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 PRINCETON, N. J. *ig 
 
 Presented by \~V«^:S\ C/\(2.T\-V Vc:A-V-Vo\^ . 
 
 Division 
 Section 
 
A CALM REVIEW 
 
 OF 
 
 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 OP 
 
 PROF„ CHARLES A. BRIGGS. 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD D. MORRIS. 
 
 Reprove a man that hath understanding, and he will under- 
 stand knowledge.— HE^^^Vf Proverb, 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 
 
 38 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY 
 
 ANSOl^ D. F. RANDOLPH & CO. 
 
TO THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN MINISTERIAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 OF CINCINNATI 
 
 this Paper, prepared by their appointment, approved when read 
 before thetn, and printed at their generous request, is hereby, 
 with thanks for many marks of their love and confidence, 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED, 
 
 in the hope that it may prove acceptable to other minds, and in 
 some small degree may help to guide our beloved Church along 
 that mediate course between blind conservatism and an incon- 
 siderate radicalism in which its peace, its strength, and its 
 prosperity must ever lie. 
 
 The Author. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 A CALM REVIEW OF ITS POSITIONS. 
 
 No address delivered of late years on the platform of any 
 among our Theological Seminaries has attracted so much 
 attention or excited such varied comment as the one whose 
 consideration is now proposed. This interest is due in part 
 to the special prominence of the Institution where the ad- 
 dress was delivered, and to the nature and purpose of the 
 new Professorship at the time endowed and established, 
 and in part also to the high standing of the speaker as one 
 of the foremost scholars on the continent in particular lines 
 of study and instruction. "What was said in the address on 
 certain doctrinal questions of great importance, and espe- 
 cially on some matters which are just now exciting contro- 
 versy among us, doubtless tended to increase this interest. 
 There are also some elements in the existing condition of 
 Protestant thought generally, in the apparently transitional 
 character of the period, in the popular disaffection toward 
 old methods and opinions, in the extensive desire for what 
 is novel and even revolutionary in the domain of theology, 
 which have contributed still further to such interest. And 
 these exceptional features of the case — easily recognized by 
 all — will furnish, it is believed, whatever justification is 
 needful for a sincere, faithful, earnest examination of this 
 remarkable address, as it is now in an authoritative form 
 pubhshed for general inspection. 
 
 (5) 
 
6 THE INAUGUEAL ADDEESS OF 
 
 It is not the object of this review to animadvert in any 
 way upon the distinguished speaker, to whom the writer 
 has long been bound by strong ties of friendship. Nor has 
 he anything to say respecting any ecclesiastical issues pres- 
 ent or prospective that may spring from the positions taken 
 in the address, — unless it be to avow his frank opinion that 
 the best way to deal with any error that may be discovered 
 there lies, not in judicial procedures, but in such fair and 
 thorough discussion as shall expose such error and bring the 
 whole truth in the case more simply and more fully to the 
 intelligence and conviction of the Church.* Nor is the 
 writer disposed to criticise unfavorably the general quality 
 and temper of this address, beyond the honest acknowledg- 
 ment of his regret that, amid so much that is interesting in 
 thought and brilliant in diction, there should be anything 
 that savors of presumptuous confidence in what is expressed, 
 or of contemptuous reference to the beliefs and teachings 
 of other minds deservedly recognized as worthy of the 
 highest respect. Blemishes of this class in such a produc- 
 tion have at least the bad effect of predisposing those who 
 note them, to look with suspicion or with prejudice on 
 what they might otherwise have been inclined to regard 
 with favor. 
 
 Particular praise of the address is hardly needful here ; 
 
 * What the writer has seen and known of ecclesiastical procedures 
 for the arresting and correction of current errors of this class, has 
 compelled him to regard them with considerable misgiving, and to 
 prefer greatly what seems to him a more effective way, the way of 
 fair, free, thorough discussion. Respecting the value and the outcome 
 of such discussion, he has almost unbounded faith. In its presence 
 no real error is likely to maintain for long a firm footing in our 
 Church ; and, on the other hand, any error that cannot be overmatched 
 in discussion, will be likely to live and exert its baleful influence in 
 the Church, even though it were condemned by the strongest ecclesi- 
 astical verdicts. 
 
REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 7 
 
 it speaks for itself, and in a manner that cannot fail to 
 command extensive interest. Many of its suggestions are 
 deserving of large respect ; many of its sentences sparkle 
 with genius ; the glow of a high enthusiasm, like the pas- 
 sion for battle, mantles most of its pages. Though not 
 always free from rhetorical faults, it exhibits in general 
 marked skill in style and diction ; it shows extensive, though 
 not always well-digested learning ; it manifests theological 
 acumen and vigor, though sometimes betraying a lack of 
 discrimination and of depth ; it everywhere reveals admi- 
 rable ardor and earnestness, even in some instances at the 
 sacrifice of discretion. It introduces the reader to a wide 
 and interesting, though somewhat multifarious collection of 
 material, but fails in some degree to organize such material 
 into full unity and compactness ; it is too much a congeries 
 or compilation — too little a single, well-developed, vital 
 whole. All in all, however, it will not only take its place 
 fitly among the brightest productions from the fertile pen 
 of its author, but also rank high in the general list of inau- 
 gural discourses of this class. 
 
 The general aim of the address is sufiiciently indicated 
 by the occasion of its delivery, — the instituting of a new 
 Professorship, hitherto unknown in this distinct form in 
 our Church, for the introduction and development of a 
 new science or discipline into our theological cultus, the 
 science or discipline of Biblical Theology. The speaker is 
 seeking to set forth this special form of instruction at its 
 full value : to describe this young science in its nature and 
 field, to give some account of its aspirations and methods 
 and contents, and, in general, to commend it to the respect 
 of all who are interested in theology, and particularly of 
 those who are specially concerned with the training of 
 young men in our theological institutions. How far has 
 lie succeeded in this purpose ? 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 SOURCES OF AUTHOEITT IN KELIGION. 
 
 It may be said in all frankness at the outset that it is 
 doubtful whether this purpose was much subserved by the 
 preliminary discussion respecting the Bible, the Church, 
 and the Reason, regarded as three sources of di\ane author- 
 ity as to religious doctrine and duty. While the author 
 nowhere represents these as co-ordinate sources, and dis- 
 tinctly recognizes the Bible as the superior source, yet his 
 language seems both to separate the three sources too wide- 
 ly, as if they could be independent of each other, and also 
 to place them practically too nearly on the same level as to 
 authoritativeness. In fact, there are very few who find 
 God — to use his descriptive phrase — through the Bible 
 without the adjunctive influence and teaching of the Church ; 
 and fewer still, at least among Protestants, who find God 
 through the Church, without the illuminating aid of the 
 Bible. As for those who, openly rejecting the assistance 
 of both the Bible and the Church, are said to find God 
 through the Reason alone, on what warrant can Professor 
 Briggs maintain that they have any title to a place in the 
 company of the faithful ? If James Martineau, who could 
 see, as is here alleged, no proper authority for his religious 
 belief in the Church and the Bible, but in his own reason 
 alone, were to be so classed,* is it not a very sweeping and 
 
 * It is a familiar aphorism of Coleridge : Ibelieve that maiiy Unitari- 
 ans are Christians, but am sure that Unitarianism is not Christianity. 
 While we exercise the broadest charity in our judgments of men who 
 seem to us to be departing from the essence of the faith once delivered 
 to the saints, we are bound to see to it that our charitable disposition 
 shall not lead us into any compromise of the faith itself. The fol- 
 lowing sentence, wliich the Professor must have overlooked in a re- 
 cent work of Martineau quoted in his address, will illustrate in a 
 way truly painful the peril of assigning to any man of rationalizing 
 opinions and tendencies a place in the company of the faithful — the 
 
KEY. CHARLE3 A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 9 
 
 dangerous inference from one such case to conclude or even 
 imply that rationalists in general may be counted in that 
 Trmltitudo Jidelium who, according to St. Hugo, constitute 
 the true Church of Christ in the world ? Is it true, as is 
 alleged, that tlie average opinion of the Christian world 
 would not assign to Charles Spurgeon a higher place in the 
 kingdom of God than Martineau ? "Why should such men 
 be included in a class to which they have no desire to be- 
 long, and whose companionship they would openly spurn, 
 and from which not only our own Confession (chap. i. 1 ; 
 X. 4 ; xvi. 7), but also the universal judgment of evangelical 
 Protestantism, excludes them ? How can an intimation of 
 this sort be justified, unless it be on the assumption that in 
 tbese cases the Reason really becomes an authority superior 
 to the Church and the Scripture, and is of itself sufficient 
 to lead the soul to God and to everlasting life ? 
 
 When it is remembered that the speaker is not referring 
 here to devout heathen who may haply find God without 
 the help of His written Word, but to known rationalists, 
 who profess to have received that Word and to have set it 
 aside as in no sense an authority in belief, does it not be- 
 come clear to us that the cathohc Professor has not weighed 
 well the possible error and mischief apparent, on close in- 
 spection, in his genial but unguarded utterances? And is 
 there not implied in his plea for the rationalism which re- 
 invisible Body of Christ : " The blight of birth-sin, with its involun- 
 tary perdition ; the scheme of expiatory redemption, with its vicarious 
 salvation ; the incarnation, with its low postulates of God and man, 
 and its unworkable doctrine of two natures and one person ; the ofHcial 
 transmission of grace through material elements in tlie keeping of a 
 consecrated corporation ; the second coming of Christ to summon the 
 dead and part the sheep from the goats at the general judgment — all 
 are the growth of a mythical literature, or Messianic dream, or Phari- 
 saic theology, or sacramental superstition, or popular apotheosis." — 
 8eai of Authority in Religion, p. 650. 
 
10 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OP 
 
 jects the Bible an unwarranted reflection upon the position 
 which Protestantism has with entire unanimity maintained 
 as to such rationalism from the days of the Keformation 
 until now ? An intelligent Protestantism does not decry 
 the human reason when in the exercise of its proper func- 
 tions, within its own proper sphere ; nor does it question 
 the worth of the creeds and theologies of the Church as in- 
 valuable helps in the attainment and the culture of personal 
 faith in God. But an intelligent and devout Protestantism 
 places neither of these sources of authority by the side of 
 the Bible, as though either were in itself a sufficient or a 
 final source of belief. The Truth of God as contained in 
 the inspired Scripture, believed in and affirmed by the 
 Church, justified and embraced through the reason and the 
 conscience, is held by all evangelical minds to be the only 
 legitimate basis either of acceptable faith or of the right of 
 any man to a place in the blessed company of the faithful ; 
 and all liberality which goes very far beyond these bound- 
 aries must be viewed as both unwarrantable and dangerous. 
 
