever recurring diffi
culty, where will you draw the line? ”
I must crave permission to answer this objection
by a similar one drawn from the affairs of every-day
life. It is not merely or chiefly as a disciple of
Butler that I venture to recur so frequently to this
argument of Analogy. Far rather is it, because I
believe—and am fortified in this belief by the
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
15
Parables of Christ—that the facts of this outward
physical Universe are God’s own chosen method of
teaching us the mysteries of his spiritual Kingdom,
and that we are like little children slow to learn
and awkward at remembering abstract truths, whom
he accordingly deigns to instruct out of the great
picture lesson-book of his visible Creation.
I say then in answer to such objections as
these last described. “ How do you deal with the
nature of Man himself ?” Here is a being, part of
whose organisation plainly and undoubtedly belongs
to the material world. The analytical chemist can
tell us how many ounces of phosphorus there are in
his bones, and what quantity of nitrogen in his flesh.
Administer certain drugs, and certain results will
follow, with the same unerring accuracy with which
chemical equivalents combine. The laws of Statics
and Dynamics govern this part of Man’s being as
absolutely as the veriest clod of the fields : he may
strive to neutralise, but he cannot escape them. In
short, on this view of the case, Man is a certain
amount—varying generally from one to two hundred
weight—of solid, liquid and gaseous particles of
matter, combined in certain proportions, and sharing
the power common to all animals of taking up fresh
atoms out of the material world around and giving
off others in their stead.
Is this all the nature of Man ? We know that it
is not. I am not writing for Materialists, for men
�16
THOUGHTS ON THE
who have persuaded themselves that Thought is a
mere incidental function of Animal Life, and that the
imagination of Shakespere, and the will of Napoleon
are simply the results of particular arrangements of
molecules of matter, which, a little differently dis
posed, would have culminated in a Jelly-fish, or a
Zoophyte. That in me and in thee, which reasons,
which fore-casts, which wills, that by virtue of
which we love, and hate, and desire, and worship,
all the Intellectual, Moral, and Spiritual part of
Man’s Nature (whatever divisions and classifications
we may make of it in itself,) constitutes another
something utterly distinct from his Corporeal Nature,
and from the Material Universe of which it forms
part. Utterly distinct, and yet for the present inex
tricably intertwined: encompassing the globe, and
weighing the planets, and yet for the present com
pelled to work through these few poor pounds of
cerebrum and cerebellum : free itself from all the
laws of matter and motion, and yet through its
humble instrument constantly brought back again
into the most abject bondage to them, so that a few
grains of opium will quiet the most restless spirit,
some drops of alcohol will kindle the most sluggish
the great Dictator laid low with ague,
-------- -— “ cries, Give me some drink Titinius,
“ Like a sick girl”------------- ;
after a few hours of fasting or of fatigue the need
of nourishment and of sleep lays its equalising hand
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
17
on the Poet and the Prize- fighter; and the most
brilliant and far reaching intellect of Europe may as
the result of a fever or a blow, find itself to-morrow
the inmate of a Lunatic Asylum.
Here have we then a two-fold element even nearer
home than in the Holy Scriptures. And yet we
cannot deny the existence of either the one or the
other element of our being. There is the material
nature without to be seen and handled, here is the
*
thinking nature within ^asserting its own existence by
its one unsilenceable argument “ cogito ergo sum.”
Nor is it the outward material part alone which
we can know and apprehend. All the charm of the
highest kinds of literature, the greater part alike
of the difficulty and the interest of Human Life, the
strongest and most abiding threads in the tissue of
Family Love, are derived ultimately from one origin,
the knowledge of character. And what do those
words, “ knowledge of character,” mean but this,
the Soul of Man penetrating through the veil of
material things and making itself acquainted with the
Souls of his fellows.
So much for the impossibility—the alleged impos
sibility—of apprehending the Divine element of the
Scriptures through their Human envelope. I say
that even amongst us men i( the invisible things ” of
Man “ are clearly seen, being understood ” through
his visible and material nature, so that the Sadducee
�18
THOUGHTS ON THE
“ is without excuse.” And as for the difficulty of
“ drawing the line,” if what I have before said,
on the subject of definitions generally be not deemed
sufficient, I would still hold fast to this analogy
presented by the human body and soul, and assert
that the same difficulty there prevails. That depen
dence of the Intellect on its instrument to which
I have already alluded, makes it impossible to
draw with mathematical accuracy a line which shall
separate between them. Aryl historically, who can
tell the hour or the day when the little helpless
infant, which certainly in the origin of its being has
appeared to lead a purely animal existence, is first
informed with a new intellectual life. True it is,
that there is one great Definer who with perfect
success draws the line between the Body and the
Soul of man, but that Definer’s name is Death.
