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REASON 
 
 AND 
 
 REVELATION 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT S. CANDLISH, D.D. 
 
 PRINCIPAL OF Till: HEW COLLEGE, immm R«H. 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 
 
 1867 
 
Scs * ' -' 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, 
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE, 
 
 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE, 
 
 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS— REASON AND REVELATION, 
 
 THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT, ... 
 
 I age 
 
 9 
 
 53 
 
 01 
 
 131 
 
 161 
 
^ttimt. 
 
 Edinburgh, 15th January 1S64. 
 
 HAVE been, rather unexpectedly, asked by the 
 Publishers to sanction a new issue of this little 
 I! work, which, I thought, had gone very far 
 into oblivion. So convinced was I of its being among 
 forgotten things, that I had little scruple in using one 
 of its treatises, revised and re-written, as my Introduc- 
 tory Lecture to the Students of the New College, at the 
 opening of the present session. This has, somewhat to 
 my surprise, led to my views on the subject of the Inspi- 
 ration of the Bible being pretty freely canvassed. In 
 point of fact, I have advanced no original views. All 
 that I have said may be found, in germ and principle, in 
 the works of Gaussen, Lee of Cambridge, and Tayler Lewis 
 of America.* My object has been simply to place the 
 doctrine which these writers, as well as others of older 
 
 * Dr. Lee's work is known to scholars. I hope we are soon to have a new 
 edition of it, for it is invaluable. Tayler Lewis's little book has been repub- 
 lished in this country, with a recommendatory preface from the pen of one most 
 competent to judge of its merits, the Rev. Dr. Henderson of Glasgow. I thor- 
 oughly agree with Dr. Henderson in all that he says in its praise. It is a sin- 
 gularly fresh, original, thoughtful treatise, and ought to be in the hands of all 
 students and inquirers. 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 date, have scientifically expounded, in a plain and popular 
 light. For it seems to me high time that this should be 
 done. And the stir which my Introductory Lecture has 
 occasioned makes me feel this more than ever. The real 
 question must be fairly stated. My attempt to state it 
 fairly — it is all that I have attempted — has been misun- 
 derstood in some quarters, and misrepresented in others. 
 I mean to try to state it again in this preface. 
 
 I think I can best do this, in the wav of offering some 
 remarks on the references which have been made to my 
 statements by Bishop Colenso and the Duke of Argyll. I 
 do not class these two together, as of the same mind in this 
 matter. Very far from it. I merely mean to say that 
 I have now to deal, not with anonymous criticism, but 
 with the comments of men high in Church and State. 
 
 The Prelate must take precedence of the Peer, being 
 first in hand. 
 
 It is in the preface to the recently published fourth 
 part of his " Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically 
 Examined," that the Bishop does me the honour of 
 mentioning me. And to what he says of me there I 
 confine my attention. 
 
 His mode of quotation is peculiar.* Let the first of 
 his three quotations serve as a specimen: — 
 
 * To prevent mistakes, I must explain that whatever I give of Colenso's book 
 is given exactly as printed there; the italics, dashes, dots, &C, being all his own; 
 ornaments of literature of his own devising. I have no fancy for them, and use 
 none of them. 
 
PREFACE. vil 
 
 "All that is in Scripture is net Revelation strictly so called, — [which means, 
 I suppose, 'All that is in the Bible, is not, in the strict and proper sense, the 
 Word of God.'] To a large extent, Scripture is a record of human affairs— of 
 the sayings and doings of men. 75 it to be held and considered infallible, when 
 it narrates the wars of kings, and inserts the genealogies of tribes and families, 
 as well as when it announces an express oracle of heaven, or authoritatively pro- 
 mulgates Divine doctrines and commands?' - " — (Preface, pages xvii. xviii.) 
 
 Here I state a fact, and ask a question. My state- 
 ment of the fact he breaks into two fragments — the first 
 being significantly italicized — by an interpolated innu- 
 endo. The interpolation shows either gross ignorance 
 or deliberate dishonesty. I impute to him only the 
 former. He evidently does not know what " Revelation 
 strictly so called" means. If he did, he could not have 
 found such a world's wonder in so plain a truism as this, — 
 that the Bible records not only what God says and does, 
 but also what man says and does. I maintain strongly that 
 " all that is in the Bible is in the strict and proper sense the 
 Word of God." It is God's inspired and infallible record of 
 his Revelation, and of the human affairs — the sayings and 
 doings of men — with which it has pleased him that his 
 Revelation should be mixed up. This is my answer to 
 the question which I put, — as the Bishop must have known 
 if he had read either my lecture or my book. He has 
 the boldness to represent my putting of the question as im- 
 plying the opposite answer. It is an artifice of contro- 
 versy, happily not now common. 
 
 There is, indeed, in the Bishop's next quotation * an 
 
 * " What God had to communicate to man, wa3 to be communicated not all at 
 once, but, as it were, piecemeal. This, I cannot but think, affords a strong pre- 
 
Vlil PREFACE. 
 
 attempt to convict me of inconsistency. It is a singu- 
 larly constructed quotation, bringing together scraps from 
 passages far apart, and dovetailing them ingeniously into 
 a sort of mosaic pavement. To make one out, in that 
 way, to be self-contradictory, may or ma}' not be right 
 and fair. But it can be neither right nor fair to say this 
 of me, — not in the small type of a quotation, or quasi- 
 quotation, from my book, — but in his own good, large- 
 type, conclusive, summing up : — 
 
 " He still asserts his belief in an ' infallible guidance,'— an ' infallible super- 
 intendence,' — such as to maintain even a 'verbal accuracy.' But this does not 
 extend to such matters as the ' wars of kings' and the ' genealogies of tribes and 
 
 sumption in favour of what is called plenary inspiration. It suggests a reason 
 why God should from the very beginning, and allthroughout, exercise such a super- 
 intendence over the committing of his communications to writing, as to secure even 
 
 the verba! accuracy of the record Properly speaking, it (Holy Scripture) 
 
 has but one author, the Holy Ghost, throughout. All the books of it are His; 
 He is responsible for them all : and, being so, He is entitled to the same measure 
 of justice at our hands, which an ordinary xcriter may claim (!).... It is not 
 simply God speaking to man, and man listening to God. It is rather God 
 coming down to earth, mixing Himself up with its ongoings, and turning to His 
 oun account (!) the sayings and doiDgs of its inhabitants. Hence the need of 
 
 discrimination I can see no reason why the Holy Spirit (!) should not use 
 
 the same latitude that a truthful man would use, when minute exactness is not 
 necessary, and is not pretended, — as, for instance, in the use of round numbers, 
 er in the customary ways of reckoning genealogies, or in the reporting of speeches, 
 where the precise words are not material. Nay, more: I imagine that a man, 
 writing under the assurance of Divine guidance, might be even less cartful than 
 he would otherwise have fdt himseh" bound to be (!) .-. . . I can well imagine that 
 Evangelists and Apostles may have been led to use more freedom than they 
 would otherwise have ventured upon in dealing with the Old Testament Scrip- 
 tures, anl connecting them with the New Dispensation, by the very fact of 
 
 their being under infallible guidance I confess that, on any other supposi- 
 
 ti d than that of infallible guidance, considering the usual scrupulosity of Jewish 
 Doctors, with reference to the very letter of their sacred writings, the free mode 
 of citation, practised by New Testament writers, seems to me all but inex- 
 plicable. "—(Preface, page xviii.) 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 families,'— that is, I presume, to matters non-essential to human salvation,— in 
 other words, to God's design in giving the Revelation." — (Page xix.) 
 
 It. requires some stretch of charity to imagine that 
 this is ignorant and not wilful misrepresentation. If he 
 has read what he is quoting from, Colenso must know 
 that I hold the exact reverse of what he here deliberately 
 imputes to me. He is at liberty to argue, — which, how- 
 ever, he has not attempted to do, — that I cannot con- 
 sistently hold the opinion which I avow. Bat he is not 
 at liberty to assert that I hold the diametrically opposite 
 opinion. This is what he has not scrupled to do. 
 
 Having made me say the contrary of what I do say, 
 he goes on to refute the doctrine thus imputed to 
 me: — 
 
 "The question then arises, as to what parts are essential, and what not. 
 And of this, as Dr. Candlish does and must allow, we short-sighted creatures can- 
 not possibly be the judges. We may imagine things to be essential, which in 
 the plan and ordering of the Divine Wisdom are not essential; and therefore, 
 though assuming an ' infallible superintendence,' we are utterly unable to judge 
 d priori what parts of Scripture must be recorded with strict verbal accuracy." — 
 (Page xix.) 
 
 Of course not. But that is the very argument which 
 I have urged at some length for our belief that all " parts 
 of Scripture must be recorded with strict verbal accuracy," 
 if we are to be sure of our having what is " essential/' 
 Or, to put the statement in better Theology, if not in better 
 English, I have argued that God, giving to us a Revelation 
 of his mind and will, in the manner in which it has seemed 
 good to him to give it. — that is, mixed up with mundane 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 affairs and the sayings and doings of men, — secures its full 
 and accurate conveyance to us, — and can secure that, — 
 only by himself taking the oversight throughout of the 
 very words in which the whole complex record is framed. 
 This may be, in the Bishop's judgment, a "priori assump- 
 tion, to which he may prefer his h posteriori induction 
 and investigation, (p. xix.) But at all events it is con- 
 sistent with the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of all 
 Scripture, which I hold. And it is inconsistent with the 
 idea of our distinguishing, as to inspiration, between the 
 essential and the non-essential in Scripture, which I re- 
 pudiate and disown. 
 
 The Bishop's third quotation is also characteristic. He 
 is very fond of arguing by means of brackets, italics, and 
 notes of exclamation. It is an easy mode of arguing 
 for him, — though somewhat irksome to his adversary. 
 The mechanical costs less trouble than the mental. And 
 it is convenient. It saves the giving of reasons ; these 
 figures of the press, if one may so say, being a cheap 
 substitute for them. 
 
 He quotes a paragraph of mine, — making it fill half 
 a page of his book, — with some half dozen interjections, 
 a goodly array of sloped letters, and one very peculiar 
 bracketed interpolation.* The interjections and sloped 
 
 * " There is need of continual discrimination, that we may ascertain the true 
 value and bearing of scriptural statements, as expressive of the Divine Mind and 
 Will. With ordinary candour, the task of exercising the necessary discrimination 
 is not really difficult. But it is easy, if one is inclined, to create embarrassment, 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 letters may pass. Not so the interpolated parenthesis. 
 It is this: " We human creatures, are ' in all fairness' to 
 1 make allowance' for the Divine Being falling short of our 
 standard of right, because He is subject to ' the constrain- 
 ing force of circumstances.' ' ; My words, which he thus 
 paraphrases, — having put them in italics of course, — are 
 these : "In all fairness allowance ought to be made for 
 the constraining force of circumstances." It is the end of 
 a sentence, in which I say nothing whatever about " our 
 standard of right," but speak only of " the highest ideal 
 of pure truth and perfect holiness;" — and in which, more- 
 over, I say not one word about " the Divine Being falling 
 short of" anything, or " being subject to" anything, but 
 speak only of what we must take into account in dealing 
 with such a progressive development of his mind and will 
 as he has given us in the Bible. 
 
 — to confound the earthly occasion with the heavenly lesson, — and to take ex- 
 ception to some things in the Divine procedure, which may appear to be incon- 
 sistent with the highest ideal of pure truth and perfect holiness, when in all 
 fairness allowance ought to be made for the constraining force of circumstances, 
 — [we human creatures, are 'in all fairness' to 'make allowance' for the 
 Divine Being falling short of our standard of right, because He is subject to 'the 
 constraining force of circums-tances !'] We must regard God, in those dealings 
 of His with men, which Scripture records, as in some sense laid under a re- 
 straint (!) It is no part of His purpose to coerce the human will, or to disturb 
 and disarrange the ordinary laws, which regulate the incidents of human life, 
 and the pi'ogress of human society. There must (!) be, on His part, a certain 
 process of accommodation. He cannot (!) in His Word, any more than in His 
 Providence, have things precisely such, and so put, as the standard of absolute 
 perfection would require. In legislating, for instance, for ancient Israel, it was 
 not possible to have the ordinance of marriage, the usages of war, the rights of 
 captives, the relation of master and servant, and other similar matters affecting 
 domestic order and the public weal, regulated exactly as absolutely strict prin- 
 ciple demands (!)." 
 
XI I PREFACE. 
 
 It is difficult to believe that an educated man like 
 Colenso could so misrepresent me by mistake. But since 
 he has misrepresented me, I must briefly explain my 
 meaning. 
 
 I suppose that some things are impossible with God, 
 from his very nature. " He cannot lie/' " He cannot 
 deny himself." These are scriptural statements. I sup- 
 pose also that God, in dealing with his creatures, — espe- 
 cially his fallen creatures, — may resolve to lay himself un- 
 der restraint, — or, in other words, may accommodate his 
 procedure towards them to their state and circumstances. 
 Perhaps, if he is to deal with them as still rational and free 
 agents, he must do so. That, at all events, seems to have 
 been our Lord's opinion, when he told the Jews of his 
 day that Moses allowed their fathers a liberty of divorce, 
 inconsistent with the original ideal of holy marriage at its 
 first institution, "because of the hardness of their hearts" 
 (Mark x. 2-9). I firmly believe that God was the author 
 of the Mosaic law of marriage, as well as of the Adamic and 
 the Christian. And I explain the admitted imperfection 
 of the Mosaic law in this particular by the consideration, 
 that God, having thought fit to assume the character of 
 civil and political ruler and legislator over the Jews, did not 
 scruple to adapt his law and policy, not always to his own 
 perfect standard, but sometimes and in some respects to 
 their state and circumstances ; and that he must needs do 
 so, if he was to rule them and legislate for them as rational 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 and free agents. Is this limiting God ? Is it at all 
 derogatory to his absolute sovereignty and infinite perfec- 
 tion? Is it not rather a simple assertion of his unlimited 
 power and discretion, as being at liberty to do always 
 what, in the view of the case before him, he judges to 
 be right? 
 