 BARRIERS TO BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 If a mistake has been made at this point in the address, 
 another of greater importance appears in the account which 
 it gives by way of further preliminary respecting cer- 
 tain barriers which are said to have been raised by men, 
 chiefly by theologians, against the Bible itself as a source 
 of authority in belief. The first of these barriers is styled 
 Bihliolatry, which is defined as the worshipping of the Bible 
 as a book, as though there were some magical virtue in it 
 as such. If there is any foundation whatever for such a 
 charge, the accusation seems in this case to trip too lightly 
 from careless lips : it is utterly unsustained by fact in the 
 very exaggerated form in which it is here presented. Bib- 
 liolatry is not a sin current among Protestants : and the 
 
-REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 11 
 
 characterization of the profound reverence with which they 
 habitually regard and treat the Holy Word, by such a term, 
 is at the best very questionable. — Kespecting the three bar- 
 riers which are next named, barriers springing up from 
 false views and teachings as to the authenticity, the inspira- 
 tion, and the inerrancy of the Sacred Scriptures, it is need- 
 ful to speak at greater length. 
 
 AUTHENTICITY. 
 
 Reversing somewhat the order in which these barriers are 
 presented in the address, and speaking first of Atithenticity, 
 I desire at the outset to express my personal belief in the 
 validity and worth of the new science or process which 
 bears, rather unfortunately, the name of the Higher Criti- 
 cism. Beyond the relatively Kmited sphere of what is 
 known as textual criticism, or the exegesis of this or that 
 particular verse or passage, there is, beyond all question, a 
 true and an important sphere for the larger scientific pro- 
 cess to which this name has been applied. In other words, 
 there is room and occasion, especially just at the present 
 stage of exegetical investigation, for broader and more 
 thorough inquiry respecting the style, structure, date, au- 
 thorship, scope, aim, and relations historical and doctrinal, 
 of the particular books or of certain groups of books to 
 each other and to the entire Scripture. Much work of this 
 sort had been done by biblical scholars long before the new 
 science had come into existence as a separate branch of 
 study ; but no one who is familiar with the present state 
 and needs of specific exegesis can fail to see that a much 
 larger work along these lines remains to be accomplished.* 
 
 *I should be sorry to say a word that nn>ht seem to imply any lack 
 of sympathy with this class of higher critics while they are engaged 
 in this important service for Christ and His Church. Contenii)lating 
 their labors only from the outside, and ifa no sense as an expert, I am 
 
12 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 But I have been obliged, especially of late, to draw a 
 sharp line of distinction between a Higher Criticism which 
 is conservative, reverent, evangelical — which approaches the 
 Bible and deals with it as if it were a veritable Book of 
 God — which searches and investigates that Book only that 
 it may present the one sublime Revelation in more lumin- 
 ous and more glorious lights : and a Higher Criticism 
 which treats the sacred volume on materialistic principles 
 as if it were the compilation of a national literature merely, 
 which occupies itself with negations chiefly, is largely 
 busied with the discovery of discrepancies and defects, and 
 is apparently happiest when it has said something that 
 specially shocks our reverential feeling toward the Book 
 of books. That critics of the first class will grow more 
 careful, more circumspect, as they advance in the prosecu- 
 tion of their delicate task, and more conscious of the peculiar 
 perils as well as the possible benefits of their favorite 
 study, may be confidently expected ; and as confidently may 
 we expect to find a clearer and loftier light shining ulti- 
 mately upon the divine Word as the result of their investiga- 
 tions.. On the other hand, it is greatly to be feared that 
 critics of the second class, not sufficiently held back by the 
 sweet constraints of an evangelical piety, may in this 
 country, like their allies in England and Germany, pro- 
 ceed to the point where their labors become destructive 
 rather than constructive, and tend rather to a subtle unbe- 
 lief than to the nurture and strengthening of an evangel- 
 ical faith. 
 
 It is a truism to say that this new science, like every 
 other science, must submit itself to the old and universal 
 
 bound to confess my great interest in what they are doing, and my 
 faith both in them and in the issues of their labors. So long as su- 
 preme loyalty to TJie Book animates them, God will not suffer them to 
 go far astray. 
 
KEV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 13 
 
 test : What is it doing ? The address answers this ques- 
 tion in part by assuring us that Higher Criticism has shown 
 " that Moses did not write the Pentateuch or Job ; that Ezra 
 did not write the Chronicles, Ezra, or Nehemiah ; that 
 Jeremiah did not write the Kings or Lamentations ; that 
 David did not write the Psalter, but only a few of the 
 Psalms ; that Solomon did not write the Song of Songs or 
 Ecclesiastes, and only a portion of the Proverbs ; and that 
 Isaiah did not write half of the book that bears his name." 
 Dr. Briggs further tells us that Higher Criticism has ascer- 
 tained that the great mass of the Old Testament was com- 
 posed by authors whose names and historic connection with 
 their writings have passed into utter oblivion ; that the 
 whole is a combination of miscellaneous fragments to an 
 extent never suspected before the higher critics were born ; 
 that the matter of dates, occasions, conditions as well as 
 authorship, is involved in inextricable confusion ; that ed- 
 itors and redactors and chroniclers, Elohists and Jehovists 
 and Deuteronoraists and Deutero-prophets, whose names 
 and personalities we know nothing about, have had as much 
 to do as the original authors with the books as we now have 
 them ; and so on.* How all this has been found out, it 
 is not easy for the ordinary mind to discover ; but we cer- 
 tainly have a right to ask, in all soberness, whether this 
 whole process has been truly scientific ? Have the critics 
 historical data sufficient in quantity and clearness, adequate 
 grounds and premises and materials, upon which to base 
 such a vast fabric of revolutionary conclusions ? Are we 
 sure that nothing of all this is traceable to the fertile feel- 
 ing, to the literary sense or instinct, to the pectoral con- 
 sciousness and moral disposition of the critics themselves, 
 
 * See Biblical Study and Whither ; also, Art. in Mag. of Christ. 
 Lit., Dec, 1889 ; and a recent Address reported in Christian Union. 
 
14 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 rather than to any justifying causes and reasons of an ex- 
 ternal sort ? Is this real science, or only a speculating 
 fancy, an exuberant guessing faculty, disporting itself in 
 the sedate robes of the true scientist ? ^ 
 
 A real science always advances beyond the sphere of 
 mere negations ; and Higher Criticism, if it would prove 
 itself to be such, must follow the universal law, and show 
 itself to be something more than a studied effort to prove 
 that nothing in the Old Testament is as we have supposed 
 it to be. A real science always leads the mind on from 
 doubt to certainty ; but in this instance are we not led 
 away from what we fondly supposed to be certainties into 
 a vast, variable, shifting area of guesses, hypotheses, con- 
 jectures, from which we emerge to find an impenetrable 
 mist of doubt resting upon the alleged divineness of the 
 greater part of the Old Testament ? The more the listener 
 hears the less he really knows, and the darker and more 
 painful the uncertainty which seems to him to rest like a 
 pall upon the Sacred Word. This is not the ordinary result 
 of true science, nor is such a result in any sense desirable. 
 Certainly there is nothing helpful to knowledge or to faith, 
 and th^re may be much that is mischievous, in a process 
 whose practical consequence is either a bundle of negations 
 such as this address enumerates, or an accunmlation of fog 
 and surmise which leaves us half the time in doubt whether 
 we are dealing with a veritable Book of God, or only — to 
 use a phrase current in some critical circles— with a Jewish 
 
 * See the very acute remarks of Gladstone in his recent essay on 
 this point ; especially his suggestion as to "the fashions of the time 
 and school " among specialists In this department ; to the fact that 
 many of their conclusions "appear in a great measure floating and 
 uncertain "; and to the further fact of "war waged on critical grounds 
 within the critical camp." — I'he Impregnable Hock of Holy Scripture, 
 pp. 6-15, Amer. Ed. 
 
EEV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 15 
 
 literature, not very much unlike the literature of other 
 ancient nations.* 
 
 How far the same negational and mystifying process 
 may be carried by the Higher Criticism of this lower type, 
 in dealing with the New Testament, the future alone can 
 determine. Any one who has had occasion to note the 
 history of this destructive process in Germany and in Eng- 
 land — who knows how persistently the authorship of one 
 of the four Gospels and the materials and sources and ar- 
 rangement of the others have been questioned, how stren- 
 uously the authenticity and authoritativeuess of some of 
 the Epistles have been challenged, how openly the cardinal 
 elements of miracle and prophecy have been rejected, how 
 many essential doctrines have been either slighted or tlirown 
 aside, how much all that is supernatural has been boldly 
 called in question or cast out altogether, — may well be anx- 
 ious as to the issue. The whole problem happily lies at 
 closer range, with its materials in more accessible form, and 
 with fewer chances for dangerous divergence. The greater 
 part of the New Testament can never be assigned to un- 
 known authors or to other centuries, earlier or later. The 
 story of Christ can never, like the stories of creation and 
 the fall, be pronounced a holy legend or a poetical allegory ; 
 the Christian Church, born of the New Testament, is a 
 living and an unchallengeable fact. Yet if the critics of 
 this class can by their scientific methods reduce the Old 
 Testament to the fragmentary, obscure, dissected, unat- 
 
 * It is of course to be understood that our acceptance of the Bible 
 does not turn on the question of our ability to name the authors of the 
 several books. Yet is it not hard to see what advantage is gained 
 either to science or to experience by the process of obscuration on this 
 point, in which some of the higher critics seem to find a pleasure in 
 indulging ? Cracking a nut to find it hollow, is not a nutritious or 
 cheering business. 
 