Before finally quitting this subject of the Analogy
between Scripture and the compound Being of Man,
let me mention one minor lesson which I draw
from it as to the comparative value of different
portions of the Bible. I have known sincere-hearted
Christians who have held themselves in duty bound
to regard all parts of Holy Scripture with equal
reverence, and to read them all with equal interest.
I do not believe they have ever succeeded in fully
realising their ideal, but they have striven to work
themselves up to this point, and if they did not find
themselves reading the 7th chapter of Numbers,
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
,
19
verse by verse, with the same interest and attention
which they delighted to bestow on the 7th of Acts,
they have imagined that the fault must be in them
selves, and have grieved over their own imagined
shortcoming. I do not believe that this absolute
equality of value for the different parts of Scripture
is required of us. There are passages in both the Old
and New Testament, in the writings both of Prophets,
Evangelists, and Apostles, where Jesus Christ is
so manifestly set before us, the interpreter of God’s
love to a ruined race, that we feel ourselves in reading
them, like a man looking with earnest gaze into the
answering eyes of One whom he loves, at those times
when the intervening veil of matter is felt to be the
thinnest, and Spirit all but communes with Spirit,
none intervening between them. Then there are
many other narrative passages wffiich do not indeed
bring us so close to the mysteries of Christ’s King
dom, but which display the general bearings of his
character and office. So the very lines of the face
of a friend speak to us of his disposition, and often
tell to the eye. of love, a tale of self-mastery or of
patient endurance which the world, unsympathising,
knows little of. And yet again, there are many
other portions, especially those describing the history
of the Chosen People, which while full of interest as
revealing to us the general outline of God’s Provi
dential Government of the world, and his preparation
of one peculiar soil to receive the seed of the
c2
�20
THOUGHTS ON THE
Kingdom, do not, I at once admit, in themselves
speak to us so clearly of our Father’s love as either
of the classes which we have before named. These
I would liken to the “ less honourable members” of
the human body. But are they therefore to be left
unstudied ? No, by no means. These too display
something of the character and purposes of Him
whom we desire to know, and Art herself will tell us,
that no member of the body is unimportant in her
view, that the very shape of the fingers and the
outline of the instep are faithfully reproduced by the
truly great Artist, since these too have to bear their
part in revealing to us the inner nature of the man
pourtrayed.
Scientific
difficul-
ties'
It remains for me to make a few
remarks,—very few they must be, in proportion to the countless avenues of Thought
opened up by the subject—concerning the relation
of the Scriptures to Science.
In the history of this question, three main periods
may be traced. When the intellect of Europe first
began to awake from the sleep of mediaeval bar
barism, its tendency, as represented by the school
men, was to look upon the Bible, or rather upon the
Bible’s Guardian and Interpreter, the Church, as the
one infallible Expounder of all Truth both Human
and Divine. And thus Science was, or professed to
be bounded in all her investigations into the nature
•
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
21
of things by Revelation. The Scriptures were the
quarry from whence the Subtle, or the Seraphic, or
the Irrefragable Doctor using Aristotelian Logic as
his pickaxe, was to hew out all Truth, Physical,
Intellectual, or Spiritual.
The protest against this monstrous perversion of
God’s choicest gifts to man culminated in Bacon,
and in the Novum Organon it found both voice and
victory. Roughly speaking, for the two following
centuries, the 17th and 18th, Physical Science and
the Christian Revelation lived side by side in reason
ably harmonious neighbourhood. Of course there
were doubters in abundance, especially towards the
end of this period; but Metaphysics rather than
Physics, and Literature rather than Science were the
weapons of their warfare; and I think we shall not
err in saying, that the majority of enquirers into the
nature of the Material Universe were also professed
believers in the Authority of the Scriptures.
The upheaval of Europe at the end of last cen
tury, and the enormous additions made to the
domain of human knowledge during the last sixty
years have changed all this. Literature and Philo
sophy, at any rate as represented by their highest
names, are for the most part friendly to the Christian
Revelation: Physical Science is for the most part
(we know there are some memorable exceptions)
either hostile or coldly neutral. Yet, let me not
state this antagonism more strongly than it actually
�22
THOUGHTS ON THE
exists. In England, at any rate, it very seldom
assumes the form of deliberate rejection of Christ,
or denial of the assertion that he is the heaven-sent
Saviour of Mankind : rather is it an entire negation
of the claim of the Bible to be in any sense
“ the word ” or message “ of God,” and a scarce
concealed pleasure in proving its statements one
after another to be scientifically inaccurate, yet
withal a conviction that somehow or other the
essentials of Christianity will remain after the Divine
Authority of the Bible is overthrown. But I think
it is hardly too much to say, that in the present
temper of men’s minds, the fact of a particular
theory squaring with the testimony of Scripture on
the point in question, would actually militate against
its reception by the- greater part of the Scientific
world.