 It is precisely the same principle that I apply to the 
 Bible, as the infallible record of an infallible Revelation. 
 In determining the manner in which he is to reveal him- 
 self to men, and have his Revelation recorded, God must, 
 of very necessity, lay down a plan, and in accordance 
 with it, lay himself under conditions. And it is a per- 
 fectly fair and legitimate subject of inquiry, — what is 
 that plan? and what are those conditions? Once, in 
 giving the Law from Sinai, God spoke the words himself, 
 and wrote them himself on tables of stone. Even then, 
 he must needs adapt his Revelation to circumstances. 
 He gave the Law otherwise than he would have given 
 it to angels, or to man in Paradise. He gave it as " made 
 for the lawless and disobedient' 7 (1 Tim. i. 9). Nay 
 more ; when some forty }^ears after he gave it again by 
 the mouth of Moses (Deut. v.), he gave it, as it were, in 
 a new edition, somewhat modified, at least in one of the 
 commandments, to suit the condition in which the new 
 generation of Israel was placed. May not this example 
 show that God reveals his mind and will, not as realizing 
 his own perfect ideal of optimism, but as in an impor- 
 
XIV PEEFACE. 
 
 taut sense restrained from doing so? And, in truth, is be 
 not necessarily thus restrained, if he is to deal with men 
 and things as they are, — and so to deal with them as to. 
 effect his object in a way accommodated to them, as well 
 as worthy of himself? What is this but saying that a 
 father must communicate with his children, not according 
 to his own powers and attainments, but according to 
 their capacities and circumstances? Is it not simply what 
 is said of our Lord : " With many such parables spake 
 he the word unto them, as they were able to bear it" ? 
 (Mark iv. S3.) 
 
 What I have attempted is merely to apply this prin- 
 ciple to the Bible as a whole. My method is plain 
 enough. I assume or postulate, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, what seems to be the original plan, as existing in 
 the mind of God, a priori, or beforehand. He means to 
 communicate with men through men; and that, not once 
 for all, but " at sundry times and in divers manners." I 
 lay down certain conditions which, as it appears to me, 
 must attach to the execution of such a plan. And I 
 inquire how far these conditions may serve to explain the 
 structure and aspect of the Bible as we actually have it; 
 and, in particular, how far they go to account for certain 
 facts or phenomena in the Bible that have been made 
 objections to its infallibility as the plenarily, or verbally, 
 inspired word of God. I may have fallen into error, in 
 forming my notion of the plan, or in laying down the 
 
PlIEFACE. XV 
 
 conditions, or in applying them to the facts or phenomena 
 in question. But I still think that my method is a safe 
 and right one. And, at all events, I hold myself entitled 
 to assert that it is consistent with my believing that 
 every word of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures — in so 
 far of course as the right reading of texts can be criti- 
 cally ascertained — is divine as well as human; that every 
 word of the Bible is what it is, and where it is, by the 
 direct will of the Holy Spirit, as truly as by the purpose 
 of the writer ; that the Holy Spirit is responsible for its 
 being what it is and where it is; that it is the Holy 
 Spirit's word as much as the writer's. Only the Holy 
 Spirit does not supersede the writer, or make him write 
 unnaturally. That is really all. 
 
 I have read with admiration the Duke of Argyll's speech 
 at Glasgow (11th January 1864); and for many things 
 in it I thank him most cordially. I appreciate also the 
 honour he has done me in alluding to this work which I 
 am now republishing; and I am very sure that he had no 
 intention of doing anything else than full justice to the 
 views which I hold. I do not know how far my views 
 may quite agree with his. But I think it needful to offei 
 a word or two of explanation as to the two very brief 
 sentences which His Grace quotes, and as to the con- 
 nection in which he quotes them. 
 
 Referring to the difficulty sometimes felt in receiving 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 certain doctrines of astronomy and geology, on the ground 
 of their apparently conflicting with Scriptural statements, 
 and to certain old ways of dealing with it, — the Duke 
 asks, "How do we get over that difficulty now?" And 
 lie answers as follows: — ■ 
 
 " I believe we get over that difficulty simply by adopting a doctrine which is 
 not authoritative, which is not traditional, which is objected to by the Holy 
 Catholic Church, as the Bishop of Oxford calls it, for many generations— I 
 mean this, which I find very ably expressed by Dr. Candlish in a work recently 
 published, called ' Reason and Revelation,' as follows : — ' All that is in Scrip- 
 ture is not necessarily revelation; to a large extent the Bible is a record of 
 human affairs— the sayings and doings of men, not a record of divine doctrine or 
 of communications from God.' And, especially in reference to physical facts, 
 Dr. Candlish asserts, as I believe he well may, the independence of our faculties, 
 in this important passage : ' The inspired word is abreast of the science and 
 literature of its own age, but not in advance of it.' That is how we get out of 
 the difficulties— not by holding to traditional and authoritative interpretations 
 belonging to the Holy Catholic Church, but by maintaining the independence of 
 our own judgments on all questions on which our own judgments are competent 
 investigators of truth, and submitting to the conclusion which is manifest, that 
 physical truth is only brought into connection with the Bible as a means of illus- 
 tration. And now, when we come to look at it in this point of view, when we 
 recollect that the Bible reveals, not physical, but spiritual truth, we shall find 
 that not one of the discoveries of modern science touches in the slightest degree 
 the revelation which is made to us." — {Report in " Morning Journal," Jan. 12.) 
 
 Perhaps I have already dealt sufficiently with the first 
 of these quotations from my book. The Duke introduces 
 it merely as preliminary to the second : " The inspired 
 word is abreast of the science and literature of its own 
 age, but not in advance of it." 
 
 That is what I say, no doubt ; but it is not all 
 that I say. And it is scarcely fair to represent it 
 as all that I say ; for, in fact, I say the very opposite of 
 the view which may be held to be here ascribed to me. 
 
 I affirm that the inspired word is so framed as to be 
 
 (3) 
 
PREFACE. Xvii 
 
 found consistent with the science and literature of ages 
 long posterior to its own. This is the very point and 
 pith of my argument. 1 put it as a problem which only 
 the Omniscient can solve, — How a Revelation which is 
 to range over centuries of comparative ignorance on 
 matters of secular and mundane science, — and is neces- 
 sarily, according to its plan, to mix up these matters 
 freely with its higher themes, — is to be so constructed, 
 and so recorded, that it shall not anticipate human dis- 
 coveries, and yet shall be in entire harmony with them as 
 in the course of time they emerge. I maintain that this 
 precise problem is found actually solved, in point of fact, 
 in the Bible. And I draw the inference that this implies 
 its plenary, verbal inspiration. The reason is plain 
 enough, according to my view. Only One seeing the 
 end from ihe beginning could so adjust the language 
 used as, on the one hand, to make it tell the men of the 
 existing generation no more than they otherwise knew 
 of astronomical, or geological, or other natural truth ; — and 
 yet, on the other hand, to make it such that the men of 
 all future generations should be able in the long run, 
 and without violence, to explain it satisfactorily, in the 
 light of their clearer and fuller information, and their 
 more advanced and accurate science.* 
 
 * See page 85, where I refer to a very interesting remark of Hugh Miller's as 
 to the difference in this respect between the uninspired Westminster Standards 
 and the inspired books of Moses, with reference to the language which they 
 respectively use in speaking of the creation of the world. 
 CO 2 
 
xviii PREFACE. 
 
 I am not quite sure that I quite understand the 
 Duke of Argyll's statements upon this point. So far as 
 I can gather, I scarcely think that they altogether coin- 
 cide with mine ; or that there is such an agreement as 
 His Grace seems to suppose. I may "be doing him 
 injustice ; but I rather imagine that he is prepared to 
 admit, not only apparent, but real, discrepancies between 
 the statements of the Bible and the facts of science.* Of 
 course that admission requires some modification of the 
 doctrine of plenary or verbal inspiration. In my opinion 
 the admission is unnecessary. All past experience, I 
 think, goes to prove it to be unnecessary. Always 
 hitherto it has been found that, after a little time, 
 and a little patience on both sides, apparent discrep- 
 ancies have turned out not to be real. I am pre- 
 pared to expect that the same final harmony will come 
 out of passing discord, in the future progress of Biblical 
 study and scientific research, — independently conducted 
 
 * I am almost forced to infer this from the closing words of the passage : 
 " When we recollect that the Bible reveals, not physical, but spiritual truth, we 
 shall find that not one of the discoveries of modern science touches in the slightest 
 degree the revelation which is made to us." Of course I hold, with the Duke, 
 that " the Bible reveals, not physical, but spiritual truth." That, no doubt, is 
 its proper, primary design. But then I hold that it reveals spiritual truth in 
 connection with physical truth ; and that, on the plan which God has seen fit to 
 adopt, it could not have revealed spiritual truth otherwise. And I hold that it 
 could not, on that plan, reveal spiritual truth infallibly, unless it were infallible 
 also in all that it says about physical truth. In other words, all its references 
 to physical truth must be true; God being, if without offence I may so say, re- 
 sponsible for thetn. They are references merely de presenti, and not discoveries 
 de futuro; — far less are they absolute declarations of the highest order ulti- 
 mately to be developed in the universe. Still they are so framed that, while 
 t'.iey anticipate nothing, they are in harmony with all that is ever to be known. 
 
PEEFACE. XIX 
 
 and with Baconian modesty on both sides, — without 
 rash or premature dogmatism or generalization on either. 
 In that confident expectation, I can calmly await the 
 issue. 
 
 I close with one remark. It is the policy of our 
 opponents, on this question, to run us up to untenable 
 positions. They insist on our maintaining certain extreme 
 and absurd views, such as have no doubt sometimes 
 found supporters among theologians writing before the 
 subject was much discussed. And they raise a shout of 
 exultation when any rational explanation is given on our 
 side, as if it implied an entire abandonment of the whole 
 doctrine. We have to thank Coleridge and Arnold 
 for having led the van in this unworthy mode of 
 assault. They, however, I believe, did it ignorantly ; 
 not knowing, or not understanding, the real orthodox 
 belief, as expounded by its intelligent advocates. I 
 am not prepared to be quite so charitable in my judg- 
 ment of some, at least, of the tribe who have so eagerly 
 caught up the weapon wielded by these great men. It is 
 far easier to ring the changes on the word " mechanical," — ■ 
 and to raise a rude laugh at the idea of the inspired 
 writers being made mere receptacles or " drawers," — and 
 so forth, — than to enter seriously into the discussion of 
 what all earnest persons must allow to be a difficult and 
 delicate, as well as a very sacred, topic of investigation. 
 
XX PREFACE. 
 
 For our part, we must beware of being too much moved 
 by the taunts of such adversaries. And, in particular, 
 we must beware of permitting them to drive us into 
 asserting more than Scripture itself and sound reason 
 fairly warrant and require. It is on this account that I 
 am not myself very sensitive on the score of being- 
 charged by hostile critics with surrendering the high 
 views of Inspiration commonly held in the Evangelical 
 Churches, because I endeavour to make some small con- 
 tribution towards a fair and candid exposition of what 
 these views, when candidly looked at, really are. And 
 on the same ground, I consider that a fair appeal may be 
 made to some friendly parties to whom some things I 
 have been advancing may have occasioned uneasiness. 
 They need not prematurely take alarm, as if the founda- 
 tions of the citadel of God's inspired word were to be 
 destroyed, or even weakened. Perhaps they may not 
 hitherto have been led to walk about these foundations 
 very closely. Perhaps, also, they may not be accustomed 
 to draw the distinctions which it is needful to draw when 
 a complex object, such as either the written word, or the 
 Incarnate Word, — -uniting the human and the divine, — is 
 under examination. I would suggest the propriety of 
 their putting the best construction they can on at- 
 tempts made to clear up what has been too often, 
 whether unintentionally or on purpose, involved in 
 mist and doubt. And for myself, I claim the justice 
 
PREFACE. XXI 
 
 of being believed when I avow it as my sole aim to 
 advocate, as best I may, the great truth on which the 
 religion of Christ and the hopes of Christians depend, — ■ 
 that not only is the word of God in the Bible, but 
 that the Bible is itself, in the strictest and fullest sense, 
 in every particular of its contents and in every ex- 
 pression which it uses, the infallible word of the one 
 only living and true God. 
 
THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 
 
 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 
 
 v. 
 
 %m^ 
 
£>Uft 
 
 
 THE AUTHORITY AXD INSPIRATION 
 
 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 
 
 The authority and inspiration of Holy Scripture form one l 
 subject. According to its inspiration, so is its authority. I 
 Aud if the Bible is not insp ired, in the full sense of that/' 
 term, — in the sense of its being literally the word of^ 
 God, — the whole question as to the degree of weight tou 
 bo attached to its statements becomes a matter of discre- H 
 tion and doubt. Reason, or intuition, or whatever else the I 
 knowing faculty in man may be called, is constituted I 
 the ultimate and only judge. And in all that relates to / 
 our acquaintance and intercourse with the Supreme, — in 
 the whole vast problem of the settlement of our peace 
 with God, and the adjustment of the terms on which Wfl 
 are lo be with him for ever, — we have absolutely no 
 distinct and authoritative expression of the Divine mind 
 at all. We are left entirely to the guidance of the 
 higher instincts of our own nature, and of such finer 
 particles of the historical Record, — such flowers of 
 Biblical fact or argument or appeal, — as these instincts 
 may happen to grasp. In short, we have no external 
 
1 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 standard or test of religious truth, — no valid objective 
 revelation, — no " thus saith the Lord ; " — but only such 
 a measure of insight as a good and holy man, by the 
 help of what other good and holy men have written, may 
 attain into the Divine Ideal, which the aching void and 
 craving want of the human soul either creates and evokes 
 for itself, or welcomes when presented from whatever 
 quarter, and by whatever means. 
 