16 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 tractive, and inniitritious condition in which this address 
 describes it, who can tell what the same process may yet 
 accomplish in the New ? * 
 
 I should do great injustice to this young science, and to its 
 better representatives, if I were to charge them with any 
 complicity with the bad issues and impressions to which 
 reference has just been made. No fair mind can be indif- 
 ferent to at least four marked benefits that have already come 
 to Christian scholarship and to the whole Church of God 
 from the sound and wise application of these critical princi- 
 ples: the historic development of the Hebraic legislation 
 
 * I have lately read a history of the Development of Theology in 
 Germany since the age of Kant, by Dr. Pfleiderer, Prof, of Theology 
 at Berlin. One part of the treatise is devoted to the record of certain 
 theological developments in Great Britain during the same period. 
 The reading of this volume, especially of the chapters on Criticism 
 and Exegesis, has impressed me anew, and very painfully, by its ex- 
 hibitions of the irreverent and reckless handling of the Bible by many 
 German and some English scholars, and also of the speculative and 
 skeptical doubts, verging toward positive unbelief, as to some important 
 doctrines, such as miracle and prophecy, which stand in special rela- 
 tions to the inspiration and authoritativeness of the Word of God. I 
 might fill pages with illustrations of the bold theorizing, the conflict- 
 ing hypotheses, the destructive conjectures, the unbelieving temper 
 and purpose, which have characterized in numerous instances the 
 treatment of the Bible by this class of critics. Amid much that is or 
 will be made valuable in future exegesis and future theologizing on 
 the biblical basis, there is much which it would be very undesirable 
 to import to our shores, or to introduce into our study of the Book of 
 God. The undcvout flippancy, the recklessness in speculation, the 
 confident assertion of individual taste or opinion, the contemptuous 
 indifference to the judgment of others or the beliefs of the Church, 
 are traits which cannot find favor with the American mind ; and, on 
 the other hnnd, the evident lack of concord on many of the points dis- 
 cussed, and the hot warfare waged by one speculator against another, 
 and other like phenomena, compel one to question in his own mind 
 whether the whole process in its present stage is not doing more harm 
 than good. 
 
REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 17 
 
 along lines both supernatural and natural, the beautiful 
 growth of the Hebrew psalmody from the Davidic stock, the 
 orderly progression of predictive prophecy, especially re- 
 specting Christ, and the wonderful, superhuman progress of 
 doctrine in both the Old Testament and the New. These 
 results enable us better to understand the Bible as an in- 
 spired Book, and fill us with a fresh sense of its unspeak- 
 able worth as a divine revelation. When all who claim to 
 be higher critics shall cease from their conjectural dissec- 
 tions and reconstructions, and shall, by working along these 
 loftier lines, give us positive results such as will ex- 
 pand thought and nourish intelligent faith, the title of 
 Higher Criticism to a place among the Christian sciences 
 will be much more clearly established. 
 
 ESrSPIKATION. 
 
 Passing on to the closely related matter of Inspiration^ 
 we are confronted at once by the question of terms. The 
 words verhal and dictation^ so often used in this address, 
 are certainly misleading, if they are intended to describe 
 the common doctrine of evangelical Protestantism on this 
 subject. There are some Protestants who aflarm an inspi- 
 ration which is simply dictation throughout — the sacred 
 writers being passive pens, or penmen, in the divine 
 Hand, and every sentence and word being put into the text 
 exactly as the divine Hand through these instruments placed 
 it there. But this is not the universal, if, indeed, it be a gen- 
 eral view. Most Protestants recognize the fact tbat there is 
 also a distinct human element, a discernible human factor, in 
 the composition of the Scriptures ; they see the personality 
 of the writers as well as the voice of God in what is written. 
 Protestantism also recognizes the great underlying fact 
 that inspiration is not a single or simple but a very com- 
 plex and multiform process, concerning itself sometimes 
 
18 THE INAUGUEAL ADDKESS OF 
 
 with general superintendence of what is recorded, some- 
 times exhibiting itself in the form of spiritual elevation, 
 and in some portions of Scripture, though not in all, 
 making itself visible in what is nothing less than direct 
 or verbal dictation, word after word dropping immediately 
 as from the lips of God. 
 
 But while Protestants difier among themselves as to the 
 relative prominence and proportion of these varieties of in- 
 spiration, evangelical Protestantism holds fast by two 
 things : First, that the original cause and author of the 
 Bible as a book is not man, but God ; and, therefore, that 
 all merely naturalistic conceptions of it, all handling of it 
 as if it were a Jewish literature merely, all interpreting of 
 it as if it were composed by men, is a crime against God as 
 its author. And secondly : That this primal divine agency 
 was immediately concerned with the form, the language 
 and expression, as well as with the substance of the 
 Book, viewed as a revelation.* It is at the latter 
 
 * A good statement of the common Protestant view may be found in 
 the apologetic treatise of the revered theologian and teacher, Henry 
 Boynton Smith : that divine influence by virtue of which the truths and 
 facts given by Revelation, as well as other truths and facts pertaining 
 to the Kingdom of God, are spoken w written in a truthful and authori- 
 tative manner. In the same treatise this author presents another defini- 
 tion : Inspiration gives us a book properly called the Word of God, in- 
 spired in all its parts. This inspiration is plenary in the sense of extend- 
 ing to all the parts, and of extending also to the words. This seems to be 
 the position of Dr. Briggs himself in his interesting volume on 
 American Preshyterianism, pp. 6-7, and also in his work on Messianic 
 Prophecy. Lee defines inspiration as that actuating energy of the 
 Holy Ghost which guided the prophets and apostles in officially pro- 
 claiming the will of God by word of mouth, and in committing to 
 writing the several portions of the Bible. 
 
 Some writers on the subject (for example, Drs. Hodge and Warficld, 
 Presbyt. Review, April, 1881) would claim more than this, yet they would 
 doubtless accept this as being the most essential truth in the matter. 
 They do not bind themselves to the old theory of an absolute verbal 
 
EEV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 19 
 
 point that the doctrine of the address seems seriously 
 defective. The learned Professor avers that there is noth- 
 ing divine in the letters, words, clauses, or style of the text, 
 — that the relation of God to the Book appears simply in 
 the giving of certain concepts, and that the embodiment of 
 these concepts in human speech is simply the act of the 
 men who received them. And this he presents as an ade- 
 quate account of inspiration. 
 
 But what is a concept ? Waiving the general definition 
 of the term, which is inadequate here,^ a concept must in 
 this connection be simply some thought or impression con- 
 veyed to the mind by God without being embodied in lan- 
 guage — some suggestion respecting spiritual things divinely 
 communicated to certain persons preternaturally qualified 
 to receive such suggestion without the medium of words. 
 It is a grave question in psychology whether a thought, an 
 idea, can exist in the human mind in this disembodied Con- 
 or mechanical dictation throughout, as their interesting and able treat- 
 ise clearly shows. Dr. Charles Hodge directly rejects the mechanical 
 theory. "The Church has never held what has been stigmatized as 
 the mechanical theory of inspiration. The sacred writers were not 
 machines, etc." Syst. TkeoL, I., 157. See his definition of the term, 
 plenary inspiration, I., 165. 
 
 * In philosophic usage the term is defined (Century Diet.) as a gen- 
 eral notion, or an immediate object of thought in simple apprehen- 
 sion, or ( Webster) an abstract general conception. Coleridge defines 
 conception as a conscious act of the understanding, bringing some 
 given object or impression into the mind in certain relations to other 
 objects, and the concept is the product of such conscious action. Kant 
 (Critique) says that the understanding is the faculty of thinking, and 
 thinking is knowledge by means of concepts. Hamilton {Logic) says 
 that in the forming of concepts or general notions the mind Compares, 
 disjoins, or conjoins attributes. A concept is clear when its object as 
 a whole can be distinguished from any other: it is distinct when its 
 several parts can be distinguished from each other (Fleming, Vocab. 
 Phil.). These definitions clearly imply the necessary use of language 
 fn the formation as in the description of our concepts. 
 
,20 THE INAUGURAL ADDEESS OF 
 
 dition, yet no one can deny that for such a purpose as the 
 creation of Scripture God might empower certain minds to 
 discern and receive truth without the help of language. 
 But if this be granted, is it not clear that this peculiar 
 process is not inspiration, but revelation ? Are not two 
 things which are very different confused here, the impart- 
 ing of knowledge and the recording of it? Inspiration is, 
 in fact, the recording of revelations previously received, 
 and of whatever else is essential to the proper apprehending 
 of these revelations. Is this act of recording one in which 
 God concerns Himself, or is it the act of men, who are 
 constantly exposed to such mistakes or defects as are inci- 
 dent to human fallibility, so that the record becomes at last 
 only their account of certain concepts which God once 
 gave them ? How can their account have any authority for 
 us, unless we have reason to believe that they were divinely 
 empowered, divinely guided, not merely in receiving, but 
 also in describing their concepts and transmitting them to 
 the world ? If there is no distinct, positive, theopneustic 
 element or process in such description and transmission, 
 what does the result become tons but an inadequate human 
 communication, void of all spiritual authoritativeness ? 
 And when the whole case is further obscured by bringing 
 the matter of authorship into doubt as to name and date, 
 conditions and purpose, and by affirming that on all these 
 contributory points the great mass of the Old Testament, 
 for example, is substantially a terra incognita^ what real 
 weight can we attach to such a communication as a true 
 message from God ? 
 
 But further : the Bible is not a mere series of reported 
 concepts; it is also a history, a biography, a ritual and 
 psalmody, a collection of prophecies, a statement of doc- 
 trines, a law, a transcript and summary of human duties, a 
 manual on character, a proclamation of grace, a way of life. 
 
EEV. CHAELES A. BKIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 21 
 
 The concept theory furnishes no intelligible explanation of 
 these elements in Holy Scripture — no account especially as 
 to those facts and declarations of the Gospel respecting 
 which what we need is a clear, faithful, reliable record. 
 The definition gives us, for example, no apprehensible de- 
 scription of the process by which the four evangelists set 
 forth in detail the various events, acts, teachings, journeys, 
 experiences, in the life of our blessed Lord. The Book of 
 Acts is in no sense whatever a book of concepts : the Pen- 
 tecost was an event, not a suggestion conveyed to the mind 
 of Luke without the medium of words, and then described 
 by him in such language as he could command. 
 