In short, in the first period Science was supposed
to be the sworn vassal of Revelation, in the second,
she was her friendly Ally, in the third, she is (too
often) her bitter antagonist,
I have spoken—it is difficult in these matters
to avoid speaking—of Science and Revelation, as if
they were two complete and independent Per
sonalities, and as if it were possible that there could
be hostility or antagonism between them. Yet,
whenever this idea is present to the mind, we are
really thinking not of Science but of some of the
Scientific men of one particular generation, not of
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
23
Revelation, but of some of the Advocates of Revela
tion at one especial time. These may be advancing
claims which their brief never warranted ; those may
be smarting under the pain of long oppression, dazed
with the light of some new truth just won, or mis
taking the dim outlines of some truth, as yet but
half risen above the horizon.
To say that I
believe that Science and Revelation essentially and
per se can never be at variance, is but to say, that
“ I believe in one God, Maker of Heaven and
Earth,” who has revealed himself to mankind ; for
successful Science is but the observation of the
working of his hands, and true Revelation but the
echo of his voice.
Without doubt Scientific Men, in their earnest
and simple search after Truth, have oftentimes
suffered great injustice at the hands of Theologians.
A sad instance of the arrogance of well-meaning
ignorance is afforded by no less illustrious a name
than Luther’s. “ Mention was made in his presence
of a new Astronomer (Copernicus), who sought to
prove that it was the Earth which turned round,
and not the Firmament, the Sun, and the Moon;
and who said that the inhabitants of the world
generally, were in the same position with the person
who, being in a chariot, or in a ship, imagines he
sees the coast or the trees of the roadside flying
away behind him. ‘ Ah !’ observed Luther, ‘ this
is quite the way of the world now-a-days. . . ♦
�24
THOUGHTS ON THE
This silly fellow, for instance, wants to upset the old
established Astronomy ; but, according to the Scrip
ture, Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still, and
not the earth? ”—(Michelet’s Life of Luther, Ed.
Bohn, p. 289J. This surely ought to be a lasting
caution to us against arguing in scientific discussions,
“ The Bible says so and so, therefore, this asserted
discovery of Science must be wrong”—against fol
lowing the example of that most unwise, though, no
doubt, excellently intentioned disputant, who at a
meeting of the British Association, triumphantly
held up his Bible as the only but conclusive answer
to a purely scientific statement, made by one of
the members.
Let us, therefore, entirely dismissing from our
minds the old scholastic claim, unwarranted by
Scripture, unwarranted by Reason, to find in Scrip
ture a Cyclopaedia of all Sciences, Human and
Divine, let us inquire, what are in fact the points
of variance, real or supposed, between the Bible
and Modern Science. I believe I shall not err in
asserting, that they may all be reduced to three
(though I fully admit that for some purposes three
might be as effective as three hundred).
1. Astronomical.—It is evident enough that
none of the writers of Scripture had any idea of the
truth of the Copernican theory. The Earth was to
them, probably, a flat disc, bordered by the Ocean,
the Sun and Moon and Heavenly Bodies all revolving
•
*
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
25
around it. Whereas we know that God has made
the Earth a sphere revolving on its own axis, and
also round its far-off solar centre, and that again,
possibly, round some immeasurably distant point
in the universe.
2. Geological.—The First Chapter of Genesis
appears, on first reading, to assert that the Earth
and Heaven were all made in -seven periods of 24
hours each, at a time which, as subsequent Chapters
inform us, was only separated from the present day
by about 6,000 years. More attentive study shows
us that this is not really stated so sharply and defi
nitely as we had at first supposed ; yet the general
impression remains of a recent origin, at least, of
organic life. Geology seems to have proved, as far
as any fact in physical science can be considered
proved, that ages of incalculable vastness must have
passed before the Earth alone (to say nothing of the
other heavenly bodies) Was prepared for the abode
of its present inhabitants; and that, through many
of these ages, the land and the waters teemed with
animal and vegetable existences. The account
given in Genesis of the Deluge also, appears at first
sight to suggest an universal deluge over the whole
surface of our planet, which Science refuses to
acquiesce in, though willing to accept, all that
the narrative, with its strong Oriental forms of
speech, is probably intended to convey—a local
inundation sufficient to destroy the whole of the
�26
THOUGHTS ON THE
then existing family of man, and the creatures
dependent on him.