 This is especially the state of the question with refer- 
 ence to the turn which modern speculation, in religious 
 matters, has taken. 
 
 For a revolution, as it would seem, has come over the 
 camp and kingdom of the freethinkers — whether philoso- 
 phers or divines. 
 
 Formerly, the battle of the Bible was to be fought 
 chiefly on the ground of historical testimony and docu- 
 mentary evidence. The possibility at least, — if not the 
 desirableness, — not to say the necessity, — both of an ex- 
 press revelation from above, and of an infallible record of 
 that revelation, — was acknowledged ; — and upon that 
 acknowledgment the method of procedure was well 
 defined. Two steps were required. In the first place, 
 good cause must be shown for connecting the two 
 volumes which we now call the Old and New Testaments, 
 and these alone, with the entire body of proof for the 
 supernatural origin of our religion, which miracles, pro- 
 phecy > internal marks of credibility, and other branches 
 of the evidence of a divine revelation, afford. And in 
 the second place, these volumes being thus attested and 
 accredited — by the whole weight of proof that accredits 
 
THE HOLY SCEIPTUKES. 1 1 
 
 and attests the religion itself with which they are iden- 
 tified, — it followed that they must be allowed to speak 
 for themselves, as to the manner in which they were 
 composed, and the measure of deference to which they 
 were entitled. Thus the two questions, of the canon of 
 Scripture, and the authority of Scripture, fell to be dis- 
 cussed in their order, immediately after the evidences of 
 Revealed Religion. The divine origin of Christianity 
 being established by the usual arguments, together with 
 the genuineness and authenticity, as historical documents, 
 of the books from which we derive our information con- 
 cerning it — the way was open for inquiring, first — On 
 what principle have these books come to be separated 
 from all other contemporary writings, so as to form one 
 entire and select volume — the Holy Bible — held to 
 possess a peculiar character, as entitled to be considered 
 exclusively and par excellence divine ? And, secondly, — 
 In what sense, and to what extent, is the volume thus 
 formed to be regarded as the word of God, — how far is 
 it to be received as dictated by his Spirit, and as declar- 
 ing to us authoritatively his mind and will ? This last 
 inquiry, supposing the other to have been satisfactorily 
 adjusted, sought and found its solution within the volume 
 itself ; and whatever it could be fairly proved that the 
 Bible claimed to be, in respect of its inspiration, — that, 
 it was admitted, it must be allowed and believed to be. 
 For at that stage of the Christian argument, the Bible 
 had established a right to speak for itself, and to say what 
 kind and amount of submission it demanded at the hands 
 of all Christian men. 
 
1 2 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 Such is the method of proof applicable to this subject, 
 as it used to be discussed formerly, in the Protestant 
 schools and books of divinity. And such, I venture to 
 think, is the only fair and legitimate method of proof 
 still ; at least, if the sound and cautious principles of the 
 Baconian logic, or the inductive philosophy, are to have 
 any weight in the province of religious belief. By a rigid 
 investigation of its credentials, we ascertain that Chris- 
 tianity is the true religion, — that it is of supernatural 
 origin, — that it is a divine revelation, divinely attested. 
 On an examination of written records and documents, we 
 find, that this religion of Christianity, thus proved to be 
 divine, is identified with a volume entirely sui generis; — 
 that the whole force of its own divine authority, and of 
 the divine attestations on which it leans, is transferred to 
 that volume ; — that the volume, in short, is the religion 
 which has been proved to be divine, and is therefore 
 itself divine. Thereafter, we consult the volume itself to 
 discover what it tells us of its own composition and 
 claims : and whatever it tells us concerning itself, we 
 now implicitly receive as true. 
 
 But a new aspect of the question meets us, as we come 
 in contact with the speculations of modern times. Not 
 only the antecedent probability, but the very possibility 
 of an infallible external standard of faith, is doubted at 
 least in some quarters, and wholly denied in others. A 
 subtle sort of refined mysticism, — offspring of the tran- 
 scendental philosophy meeting with a certain vague fer- 
 vour of evangelical spirituality, — has entered the field : 
 and the atmosphere has become dim with the haze and 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 1 3 
 
 mist of a vapoury and verbose cloud, in which nothing 
 is clear, nothing distinct or defined, but the vast sublime 
 of chaos seems again to brood over all things. 
 
 Among others who have contributed to this result, 
 Schleiermacher in Germany might be named, and the 
 poet Coleridge among ourselves ; although it is due to 
 our great and good countryman to remark, that many 
 who are indebted to him, — and these not merely among 
 the more openly sceptical, but even among the schools 
 and circles of far more evangelical thinkers, — have im- 
 proved upon his hints, bettered his example, and so out- 
 Coleridged Coleridge that the philosophic bard might 
 with almost as much justice protest against being identi- 
 fied with his followers, as Wilkes the patriot did when 
 he denied that he had ever been a Wilkite. 
 
 At the same time the impulse given by the profound 
 and transcendent genius of Coleridge, has been one chief 
 cause or occasion of the style and method that has become 
 fashionable, of late years, in treating of the inspired 
 authority of the Bible. His famous opprobrium of Bib- 
 liolatry, — -flung in the face of old-school, Bible-loving, 
 gospel-taught Christians, — has become a by-word and 
 watchword in the mouths of men, whom to name in the 
 same breath with Coleridge would be to offend alike 
 against high intellect and pure spirituality. Even some 
 minds of better mark, while themselves railing against 
 the mere echoes with which, instead of voices, they say 
 the orthodox world resounds, have not scrupled to ring 
 the changes on this poorest of all echoes, — the unintelli- 
 gent echo of a not very intelligible conceit, — filling the 
 
14 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 air with the cry of Bible-worship, and making it out 
 that to receive the Bible as the word of God is as gross 
 idolatry and superstition as to revere the Pope in the 
 character of the Vicar of Christ. 
 
 With this modern form of opposition to the infallibility 
 of Holy Scripture, it is not very easy to deal. In the 
 first place, it is in itself very intangible, unfixed, obscure ; 
 being negative rather than positive. And it is apt, more- 
 over, to take shelter in a sort of studied indistinctness ; 
 making a merit of abstaining from plainness of speech, 
 and creating such a vao-ue alarm as leads timid men to 
 be thankful for any measure of forbearance, and to shrink 
 from asking explanations, or wishing to have the inquiry 
 carried further home. 
 
 A notable instance of this occurs in a tract of Arch- 
 deacon Hare, in which he speaks of himself and those 
 who think with him, as " finding difficulty in the forma- 
 tion and exposition of their opinions on this mysterious 
 and delicate subject," — " hesitating to bring forward 
 what they felt to be immature and imperfect," and 
 " shrinking from the shock it would be to many pious 
 persons if they were led to doubt the correctness of their 
 notions concerning the plenary inspiration of every word 
 of the Bible/' 1 So far good. This maybe a reason why 
 " refusing to adopt the popular view on the subject, the 
 Archdeacon does not straightway promulgate another 
 view." But might not this hesitancy of his incline him 
 to speak a little less offensively of the popular view than 
 he sometimes does, seeing that he has nothing better to 
 
 1 Letter to the Editor of the English Review, p. 26. 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 1 5 
 
 put in its place ? l Might it not also suggest the sus- 
 picion that possibly he does not really understand that 
 " popular view " itself so well as he evidently thinks 
 he does ? And, above all, does it never occur to him 
 that this sort of bush-fighting is unfair to his opponents, 
 and that they are entitled to demand from him a practi- 
 cal repudiation of the popish doctrine of reserve — as well 
 as a distinct, articulate, and manly avowal of what he, 
 and such as he, really hold the Scriptures of the Old and 
 New Testaments to be ? 
 
 But I must do what I can to thread my way through 
 the misty labyrinth. And accordingly, passing from pre- 
 liminaries, I now propose to indicate rather than discuss 
 — for I can do little more than indicate — four successive 
 topics, as those which, in my opinion, a thorough inquiry 
 into the subject before us should embrace. 
 
 I. The conditions of the question should be ascertained. 
 What previous points of controversy are to be held as 
 settled? And what meaning is to be attached to the 
 terms employed ? — II. The method of proof ought to be 
 
 1 The Archdeacon in his "Mission of the Comforter" (Appendix, p. 500), 
 quotes from Akermann, with a manifest adoption of the sentiment as his own, a 
 passage in which that author speaks of the position of the writers of the Bible, 
 on the theory of plenary inspiration, as being the position of " drawers wherein 
 the Holy Ghost puts such and such things," — whose "recipiency, with reference 
 to the Spirit inspiring them, was like that of a letter-box." Is any man entitled 
 thus to caricature, distort, and insult the opinion deeply and devoutly held by 
 his fellow-Christians and fellow-countrymen, and yet to make a merit of his 
 refusal to state explicitly and unequivocally his own views, which lie would sub- 
 stitute iu its stead ] If he says he has no views that he can explicitly and 
 unequivocally state, that is another matter. Let him say so ; and let the contro- 
 versy be adjusted accordingly. But let him not affect the praise of tenderness 
 to tender consciences and scrupulous understandings, without explaining what he 
 means. 
 
] 6 THE 'AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 (adjusted. What are the lines cf evidence bearing upon 
 the investigation ? And what is their precise amount 
 and value, whether separately or in combination? — III. 
 The sources of difficulty are to be candidly and cautiously 
 weighed. And IY. The practical value of the doctrine 
 is to be estimated, with especial reference to the right 
 fixing of the limits between divine authority and human 
 liberty, and the vindication of our Protestant submission 
 to the teaching of the Spirit, in and by the word, from 
 the imputation of its being analogous to, if not virtually 
 identical with, the popish prostration of the intellect, and 
 heart, and will, beneath the blind sway of a spiritual 
 monarch or a traditional Church. These, then, are my 
 heads of discourse. 
 
 I. There are several preliminary matters in regard to 
 which we ought to have a clear and common understand- 
 ing, before we enter directly upon the argument we have 
 in hand. Three of these in particular must be briefly 
 noticed, however imperfectly. 
 
 1. A divine revelation of the mind of God is a dif- 
 ferent thing from a divine action on the mind of man. 
 To some, this remark may sound like a self-evident 
 truism; but the turn of modern metaphysical speculation 
 in certain quarters renders it necessary to make it. 
 
 According to what is now a favourite theory of our 
 mental constitution, we are possessed of a twofold reason ; 
 the one, the lower, or logical faculty, which deals with 
 truth in the region of experimental knowledge, and deals 
 with it mediately, through the processes and forms of 
 
THE HOLY SCKIPTUKES. 17 
 
 ratiocination and language ; the other, the higher, or 
 intuitional faculty, which has for its object the spiritual, 
 the transcendental, the infinite, and which grasps its 
 object immediately, by a sort of super-sensual instinct, 
 and without the intervention of the ordinary means, or 
 media, of human thought. To the cognisance of this 
 latter faculty belongs the idea of God, and of whatever 
 pertains to his character, government, and law. What- 
 ever real insight we have into the being and perfections 
 of God, is by the intuitional faculty, or by intuition. 
 Hence it is inferred that the only way in which God 
 can make discoveries of himself to man, is by quickening 
 his intuitional faculty, and so giving to his higher reason 
 a new sense and sight of things divine. In this way all 
 revelation is resolved into one grand process of subjective 
 illumination, which God has been carrying on by a great 
 variety of methods since the world began. In short, 
 according to the theory to which I am now adverting, 
 revelation is not oracular, but providential. The Scrip- 
 tures are not in any proper sense the oracles of God ; — 
 nor do they convey to us direct utterances, or objec- 
 tive communications, of the divine mind. They merely 
 contain materials fitted to exercise a wholesome in- 
 fluence, by awakening into more intense and lively action 
 our own intuitional powers, through the contagion of 
 sympathy — the force of example — and whatever divine 
 impulse may lead us to kindle our torch at the divine fire 
 which we see burning there so brightly. 
 
 For that a divine fire does burn in the Bible is not 
 denied. It burns in the wondrous history of the Church 
 <s) 3 
 
1 8 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 as unfolded in the Bible, from the first germ of that 
 history in the homes of the pilgrim patriarchs — through 
 all the stirring vicissitudes in the Jewish annals of capti- 
 vity, deliverance, wildeiTiess-wanderings, wars, and vic- 
 tories, gorgeous pomps, and temple services — down to the 
 full development of faith and fellowship ushered in at 
 Pentecost. It burns also in the heroic lives and deaths 
 — the words and deeds — of all the holy men of whom 
 the world was not worthy — the martyrs, prophets, apos- 
 tles, raised up in succession to receive the gift of a divine 
 intuition, and spread the savour of a divine unction all 
 around. Especially it burns in the character and life of 
 the divine Man who taught in Galilee and Judea, and 
 died on Calvary. 
 