 Dr. Briggs finds a refuge from this inevitable conclusion 
 by introducing, in another connection, the theory of a gen- 
 eral divine superintendence, which is exhibited especially 
 in those portions of the Bible that are biographic or his- 
 toric — those which deal with what he regards as the circum- 
 stantials rather than essentials of the divine revelation. 
 After averring in strong terms that errors do in fact exist 
 in these portions, although such superintendence has been 
 exercised over them, he proceeds to define this superintend- 
 ence in the following words: "It may be that this provi- 
 dential superintendence gives infallible guidance in every 
 particular ; and it may be that it differs but little, if at all, 
 from the providential superintendence of the fathers and 
 schoolmen and theologians of the Christian Church." This 
 certainly is no sufficient explanation. Have we not a right 
 to ask, with great earnestness, whether so colorless and in- 
 ert a concept as this has any title to a place among legiti- 
 mate theories of inspiration ? Is it true that there is no 
 distinction which is discernible and vital between, for ex- 
 ample, the inspiration of the four narratives respecting 
 Christ, where the theory of imparted concepts cannot be 
 applied, and that gracious aid and guidance which ordinary 
 
22 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 believers enjoy ? Under such a statement, what is inspira- 
 tion except an uncertain name ? 
 
 The conclusion of the matter, according to the common 
 verdict of Protestantism, is that inspiration, as a divine 
 process, must concern itself, not with the reception only, 
 but also and specially with the impartation of divine truth, 
 and, therefore, that it cannot exist in any other form than 
 in connection with language. To maintain, under whatever 
 plausible theory, that the language introduced is the contri- 
 bution of man only, is either to destroy inspiration alto- 
 gether or to make of it a speculative fiction with which the 
 Christian mind, seeking for some true and valid foundation 
 for its faith, can never be satisfied. In this position all 
 evangelical schools and grades of opinion, however widely 
 they may divide in their definitions, are heartily agreed. 
 Plenary inspiration, all will affirm, is an inspiration of lan- 
 guage as truly as of thought. 
 
 INEKEANOY. 
 
 We are now brought to another problem vitally connected 
 with the two preceding topics — the problem of Inerrancy. 
 Here again we are in need of careful definition and dis- 
 crimination. The term is employed by the author as if it 
 could refer only to the biographic and historic portions of 
 the Bible, to the circumstantials, but not the essentials. 
 But I can discern no reason in the nature of the case why, 
 ^f there be errors scattered through the narratives and his- 
 tories of Scripture, there may not be errors, all the more 
 dangerous because we cannot so easily discover them, in 
 the statements made by fallible men in fallible language 
 respecting the concepts which God gave them as to the 
 principles, the laws, the doctrines, the most essential and 
 saving elements in His revelation.* The proper definition 
 
 * If the sacred writers have made mistakes in the circumstantials of 
 
REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 23 
 
 of the term inerrancy is not exactness, but accuracy — free- 
 dom or exemption from error. It does not imply that each 
 sacred writer told the whole story of that which he describes, 
 but simply that he was accurate in what he did record. 
 Nor does it imply that there must always be a verbal par- 
 allelism, as in the case of quotations from the older Scrip- 
 tures, if the real sense and teaching of the passage quoted 
 are given. Nor does it require verbal exactness at every 
 point, as in the case of the four differing inscriptions re- 
 ported by the four evangelists as ha\nng been placed above 
 the head of the crucified Christ. Neither does it demand 
 that an exact historical order shall be preserved when, as in 
 the narrative of the temptation of our Lord, the substance 
 of the impressive fact is truly related. Variations in the 
 structure of a story, the transposition of events, changes in 
 the order of a narrative, repetitions of the same event in 
 different form or connection, are by no means inconsistent 
 with a true and plenary and inerrant inspiration. Still less 
 is it necessary that now, after so many centuries of possible 
 inadvertence in transcription and otherwise, we should be 
 able, under conditions so changed, to discern in every detail 
 the circumstantial harmony which may have been entirely 
 manifest to those who first heard or read the sacred story. 
 
 Scripture where accuracy is comparatively easy, the natural pre- 
 sumption is that they fell into mistakes in dealing with those more 
 essential matters where accuracy is certainly more difficult, and where, 
 it may be added, error is a thousandfold more dangerous. This con- 
 clusion cannot be avoided except by the assumption that in the record- 
 ing of these essentials they were inspired in a special sense and measure^ 
 and were thereby saved from the mistakes into which they were suf- 
 fered to fall in their historic or biographic work. But this assumption, 
 with all that it implies, is certainly open to very serious question. It 
 offers to us a Bible some parts of which are infallible, while others are 
 fallible, but gives us no clue or key by which we can distinguish the 
 first class from the second. 
 
24 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 It certainly is enough for us all if, at this distance of time 
 and place, we are satisfied that the Bible is exempt from 
 any and all error which would in any way impair its claim 
 to be an adequate and trustworthy revelation from God. 
 
 I may allude in passing to a singular logomachy which 
 has arisen at this point respecting the original manuscripts 
 of the books of the Bible. On one side it is afiirmed that 
 if we could but examine these original manuscripts, we 
 should find them absolutely free from each and every form 
 of error or discrepancy. Admitting that certain discrep- 
 ancies and errors are found in the copies of these manu- 
 scripts that have been preserved for us, this party would 
 maintain that everything of this sort must have crept in at 
 some later date. On the other side it is affirmed that there 
 are some of these errors and discrepancies which cannot 
 be explained through mistake in transcription or obscura- 
 tion of time or any other like cause — which must have 
 been in the original manuscripts at the outset. The first 
 party create a very strong presumption in their favor by 
 pointing to God as the author of the Bible, to the nature 
 of inspiration as a process in which the minds of the 
 writers were lifted above their ordinary exposure to mis- 
 take, to the general testimony of Scripture in favor of its 
 own inerrancy, and to its avowed aim and purpose as an in- 
 fallible guide to everlasting life. The second party create an 
 opposing presumption drawn from the numerous instances 
 where discrepancy or error appear in our present copies 
 which cannot be explained on any theory of subsequent 
 changes, but must, as they affirm, have existed in the 
 original writings. 
 
 For myself I frankly say that the first presumption 
 seems far stronger than the second ; and the fact that I am 
 unable to remove the latter by any explanatory process 
 does not compel me to abandon the first. If I must make 
 
EEV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 25 
 
 either affirmation, I deliberately prefer the position of in- 
 errancy, however serious the difficulties that confront me 
 from the second quarter. But have I a right to require 
 that other Christian minds shall take the same position at 
 the peril of being counted as disloyal to Holy Writ if they 
 refuse ? On the other hand, have they any right to enforce 
 their presumption of errancy upon me? When we re- 
 member that the oldest extant copy of the Old Testament 
 is less than a thousand years old, and at least fourteen or 
 fifteen centuries more recent than the date of the latest 
 portions of this earlier half of Scripture, — that the oldest 
 copies of the New Testament belong at the farthest to the 
 fourth or fifth century of the Christian era, — that all these 
 books were preserved for many hundred years on parch- 
 ment or linen by the slow process of copying, often by 
 ignorant and incompetent hands, and sometimes by those 
 who sought to improve the original text, — and that all the 
 ancient versions and other helps to the proper understand- 
 ing of those originals have passed through the same process 
 and themselves bear the same marks of present imperfection, 
 why under such conditions should we disturb one another 
 with sharp controversy over something which we have 
 never seen or can see, and which none of us can ever ad- 
 duce as decisive proof of the accuracy of his individual 
 presumption in the case ? Can any authoritative theory of 
 inspiration be builded up on either of these hypotheses ? 
 And does not the controversy, as we now behold it, seem 
 to possess all the elements of an interminable, and perchance 
 a mischievous, logomachy ? * 
 
 * It seems to be supposed by the advocates of the absolute inerrancy 
 of the original Scriptures in every minute detail, that their view is sus- 
 tained in some way by the creed of our Church. The plain fact 
 is, that there is not a single sentence or phrase in our Confession (or, 
 indeed, in any Protestant Symbol,) by which a man could be con- 
 
26 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 On the other hand, I have been led, after some examina- 
 tion of the matter, to suspect that some of the bibhcal 
 critics, in their effort to maintain a particular opinion as to 
 inspiration, have made much more than the facts warrant, 
 or than is prudent in Christian men, of existing discrepan- 
 cies in the Bible. The existence of such discrepancies is 
 not to be denied. Yet ought not this fact to be so stated 
 that it shall not seriously disturb our faith ? When our 
 Confession (chap. i. 8) declares that the Sacred Books 
 have by the singular care and providence of God been 
 kept pure in all ages, this does not imply that copyists and 
 translators were, like the original authors, inspired or were 
 miraculously kept from error. The wonder of thoughtful 
 minds is that a book which required fifteen centuries for its 
 formation, by many writers in several languages, and under 
 most diverse conditions, should after its completion and 
 compilation have passed through so many exposm*es and 
 been transmitted through processes so likely to impair its 
 original statements, and at last should have come down to 
 us after eighteen centuries so free from serious error on 
 any essential point of doctrine or duty, so void of contra- 
 dictions or even of important historic discrepancies, that 
 we have no difficulty in receiving and embracing it as in 
 its totality the very Word of God. Whatever may have 
 
 vlcted of heresy who should aflSrm that in his judgment there were 
 errors of this class iu some of the books of Scripture as originally 
 written. Our creed is much less specific on this point than is com- 
 monly supposed — much less, in fact, than is the general belief of the 
 Church itself in our time. The doctrine of inspiration, as most of us 
 hold it, is an historic growth, subsequent to the Westminster Assembly, 
 and, indeed, chiefly within this century. In condemning departures 
 from that doctrine, it is well to remember that we as Presbyterians 
 can go no farther ecclesiastically than our own Confession warrants ; 
 later opinion, however current, is not a constitutional basis for dis- 
 cipline. 
 
REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 27 
 
 been its exact original form, whatever the changes and 
 vicissitudes to which it has been subject through the cen- 
 turies, and whatever questions may be started as to the best 
 way of explaining some perplexities which here and there 
 arise in our study of it, we may reverently accept it with- 
 out any soHcitude as being an inerrant revelation, entirely 
 adequate to guide us and all men from earth to heaven. 
 