3. * Ethnological or Anthropological. The
Bible seems to assert the derivation of all mankind
* I do not wish, to enter here into any detailed examination
of any of these points of variance; but as this question is still
sub judice, I may be permitted to notice one or two considera
tions which, to a non-scientific mind, seem to throw some doubt
and obscurity over the conclusion to which Science appears
likely to commit herself. If the human race have really lasted
even 100,000 years, it seems strange that its conscious history
should reach back so little way, strange that in the annals of the
most ancient nations with which we are acquainted, Egypt,
Babylon, China, we should find no firm footing further back
than, at earliest, B.C. 5,000, strange that we should have no
Time-defying structures like the Egyptian Pyramids, or the
Roman Aqueducts, of a vastly greater antiquity than any of these ;
stranger still (if we are told that during those preceding 95,000
years the Human Race was slowly raising itself into civilization)
. that we so very rarely see this process repeated by any tribe of
savages now without assistance from some more highly civilized
race outside of them, though we do see abundant traces of the
contrary process, Civilization sinking down into Barbarism.
As for the argument derived from the present variety of
national types, I venture to suggest, with much diffidence,
whether those who accept in any sense the doctrine of the
Creation as distinct from the cfeveZopmeni of Man, may not also
acquiesce in the possibility that by a fresh act of the Creative
"Will, differences of type may have been at some distant period
impressed upon particular individuals, the chosen progenitors of
the varying races of mankind. A new force, “ an attraction of
repulsion,” so to speak, would thus have been imported into the
Dynamics of Humanity, the object being to counterwork that too
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
27
from a single pair of ancestors, that pair having
been created not more than ,4,000 or 5,000 years
before the Christian era. Scientific men, while
pretty evenly divided on the question of the unity of
strong tendency of the atoms to gravitate into one mass which
had hitherto prevented the “ replenishing of the Earth ” from
going on with sufficient rapidity and extensiveness.
And upon the whole matter, looking to the singularly close
accordance which exists between that part of the Scripture
history which ,we can compare with human annals, and these
annals themselves—an accordance which the investigations of
the last twenty years has strengthened rather than weakened—
my inclination is to believe, putting the question of their Divine
authority aside for the time, that they will also be found a safe
guide to follow in the dimmer twilight, where we are unable to
apply any such test to prove their veracity. Yet I am withal
desirous to bear well in mind, that many sincere believers in the
truth of Scripture, hold and have long held the idea that the
early chapters of Genesis have an allegorical character which is
not shared by the later chapters of the same book and the other
books of the Pentateuch; and that the same canons of interpreta
tion are not to be applied to all alike. That this notion, be it true
or false, is no mere device for evading a present difficulty, but
springs from a consideration of the text of Scripture itself, take
Sir T. Browne’s Religio Medici (page 82), published in 1642, as
proof:—
“And truely for the first chapters of Genesis, I must confess a
great deal of obscurity; though Divines have to the power of
humane reason endeavoured to make all go in a literal meaning,
yet those allegorical interpretations are also probable, and
perhaps the mystical method of Moses bred up in the Hierogly
phical Schools of the Egyptians.’* •
�28
THOUGHTS ON THE
origin of the human race, seem, on the whole,
disposed to agree in claiming for it a much greater
antiquity—say hundreds of thousands of years
instead of thousands. Some of the strongest advo
cates for Unity of Origin (who are willing so far to
agree with Scripture), appear to consider themselves
bound to claim the most enormously extended
period of duration, in order to allow room for the
gradual introduction of the now existing varieties of
type. Upon the whole question Science cannot be
said to have yet delivered her verdict; but it is not
difficult to see in which direction the minds of the
Jury lean. And, if it be finally given in that direc
tion and maintained by irrefragable argument, we
must, of course, accept it, as we have already
accepted the utterances of Astronomy and Geology,
and readjust our previous opinions in accordance
therewith.
1. Now, with reference to all these divergencies,
I have to remark at the outset, that the bitterest
opponent of Scripture would not class them with,
the ludicrous errors of those cosmogonies which
form the bases of so many other religions.