 Thus, throughout the Bible a divine fire burns. The 
 sympathising student may catch the flame of it ; and in 
 this way, imbibing the spirit of the Scriptural narratives, 
 — and of the Scriptural personages whom these narratives, 
 so manifestly show to have been spiritually moved, — 
 being moreover spiritually moved himself, — he may gain 
 an insight into things divine, otherwise beyond his reach. 
 Thus in a sense he may come to " see Him who is in- 
 visible. : ' 
 
 Kow this vague and perhaps sublime recognition of a 
 certain sort of divinity in the Bible, is manifestly incon- 
 sistent with the idea of its being, in any fair meaning of 
 the term, a revelation of the mind of God. It becomes, 
 in this view, merely one of the means by which God acts 
 upon the mind of man. The Bible is in no respect dif- 
 ferent from " Fox's Book of Martyrs," or " The Scottish 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 1 9 
 
 Worthies," in which also the divine life is manifested 
 through the actions and sufferings of divinely-gifted and 
 divinely-aided men. There may be a difference in degree 
 between God's teaching us thus in the Bible, and his 
 teaching us in the same way in these other works. But 
 there is no difference in kind. 
 
 To call this a revelation is an abuse of language ; but 
 it is a plausible abuse, and one fitted to impose upon the 
 unwary. The distinction between a real revelation and this 
 spurious counterfeit adroitly substituted for it, is as broad 
 as it is vital. It may be made clear by a simple illustration. 
 
 It is one thing for a king to leave his subjects to 
 gather his mind from what they may see of the conduct 
 of his officers and captains, whom he admits nearest to 
 his person, and who may be presumed to have the best 
 opportunities of knowing him, and to be most strongly 
 attached to him by the ties of loyalty and love; — to be 
 most capable, therefore, of exhibiting and acting out, in 
 their whole life and conversation, the true spirit of their 
 royal master's kingdom. It is quite another thing for 
 the king to make an express communication of his mind 
 to his subjects, and to use the agency of his officers and 
 captains in making it. That nothing is to be learned of 
 his mind in the first of these two ways I am for from 
 saying; nay, I admit that the teaching of the Bible is, in 
 many parts, of that indirect nature, in so far at least as 
 the use which we are to make of its inspired narrative 
 is concerned. Still revelation, properly so called, is some- 
 thing different. It is not merely a depository or recep- 
 tacle of sundry influences fitted to act upon my mind. It 
 
20 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 is God himself making known to me, and to all men, his 
 own mind. It is God speaking to man. 
 
 2. Inspiration, as connected with revelation, has re- 
 spect, not to the receiving of divinely communicated truth, 
 but to the communication of it to others. This again 
 might seem so self-evident as scarcely to need its being 
 stated. But in certain quarters there is great confusion 
 of ideas upon this very point. 
 
 It is admited by all deep thinkers — it is a great doc- 
 trine of Scripture, that spiritual things can only be spirit- 
 ually discerned. Let these spiritual things be set forth 
 ever so clearly, in the plainest forms of speech, so that an 
 intelligent man can have no difficulty in ascertaining what 
 is meant, and in laying down correct propositions upon 
 the subjects to which they relate, still the things them- 
 selves cannot be fully grasped by the mere logical faculty 
 or understanding: the higher reason or intuition, which 
 alone is conversant with the infinite and the absolute, 
 must be called into exercise; and even it cannot take in 
 the things of the Spirit of God, to the effect of their be- 
 coming practically and powerfully influential, without an 
 operation of that same Spirit upon the mind itself, purg- 
 ing, quickening, elevating the mental eye, so as to make 
 it capable of the divine, the beatific vision. 
 
 All this is true ; or, in other words, it is true that no 
 communication of the mind of God to me from without, 
 even if it were made to me directly and immediately, in 
 express terms, b} T God himself, could give me a real spirit- 
 ual, satisfying, and saving knowledge of God, if he did 
 not also, by his Holy Spirit, touch and move me within 
 
THE HOLY SCKIPTURES. 21 
 
 in my inner man, giving me a spiritual tact and spiritual 
 taste to discern spiritual things. 
 
 Now, such an action of the Spirit of God in and upon 
 my spirit, with a view to my spiritually apprehending 
 spiritual truth, may be called in a certain sense inspira- 
 tion. And if there he due warning given of the unusual 
 sense in which the word is to be employed, no great harm 
 perhaps may be done. 
 
 But such an application of the term ceases to be harm- 
 less, and becomes a snare or a juggle, when it is the oc- 
 casion of confounding the Spirit's action upon me, for my 
 own enlightenment and edification, with the use which 
 the Spirit may make of me, for conveying his mind to 
 others. The inspiration of a disciple is one thing; the 
 inspiration of an apostle is another. 
 
 A little child in the kingdom of God is inspired: he is 
 breathed upon, — he is breathed into, — by the Holy Spirit; 
 he has imparted to him a capacity for knowing God and 
 apprehending things divine, higher far than man's 
 proudest intellect can boast. He has a God-given eye to 
 see, and a God-given heart to feel, the very eye and 
 heart of the Eternal Father, as he looks down from 
 heaven in love, to embrace all that believe in his Son. 
 Tender as he may be in age, and but ill-instructed in the 
 schools of human learning, that little child has in him 
 the Spirit who " searcheth all things, even the deep things 
 of God;" and in respect of all that pertains to his saving 
 acquaintance with the Most High, he may be greater 
 than the greatest of the prophets. 
 
 Nevertheless there is an inspiration proper to the 
 
22 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 prophet, as a revealer of the will of God, which the little 
 child, as a learner of it, does not need, and does not pos- 
 sess. This last sort of inspiration may be less intuitional 
 and spiritual, so far as the immediate recipient of it is 
 concerned, than the other ; and therefore to him person- 
 ally, far less valuable. It would have been better for 
 Balaam personally, if he had been taught as a little child 
 by the Spirit to know the will of God, for his own sal- 
 vation, rather than used as a prophet by the Spirit, 
 almost as involuntarily as his own dumb beast, for mak- 
 ing known the will of God to others. The question 
 here, however, is not as to the comparative advantages 
 of these two operations of the Spirit, but as to the 
 essential distinction between them. Our sole concern 
 at present is not with what the Spirit does when he 
 works faith in the heart, but with what he does when he 
 employs human instrumentality for communicating those 
 truths which are the objects of faith 
 
 3. One other remark, under this head, must be allowed. 
 The fact of inspiration is a different thing altogether 
 from the manner of it. The fact of inspiration may be 
 proved by divine testimony, and accepted as an ascer- 
 tained article of belief, while the manner of it may be 
 neither revealed from heaven nor within the range of 
 discovery or conjecture upon earth. 
 
 But it may be asked, What are we to understand by 
 the fact of inspiration which is to be proved ? And espe- 
 cially, What are we to understand by the inspiration of 
 the Bible ? 
 
 To this I answer generally, that I hold it to be an 
 
UviCktclf / 
 
 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 23 
 
 infallible divine guidance exercised over those who are 
 
 commissioned to declare the mind of God, so as to secure 
 
 that in declaring it they do not err. What they say 
 
 or write under this guidance, is as truly said and written V f 
 
 by God, through them, as if their instrumentality were /;, t u j^ 
 
 not used at all. God is in the fullest sense responsible, *^*v.- ~ u++ 
 
 for every word of it. 
 
 Now I do not much care about the definition of the K/wr* H&. 
 term being more precise than this. It is of very little 
 consequence whether you call this verbal dictation or not. ^~_ * u- v 
 It is equivalent to verbal dictation, as regards the reliance » 
 which we may place on the discourse, or the document, 
 that is the result of it. Only to speak of it under that J 
 name is to raise a question as to the manner of inspira- <H> * £* *• 
 tion, the very subject into which I refuse to be dragged. 
 For the same reason, I refuse to discuss a topic which ^cUk - <■ s 
 used to be too much a favourite anions religious writers, ^ . „ 
 that of the different kinds and degrees of inspiration Umjl 
 necessary for different sorts of composition. The mode of 
 divine action upon the mind of the speaker, or writer, is 
 not the point at issue. It is enough to maintain such an 
 action as makes the word spoken, and the word written, 
 truly and all throughout, the very word of God. 
 
 Oh ! but this is a mechanical theory of inspiration, cry 
 some. We, for our part, prefer the dynamical. The prophets „ - 
 and apostles were d}mamically inspired, not mechanically. 
 
 Formidable w r ords ! which it would puzzle many who j *&*Z d*ic< 
 use them most familiarly to translate into plain English,!/ Ar0| 
 and plainly distinguish from one another. 
 
 But if what they mean is this; that God by his " ^ * 
 
2-t THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 Spirit cannot so superintend and guide a man speaking 
 or writing on Lis behalf, as to secure that every word of 
 what the man speaks or writes shall be precisely what 
 God would have it to be ; and that not merely the whole 
 treatise, but every sentence and syllable of it, shall be as 
 much to be ascribed to God as its author as if he had 
 himself written it Avith his own hand ; if they mean that 
 God cannot do this, without turning the man into a mere 
 machine — if this be what they mean — then I have to 
 tell them that the onus probandi, the burden of proof, 
 lies with them. They must give some reason for the 
 limitation which they would impose upon the divine 
 omnipotence. They must show cause why God may not 
 employ all or any of his creatures infallibly to do his 
 will and declare his pleasure, according to their several 
 natures, and in entire consistency with the natural exer- 
 cise of all their faculties. 
 
 God may speak and write articulately in human lan- 
 guage without the intervention of any created being, as 
 he did on Sinai. He may cause articulate human speech 
 to issue from the lips of a brazen trumpet, or a dumb ass. 
 He may constrain a reluctant prophet to utter the words 
 he puts in his mouth, almost against his will, as in the 
 case of Balaam : or so order the spontaneous utterance of 
 a persecuting high priest, as to make it an unconscious 
 prediction, as in the case of Caiaphas. But is he 
 restricted to these ways of employing intelligent agents 
 infallibly to declare his mind and will ? 
 
 Let us see how this matter really stands. Let us 
 eliminate and adjust the conditions of the problem. 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 25 
 
 It is an important part of the divine purpose that, for 
 the most part, men should be employed in declaring his 
 mind and will to their fellow-men; men rather than, for 
 example, angels. Several good reasons may be assigned 
 for this. Two, in particular, may be named here. 
 
 For the purposes of evidence, this is an important 
 arrangement. A divine revelation needs not only to be 
 communicated, but to be authenticated; and the authen- 
 tication of it must largely depend upon human testimony. 
 Take, for example, the four gospels. These are not 
 merely the records of our Lord's ministry, but the proofs 
 of it. It is upon the historical authority of these docu- 
 ments that we believe Christ to have been a historical 
 personage, and to have said, and done, and suffered the 
 things ascribed to him. But the historical authority of 
 the gospels rests very much, not only on the external 
 evidence in their behalf afforded by the writers of the 
 first and second centuries, but also on the internal evi- 
 dence arising out of a comparison of thern among them- 
 selves. And here great stress is justly laid upon their 
 essential agreement, amid minute and incidental differ- 
 ences. There are variations enough in the accounts 
 which they severally give of Christ, to preclude the idea 
 of a concerted plan, or of premeditated collusion; while 
 there is so entire a harmony throughout as to make it 
 manifest that they are all speaking of a real person, and 
 that person the same in all. In short, we have four 
 independent witnesses to the facts of our Lord's history; 
 proved to be independent, by the very differences that 
 are found in their depositions ; differences not sufficient to 
 
26 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 invalidate the testimony of any of them, but only fitted 
 to enhance the value of the whole, by making it clear that 
 they did not conspire together to deceive. 
 
 Such is the actual result of a fair collation and com- 
 parison of the four gospels as they stand. 
 
 Now to secure that result, it is manifest that the 
 Spirit, in inspiring each evangelist, must act according to 
 that evangelist's own turn of thought and gift of memory, 
 and must direct him to the use of expressions such as 
 shall at once convey the mind of the Spirit in a way for 
 which he can make himself thoroughly responsible, and 
 shall also at the same time record the bona fide deposi- 
 tion of the evangelist, as a witness to the transactions 
 which he narrates. 
 
 Nor is there any incompatibility between these two 
 things. Take an illustration. Let it be supposed that 
 any one — say such an one as Socrates — has spent three 
 years in teaching, and that he wishes an authentic and 
 self-authenticating record of his ministry to go down to 
 posterity. Four of his favourite pupils ; or two, per- 
 haps, of these, and two other students writing upon the 
 immediate and personal information of men who had been 
 pupils, prepare four separate and independent narratives, 
 all availing themselves more or less of the reminiscences 
 current in the school. The four narratives are submitted 
 to the revision of Socrates. He is to correct and verify 
 them, so as to make each of them a record for which he 
 can become himself out and out responsible. And yet he 
 is not to prune and pare them into an artificial sameness. 
 Would he have any difficulty in the task? Could he not 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 2 i 
 
 easily revise each narrative, with such close attention to 
 the minutest turn of phraseology as to imply that he sets 
 his seal to every word of it, and owns it to be what lie is 
 prepared to stand to as an exact record of his sayings 
 and doings ? And would he ever dream of reducing all 
 the four to one flat level of literal uniformity ? Would 
 he obliterate all the nice and delicate traces of truth and 
 character that are to be observed in different varieties of 
 men, honestly and correctly testifying, each according to 
 his own genius, to the same fact, or to the substance of the 
 same discourse ? What, then, in the case supposed, would 
 be the result ? Socrates would have four memorabilia, 
 or records of his memorable deeds, for each of which, in 
 virtue of his revisal of them all, he would be as thoroughly 
 responsible, down to the very sentences and syllables, as 
 if he had himself written it with his own proper hand ; 
 while each, again, would preserve the freshness and 
 naturalness of its own separate authorship; and the whole 
 together would carry the full force of four independent 
 testimonies to the credit of the life which Socrates actually 
 led, and the doctrines which Socrates taught. 
 