 How shall we as Christian men treat such discrepancies 
 as do in fact appear in the present Scriptures? At the 
 outset it would seem to be our duty to guard ourselves 
 against the serious mistake of endeavoring, under the influ- 
 ence of a desire to build up one theory of inspiration or 
 to throw down another theory, to magnify this admitted 
 difficulty, whether by enlarging the number of such dis- 
 crepancies or by emphasizing their importance. If the 
 critic should find a thousand of them in the Bible as he 
 has it, he could never prove that any given number, or 
 even any single one of them, was actually in the original 
 manuscripts, and therefore he could never prove by this 
 process that the original Scriptures were not inerrant. He 
 might create a presumption against their inerrancy, but his 
 argument would be a presumptive argument only, and the 
 presumption is one which he could not present as a sufficient 
 basis for a theory of inspiration, or a conclusive key to 
 biblical interpretation, or for which he could claim the ap- 
 proval of other minds. And may it not be seriously asked 
 here whether the motive that inspires him, right enough in 
 itself, really justifies a procedm-e which has in it, as all can 
 see, so many elements of danger to the conmion faith? 
 What truth would be brought out, what doctrine made 
 clearer, what duty more strongly enforced, by such an ac- 
 cunmlation of actual or possible defects discovered or sup- 
 posed to be discovered in the written "Word ? Why, for ex- 
 ample, should Dr. Briggs desire first to reduce the doctrine 
 
28 THE IlSrAUGUEAL ADDRESS O:? 
 
 of inspiration into a peculiarly speculative, slender, evanes- 
 cent form, and then make sucli inspiration still more intan- 
 gible and dubious by emphasizing so strongly the errancies 
 and aberrations of Scripture ? How is the Biblical Theol- 
 ogy, of which he is the elect representative, to be aided by 
 showing that the Book from which it is derived is marred 
 by multiform errors ? 
 
 We may learn a practical lesson here from the great 
 English apologists of the last century, Leslie, Warburton, 
 Leland, and their compeers. No critic of our day, German 
 or British or American, could bring together a stronger 
 array of discrepancies, contradictions, errors, than may be 
 found in the writings of Toland, Collins, Woolston, Tindal, 
 Chubb, and their associates among the English Deists of 
 that dark period. Thomas Paine and the Age of Reason 
 may be said to have brought their malevolent work of 
 aspersion to its final consummation. But the noble school 
 of apologists to whom I have referred gave themselves res- 
 olutely to the task of answering these unworthy aspersions 
 upon the Bible, of explaining the alleged errors, of dis- 
 proving the asserted contradictious, of harmonizing dis- 
 crepancies wherever this was possible, and of showing in 
 general that, after all, the Bible was a true revelation, 
 worthy of universal credence. They accepted the challenge 
 of Deism on every field, and on every field they won a 
 decisive victory for the Divine Word and for the common 
 Christianity. The hostile researches of another century, 
 the investigations and incongruous affirmations of the Ger- 
 man criticism, the speculative problems and perplexities 
 raised in various quarters since their day, have not increased 
 the difficulty of like defence in our time ; and, on the other 
 hand, the vdder knowledge, the larger scholarship, and bet- 
 ter equipment which we enjoy make the conflict and the 
 victory more easy and more sure. If we but enter upon 
 
EEV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 29 
 
 the task in their spirit of reverential loyalty to the Word, 
 with a controlling desire to make the least rather than the 
 most of every difficulty, we, like them, shall have the priv- 
 ilege o^ seeing sucli difficulty for the most part disappear. 
 
 When the whole matter of discrepancy has been reduced 
 to its lowest dimensions by processes of analysis and ex- 
 planation such as these, it may be reduced still further by 
 reference to the lung process of transcription running 
 through many centuries, with some possibility of error or 
 corruption at every stage. Wliile no one could affirm that 
 all discrepancy can be explained by such reference, Chris- 
 tian minds will generally admit that very much can be so 
 explained. And if to this source of helpful light there be 
 added the historic obscuration that has come through the 
 long ages upon the sacred text, rendering inscrutable to us 
 many things which were entirely plain to those who lived 
 when the text was written, or shortly after, we have an- 
 other source of relief from perplexity, of probably greater 
 value than most have been accustomed to suppose. I have 
 an impression also that Higher Criticism, as it shall advance 
 into the stage of a positive and matured science, will be 
 found to be exceedingly helpful in this direction, — just as 
 Assyriology and Egyptology are already explaining many 
 biblical obscurities and confirming our faith in certain his- 
 torical parts of Scripture. And I further believe in my 
 inmost heart that by these, and by other kindred processes 
 that might be named, this whole matter of errancy can be 
 reduced to such insignificant dimensions that it would never 
 unsettle intelligent faith or disturb in any way the harmony 
 of the Church.* 
 
 * Charles Hodge; Syst. Theol, vol. i., 151-170, on inspiration and 
 inen-ancy, especially pp. 169, 170, on the way of regarding and treat- 
 ing existing discrepancies. Also, Lee on Inspiration, especially Lect. 
 
30 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 A word in passing with regard to two other barriers 
 which Professor Briggs charges the theologians with hav- 
 ing erected against the new science of Biblical Theology, — 
 false views of Miracle and false views of Projphecy. The 
 affirmations of the address on the first point are, that mira- 
 cles are of less moment to the Christian system than the 
 modern apologists have been accustomed to maintain ; that 
 they are not widely diffused through the Scriptures, but 
 are limited to two or three specific periods in the develop- 
 ment of the scheme of grace ; that they are always miracles 
 of redemption ; that they are wrought chiefly to illustrate 
 the saving love of Christ and the process of our salvation ; 
 that nothing would be lost from their practical value if 
 they were regarded simply as extraordinary acts of Provi- 
 dence in accordance with the laws of nature ; that if the 
 miracles of Christ could be explained by the use of hypno- 
 tism or by some other occult natural agency, nothing essen- 
 tial would be lost out of them ; and that the theories of 
 miracles taught in the Church are human inventions merely. 
 The .address does not suggest what some critics are now 
 openly affirming, that the presence of miracle in the Bible 
 is a positive difficulty in the way of belief, but it certainly 
 makes no distinct reference to that grand function of mira- 
 cle as an evidential adjunct to Scripture, without which the 
 explanation and defence of miracle are well-nigh impos- 
 sible. 
 
 "What is a miracle ? A miracle is a specific act produced 
 within the sphere of nature or of humanity, not by any 
 
 viii. ; H. B. Smith, Introd. to Christ. Tlieol., ch. v., Part II., III. ; 
 Shedd, Syst. TJieol., vol. i., 93-110. "Minor variations are not incon- 
 sistent with plenary inspiration. . . . They are also compatible with 
 an infallible account." 
 
EEV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 31 
 
 occult force in nature, but by the direct efficiency of God, 
 for the purpose of attesting some truth or promise, or of 
 demonstrating the divine authorship of some scheme or 
 process of government or of redemption. It is not import- 
 ant here to state the proof that miracle can occur, or that 
 such occurrence can be proved, or that God is immediately 
 in every miracle, according to the testimony of Scripture. 
 But it is important to say that miracles are very widely 
 diffused through the Bible ; that, especially in the Old 
 Testament, they are often miracles of pro%^deuce, of power 
 and authority, or of retribution, rather than of grace ; that 
 while they do in many cases gloriously illustrate the love 
 of the Saviour and the methods by which the soul is saved, 
 they are always represented as having a wider attestational 
 function ; and that, instead of being obstructional or unim- 
 portant, they are of inestimable moment as witnesses to the 
 inspiration and the authoritativeness of the whole Bible. 
 
 PKOPHECT. 
 
 Respecting prophecy. Dr. Briggs denies that it consti- 
 tutes in any direct sense a history before the time ; he 
 quotes Kuenen with approval as having shown that many 
 Old Testament prophecies, instead of having come to pass, 
 have actually been reversed by history ; he affirms for him- 
 self that the great body of Messianic prediction not only 
 never has been, but cannot now or at any time in the 
 future be fulfilled. He does not side directly with that 
 school of criticism which is now inclined to hold that there 
 is in fact no predictive element in the Old Testament, and 
 that the prophets were simply and solely religious teachers, 
 whose strong declarations respecting men and cities and 
 nations have been entirely misapprehended by the modern 
 Church. But the illustration which he adduces as an in- 
 stance of unfulfilled prophecy, the minatory declai-ation of 
 
32 THE INAUGUEAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 Jehovah by the mouth of Joshua, afterwards modified upon 
 the repentance of the monarch and people of Nineveh,* 
 shows how imperfect and how injurious in some aspects his 
 theory of prophecy must be. We have only to analyze the 
 great fact of prophecy more closely, and to study that great 
 fact in its evidential relation to Scripture, to see just where 
 the imperfection and the injury lie. 
 
 It is true that the Westminster divines made no refer- 
 ence to prophecy or miracle, or to the grand attestational 
 argument drawn from the history of the Bible and from its 
 moral influence, in their list of the evidences by which the 
 Book certifies itself to us as from God. This is an obvious 
 defect in their Confession, and one that justifies its revision. 
 But this defect has been fully made up by the apologists 
 of later times, and the combined arguments from miracle 
 and prophecy now stand out, in the apprehension of Prot- 
 estantism, as an impregnable defence of Holy Scripture. 
 It may be that in developing this composite argument some 
 of these apologists have magnified unduly these external 
 defences, but certainly it is now too late for any intelligent 
 
 * To quote the minatory declaration of God against Nineveh, taken 
 in connection with the subsequent repentance of the people and the 
 consequent change in the divine dealing with them, as an instance of 
 uufultilled prediction, certainly involves a grave misapprehension of 
 the nature and function of prophecy. To draw from this and sim- 
 ilar instances in the Old Testament where conditional judgments are 
 threatened but afterwards withheld, the inference that many divine 
 predictions have been reversed by history, is a still more serious mistake. 
 Respecting the affirmation that there lies embodied in the brief book 
 of Jonah " the gospel of infant salvation and the gospel of heathen 
 salvation," one cannot avoid being surprised, whether we consider it 
 as theology or as exegesis. How much more impressive is the pro- 
 found remark of Edwards: "Where Scripture History fails, there 
 Prophecy takes its place ; so is the account still carried forward, and 
 the chain is not broken till we come to the very last link — the consum- 
 mation of all things." 
 
KEY. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 33 
 
 Protestant to decry or to ignore them. The inward witness 
 for the Word, the testimony of the Christian consciousness 
 in its behalf, precious as it is, can nevermore render need- 
 less this subhme external testimony. Surely, surely, it is 
 useless to disparage miracle so long as the transcendent 
 story of the resurrection of our Lord, the crowning miracle 
 of Christianity, stands unim peached and unimpeachable on 
 the sacred page. And as for prophecy, so long as Tyre 
 stands a perished city by the sea ; so long as many centuries 
 of time attest the truthfulness of the solemn predictions 
 respecting Egypt and Moab and Assyria ; so long as the 
 numerous and explicit predictions of the Old Testament 
 concerning Christ are so clearly verified in the four evan- 
 gels ; so long as the clear prophecies of Christ respecting 
 His own death and resurrection, respecting the destruction 
 of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jewish people, 
 respecting the development and progress of His Gospel 
 and its expanding career on earth, remain imquestioned in 
 the Bible, it will be vain to depreciate the presence or the 
 worth of prophecy in the Christian scheme.* 
 
 BIBLICAL AND SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. 
 