We have here no such stories as that Indian one,
of the world being supported by a gigantic elephant,
who stands on a still more gigantic tortoise : we
have no laying of world-eggs, or manufacture of
mountain ridges out of giants’ bones as in Greek
mythology. We may say, in fact, that everything
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
29
here described really is or has been, but that it is
described from Man’s point of view, and, possibly,
with an imperfect reproduction of the aerial per
spective of the picture. If we accept Hugh Miller’s
suggestion that the history of the Creation was
conveyed to the inspired narrator in a series of
visions, somewhat like those which were at a later
period vouchsafed to the Prophets, then our very
experience of these Prophetic writings themselves
will lead us to look for these characteristics in the
description—faithfulness as to the general outline of
the objects revealed, vagueness and perhaps no little
ignorance as to the intervals of time by which those
objects were separated one from another. I can well
believe that Moses, with reference to Time Past,
even as the Prophets and Apostles with reference to
Time Future, was not permitted “ to know the times
and the seasons ” in which the Father worked out
his own far-reaching counsels : and this limitation
of the knowledge of the scribe I can at once and
without difficulty refer to the human element with
which the Divine Message has garmented itself.
Limitation of knowledge, be it observed, not un
faithfulness in its utterance. An Artist, let us say,
sits down to sketch a wide expanse of sea, with dis
tant headlands far away in the horizon ; he knows
that those three minute specks of black on the left
of his picture are rocks ; but he is very likely
ignorant that each one is a group of rocks, thickly
�30
THOUGHTS ON THE
encrusted with organic life, a little World of interest
and delight to the scientific explorer, and that the
sea, upon whose bosom they seem so calmly resting,
is at this very moment swirling in impetuous eddies
through their hundred channels, and by its heavings
up and down forbidding any boat to lie there in
safety; he knows not that the thin scarcely dis
cernible line in the cliff to the right of these, stands
for a chasm in the rocks more than seventy yards
wide, and though he sees and strives to reproduce
in his picture some marked difference of shade, and,
consequently, of nearness in the two succeeding
headlands, he knows not nor would ever have con
jectured that the bay thus guarded, narrows into a
gulf, and the gulf widens out again into a lake,
which runs up for miles inland, and well nigh insu
lates him, the artist, from the coast which he has
been depicting. Still, he has honestly and success
fully laboured to reproduce that which the sense of
sight did reveal to him, though his picture, could it
be cross-examined like a witness in a Court of
Justice, wTould very likely betray his ignorance on
some of these points as to which he remained in
darkness.
Even so, as it seems to me, would Moses pro
bably describe what was revealed to him in vision
of the far distant Past, or Isaiah, of the fore
shadowed Future, faithfully describing events, but
often ignorant by what intervals these events were
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
31
separated one from another. Furthermore, could
we imagine a blind man setting himself to study the
Natural History and configuration of that very Coast
line, he would probably in the course of time make
out for himself all these facts of which the Artist
was ignorant: yet surely more of the real glory of
God’s handiwork in the scene is revealed to the
Painter in one flash of sight, than years of patient
labour can unfold to the blind Student. Something
like this is perhaps the relation borne by such Vision
of the Creation as may have been vouchsafed to
Moses, to such knowledge of it as the Geologist
conquers for himself.
2. Still there is no doubt that the non-scientific
character of these descriptions is a stone of stum
bling to many of the present generation. Miracles
they do not desire, indeed, many of them say that
the existence of alleged miracles is a positive hin
drance to their belief in a Revelation ; but the
presence in the Scriptures of any discovery of
modern Science, the enunciation, for instance, of
Kepler’s Laws, or Dalton’s Theory, or some hint of
the marvels of Spectral Analysis would have greatly
gratified that craving after “ a sign,” which our age
also feels, though it loves not to avow it.
Yet, on reflection, we must see that such
thoughts, while reviving the old and exploded
fallacy of the schoolmen, do also claim of the Most
High that which, without “ respect of persons,”
�32
THOUGHTS ON THE
could not have been granted to this generation.
How infinitely small a proportion in space and time
do the scientific investigators of our day bear to the
millions in past centuries or still living in humble
homes, for whom as much as for these Christ died,
to whom as much as to these God meant the know
ledge of his will to come. To all these millions
the presence in the Scriptures of the sublime para
doxes of Science would have constituted a positive
barrier against their acceptance of the Truth. It is
not too much to say, that one good clear statement
by Moses, of the Copernican Theory alone, would
have made the path of the Hebrew incalculably
more difficult to tread, would probably have seemed
to thousands a sufficient reason for adopting the
always alluring worship of Baal or Astarte, and
renouncing the hard covenant with Jehovah, who,
it would be said, “ not only requires of his wor
shippers this severe and almost unattainable aus
terity of morals, but bids us believe, in plain
contradiction to all the evidence of our senses, and
all the wisdom of the learned, that this flat earth
fixed immovably beneath us, is a round ball, rolling
with the rapidity of a whirlwind through the
heavens.”