 The case is really the same, so far as the consideration 
 now in question is concerned, whether it be verbal revisal 
 afterwards, or verbal inspiration beforehand. The Spirit 
 is as much at liberty to dictate and direct the writing of 
 four different accounts of Christ's ministry, according to 
 the different minds and memories of the compilers whom 
 he employs, as Socrates would be to sanction four dif- 
 ferent reports of his teaching, taken down by four of 
 his followers of very various capacities and tastes, and 
 
28 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 submitted for his imprimatur to himself. An exact 
 agreement in accounts given by different persons of 
 things done or said, is not essential to the integrity of 
 the narrators; it would often be a proof of preconcerted 
 fraud Neither is it essential to the integrity of one 
 revising their several accounts ; — even if he do so under the 
 condition of becoming himself accountable, as much as if 
 he were directly the author, for every one of them, and 
 for everything that is in every one of them. It cannot, 
 therefore, be fairly regarded as inconsistent with the 
 integrity of the Holy Spirit, that, in inspiring the four 
 evangelical narratives, he should give to each the impres- 
 sion of its own characteristic authorship; so as to make 
 them severally tell as distinct attestations, upon the faith 
 of independent witnesses, to the things that were said and 
 done by the Lord Jesus in Galilee and in Judrea, 
 
 But again, for the purposes of life, and interest, and 
 spirit, as well as for the purposes of evidence, the ar- 
 rangement in question is important. The Bible would 
 have been comparatively tame and dull, if it had come 
 to us as the utterance of an angelic voice, or as all at once 
 engraven on a table of stone. Its power over us largely 
 depends upon its being the voice of humanity, as well as 
 the voice of Deity; and upon its being the voice, more- 
 over, of our common humanity, expressing itself in 
 accommodation to all the varieties of age, lano-uao-e, situa- 
 tion, and modes of thought, by which our common 
 humanity is modified. A stiff thing, indeed, would the 
 Bevelation of God have been if it had been pro- 
 claimed once, or twice, or ever so often, by an oracular 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 29 
 
 response from a Sybil's cave, or by a heavenly trumpet 
 pealing articulate words in the startled ear. God has 
 wisely and graciously ordered it otherwise. He inspires 
 men to speak to men — he inspires men to write for men. 
 And he inspires men of all sorts; living in various times 
 and countries; occupying various positions; accustomed 
 to various styles. He inspires them, moreover, as they 
 are, — as he finds them. He does not put them all into 
 one Procrustes-bed of forced uniformity. He uses them 
 freely, according to their several peculiarities. They are 
 all his instruments; but they are his instruments accord- 
 ing to their several natures, and the circumstances in 
 which they are severally placed. Every word they write 
 is his; but he makes it his, by guiding them to the use of 
 it as their own. 
 
 Doubtless there is some difficulty in our thus conceiv- 
 ing of this divine work. But it is not a difficulty that 
 need affect either our understanding of the Spirit's mean- 
 ing, or our recognition of his one agency throughout, 
 amid all the diversities of composition which he may see 
 fit to employ. 
 
 Thus, as to the first of these points, with reference to 
 our understanding the Spirits meaning when he thus 
 variously inspires the various writers of the Bible, we 
 must apply the same sagacity that we would bring to 
 bear upon the miscellaneous writings of a human author. 
 A mass of papers, written or dictated by a friend, or a 
 father, comes into my hands. They are of a very mis- 
 cellaneous character, with a great variety of dates, ranging 
 over many years of time, and almost every clime and 
 
SO THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 country of the globe. They consist of all manner of 
 compositions, in prose and poetry. — historical pieces, — 
 letters on all sorts of subjects, and to all sorts of people, 
 — antiquarian researches, — tales of fiction, — with verses 
 in abundance, lyric, dramatic, didactic, and devotional. I 
 receive the precious legacy, and I apply my reason to 
 estimate and arrange so welcome an " embarras ties 
 richesses." And here there are two distinct questions; 
 the first, What can I legitimately gather out of the 
 materials before me as to the real mind of the author on 
 any given subject? and the second, What weight is due 
 to his opinion or authority ? Assuming this last question 
 to be settled — and it is the fair assumption — what re- 
 mains as to the first ? There may be very considerable 
 difficulty in dealing with it, and much room for the 
 exercise, and, let it be added emphatically, for the trial 
 of my candour, patience, and good faith. There is not 
 a little confusion, let us say, in the mass of materials 
 to be disposed of ; it needs to be examined, assorted, and 
 classified. There may be room for inquiry, in particular 
 instances, as to how far, and in what manner, the author 
 means to express his own views in his narratives and 
 stories, or in his poetical productions, or even in his 
 abrupt, off-hand, and occasionally rhetorical reasoning. 
 There may be need of a certain large-minded and large- 
 hearted shrewdness, far removed from that of the mere 
 "word-catcher that lives on syllables/"' and able to enter 
 into the genuine earnestness with which the writer 
 throws himself always into the scenes and the circum- 
 stances before him, — nay, even when he employs an 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 31 
 
 amanuensis, into the habits of thought, and the very- 
 manner of expression, of his scribe. The voluminous and 
 varied papers of more than one great man might furnish 
 an example of what I mean. 
 
 Now, in a sense quite analogous to this, the Bible 
 may be said to consist of the papers of God himself. 
 They are very miscellaneous papers : every sort of 
 character is personated, as it were, in the preparation of 
 them; every different style of writing is employed; 
 every age is represented, and every calling. There are 
 treatises of all sorts, which must be interpreted according 
 to their respective rules of composition. And yet an 
 intelligent reader can discriminate between the several 
 discoveries which God makes of himself, — in the in- 
 spired histoiy of the Pentateuch, in the inspired drama 
 of Job, in the inspired reports of Christ's own teach- 
 ing, in the inspired reasoning of Paul's epistles, — just as 
 accurately as he can gather a human author's real senti- 
 ments upon any point from a comparison of his different 
 writings — the plays, and poems, and tales, and histories, 
 and treatises, and sermons, which he may have composed. 
 His mind is not indicated in the same way in each and 
 all of these various kinds of writing. It is discovered 
 more directly in some, and more inferentially in others. 
 Still, they are all his writings; he is responsible for ever}' 
 word of every one of them; and, taken freely and fairly 
 together, they authentically, and with sufficient clearness 
 and certainty, declare his views. 
 
 Nor again, on the other hand, need we have any 
 serious difficulty in recognising the one divine agency that 
 
32 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 pervades the various compositions which the Bible com- 
 prehends within itself. 
 
 • Let it be assumed that God means to compose a book, 
 such as shall at once bear the stamp of his own infallible 
 authority, and have enough of human interest to carry 
 
 : our sympathies along with it. He may accomplish this 
 by a miracle in a moment; the book may drop suddenly 
 
 . complete from heaven; and sufficient proofs and signs 
 
 i may attest the fact. Even in that case, unless the 
 miracle is to be perpetual, the book once launched has the 
 usual hazards of time and chance to run in the world; 
 in the process of endless copying and printing, it is liable 
 to the usual literary accidents; and in the course of 
 centuries, sundry points of criticism emerge regarding 
 it. But instead of thus issuing the volume at once and 
 entire from above, its divine Author chooses to compile 
 it more gradually on the earth, and he chooses also to 
 avail himself of the command which he has of the mind 
 and tongue and pen of every man that lives. He selects, 
 accordingly, chosen men from age to age. These he does 
 not turn into machines; they continue to be men. They 
 speak and write according to their individual tastes and 
 temperaments, in all the various departments of literary 
 composition : the prince, the peasant, the publican, the 
 learned scribe, the unlettered child of toil, one skilled in 
 all the wisdom of Egypt, another bred among the herd- 
 men of Tekoa, — men, too, of all variety of natural 
 endowments, the rapt poet, the ripe scholar, the keen 
 reasoner, the rude annalist and bare chronicler of events, 
 the dry and tedious compiler, if } t ou will, — all are enlisted 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 33 
 
 in the service, and the Divine Spirit undertakes so to 
 penetrate their minds and hearts, and so to guide them in 
 the very utterance and recording of their sentiments, as to 
 make what they say and write, when under his inspira- 
 tion, the word of God in a sense not less exact than if, 
 with his own finger, he had graven it on the sides of the 
 everlasting hills. 
 
 Many questions, doubtless, will arise to exercise the 
 skill and tact of readers, and put their intelligence and 
 good faith to the test; for it is to intelligence and good 
 faith that this volume of miscellanies is committed. In 
 the case of any author writing freely and naturally, it 
 often becomes a nice point of criticism to determine how 
 far and in what way he is to be held as giving any 
 opinion of his own; as, for example, when he narrates 
 the speeches and actions of others, or when in an abrupt 
 r»lay of argumentative wit he mixes up the adversary's 
 pleas with his own, or when he uses parables and figures, 
 or when he adapts himself to the state of information 
 and measure of aptitude to learn among those for whom 
 he writes, or when he writes in different characters and 
 for different ends. On the principle of plenary inspira- 
 tion, it is of course assumed that the same sagacity and 
 good sense will be applied to those various works of 
 which God is thus the author, that we do not grudge in 
 a case of voluminous and versatile human authorship; 
 and it is confessed that the w T hole inquiry regarding the 
 books to be included in the collected edition of these 
 works, the purity and accuracy of the text, and the 
 rules of sound literal interpretation, falls within the 
 
 (5) 4 
 
34< THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 province of the uninspired understanding of mankind, 
 and must be disposed of according to the light which the 
 testimony of the Church, the literary history of the canon, 
 and other sources of information may afford. 
 
 But what then ? Does this detract from the value of 
 our having an infallible communication from the divine 
 mind, — somewhat fragmentary, if you will, and manifold, 
 having been made " at sundry times and in divers man- 
 ners/' 7roAv/Acptus Kat TroAvTpoVojs, — but still conveying to us, 
 on divine authority, and with a divine guarantee for its 
 perfect accuracy, the knowledge of the character and 
 ways of God, the history of redemption, the plan of sal- 
 vation, the message of grace, and the hope of glory? Or 
 does it hinder the assurance which, under the teaching 
 of the Holy Ghost, a plain man may have, as the Scrip- 
 tures enter into his mind, carrying their own light and 
 evidence along with them, that he has God speaking to 
 him as unequivocally as one friend speaks to another, — 
 but with an authority all his own ? 
 
 I have dwelt so long upon my first topic — which is 
 the preliminary work of clearing the way — that I must 
 hasten rapidly over the remainder of the ground. In 
 particular I must dismiss, almost without remark, the 
 second and third branches of the subject, — the method 
 of proof, and the sources of difficulty. This I do the 
 more willingly, because they are found sufficiently dis- 
 cussed in many excellent and easily accessible treatises, 
 and because the principles upon which they are discussed 
 in these treatises are really not substantially affected by 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. T 35 
 
 those transcendental speculations, which threaten to in- 
 volve the whole question of a divine test or standard of 
 truth in hopeless and inextricable confusion. 
 
 II. In regard to the method of proof — I may briefly 
 indicate the line of evidence that seems most simple and 
 satisfactory ; only premising again that we must assume, 
 at this stage, an acquiescence in the truth of Christianity, 
 as well as in the genuineness of its books as historical 
 and literary documents. 
 
 1. First, then, I start with the undoubted fact, that 
 Jesus and his apostles recognised the Old Testament 
 Scriptures as of divine authority, and divinely inspired. 
 This is clear from the use which they made of them in 
 their discourses and writings. 
 
 It must be remembered that, in our Lord's day, the 
 sacred books of the Jews existed, not as miscellaneous 
 works of different authors, having different claims upon 
 men's attention and belief, but as one volume, of which 
 throughout God was held to be the author. The contents 
 of the volume were well defined. It had its well-known 
 division into • three parts. But it was always freely 
 quoted and referred to as one complete whole ; and the 
 words contained in it anywhere, in any of its parts, 
 were always cited as divine. I do not here inquire into 
 the formation of the Jewish canon. That is a matter of 
 history involved in much obscurity. When, how, and by 
 whom, the writings of Moses and the Prophets were col- 
 lected, revised, and published as one book — by what 
 authority and under what guidance — we may be unable 
 
36 THfe AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 to ascertain. But that does not affect the notorious 
 fact that the book did exist, as one book, in our Lord's 
 day ; and that it was so well known as having the cha- 
 racter of a peculiar, a sacred book, that any allusion 
 made to it by him and his apostles could admit of no 
 misapprehension. 
 
 Now, whenever either he, or they, do allude to that book, 
 or any portion of it, ifc is in language implying in the 
 strongest manner its divine authority and inspiration. 
 Such phrases as, " It is written " — " Well spake the Holy 
 Ghost by the mouth of" such a one — "The Scripture 
 saith " — "David in the Spirit calleth him Lord" — these 
 and similar forms of expression will readily occur ; to- 
 gether with such exhortations and testimonies, as " Search 
 the Scriptures M — " Then began he to open up to them 
 the Scriptures, and to show that Christ must needs have 
 suffered, and have risen from the dead " — " These were 
 more noble than the men of Thessalonica, in that they 
 searched the Scriptures daily whether these things were 
 so." The uniform manner of speaking of the Old Testa- 
 ment which we trace in the sayings and writings of 
 Christ and his apostles in the New — is such as to be 
 wholly incompatible with any other idea than that of its 
 full and verbal inspiration : and cannot but convey to a 
 simple reader the impression that they regarded every 
 word of that Testament as divine. 
 