 After these various and long digressions into adjacent 
 fields of thought, we have now come to the main and the 
 final topic in this important address. The chief aim of the 
 author, as has been already stated, is to set forth the nature 
 and claims of Biblical Theology as a science worthy of a 
 high place in our theological curriculum. In order to se- 
 cure recognition for this new science, he seems to think it 
 needful to disparage Systematic Theology and its repre- 
 
 * On the worth of Miracles, note the admirable presentation by 
 Henry B. Smith, Apologetics, chap. iv. ; and on Prophecy and its Ful- 
 filment, see his Introduction, pp. 162-167. 
 
34 THE INAUGURAL ADDEESS OF 
 
 sentatives in language probably never before applied on 
 such an occasion in such a way. We listen in wonder to 
 his profuse arraignment of these representatives, some of 
 whom are among the most eminent names on the roll of 
 Protestantism. They are not only theologians and apolo- 
 gists and theologizers, but also dogmatists and dogmaticians ; 
 the scholastics and ecclesiastics of Protestantism and blind 
 defenders of traditionalism ; engaged in putting up barriers 
 of dogmatism against the truth ; substituting a human rule 
 of faith for the authority of God ; shutting out the light 
 and obstructing the life of God, and obtruding themselves 
 in the way of devout seekers after God ; representatives of 
 priestcraft, ceremonialism, and dead orthodoxy ; depreciat- 
 ing the Church and the Eeason, and treating even the 
 Bible as if it were a baby ; reasoning falsely in a circle and 
 yet in utter unconsciousness, while they thrust their fallacies 
 and deceits in the face of other men, and create ghosts of 
 evangelicalism to frighten children ; well-meaning but mis- 
 guided, resting in their own conceits and follies rather than 
 in the written Word ; inculcating a hard and fast system of 
 dogma in which they beg their premises and jump at their 
 conclusions ; exaggerating, misunderstanding, and even per- 
 verting the doctrines of Scripture ; teaching bugbears and 
 magical transformations and other conceits, derived from 
 the ethnic religions, without any basis in the Bible or 
 Christian experience or the Christian creeds ; at the saaae 
 time culpably neglecting the ethical portions of both the 
 Old and the New Testaments, and especially the ethics of 
 Christ ; and so on and on. 
 
 The science of Systematic Theology, justified by more 
 than three centuries of healthful development, graced by 
 many illustrious names from Melancthon and Calvin down 
 to the honored teachers of our own time, dead and living, 
 and well approved by the Church in its general temper, 
 
REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 35 
 
 principles, processes, and results, needs no eulogy or de- 
 fence from me. That it is yet a complete science, perfect 
 in all its methods and absolutely secure and final in all its 
 conclusions, no wise representative of it would claim. That 
 some of its representatives have been prone to follow 
 precedent rather than Scripture, to rest too much in phi- 
 losophical or metaphysical reasonings, to fabricate systems 
 too largely from their own fancy, and so to diverge over- 
 much from the straight line of biblical teaching and bib- 
 lical authority, no one ought to deny. But that it is a real 
 science, based on sound principles in the main, prosecuted 
 for the most part in an intelHgent and faithful spirit, and 
 therefore worthy of respect from considerate men, may be 
 safely affirmed. In regard to this singular assault upon 
 this science and its representatives at such an inopportune 
 time and place I propose to say nothing now excepting 
 this : that a poorer way of commending a new science and 
 a new professorship to popular sympathy and confidence 
 could not possibly have been invented. And the attitude 
 which the author in this connection assumes for himself as 
 the elect leader of another theological advance or crusade 
 which is to sweep or burn away all this dead orthodoxy, 
 this effete ecclesiasticism, this formal morality, and to in- 
 troduce in their stead a new life and a new age in theology 
 and in Christian experience — a reformation grander, as he 
 assures us, than that of the sixteenth century — is neither 
 diffident nor safe. It remains to be seen whether, in 
 famihar phrase, the vigor and success of the war will at 
 all equal the sounding phrases of the manifesto.* 
 
 * One who has the privilege of teaching theology in the systematic 
 form would be culpable, if he should allow these reflections in his 
 favorite pursuit to warp in the least degree his estimate of the interest 
 and the value attaching to this new science of Biblical Theology. 
 He should rather welcome it as a mode of presenting in fresh and in 
 
as THE INAUGUEAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY DEFINED. 
 
 Dr. Briggs defines Biblical Theology, which stands in his 
 apprehension so far above Systematic Theology, as the The- 
 ology of the Bible. This is a promising phrase, but rather 
 too general and vague to be useful. In the Appendix he 
 further defines it as that theological discipline which pre- 
 sents the theology of the Bible in its historical formation 
 within the sacred writings. He again describes it as Bib- 
 lical Dogmatics, — that part of dogmatics which rests upon 
 the Bible and derives its material from the Bible by the 
 legitimate use of its principles. Is there not in these defi- 
 nitions a half-concealed assumption of special scriptural- 
 ness, of a higher and purer biblical quality than is to be 
 found in Systematic Theology ? Dr. Shedd tells us {Dog- 
 Tnatic Theol., i., 12-15) that the biblical, like the systematic 
 method of theologizing, may construct a biblical or an un- 
 biblical book, an evangelical or a rationalistic treatise, a 
 theistic or a pantheistic scheme. As a matter of fact, he 
 says, all varieties of orthodoxy and of heterodoxy may be 
 found within this new department, and he points us to 
 Germany for the evidence. And then he shrewdly adds : 
 As we have to ask respecting systematic theology whose the- 
 ology it is, so also in regard to biblical theology we must 
 
 some respects specially efifective ways, the Truth of God. To study 
 thoughtfully and as separate from all other, the theology of some man 
 like John or Peter or Paul, or the theology of some single epistle 
 like the Galatian or the Ephesian, or some group of epistles like the 
 Pastoral, is in itself a most delightful task, and one which the writer 
 from a long experience would heartily commend, especially to the 
 younger ministers of our Church. They will not be likely to find 
 much new truth, but they will discern the old truths in fresher form 
 and coloring, and perhaps in greater attractiveness. How such a 
 study can be at variance with Systematic Theology, it is hard for a 
 plain mind to conceive. 
 
BEV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 37 
 
 ask whose biblical tlieolof^y it is. On bis authority we 
 may, therefore, conclude that biblical theology is not more 
 biblical by necessity than systematic theology is. In this 
 instance what we have are simply the opinions of Professor 
 Briggs, after the most thorough examination which he can 
 give respecting the doctrinal contents of this or that book, 
 or the personal teachings of this or that inspired writer, or 
 the general doctrine found b}' him in some broader division 
 of the Bible, or in the Bible as a whole. What now are 
 these opinions, as presented in this address? 
 
 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY CONCERNING GOD. 
 
 Passing by what is said in a suggestive way respecting 
 the theophanies and institutions of the Old Testament, and 
 of the religious system of the Hebrews, we come at once 
 upon his exposition of the contents of the Bible under the 
 three main heads : God, Man, Kedemption. Under the 
 first head he remarks that a new doctrine of God, high 
 above the most skilful constructions of the systematic the- 
 ologians, is one of the greatest needs of our time. He 
 proceeds further to say that we do not need a Bible to 
 teach us that God is just ; that the favorite attribute of the 
 Bible is mercy ; that all our creeds and systems of divinity 
 exaggerate the divine justice, and indicate a fear lest God 
 should be regarded as too merciful ; and that the love of 
 God for the world will shine out as the one great truth for 
 man to know when all the creeds and theologies shall have 
 been buried (so he prophesies) in the obhvion of the 
 eternities. As we calmly weigh these sentences, we fall at 
 once to wondering whether we are really getting something 
 new and lofty beyond all antecedent conceptions of the 
 Deity, or are listening to an old half-truth stated in fresh 
 and rather oracular form. What on this view is to become 
 of all those portions of the Old Testament (from which 
 
38 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 the tlieologj of the author seems to be very largely drawn) 
 which tell us so frequently and impressively of the holy 
 sovereignty of God, — of His law and commandments, 
 His righteous administration, His faithful warnings against 
 sin, His holy judgments. His terrible retributions? Do 
 we not need the Bible to tell us of all this, as well as to 
 set forth the divine mercy ? How can that mercy be com- 
 prehended at all except in its relations to the divine justice ? 
 And is Biblical Theology to devote itself simply to the ex- 
 position and collation of one among the divine attributes, 
 while ignoring or counting as secondary all the rest? 
 "Where in such a theology as is proposed do we find room 
 for the fundamental doctrine of the moral or even the prov- 
 idential government of God ; and how can we on such a 
 basis explain the impressive facts of His administration, or 
 interpret His imperative and holy statutes, or join with 
 patriarchs and psalmists and prophets in those solemn as- 
 criptions of praise and adoration which sound magnificent, 
 like organ peals, through the older Scriptures ? 
 
 I have been accustomed to think that our own well- 
 poised and comprehensive Confession, when it (chap, i., 1) 
 describes God on one hand as " most loving, gracious, mer- 
 ciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, for- 
 giving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and the rewarder of 
 them that dihgently seek Him," and then describes Him 
 on the other hand as "most wise, most holy, most free, 
 most absolute, working all things according to the counsel 
 of His most righteous will ; also most just and terrible in 
 His judgments and hating all sin," presents us with a 
 thoroughly biblical view of God, the result of a profound 
 study of His Word, not in a few passages here and there, 
 but throughout, and therefore worthy of universal accept- 
 ance among Christians substantially as it stands. Individ- 
 ual theologians and some schools of Calvinistic theology 
 
REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 39 
 
 may have enipliasized overmuch the severer side of this 
 hiblical portraiture, and there is ground for the general 
 admission that the Confession itself, in its subsequent ap- 
 plication of the doctrine, has not sufficiently kept in de- 
 served prominence the love of God for the world, and the 
 sincerity and fullness of His desire that all men should 
 come back to Him in penitence and faith.* But notwith- 
 standing such facts, we may still present this portraiture 
 not merely as one that is worthy of universal acceptance, 
 but one that in its essence is practically recognized by evan- 
 gelical minds of every name as a fuU and sound and un- 
 questionable deduction from what the Bible, and the whole 
 Bible, teaches on this subject. 
 