3. And who can tell, even now, that a full and
complete revelation of the nature of the Physical
Universe, interwoven with the Scriptures, would
not, even to the men of this generation, prove
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
33
hindering rather than helpful. The foremost men
in the ranks of Science, those who have done the
most themselves to add to her domains, are they
who realise the most vividly how much yet remains
to be done, how far we still are from penetrating
into the mysteries of Life and Being. And if we
could imagine a Prophet now commissioned to come
forth and declare these to us, and at the same time
to inform us what it was the will of God that we
should do, how much was comprehended in our
duty towards him and towards our fellow-men, it is
likely that the practical part of his message would
suffer from its union with the theoretic, that the
Scientific Truths which the men of Science are not
yet prepared to assimilate, would prove a positive
hindrance to their being nourished by the Spiritual
Verities which accompanied them.
*
* It is possible even that some of the Propositions which
Science has already established, would not a little bewilder
many of her disciples, if stripped of the technical language in
which they are usually clothed. It must be confessed that
Physical Science is apt to talk a strange artificial dialect,
curiously compounded of derivatives from the Greek, (which
would move one of the old Hellenes to most sincere astonishment,
if he were told that they belonged to his language,) and barbarous
surnames of modern discoverers fitted with a classical ending.
Yet these very names, once mastered by the memory, are the
catchwords, so to speak, by which many of the rank and file of
Science apprehend’ and retain Scientific Truth ; and were this
enunciated simply, and in language fitting more closely to the
D
�34
THOUGHTS ON THE
4. But the best summing up of the whole question
is contained in the now trite maxim, “ The Bible
was not meant to teach us Science.” Whatever the
reason may be, whether any of those here hinted
at, or that other more commonly put forward,—that
God would not enervate man’s intellectual faculties
by giving him that truth ready to his hand which
he had provided him with the means of thinking
out for himself—here is the fact, and Theologians
and Men of Science, as they have really agreed in
accepting this conclusion, should consider what
practical consequences flow from it to each of them.
My belief is, that the Bible is—to state the
matter as simply as possible—God’s Message to
Man. These two beings, God and Man, are the
two all-important terms of every proposition with
which it has to deal. Thus in those early chapters
of Genesis, where there appears to be the nearest
approach to Scientific teaching, the true Predicate of
the main proposition is not Scientific but Religious,
and the Science is introduced as part of the defini
tion of the Subject. The object of these chapters is,
not to teach us with scientific accuracy one parti
cular cosmogony, but to say—
God—who made the Heavens, and the Earth, and
the Sea, and all that is therein,
Nature of Things, it would be perhaps only the minds of the
real Discoverers that would be able to follow it step by step, and
recognize its identity with that which they at present hold.
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
35
Made Man also;
Made him sinless, but free to choose between
good and evil;
Saw his fall with sorrow, and
Pledged himself to provide a means of redemption.
Now the question is, considering all the countless
attestations to the truth of the Bible-message,—
attestations which we cannot here even hint at,
except collectively—Miracles, Prophecy, the very
existence of the Jewish Nation and the Christian
Church, the character of Christ, the adaptation of
his Gospel to the Individual Man and to the Human
Race, the testimony of the Martyrs, the lives of
Christians, and still more their deaths, the answer
which Scripture gives to the deepest yearnings of
the Soul of Man, the harmony which it brings back
into that otherwise wild and bitter discord which
we call Human Life, considering all these things,
will you reject the message, and say that it comes
not from God, because the message-bearers were
men ignorant of modern Science ? I hardly know
how to convey my sense of the disproportion be
tween the negative and the positive quantities in
this case, between the objection taken and the evi
dences ignored. Yet, if we could imagine an officer
in the thickest of the fight on the day of Waterloo,
refusing to advance his troops to cover an important
movement on his flank, and thereby imperilling the
whole fortune of the day, simply because the aide-
�36
THOUGHTS ON THE
de-camp, who brought the message, in some way
mispronounced one of the words in it, “ You sound
the ou in Hougoumont as if it was u. I am sure
that His Grace is too good a French scholar to have
made such a mistake, and I shall not obey an order
which for this reason cannot come from him”—that
would in some measure express our notion of the
absurdity of disbelief on such grounds as these with
which we are now concerned. Or again, in a case
of shipwreck which actually occurred a few months
ago in the North of England, the lives of half the
passengers and crew were lost, owing to a mistake
in fixing the rocket apparatus too low down on the
mast of the ship, which caused the tackle to “ foul.”