 2. There are manifest traces, in the teaching of 
 
 Christ and his apostles, of the design to have a volume, 
 
 ; and of the actual forming of a volume, under the 
 
 New Dispensation, corresponding in respect of autho- 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 37 
 
 rity and inspiration to that existing under the Old, and 
 equally entitled to the name of the Scriptures, or the 
 Word of God. Not to speak of the presumption that 
 this really would be the case — since surely God could 
 not be expected to provide less security for the gospel 
 being infallibly transmitted among the families of men, 
 than for the law being so transmitted — and not to dwell 
 on the plain intimations which Christ gave of his design 
 to have his own words perpetuated upon earth, and to 
 endow his apostles with the gift of the Holy Spirit, for 
 the utterance, as well as for the understanding, of all 
 truth, — it is impossible to read the epistles generally, 
 without perceiving that we have in them the gradual 
 compiling of books that are to lay just claim to a place 
 in the New Testament volume. And in particular, it is 
 impossible to evade the force of the Apostle Peter's testi- 
 mony, classing the writings of his brother Apostle Paul 
 among the well-known Scriptures — as to whose divine 
 character there could be no doubt. 1 
 
 Here, again, we may be at a loss to explain, histori- 
 cally, the settlement of the Christian canon. This much, 
 however, seems plain enough. The early Christians had 
 every reason to believe and be sure that inspired narra- 
 tives of gospel history, and treatises on gospel truth, 
 would be forthcoming. And when called to discriminate , 
 between these and other publications, they were in the 
 
 1 " And account that the long suffering of our Lord is salvation ; even as our 
 beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written 
 unto you ; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things : in which 
 are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and un- 
 gtable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction."— 
 2 Pet. iii. 15, 16. 
 
38 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 best possible circumstances for knowing and judging what 
 were divine and what were not. That they were, in 
 point of fact, guided to a wonderfully correct discrimina- 
 tion, must be evident to every one who considers the 
 cautious pains which they took, and the scrupulous 
 jealousy which they exercised, in admitting books into 
 the canon ; — especially when in connection with that, he 
 compares the books actually admitted, with those of the 
 like kind discarded or rejected. The contrast is so 
 striking between the most doubtful of the canonical books 
 and the very best of the apocryphal, or the patristic, in 
 point of doctrine, sentiment, taste, sense, and judgment 
 — that scarcely any one can hesitate to admit that the 
 early Christians came to a sound conclusion when they 
 recognised the present set of works as composing the 
 New Testament Scriptures — which they had already been 
 led beforehand to expect, and which they had been 
 taught to place upon the same level, in point of inspira- 
 tion and authority, with the Old Testament Scriptures 
 ) themselves, as the Jews had been wont to accept them. 
 3. And now, at this stage, we are fully warranted in 
 applying to the books, both of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments, viewed as a whole, whatever testimonies we find 
 anywhere in the Bible to the plenary character of the 
 inspiration of Scripture. Among others, including the 
 familiar formulae of quotation already noticed — two in 
 particular stand out ; the first, that of the Apostle Paul 
 (2 Tim. iii. 1 6) — " All scripture is given by inspiration 
 of God ; " and the second, that of the Apostle Peter 
 (2 Pet. i. 20, 21) — " No prophecy of the scripture is of 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 39 
 
 any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not 
 in old time by the will of man : but holy men of God 
 spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost/' 
 
 In the first of these passages, inspiration is plainly 
 ascribed to Scripture or to the written word ; — not to 
 the conception of divine things in the mind, but to the 
 writing down of divine things with the pen. In so far 
 as inspiration can be predicated of any scripture or 
 writing at all, it must, according to this testimony, be 
 inspiration reaching to the very words or language, as 
 written down. 
 
 The other passage, again, giving the reason why no 
 prophecy, or no revelation, of Scripture is of any private 
 interpretation, uses phraseology singularly explicit and 
 strong : " Holy men of God spake as they were moved 
 by the Holy Ghost/' And the argument implied is a 
 striking confirmation of this view. It is briefly this. 
 No human author should have his meaning judged of by 
 any single, isolated observation or expression, in some 
 one portion of his works. You are not at liberty to 
 fasten upon a single sentence, as if it must needs be 
 exclusively its own interpreter, and as if out of it alone 
 you were to gather the author's mind on any point at 
 issue. He is entitled to the benefit of heincr allowed to 
 explain himself; and you are bound to ascertain his views, 
 not by forcing one solitary passage to interpret itself, but 
 by comparing it with other passages, and from a fair 
 survey of the scope and tenor of his whole writings, col- 
 lecting what he really means to teach. The Author of 
 the Bible, argues the apostle, has a right to the same 
 
40 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 mode of treatment. If, indeed, each holy man of God had 
 spoken simply by his own " will," then the Bible would 
 have many authors, and each author must speak for him- 
 self ; his teaching, apart from that of others, must be self- 
 interpreting. But if holy men of God spake as they were 
 moved by the Holy Ghost, then the Bible has really but 
 one author — the Hoi} 7 Ghost. And in dealing with it, you 
 are to deal with it as one whole, — the product of one 
 mind — the collection of the miscellaneous w^orks of one 
 divine Author. 1 
 
 4. Finally, to a mind rightly exercised upon them, 
 and above all, to a heart influenced by the same Holy 
 Spirit who breathes in them, the Scriptures evidence 
 themselves to be of divine authority and divine inspira- 
 tion. This is a great and glorious theme, upon which, 
 however, it is impossible, in the present lecture, to expa- 
 tiate or enlarge. One remark only I would make, in 
 reference to a somewhat unfair objection that has been 
 raised against this branch of the proof of inspiration. It 
 is admitted that some books and passages of the Bible do 
 commend themselves to the honest mind and pious heart 
 as divine. But what impress of divinity does any one 
 feel or own in the genealogies of Matthew and Luke, or 
 in the dry catalogue of names in the tenth chapter of 
 Nehemiah ? The question is almost too absurd to deserve 
 a reply; and yet very spiritual and transcendental philo- 
 sophers have condescended to put it. If it is anything 
 more, in any instance, than a mere trick of argument, a poor 
 
 1 See, for some further use of this text, the succeeding Lecture on the Infalli- 
 bility of the Bible. 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 41 
 
 and paltry hit, — if any one is seriously embarrassed by it, 
 —a plain natural analogy may furnish a satisfactory reply. 
 My child feels the letter which I write to him to be 
 from me. He lovingly recognises my spirit breathing in 
 it, and prompting all the words of simple fatherly fondness 
 that I address to him. " It is my father's letter, all 
 through/'' he cries ; — " I trace my father's warm and loving 
 heart in every syllable of it." My own actual hand- writ- 
 ing may not be on the page: sickness, or some casualty, 
 may have made an amanuensis necessary. But my boy 
 knows my letter nevertheless — knows it as all my own 
 — knows it by the instinct, the intuition of affection, and 
 needs no other proof. And what would he say to any 
 cold, cynical, hypercritical schoolmates, who might ask, — 
 But what of your father do you discern in that barren 
 itinerary with which the letter begins — the dry list of 
 places he tells you he has gone through ; or in that 
 matter-of-course message about a cloak and some books 
 with which it ends ? How would he resent the foolish 
 impertinence ! How would he grasp the precious docu- 
 ment all the more tightly, and clasp it all the closer to 
 his bosom ! " You may be too knowing to sympathise 
 with me," he will reply ; — " but there is enough in every 
 line here to make me know my father's voice ; and if he 
 has been at the pains to write down for my satisfaction 
 the names of towns and cities and men — if he does give 
 me simple notices about common things, I see nothing 
 strange in that. I love him all the better for his kind- 
 ness and condescension ; and whatever you may insinuate, 
 I will believe that this is all throughout his very letter. 
 
42 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 and that he has a gracious meaning in all that he writes 
 to me in it, however frivolous it may seem to you." 
 
 III. The sources of difficulty, in connection with this 
 subject, are many ; nor is it wonderful that it should be 
 so, and that the lapse of time, and the loss of nearly all 
 contemporary information, should render the solution of 
 some perplexing questions impossible. There is much 
 that is incomprehensible in the doctrine, or fact, of inspi- 
 ration itself, and not a few things in the inspired Scrip- 
 tures confessed^ hard to be understood. Objectors are 
 fond of multiplying and magnifying these difficulties, — 
 drawing them out in long and formidable array, and 
 giving them all the pomp and circumstance of successive 
 numerical enumeration. In point of fact there are two 
 classes to which they may all be reduced. 
 
 1. There are critical difficulties connected with the 
 canon, the orio-inal text, the translations, and the inter- 
 pretation of the Scriptures. Several elements of uncer- 
 tainty are thus introduced which, it is alleged, go far to 
 neutralise the benefit of an infallible, plenary inspiration. 
 
 Xow it is admitted, of course, first that the question 
 of the canon, — what books are to be received as of 
 divine authority, or what books do the Scriptures con- 
 tain, — is mainly a question of human learning — secondly, 
 that the original text of tne sacred books has suffered 
 from successive copyings, that it must be adjusted by a 
 comparison of manuscripts, and that the best adjustment 
 can furnish only an approximation to absolute accuracy — 
 thirdly, that all translations, ancient and modern, are 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 43 
 
 imperfect — and, fourthly, that the ordinary rules of 
 criticism must be applied to the interpretation of the 
 Bible, and that in applying them there may be doubt, 
 hesitancy, and error. It is confessed that these circum- 
 stances do imply that a certain measure of uncertainty 
 attaches to the Scriptures as we now have them; though 
 far less than in the case of any other ancient book, as 
 facts prove, and as there are obvious reasons to explain. 
 But what of that ? Because we, at this distance of time 
 and place, can have but a transcript, somewhat marred 
 and obscured by the wear and tear of ages, of the inspired 
 volume as it originally, in its several parts, came directly 
 from God, — does it therefore follow that there was no 
 inspiration of the original books at all? Or that we 
 would have been as well off if there had been none ? 
 
 The strangest perversion of mind appears among our 
 opponents upon this point. One learned Theban, for 
 instance, a profound Anglican divine, 1 objects to our view 
 of inspiration, on the ground that it precludes the appli- 
 cation of criticism to the settlement of the text, or the 
 interpretation of the meaning of the Bible. I would 
 have imagined it to have an exactly opposite tendency. 
 If the Scriptures have God as their author, it surely con- 
 cerns us all the more on that account, to have them 
 submitted to the most searching critical scrutiny. What 
 pains do critics take with the remains o'f a favourite 
 
 1 See " Vindication of Protestant Principles," by " Phileleutherus Angli- 
 can us, "—that is, as is well known, Dr. Donaldson, late head-iuaster of Bury St. 
 Edmund's School, and author of the " New Craylus," and other more recent 
 publications in which his views on the subject of this lecture, and on other 
 kindred subjects, are brought out in still more marked opposition to the received 
 opinions of the churches of Christendom. 
 
44 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 classic ! With what zeal will a Bentley apply himself 
 to the works of Horace ; first, to see to it that no spurious 
 production is allowed to pass under that honoured name ; 
 secondly, to make the text, by a comparison of manu- 
 scripts, and the exercise of a sound, critical acumen, as 
 nearly as possible, immaculately accurate ; thirdly, to 
 guard against mistakes in translation ; and, fourthly, to 
 lay down the rules, and catch the spirit, that may enable 
 him most thoroughly to enter into and draw out his loved 
 author's meaning ! In all these particulars the pains spent 
 upon the works of Horace may with tenfold more reason 
 be spent upon the word of God. And the more thoroughly 
 and completely the Scriptures are held to be the very word 
 of God, so much the more need will there be for the 
 vocation of the sound biblical critic. Our worthy scholar 
 and theologian, therefore, may calm his alarmed soul, and 
 rest assured that the theory of a plenary inspiration will 
 give him no cause to cry "Othello's occupation's gone •" 
 2. The other class of difficulties are of a historical, 
 physical, and moral, rather than of a critical, kind ; con- 
 sisting of alleged inconsistencies and contradictions, 
 whether between different passages of the Bible them- 
 selves, or between the Bible and the facts of history, or 
 the laws of nature. These would require to be dealt 
 with in detail ; and this cannot be attempted at the end 
 of so long a lecture. But one general observation may 
 be suggested. No intelligent defender of plenary inspira- 
 tion need be ashamed to own that, in many instances, he 
 cannot reconcile apparent disagreements. For, after all, 
 the Scriptures are fragmentary writings : and we would 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 45 
 
 require to have far fuller information on all the matters 
 of which they treat, to enable us to say which of several 
 possible explanations may be the right one, or whether 
 there may not be an explanation in reserve, such as our 
 limited knowledge fails to suggest to us. 
 
 IV. But I must now close with a brief reference to my 
 fourth and last topic. I would vindicate, in a few words, 
 this sacred doctrine of the authority and inspiration of 
 the Bible, against the charge of Bibliolatry, rashly vented, 
 in an evil hour, by a man too great for the use of such a 
 nickname ; and eagerly bandied about by a whole tribe of 
 lesser followers, to the exposure of their own conceit, as 
 much as to the scandal of pious minds. 
 
 " Bibliolatry ! " "Mechanical Inspiration!" "As of 
 a drawer receiving what is put in it!" "Cabalistic 
 Ventriloquism ! " So the pleasant sarcasm takes ! And 
 the ingenuity of sucessive lovers of freedom is taxed, as 
 they go on improving on one another ! One of the most 
 recent improvements, perhaps, is due to Professor Sherer, 
 formerly of Geneva, to whom belongs the credit of that 
 inimitably happy hit, " Cabalistic Ventriloquism ! * 
 
 What profanity, one is inclined to exclaim ! And yet, 
 need we wonder? It is not meant for profanity by the 
 writers. Nay, they think they are doing God service. 
 And they do well to get a convenient by-word, or term 
 of reproach, that may make short work with Christ's word, 
 — as certain men of old contrived by such a by-word, — 
 or by two, — blasphemy and treason, — to make short 
 work with Christ's person. 
 