 Biblical Theology can do no better than to accept, not 
 the favorite attribute of mercy alone, but the essential 
 attribute of justice, and all the other attributes and perfec- 
 tions of the Deity also, and endeavor to blend the whole in 
 one harmonious, sublime, glorious, and most winning con- 
 cept of Him in all that makes Him God over all, blessed 
 
 * It is a suggestive fact in this connection that a very large propor- 
 tion of the Presbyteries of our Church have recently petitioned the 
 General Assembly for such changes in our Confession as shall bring 
 this grand doctrine more fully into view, and that the General Assem- 
 bly has recognized the propriety of the petition, and has made pro- 
 vision to secure the improvement desired. But it is also a suggestive 
 fact that many of these Presbyteries have expressed their earnest wish 
 that in making this change nothing should be introduced into the 
 Confession that would in any way impair the great antithetic doctrine 
 of the justice and holy sovereignty of God, and the General Assembly 
 has declared that nothing of this sort shall be allowed. It may be 
 inferred that the Presbyterian Church with which we are identified 
 intends to hold not one part of the truth, but the whole ti-uth, on this 
 subject, and will repudiate any narrower view from cither quarter. 
 And what is true of our own Church is true, so far as appears, of the 
 Presbyterians of England and Scotland and elsewhere. There are no 
 signs anywhere of a disposition to abandon the distinctive principles 
 of Calvinism. 
 
40 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 forever. "When it has done this, it will not find itself very 
 far removed from the existing; doctrine as set forth in our 
 own creed and in the symbols of Protestantism generally, 
 and as explahied in our best current theologies. But if 
 Biblical Theology proposes to itself to push into the back- 
 ground one side of this Scriptural portraiture, as the address 
 intimates, and to exalt the other side as the favorite and 
 the needful view of God for such an age as this, with its 
 loose sentimentalisms in religion and its painful lack of 
 sturdy emphasis upon those granite principles of justice on 
 which the throne of God is eternally reared, then I greatly 
 fear that Biblical Theology will drift, all unconsciously, 
 into a swift current of departure from sound doctrine on 
 this point which such a Church as ours will not be able to 
 approve. No Biblical Theology of this type is worth half 
 as much as the plain, comprehensive, thoroughly Scriptural 
 definition in our Shorter Catechism.* 
 
 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY CONCERNING MAN. 
 
 The very brief statements in the address respecting the 
 biblical doctrine of Man do not demand attention beyond 
 Bome frank recognition of their meagreness, except at two 
 points ; of which the first is the declaration that Protestant 
 theologians have greatly exaggerated the doctrine of orig- 
 
 * It would be useless to begin to quote references from Calvinistic 
 theologians like Hodge and Smith and Shedd, and a hundred others, 
 with regard to the danger of such a partial theology as seems to be 
 inculcated in the address. See especially H. B. Smith, Syst. of Christ. 
 TJieol., Part I., chap, viii., on the Divine Love, and chap, x., on the 
 Divine Justice. 
 
 Dorner {Syst. of Christ. Doct., vol. iv., 77) says: "The one-sided 
 emphasizing of a divine love apart from justice is essentially Antino- 
 mian in nature ; and in all its possible forms, however lofty they may 
 seem, sinks back into an unethical and, in so far, essentially physical 
 ground." 
 
REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 41 
 
 inal righteousness — the righteousness which our first par- 
 ents had before the fall — in order to emphasize by contrast 
 their dogma of original sin. This declaration is unsustained 
 by any proof, and is probably incapable of proof on any 
 large scale. Standing where it does, in conjunction with 
 other statements respecting the first temptation as a neces- 
 sary means of grace, and sin as a temporary or transitional 
 condition, it bears itself some marks of an exaggeration. 
 
 The second and more important point is the afiirmation 
 that Biblical Theology reveals to us in the Scriptures the 
 fact of a race origin, of a race sin, of a race ideal, and also 
 of a race redeemer and a race redemption. What the 
 phrase, a race redeemer, signifies it is not easy to determine 
 in such a connection. If it simply implies that Christ, in 
 His person, character, sacrifice, mediatorial mission, was 
 inherently competent to save all mankind, and that His 
 Gospel is in a true sense provided for all and available for 
 all, and therefore to be freely offered to all on condition of 
 repentance and faith, there is in it nothing more or less 
 than is found habitually in the current theologies and in 
 the ordinary sermons of our day. Does the author intend 
 to say more ? Is the universality that attaches to sin in its 
 origin and its development, to be affirmed in an uncondi- 
 tioned or unlimited form in respect to the Redeemer also ? 
 He is able inherently to save all men, even the race, but 
 does He save the race in fact ? 
 
 So of the corresponding phrase — a race redemption. If 
 this simply means that the salvation provided in Christ for 
 mankind will ultimately reach so far and widely, will be 
 made effectual in so large a proportion of mankind, that it 
 might well be called universal, a redemption of humanity, 
 the proposition is one in which Protestants generally in this 
 age are agreed. 1 find a significant parallel to it in the 
 theological writings of a certain teacher whom Dr. Briggs 
 
42 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 regards as wholly wedded to a strict traditionalism : " We 
 have reason to believe that the number of the finally lost, 
 in comparison with the whole number of the saved, will be 
 very inconsiderable. Our blessed Lord, when surrounded 
 by the innumerable company of the redeemed, will be 
 hailed as the Salvator Hominum, the Saviour of men." * 
 But does Bibhcal Theology teach us anything more than 
 this ? Is there to be a race redemption in any sense more 
 comprehensive, more universal ? The author explains him- 
 self in another place by the statement that, though the 
 Bible teaches the salvation of the world, of the race of 
 man, it does not teach universal salvation. Still further 
 explanation may be found in his statement, which is obvi- 
 ous enough, that some theologians, under the influence of 
 a narrow view of election as to its definiteness and its range, 
 have formed too low an estimate of the freeness and ex- 
 tent, the cosmic quality and efficacy, of the scheme of 
 grace. 
 
 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY CONCERNING REDEMPTION. 
 
 Perhaps the account of Redemption under the third 
 general head of Biblical doctrine, explains still further the 
 position of the author. He habitually contemplates that 
 redemption on its subjective rather than its objective side : 
 he accepts the Christus in nobis of the Lutheran theology 
 more cordially than the Christus pro nobis of Calvinism. 
 Bedemption, in his view, is the transformation of the sin- 
 ful and suffering race of man into the image of God, as He 
 is made manifest in Christ ; and this transformation in- 
 
 * Hodge, Syst. TlieoL, vol. iii., 879, 880; see also vol. i. Shedd, 
 Syst. Tlieol., vol. i., 422 : "The number of the lost angels and men is 
 small, compared with the whole number of rational creatures. Sin is 
 a speck upon the iufiuite azure of eternity. Hell is a corner of the 
 imiverse ; it is a hole or pit, not an ocean : bottomless but not bound- 
 less." Also vol. ii., 745, 
 
KEV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 43 
 
 eludes the whole nature and the whole life of man, and 
 indeed of the race. His references to this transfor- 
 mation, especially as connected with his view of the 
 Messiahship, are worthy of the closest attention. But here 
 again he arraigns the theologians, on the ground that they 
 do not contemplate redemption in its fullness : more spe- 
 cifically that they emphasize unduly the beginnings of re- 
 demption in our justification by faith, and also our regen- 
 eration, as distinct from the work of sanctification. He 
 alleges that modern theology does not comprehend the 
 process of grace in its fullness — does not treat as it ought of 
 renovation and transformation and sanctification, of faith 
 and repentance and holy love. Respecting this general 
 arraignment, which is a blemish upon a discussion that 
 otherwise attracts sympathy, it is enough to say here that it 
 would be hard to find a theological treatise of our time 
 which would justify such a charge. 
 
 But the chief issue of the author with modern theology 
 in this connection is found in what he describes as a limita- 
 tion of the process of redemption to this world, and it is 
 here that modern theology of the Protestant type finds one 
 of its most serious issues with him. He tells us that the 
 Protestant theologians, even more than the Roman Catho- 
 lic, have neglected those vast periods of time which lie be- 
 tween death and the resurrection. He tells us that the 
 bugbear of a judgment immediately after death, — in other 
 words, a final division and separation of men as individuals 
 occurring at death, on the basis of character, under a spe- 
 cific adjudication by God in Christ, — is a conceit imported 
 from the ethnic or natural religions, and without any basis 
 whatever in the Bible or in Christian experience or the 
 Christian symbols ; and he further denounces the doctrine 
 as something calculated to make death a terror to the best 
 of men. In the same strain he protests against what he 
 
44 THE INAUGUKAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 styles the illusion of a magical transformation of the sonl 
 at death into a condition of immediate and perfect holiness. 
 This illusion comes — he tells us — from the same pagan 
 sources, is equally unsustained by Scripture, cuts the nerve 
 of Christian activity and effort after holiness, and makes 
 our human life and experience of no value. Both of these 
 common doctrines, he affirms in impassioned words, are 
 hurtful and unchristian errors, which ought to be banished 
 from the world. And as a substitute for them he proposes 
 the dogma of a progressive sanctification, to be carried on 
 through the intermediate state, and as far as the day of 
 final judgment — a dogma for which he claims the indorse- 
 ment, not only of the Bible, but also of Christian orthodoxy 
 and Christian experience. 
 