Imagine that before this was done, one of the lands
men standing by had swum out at the peril of his
life to bring the captain word from the sailors on
shore, how the apparatus should be placed, but in
doing so, had failed to pronounce in true sailor
fashion the name of the fore-top-gallant yards to
which it ought to be affixed; that the captain for
this reason refused to believe that his message came
from sailors, and that all those lives were lost in
consequence. This, also, would seem to me a not
more insane procedure than the rejection of Scrip
ture, because the revelations made to Moses antici
pated not the discoveries of Copernicus or of Lyell.
*
* Sec Note in page 43.
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
37
VIII. For this is after all the main ques- practicaj
tion for each man to answer for himself. Conclu“If it be reasonably probable that this &lons‘
book is a message to Man from his Creator, what
must I do to share the deliverance and to escape the
dangers of which it speaks ? ”
The first question for us is the moral and practical
one. The speculative and theoretical one—as to the
nature and extent of Inspiration, comes far later in
the true order of enquiry : and no honest hearted
seeker after truth should reverse this order. Many,
of course, there are in our day, wThose objections to
the Christian Revelation are not free from the taint
of self-interest, who are at heart anxious that it
should be proved untrue, who weary of its high and
holy teaching and would fain ostracise the Lawgiver,
whom, with an unanimity which begins to be tedious
to them, eighteen centuries have agreed in recog
nising as emphatically The Just One. It is not to
these men, who for the sake of obtaining a wilder
license are saying, “ Let us break their bands
asunder and cast away their cords from usthat
I address myself. To them, one seems to hear the
Lord saying, “If any man hear my words and believe
not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the
world, but to save the world. He that rejectethme
and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth
him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall
judge him in the last day.” But there are men,
�38
THOUGHTS ON THE
and to them I speak, who long to believe, if they
could, firmly and heartily, that God has revealed
himself to Man by Jesus Christ, and who would, if
they could accept the Christian Scriptures as the
written record of his will: but the voices of doubt
which are in the air trouble them, the apparent
opposition of Science fills them with dismay, and
they are like the ranks of an army just beginning to
waver in its position when whispers, “ The day is
lost ” begin to pass from one to another, and even the
brave man looking on the face of his fellow sees his
own unuttered fear written there. To such men I
would say : You stake your faith on far too narrow
an issue. The point towards which you are looking
—and whose danger I believe you exaggerate—is
not, is far indeed from being, “the key of the
position.”
I desire not to under-estimate the
importance to the Believer, of a right faith in the
Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, but I hold that
faith in certain great facts therein recorded comes,
far before it in the history of the human soul.
I
utterly dissent from and renounce the doctrine in
sinuated in the cry, “.Christianity without Judaism
yet I am fully persuaded that to us, not Jewish
born, but “sinners of the Gentiles,” the New
Testament, last of the two volumes in the order of
composition, is first in the order of belief. Could
the Apostle Paul revisit the earth to prove the des
cendants of his Gentile converts as to the faith that
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
39
was in them, I am sure that his first question
would not be, “ Dost thou accept the theory of
literal Inspiration ?” or, “In what sense dost thou
interpret the Mosaic record of Creation ? ” but
rather, “Dost thou believe in Jesus and the Resur
rection?” and then, “Hastthou received the Holy
Ghost ? ” Thus, it is with events which happened
in the full blaze of historic light, the Life, Death,
Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ that we
are primarily concerned, and no amount of groping
enquiry into “ the origins of Earth and Man” can
really unsettle these. It is true that later on, and
after we have accepted him as our Saviour, the
question, “ In what relation did this Saviour stand
to the Old Covenant ? ” will probably force itself
upon our attention. We find his coming in the
flesh continually spoken of both by himself and his
Apostles as the fulfilment of that Covenant: he
answers the Tempter by three quotations from
Deuteronomy, and the Sadducees by a verse from
Exodus : he commands or accepts the examination
*
of “ the Scriptures,” as bearing witness to himself;
his chosen Evangelists everywhere quote the Old
Testament prophecies as divinely-inspired predic
tions of him ; he says that “ the Scripture cannot be
broken,” and that “ not one jot or one tittle of the
Law shall pass till all be fulfilled,” and the Apostle
of the Gentiles says, “Well spoke the Holy Spirit
* EpEvvare Imperative or Indicative.
�40
THOUGHTS ON THE
by Isaiah, the Prophet.” My own feeling is, that all
this could not have been unless the Old Testament
had been substantially, what it professed to be, the
Divinely-inspired record of God’s covenant with his
people. Without being thereby bound to accept
all the minutiae of the Masoretic annotators, I feel
that the attestation of him who was himself The
Truth, is hereby given to the broad outline of the
message of that Covenant. And even in giving this
attestation, he and his Apostles have given us a key
to unlock its really hardest passages—those of moral
and spiritual difficulty—by such expressions as these,
“ Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts
suffered you to put away your wives.” “ The Law
was added because of transgressions.” “The Law
was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ,” all
of which entitle us to speak of the Old Dispensation
as but an imperfect reflection of the attributes of
our Heavenly Father—a compromise, may we ven
ture to say, between his Light and the thick Dark
ness which was covering the Nations.