46 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF i 
 
 But we wrong them. They are the champions of 
 liberty. They are to emancipate the soul from the Pro- 
 testant yoke of subjection to the Bible, as well as from 
 the popish yoke of submission to the church. Authority, 
 • — especially authority claiming to be infallible, — must 
 be set aside ; and man must be absolutely free ! The 
 Papist has his church. The Protestant has his Bible. Both 
 are almost equally bad. For me, I have as the object 
 of my faith, the person of Jesus Christ ! And ask me 
 not to define who, or what, Jesus Christ is. Far less ask 
 me to define what his work was upon the earth. All the 
 ills of Christianity come from definition. Let me have 
 the person of Jesus Christ, as my intuitional consciousness, 
 quickened by a divine inspiration of it, apprehends him ; 
 let me lose myself in him: let me plunge into the infinite 
 divine love of which he is the impersonation. 
 
 But I cannot pretend to make intelligible the rhap- 
 sodies of this new anti-biblical mysticism. Nor need I 
 dwell on the approaches to it that are but too discernible 
 in the whole school that would substitute what is called 
 "the Christian consciousness " for the direct authority of 
 Scripture. Let it suffice to contrast man's position before 
 God, upon the true Protestant footing of his owning the 
 Scriptures as authoritative and inspired, with either of 
 the other two positions which he may be regarded as 
 occupying ; — when, on the one hand, he rejects, more or 
 less, their inspired authority, or when he substitutes for 
 them, on the other hand, the authority of church or Pope. 
 
 1. Some would have it that Christianity is purely a 
 subjective influence on the minds of men — that the gos- 
 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 47 
 
 pel operates by assimilating the soul to itself — that Christ 
 is not a revealer, but a revelation — and that as the cen- 
 tral revelation of God, he becomes the occasion, or the 
 means, through the working of the Spirit, of our intuitively 
 apprehending God, and being renewed into his likeness. 
 According to this view, God brings to bear upon you a 
 series and succession of influences, partly external and 
 partly interna], fitted to emancipate you from corruption, 
 and elevate you to a participation in the divine nature. 
 It is a subjective process, — a working in and upon you, 
 so that like the plastic clay, you take the impress and 
 character into which you are moulded ; and the Scriptures, 
 as an exhibition of God in Christ, have an important 
 part in the process. But in all this, there is nothing like 
 God addressing himself directly to you, and dealing witli 
 you, as it were, face to face. There is no real, objective 
 transaction or negotiation of peace between you and him. 
 This, however, is the very peculiarity of the gospel, as 
 we conceive of it; that God not merely influences man, 
 but speaks to man. He treats man, not as a creature 
 merely, but as a subject; not merely as a creature needing 
 to be renovated, but as a subject to be called to account. 
 
 The two systems are directly conflicting here. And 
 which, think you, best consults in the long-run for the 
 true dignity and liberty of man ? 
 
 Tell me that I am brought within the range of influ- 
 ences and impulses, inward revelations and spiritual 
 operations of various kinds, to be grasped by my intui- 
 tional consciousness, and to be available, through the 
 exercise of my soul upon them, and their hold over me, 
 
48 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF 
 
 for my regeneration. In one view, my pride may be 
 gratified. These divine communications are all subject 
 to me: I am their master: I receive them only in so far 
 as they commend themselves to my acceptance: and I 
 use and wield them for my own good. But after all, in 
 the whole of this process, am I not passive, rather than 
 active ? It is God acting upon me ; according to my intel- 
 ligent and self-conscious nature, no doubt ; but still very 
 much as if he were acting upon some sort of substance that 
 is to be sublimated into an ethereal essence, and is to lose 
 itself ultimately in the surrounding air. 
 
 But tell me that God has something objectively to say 
 to me, — that he summons me as a responsible, and in a 
 sense, an independent being before him, — that he treats 
 with me upon terms that recognise my standing at his 
 bar, — that he calls me to account, — that he reckons with 
 me for my sin, — that he directs me to a surety, — that 
 he makes proposals of mercy, — that he puts it into my 
 heart to comply with these proposals, — that I, personally, 
 and face to face, come to an understanding with him per- 
 sonalty, and that he, judicially acquitting me, receives me 
 as a loyal subject, a son, an heir, and works in me both 
 to will and to do, while I work out my own salvation 
 with fear and trembling. Tell me all this, and tell me 
 further, that the charter of this real and actual negotiation 
 of peace is in his word, as the Scriptures infallibly record it. 
 And then judge ye, if I am not really made to occupy 
 a far loftier, nobler, freer position in the presence of my 
 God, than the highest possible refinement of subjective 
 illumination and transformation could ever of itself reach ? 
 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 49 
 
 It is true in this instance, as it is true universally, 
 that "whosoever humbleth himself shall be exalted." 
 Refusing to submit yourself to the divine word, you may 
 affect a superiority over the slaves of mere authority; and 
 you may work yourself into a state of ideal absorption 
 into Christ, little different in reality from the pantheistic 
 dream of a rapturous absorption into the great mundane 
 intelligence. But yield an implicit deference to the word. 
 Let it absolutely and unreservedly rule you, as a real 
 objective communication of his mind, by God, to you. 
 Then you have realities to deal with. You have real sin, 
 and a real sentence of death; — a real atonement, a real 
 justification, a real adoption; — a real portion in the favour 
 of God now, a real work of progressive sanctification, and 
 a real inheritance in heaven at last. 
 
 2. Nor let us be greatly moved, even if it shall be 
 alleged against us that our reverence for the Bible is to 
 be placed on the same level with the Romanist's blind 
 obedience to the Church, and the Church's head upon 
 earth. In point of fact, no tendency towards the recog- 
 nition of an infallible human authority can be more 
 direct and strong than that which the denial of an infal- 
 lible objective standard of divine truth implies. Set aside 
 the Scriptures as not furnishing such a standard. You 
 are thrown back either on the individual intuition of each 
 believer, or on the Christian consciousness of the general 
 community of believers. But neither of these refuges 
 will long satisfy or soothe an earnest soul. Soon there 
 will come to be felt a sad want of some surer prop. And 
 whether as relieving the individual from his undefined 
 
 (5) 5 
 
50 THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION, ETC. 
 
 responsibility, or as giving shape and power to the inde- 
 finite notion of a general Christian consciousness, — an 
 ecclesiastical voice will be allowed to speak as the inter- 
 preter of the dumb mind of Christendom; and the weary 
 spirit will sink to rest, and find its home, hi the maternal 
 embrace of Rome. 
 
 But apart from this consideration, an emphatic protest 
 must be uttered against the attempt to represent the 
 Scriptures in Protestantism, as occupying a parallel position 
 to that of the Church in Medievalism ; — or to that of the 
 Pope in Romanism. 
 
 The real truth is, that the Pope, — and the same may be 
 said of the Church, — does not take the place of the Bible. 
 He usurps the throne of Him whom the Bible elevates 
 as the only High Priest and King in Zion ; — Christ Jesus 
 the Lord. He assumes the office of Him who alone 
 interprets authoritatively the Scriptures which he has 
 inspired ; — the Holy Ghost, the Great Teacher of the 
 Church. And the glory of Protestantism is not that it 
 puts the Bible instead of the Pope, but that it puts 
 Christ instead of the Pope, as the great object of the 
 Bible's testimony, and the Spirit instead of the Pope, as 
 the Bible's only interpreter. The Bible — the Bible alone, 
 is the religion of Protestants ; the Bible, not sealed under 
 the papal key, and doled out by the papal ministers ; — but 
 the Bible left freely in the hands of its Divine Author, 
 the Holy Ghost, to be by Him freely opened up to every 
 devout and serious child of man, that he may know him 
 who is the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he 
 has sent ; — whom to know is life eternal. 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY 
 
 HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 SM37- 
 
THE 
 
 INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 I think it right to explain at the outset of my lecture, 
 that I do not intend to traverse the whole field of inquiry 
 which the question of the inspiration of Scripture opens 
 up. The principles and rules according to which the 
 canon of Scripture should be settled, and the genuineness 
 and authenticity of its several books should be ascertained, 
 I cannot even notice. Nor do I. touch upon such topics 
 as the methods of verifying and correcting, by the colla- 
 tion of manuscripts, the original inspired text; or the use 
 and value of translations. All these points may have a 
 bearing on the question, and must be embraced in any 
 full discussion of it. But they do not enter into its 
 essential merits. I must add that I do not mean even 
 to attempt anything like the leading of proof, external 
 or internal, in behalf of the plenary inspiration or infalli- 
 bility of the Bible. All that I propose to myself in a 
 lecture like this, is to try my hand at an adjustment, or 
 what may contribute to an adjustment, of the state of the 
 question; to bring out what it is that the advocates of 
 this doctrine really hold, and to bring out also the quali- 
 fications and conditions under which they hold it. Much 
 
54 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 is gained if I succeed in clearing up our position, and 
 contribute any help towards the extrication of it from 
 the confusion in which irrelevant discussions of matters 
 altogether beside the point have, as one is sometimes 
 tempted to think, almost hopelessly involved it. 
 
 According to the plan and method of my present in- 
 vestigation, I do not care much about any definition of 
 terms. Such definition of terms would be indispensable, 
 if I were about to enter into the whole subject methodi- 
 cally and comprehensively; but, so far as my present object 
 is concerned, I hope to be able to accomplish it without 
 the aid of rigid formal and scholastic technicality. I am 
 content to understand by revelation whatever God has to 
 say to man, whether man might have discovered it for 
 himself or not; and as to inspiration, I care for no admis- 
 sion or acknowledgment of it which does not imply 
 infallibility. I intend, indeed, rather to avoid the use 
 of this word inspiration; not because I consider it unsuit- 
 able — it is the right word — but because it has been, I 
 fear I must say disingenuously, perverted from its recog- 
 nised meaning, as expressive of that divine superintendence 
 of the process of revelation which secures infallibly the 
 truth and accuracy of what is revealed, and made to 
 signify the mere elevation, more or less, of human, and 
 therefore fallible, capacity or faculty. 
 
 Briefly I intend, first, to offer two preliminary remarks 
 in explanation of what, as I understand it, is meant when 
 the infallibility of the Bible is asserted : and then to indi- 
 cate some of the conditions — four of them — under which 
 that assertion of the infallibility of the Bible is made. 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 First, then, I have to offer two preliminary remarks in 
 explanation of what is meant when the infallibility of 
 the Bible is asserted. The first has respect to the nature, 
 the second to the extent, of the infallibility claimed. 
 
 1. By the infallibility of the Bible, I simply mean that 
 it is the infallible record of an infallible revelation. The 
 infallibility is purely and simply objective. It is the attri- 
 bute of the revelation and of the record, viewed altogether 
 apart from the interpretation which each may receive, and 
 the impression which it may make, in the subjective mind 
 with which it comes in contact. The revelation, as given 
 by God, is infallible ; it may not be so, as apprehended by 
 men. The record of it, as prompted or superintended by 
 God, is infallible ; it may not be so, as read by us. 
 
 It may seem unnecessary to advert to so plain and 
 obvious a distinction. But those who are familiar with 
 certain recent modes of reasoning on inspiration, are aware 
 that not a little pains has been taken, by mixing up and 
 confounding things which differ, to wrap the whole sub- 
 ject of revelation, and the record of revelation, in a sort 
 of dim and doubtful mist. 
 
 Thus, as to revelation, the divine influence under which 
 Moses spoke when he gave the law; Isaiah, when he de- 
 scribed beforehand the sufferings of Christ; Paul, when 
 he taught the doctrine of grace — is represented as differing 
 from the divine influence under which a good and gifted 
 man speaks now, when he discourses on the law, on Christ, 
 on grace; not generically, or in kind, but in amount, or 
 quantity, or degree. Hence it has been inferred that, 
 however much their insight into these matters may have 
 
5G THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 been clearer, higher, more intuitive, more far-reaching in 
 all directions — above, beneath, behind, before — than that 
 of others who have had less of the co-operation of the 
 Spirit, it cannot amount to absolute and complete cer- 
 tainty. It may be far more trustworthy and satisfying, 
 but it is not infallible. 
 
 So, also, as to the record of revelation, the Apostle John, 
 writing his Master's life, enjoys a larger measure of divine 
 influence and guidance than an ordinary biographer re- 
 cording the sayings and doings of a pious friend. But it 
 is an influence and guidance of the same nature. It 
 enabled " the disciple whom Jesus loved" better to under- 
 stand the divine subject of his memoir, to enter with 
 deeper sympathy into his Master's mind and heart, and 
 therefore to give a better and more vivid picture of him, 
 as well as a more exact transcript of his teaching, than he 
 could otherwise have done. Still, even John might fail 
 to grasp the whole bearings, the full and exact signi- 
 ficancy, of the story which he had to tell ; and so, in the 
 telling of it, he may have come short of the truth, or 
 unawares, occasionally, misrepresented it. 
 