 If the phrase, progressive sanctification, simply meaTis 
 that the sainted dead continue even through all eternity 
 to grow in all the graces and virtues which constitute the 
 Christian character on earth, there is nothing in it beyond 
 what most believers hold — nothing that is in any degree new 
 or specially helpful as a fresh contribution to faith. The 
 living unto righteousness which our Catechism gives as the 
 second element of sanctification, is by its own nature a state 
 of the soul which may be said never to reach an end or a 
 culmination, even throughout eternity. What is to be said 
 of the first element in that familiar definition, the dying 
 more and more unto sin ? Does the author hold that the 
 saint carries with him into the eternal state some remaining 
 taints and seeds of sin, which are to be progressively elim- 
 inated by the discipline of that state, so that he becomes 
 entirely free from sin and its pollutions only after untold 
 ages of existence in that intermediate world ? The favora- 
 ble terms in which he refers to the Koman Catholic doc- 
 trine of purgatorial purification in the case of imperfect 
 saints, would seem to imply that what has just been stated 
 
KEV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 45 
 
 is in substance his personal belief. How marked the con- 
 trast is between any such concept of a dying unto sin on the 
 part of believers in eternity and the current conviction of 
 Protestantism, may be seen in the simple, beautiful, pathetic 
 sentence in our Shorter Catechism : The souls of believers 
 are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do imine- 
 diately pass into glory. The broadened form of this state- 
 ment in the Larger Catechism is still more simple, beautiful, 
 pathetic : The communion in glory with Christ which the 
 members of the invisible Church enjoy immediately after 
 death, is in that their souls are then made perfect in holi- 
 ness, and received into the highest heavens, where they 
 behold the face of God in light and glory. How Dr. 
 Briggs, in the presence of such declarations as these, can 
 affirm that the doctrine of immediate sanctification at death 
 has no warrant in the creeds of Christendom or in Church 
 belief, but is a mischievous conceit imported from the 
 ethnic religions into Christianity, it is difficult to explain. 
 And it may be added here that the doctrine of our own 
 Confession includes infants as well as believing adults in 
 this process of immediate sanctification, they also being 
 redeemed by Christ and regenerated at once and com- 
 pletely, so far as all seeds or taints of sin are concerned, by 
 the Holy Ghost who worketh when and where and how 
 He pleaseth, in death as in life. 
 
 What does the address teach in regard to the intermediate 
 state of others than believers and infants ? It admits that 
 there will be some among men who by their rejection of 
 the Gospel and by hardening themselves against it, will 
 descend into such depths of demoniacal depravity — to use 
 its own impressive description — that they will ultimately 
 vanish from the sight of the redeemed forever as altogether 
 and irredeemably evil ; whether to an eternity of punish- 
 ment after the final judgment, or to an eternal annihilation 
 
46 THE INAUGURAL ADDEESS OF 
 
 at some point in the future, the address does not inform us. 
 But we are told in one place that this descent is made in 
 the intermediate state rather than in the present life ; and 
 in another connection that there is no doctrine of second 
 probation, or probation after death, in the Word of God ; 
 and in still another that there is no judicial separation or 
 division of men at death into classes on the basis of their 
 individual character and life on earth. It is diflScult to 
 formulate an intelligible theological statement from these 
 three propositions when brought together. If there is no 
 particular judgment in the sense just stated, and no oppor- 
 tunity for those who have rejected Christ in this world to 
 accept Him and be saved through Him in the intermediate 
 state, what does that state become ? Do the holy and the 
 unholy dwell together there in a condition of consciousness 
 and with intermingled experiences ? Are they separated, 
 according to character, by some occult law of affinity — the 
 one class dwelling in Paradise, the other in some retribu- 
 tive Gehenna? Are any of those who dwell apart in such 
 Gehenna ever permitted to cross the deep gulf, and join 
 the saints in Paradise ? Can this intermediate state be re- 
 garded as in any sense a state where new experiences may 
 perchance bring new characters to those who die in unbe- 
 lief ? Are the real characters of men indeterminate, and 
 their punishment as sinners postponed, during this long 
 period prior to the resurrection ? Does God leave myriads 
 of sinners, age after age, imprisoned but uncondemned, yet 
 without possible change in their condition ? Is the func- 
 tion assigned to Christ as the Judge of men to be exercised 
 only at the final day, so that He reaches no decision respect- 
 ing the uncounted millions whom His eye sees in this in- 
 termediate estate, neither of probation nor of retribution ? 
 Such questions crowd upon us from many sides, but the 
 address helps us to no real answer ; the speaker is silent. 
 
KEY. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 47 
 
 Dr. Briggs justly says, as he approaches his conclusion, 
 that the inductive study of the Bible, such as his new chair 
 contemplates, forces us to study every word, sentence, and 
 clause, and to ascend in the induction from stage to stage, 
 until the whole organism of the Bible, the sum total of its 
 teaching on any subject, rises beautiful and precious before 
 our sight. If he will but pursue this method, which, in- 
 deed, all considerate theologians strive to follow in their 
 researches, he will find that the doctrine of an immediate 
 sanctification of all believers and infants at death, with its 
 correlate in the sanctification of no others during the inter- 
 mediate life, and the kindred doctrine of a particular judg- 
 ment of all men at death on the basis of character, are not 
 vain conceits dragged into Christianity from the ethnic 
 faiths by stupid teachers of the Church, but rather are 
 verities as demonstrable and as incontestable as is the doc- 
 trine of eternity itself. And if he desires further confirm- 
 ation of this fact, he may find it in the following words 
 from that revered and now sainted teacher at whose feet it 
 was once his privilege to sit : " This judgment " (the final 
 judgment of which Dr. Smith is speaking) " is not the first 
 passing of judgment, but the final manifestation of it. It 
 is the end of a mediatorial kingdom — the consummation of 
 an economy. The position that at this judgment the first 
 passing of judgment will occur, uproots the Scriptural doc- 
 trine of sin and of the penalty of death, which has already 
 begun to be inflicted upon men." * 
 
 * H. B. Smith, 8i/st. of Christ. Theol., p. 613. For his doctrine of 
 sanctification, see pp. 575-579. For his clear proposition that there is 
 no sufficient scriptural warrant for the notion of an intermediate state 
 in ■which destiny is not yet decided, see pp. 604-606. For the same 
 view, see also Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 11., 616-624. 
 
 Dr. Briggs speaks -with great emphasis of the privilege he has en- 
 joyed in sitting as a learner at the feet of two men whom he reveres 
 above all others— Henry Boynton Smith and Isaac Augustus Dorncr. 
 
48 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 
 
 CONCLUDING SUGGESTIONS. 
 
 It is not to be expected that within the confines of one 
 brief address Professor Briggs should furnish a complete 
 outline of the topics with which he will be occupied in his 
 new and most inviting department of instruction. But it 
 may as well be confessed that the summary of opinions 
 which he has given in this address under the three general 
 heads named, together with what is said afterwards under 
 the title of Biblical Ethics and of the Messiahship, is not 
 such as to excite lively apprehensions, lest, under the de- 
 One cannot well refrain from remembering that both of these men 
 belonged to that class of persons to whom the address refers so often 
 in such terms of contempt. The first of these men was in a marked 
 degree philosophical, and at times speculative, but also always system- 
 atic and historical and strongly confessional, as he was highly spir- 
 itual, in his theology. The second was one of the most abstract, 
 speculative, unconf essional, individualistic in his thinking, even among 
 German theologians — the Schleiermacher of our time. 
 
 It is interesting to inquire from which of these two great theologians 
 the Biblical Theology described in this address has been derived. So 
 far as the writer, who has read the published productions of the first 
 with care for a long time, has been able to discover, the fact is that 
 there is hardly one of the new views here expressed for which the 
 support of Dr. Smith can justly be quoted : his writings show that on 
 several important points he taught exactly the opposite. On the other 
 hand, the careful reader of the System of Christian Doctrine, by Dor- 
 ner, will find most of them there. The German theologian not only 
 denies the doctrine of a judicial decision at death, but openly affirms 
 a second probation, with a probability of the ultimate restoration of 
 all men. He also holds to a progressive sanctitication of believers 
 after death in the broadest form. His conception of man and of grace 
 is decidedly univcrsalistic. In common with nearly all German the- 
 ologians, he makes comparatively little of that grand doctrine of the 
 Moral Government of God, which men like Butler and Edwards 
 taught and wliieh has been the ground and support of much of the 
 best American theology of our time. Domer is to be read carefully 
 for his many remarkable and suggestive teachings, but is also to be 
 read and followed with great caution. 
 
KEV. CHARLES A. BEIGGS, D.D., LL.D. 49 
 
 molisbing influence of this new mode of setting forth the 
 truths of Scripture, the good old systematic but really no 
 less biblical way will be banished at an early day from the 
 earth. Nor does it justify the confident prediction that 
 the incoming of this new dogmatic cultus will not only 
 work a transformation of theology, but bring in at once 
 the spring-time of a new age of glory, be the precursor of 
 a reformation grander than that of Luther and Calvin, and 
 finally bring to pass the unity of Christendom. And wlien 
 at the end we are told that the theology of the creeds as it 
 stands, is only the water-mark of a present consensus of 
 attainment, to be swept away in the developments of the 
 future ; and that even the best of these creeds gives us only 
 a small theology, when compared with the length and 
 breadth, the height and depth, of the Theology of the 
 Bible, as this is now and henceforth to be taught to men, 
 we can only reply, in much humility, that we are willing 
 to wait and see. 
 
 The writer cannot conclude this frank review of an ad- 
 dress in many respects remarkable, without some expression 
 both of interest and of regret. The high degree of in- 
 tellectual vigor, of mental and moral earnestness, of intense 
 personal conviction, of fearless loyalty to what the author 
 regards as truth, cannot be too cordially commended. The 
 extensive reading manifest on the topics discussed, and the 
 diligent though not always consistent or judicious use of 
 the material acquired, ought to be appreciated by every 
 reader. Wliile it is difiicult sometimes to make his state- 
 ments agree with one another or to harmonize them with 
 creeds and systems to which he avows full allegiance, it is 
 hard to imagine that the speaker does not see the agreement, 
 or to suppose that his professions of loyalty are not genuine 
 to the core. Much that is said awakens spontaneous sym- 
 pathy and can but deepen the love for him cherished by 
 
 y 
 
50 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 many, not in our Church alone, but in other denominations 
 and in other lands. And in the presence of so many ex- 
 cellent qualities, small blemishes of whatever sort may 
 easily be forgotten. 
 
 But the writer is bound, with deep regret, to say that in 
 his judgment the address contains too much that is defect- 
 ive either in doctrine or in statement, too much that will 
 not justify itself at the bar of sober judgment, too much 
 that seems to carry in itself germinant seeds of error, too 
 much that is more or less at variance with the teachings of 
 a safe and free and scriptural theology, too much that ap- 
 pears to run counter, at least in form, to our symbols and 
 to some of the holiest convictions of the Church. And in 
 recording this judgment, formed in no temper of hostility 
 and expressed only under a deep sense of duty, the writer 
 hopes that his words may in some degree contribute to 
 check troublous departures from the straight and clear path 
 of progress theological and spiritual, to bring the truth on 
 the grave themes discussed into fuller and happier light, 
 and through the truth to confirm the belief and promote 
 the. loving unity of the Church.