I must repeat it once more, at the risk of
iteration even to weariness ; the true question in
volved is not a theoretical, but a practical one.
This man, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, “ declared to
be the Son of God with power by the resurrection
from the dead,” is set forth as our present Saviour,
as our future Judge. Shall we accept and confess
him now, that he may confess us then, and place
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
41
us at his right hand; or shall we on some slight
pretence evade confession of him now, to hear from
his reluctant lips, in that day, the word “ Depart.”
There is no middle course possible. We must
accept him or reject him : “he that is not with me
is against me, and he that gathereth not with me
scattereth abroad.” Even silence may be hostile,
and much more may the slightly veiled sarcasm,
the shrug of the shoulders, the sneering innuendo,
“ Nous avons change tout cela”—do the work of
the enemy. Yes, of the common enemy ; it is not
“ Divines” or “Theologians” alone, whose position
Infidelity endangers; thy hopes and mine are
equally at stake in the question, “ Has God spoken
to us by Jesus Christ?” and, reverently let me say
it, neither thy life nor mine would be worth living
if he had not. But to as many as do receive this
Saviour, he gives power to become the sons of God,
and is willing to give a share of that Holy Spirit
which, though not revealing to them new truths as to
the mysteries of redemption, brings the old ones with
a new force home to their hearts, while adding no
chapters to the books containing the message, does
help them to understand under what inspiration
they were first composed.
For every one of these Sons of God, not for one
caste or order or sect alone, there is a work to do,
and in doing it, the spiritual muscles grow firm and
the spiritual eye grows bright and clear. The diffi
»
�42
THOUGHTS ON THE
culties which, to the mere Student seem infinite, the
soldier of Christ feels to be infinitesimal. In actual
conflict with Sin and Sorrow, he perceives how
helpless he would be without God’s message in his
hand, as well as God’s grace in his heart ; and
without rigorously defining the exact measure in
which the Holy Spirit has co-operated in every
word, we believe he will generally accept the oldfashioned doctrine that the Bible is God’s Book, as
expressing with the instinctive truthfulness of
popular conviction, and more nearly than any mere
speculative refinement, the truth as to the weapons
of his warfare. And if sometimes, when he is out
of sight and hearing of the great tide of Human
Life, in the solitude of his study, the intellectual
and especially the scientific Difficulty comes back
to him in exaggerated proportions, he will do wisely
to accept the advice of a modern poet—
“Wait, nor against the half-learned lesson fret;
Nor chide at old belief as if it erred,
Because thou canst not reconcile as yet
The Worker and his Word.”
He who thus patiently, yet not idly, waits, shall
have, I doubt not, one day, his part in the promise
of Christ, “ Because thou hast kept the word of my
patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of
temptation, which shall come upon all the world to
try them that dwell upon the earth.”
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
43
Note (to p. 36.)—The Author does not mean to imply, by
the comparisons here made, that the Scientific difficulties to be
met with in the Bible are of no more importance than the trifling
inaccuracies there imagined. The point upon which he wishes to
insist is this: a man may be a good and trusty messenger, and
may faithfully convey the whole message entrusted to him, yet if
cross-questioned he may display even gross ignorance upon points
as to which his principal must have been well-informed. There
fore the fact that the writers of the Old and New Testaments
were imperfectly acquainted with matters of Science does not
prove that we do wrong in listening to them on Religious
subjects as the spokesmen of the Omniscient One.
The Author admits that it is to some extent a question of
degree : but, while utterly unable to prove, he can easily believe,
that when viewed in the light of Eternity, the Scientific diffi
culties in question will be found to bear no larger proportion to
the truths revealed than the mispronunciations he has imagined,
to the orders conveyed.
Alexb. Skeen, Printer, 10, Great St. Helens, Bishopsgate.
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Thoughts on the inspiration of the scriptures
Creator
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Hodgkin, Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 43 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Printed by Alexe Green, Bishopsgate, for private distribution. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Inscription on front page: M.D. Conway Esq with the author's kind regards. A small number of annotations in ink - line of text crossed through and marginal corrections.
Publisher
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Alfred W. Bennett
Date
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1865
Identifier
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G5256
Subject
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Bible
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Thoughts on the inspiration of the scriptures), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Bible-Criticism
Conway Tracts
Scriptures