 Now, the fallacy of all this seems to lie in not distin- 
 guishing the position of one through whom a revelation 
 is given, or by whom it is recorded, from the position of 
 an ordinary person attending to the revelation, or reading 
 the record. The question is not, Was Isaiah's knowledge 
 of the message which he had to deliver full and infallible? 
 but, Did God see to it, and make sure, that by means of 
 Isaiah's instrumentality the message should be fully and 
 infallibly communicated to those to whom he ministered? 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 57 
 
 It is not, Was there in the prophet himself infallibility ? 
 but, Was there infallibility in his prophetic teaching ? So 
 far as concerns his own understanding of what God com- 
 missioned him to reveal, he might be in the same position 
 with any other member of the Church — more enlightened, 
 certainly, but not necessarily infallible. God is the re- 
 vealer — not Isaiah. The infallibility, therefore, lies in the 
 disclosure or discovery which God causes the prophet to 
 make — not in the insight of the prophet himself. This is 
 the view suggested by the Apostle Peter : — " Of which sal- 
 vation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, 
 who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you : 
 searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of 
 Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified 
 beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that 
 should follow. Unto whom it Avas revealed, that not 
 unto themselves, but unto us, they did minister the 
 things which are now reported unto you by them that 
 have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost 
 sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire 
 to look into" (1 Peter i. 10-12). 
 
 Take also the record of a revelation ; and, to simplify 
 the matter, let it again be the Evangelist John, writing 
 down one of the discourses of the Lord Jesus, in which it 
 will be admitted, that when Jesus delivered it, there was 
 an infallible revelation. As regards his own apprehension 
 and hold of the discourse, John in writing it may be re- 
 garded as similarly situated with us in reading it; — with 
 immensely greater advantages no doubt for taking it all 
 accurately in, but still, in that personal point of view, not 
 
58 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCEIPTURE. 
 
 necessarily infallible — not fully and infallibly enlight- 
 ened. And yet the infallibility of the record which he 
 pens may be secured by the immediate oversight of the 
 infallible Spirit. 
 
 2. Such being the nature of the infallibility claimed, 
 — let us now consider its extent. 
 
 All that is in Scripture is not revelation. To a large 
 extent the Bible is a record of human affairs — the sayings 
 and doings of men, not always a record of divine doc- 
 trine, or of communications from God. Is it infallible 
 when it narrates the wars of kin^s, and inserts the o-ene- 
 alogies of tribes and families ; — as strictly so as when it 
 reports an immediate oracle of Heaven, or embodies the 
 religious teaching of prophets and apostles ? 
 
 To determine this point, in so far as the necessity of 
 the case may be allowed to bear upon it, let the actual 
 plan and method of the revelation which the Bible records 
 be briefly considered. How, in point of fact, has it 
 pleased God to reveal his will to man ? 
 
 I can imagine his doin^ so in a form and manner that 
 would admit of easy extrication from the events of his- 
 tory and the actions of men. All that he intended to 
 say to the human race — the whole instruction which he 
 wished to give them verbally by direct discovery from 
 himself, apart from what they might otherwise gather 
 from his works and ways — might have been comprised in 
 one single communication, made all at once, and once for 
 all, to one competent person, or simultaneously to a select 
 number, associated for the purpose. That one communi- 
 cation might have been complete in itself, embracing 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 59 
 
 whatever information and direction God meant in this 
 way to afford for the guidance of mankind in all ages. 
 
 Let us suppose the original parents of the race to have 
 been in possession of this one communication — to have 
 got such an authentic revelation — clearly and unequivo- 
 cally certified to their own minds to be no discovery of 
 theirs, but a direct communication of God — his very word 
 spoken in their ears. Let us further suppose that they 
 made, or received, a record of this communication, and 
 that the document has come down in tolerable preserva- 
 tion to the present day. On this supposition it is quite 
 conceivable that books similar to those of which the 
 Bible is composed might be written from age to age ; 
 breaking up the one original and complete revelation into 
 its constituent parts and elements ; applying these, in 
 orderly or miscellaneous detail, to the several exigencies 
 of history, — whether the history of the entire race, or that 
 of particular families, or nations, or individuals : — and 
 showing the different uses made of them, " at sundiy times 
 and in divers manners," by the leading minds of succes- 
 sive generations. The primeval divine communication 
 might thus, as it were, be reproduced bit by bit in the 
 writings of men prompted, under the ordinary divine 
 influence vouchsafed to holy men, to illustrate and unfold 
 its various bearings, at manifold points of contact, on the 
 progress of human society, the conditions of human life, 
 and the experiences of the human heart. There might be 
 books of history, legislation, poetry, devotion, and in a 
 sense, also, prophecy ; didactic treatises, familiar letters, 
 songs, proverbs, parables ; — all based upon the old revela- 
 
60 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 tion, pervaded by its spirit, drawing out its principles 
 into their practical issues, and so interspersed with its 
 very words and phrases, its sentences and paragraphs, 
 that what existed at the beginning as a complete divine 
 whole might all be found, in the form of detached portions 
 and scattered fragments, in the body of human literature 
 thus gathering and growing up around it. I say human 
 literature — for the literature might be merely human ; 
 and so long as the original revelation, in its original 
 record, was within reach, and might be consulted, there 
 would be little or no difficulty in disentangling the 
 divine from the human. Even in that case, however, the 
 value and usefulness of the books, as books written to 
 connect the divine ideal with the realities of the actual 
 world, would be comparatively small, if the writers of 
 them were not infallibly guided, and were consequently 
 liable to err. And supposing the document itself, in which 
 the revelation is recorded as a whole, to be lost, after the 
 body of literature is held to be complete, — in which the 
 whole of it exists, indeed, but exists dispersed, and mixed 
 with other matter, — what then ? We have the revelation 
 still. But who shall tell us what it is ? Or how may we 
 find out what it is ? For we have it only as subjected to 
 merely human handling ; broken up and spread through 
 a vast variety of writings known to be more or less 
 merely human ; itself, indeed, continuing infallible as 
 before ; to be found, however, only in the compositions of 
 men, confessedly fallible ; found there, moreover, with- 
 out marks of quotation, or any definite or distinct signs 
 of discrimination of any sort between what is of God and 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 6 1 
 
 what is theirs. And the better the books fulfil the end 
 for which I have supposed them to be written — the more 
 thoroughly their authors succeed in making their several 
 compositions, of whatever kind, the living practical embo- ' 
 diments and expressions of revealed truth ; in which it is 
 variously acted out in harmonious accordance with its 
 own various parts and phases ; so much the greater will 
 be the difficulty of extricating and disentangling the 
 divine ore from its human bed. In fact, this difficulty 
 might be so great as to drive one to the alternative ot 
 either abandoning the idea of an infallible revelation alto- 
 gether, or accepting as infallible the books themselves in 
 which alone, upon the hypothesis in question, the infallible 
 revelation is now contained. 
 
 This is the very alternative forced upon us, with refer- 
 ence to the volume, or collection of writings, which we call 
 the Bible. Have we in it an infallible divine revelation at 
 all ? Can we have such a revelation, divine and infallible, 
 unless the character or attribute of infallibility belongs in 
 the fullest sense to the record in which it is contained — 
 unless the Giver of the revelation guarantees the accuracy 
 of what the recorders of the revelation write ? Can the 
 infallible word of God be in the Bible, unless the Bible 
 itself is the infallible Word of God ? 
 
 The manner in which the authoritative will of God has 
 been actually communicated or revealed to men, is very 
 much the reverse, or converse, of that in which I have been 
 supposing it to be communicated ; and the contrast may 
 be of use in guiding our inquiries and remarks under such 
 
62 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 heads as the following, touching the conditions under 
 which the infallibility of the Bible is asserted : — I. Reve- 
 lation was to be gradual and progressive, not immediately 
 and at once complete. II. It was to be practical and 
 pointed ; springing out of the exigencies, and framed for 
 the occasions, of ordinary human life and experience, from 
 day to day, and from age to age ; plastic, therefore, in its 
 susceptibility of adaptation to human modes of thought 
 and feeling ; not rigidly stereotyped in a divine mould of 
 absolute perfection. III. It was to be natural and free ; 
 not stiff and formal. IV. It was, nevertheless, to be 
 throughout limited and restricted ; not ranging over all 
 the field of possible knowledge, but embracing only what 
 concerns the moral government of God and the salvation 
 of man. Under such conditions as these, let us assume 
 an infallible revelation to be given, and an infallible 
 record of it to be framed ; and let us ask if that record 
 would not present very much the appearance which the 
 Bible, as we now have it, presents ? Let us look at the 
 Bible as a book composed under these conditions ; and let 
 us see if they do not, on the one hand, indicate the direc- 
 tion in which evidence of its inspiration and infallibility 
 may be sought, and, on the other hand, suggest the sources 
 from whence a probable solution of most of the difficulties 
 of this subject may be derived. The first two of these 
 conditions may be said to attach chiefly to the divine 
 element in the composition of the Bible ; the last two to 
 the human. 
 
 I. What God had to communicate by revelation to man 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 63 
 
 was to be communicated, not all at once, but as it were 
 piecemeal ; gradually and progressively. 
 
 Now, in the first place, this consideration suggests a 
 very strong reason why God should from the beginning, 
 and all along, superintend most closely and minutely the 
 committing of his communications to writing, so as to 
 secure even the verbal accuracy of the record. 
 
 I am aware that this is a mode of reasoning about God 
 in the use of which there is need of the greatest caution. 
 To infer that God must have taken a certain course with 
 reference to any matter, merely because to our judgment it 
 seems the only course suitable to the circumstances of 
 the case, is not often either reverential or safe. In the 
 present instance, however, I cannot but think that the 
 presumption is peculiarly strong. 
 
 He who sees the end from the beginning, and before 
 whom all truth lies open, employs me, an ignorant and 
 fallible man, to put on record, not the whole of what lie 
 means to say, but only a small, a very small part of it. 
 He knows the relation of that part to the whole ; but I 
 do not. He can judge how the part can be so put that 
 it shall be found ultimately to fit into the whole ; but I 
 cannot. Is it credible that he will leave it to me, writing 
 a history, or a poem, or a letter, to bring in the portion 
 of revelation which I have got from him just as I think 
 fit, and choose my own way of introducing and express- 
 ing it, without satisfying himself that it is treated entirely 
 according to his own mind ? You would not, as a mer- 
 chant, trust a clerk, unacquainted with all the interests of 
 your vast business, to send a message for you about some 
 
64 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCKIPTUKE. 
 
 one of them, Laving bearings, which you understand and 
 he cannot, upon the business as a whole. You would ask 
 to see the document before it was despatched, and you I 
 would correct its very language. 
 
 Again, secondly, the fact of the divine communications ! 
 which the Bible has to record being partial, and in a 
 sense, fragmentary in their character, may prepare us to 
 expect a good deal of difficulty in harmoniously adjusting 
 and combining them. At all events, it ought to be an 
 argument for much more modesty in dealing with the 
 Scriptures than is sometimes shown. 
 
 An author, especially a voluminous author, is placed at 
 a great disadvantage when his views and sentiments on 
 any important truth have to be gathered from a great 
 variety of miscellaneous writings, composed long ago, and 
 spread over a long series of years. Even with, the most 
 honest desire to ascertain his real mind, and do him full 
 justice, you are often greatly at a loss and at fault. You 
 cannot explain how he was led to speak in this particular 
 way at one time, and in that other particular way at 
 another time. You do not wish, however, to magnify 
 apparent anomalies and inconsistencies. You have a firm 
 persuasion that the great man whose works you are study- 
 ing knew what he was about when he wrote them, and 
 had fixed opinions to advocate, and a well-digested system 
 to maintain. You examine patiently, and judge candidly. 
 And if you do find passages really difficult, in which 
 he seems to express himself on any question, or to have 
 himself acted in any emergency, in a way that somewhat 
 jars with his statements elsewhere and his conduct at 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 65 
 
 other times, you are not surprised. You call to mind 
 that you are ignorant of many particulars of local, tem- 
 porary, personal, or relative significance which may have 
 influenced him on such occasions, and which, if known, 
 would show that there was only a just and wise adapta- 
 tion to the necessities of the case ; involving no change, 
 or compromise, or concession. And as you esteem highly 
 the author and his writings, you readily acquiesce even 
 in a solution merely conjectural, if it offers anything 
 approaching to a satisfactory vindication of his consist- 
 ency. Such a mode of procedure is reasonable and fair. 
 It is common sense. It is bare justice. 
 
 Now, the divine communications which the Bible pro- 
 fesses to record extend, with large intervals, over cen- 
 turies. Surely, in all fairness, the Bible which records 
 them ought to be treated and judged in the manner 
 which I have been attempting to describe. 
 
 This is probably what the Apostle Peter means in that ; 
 remarkable passage, in which he unequivocally asserts the 
 divine authorship of the prophetic books, or of the Scrip- 
 tures generally, and assigns it as the reason of a general 
 rule or canon of exposition: " No prophecy of the scripture 
 is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came 
 not in old time by the will of man ; but holy men of 
 God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost'"' 
 (2 Peter i. 20, 21). He is proving that the hope of the 
 Lord's coming in power and glory is no " cunningly de- 
 vised fable." He first insists on the fact of the Trans- 
 figuration. Even in the midst of his humiliation our 
 Lord's glory was beheld. " We," James, John, and I, 
 
 («) 6 
 
66 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 " were eye-witnesses of his majesty." We actually saw 
 hini as he is to be seen at his Second Advent. This, of 
 itself, affords a strong presumption in favour of what we 
 teach, when " we make known unto you the power and 
 coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.''' But " the word of 
 prophecy" is a still "surer" evidence: clearer, more explicit, 
 and more direct. To that word — to the Scriptures con- 
 taining it — the apostle refers his readers for proof of the 
 doctrine which he is teaching. And, in doing so, he gives 
 them a strong caution. They are to "know this first" — 
 they are to keep it in view as a primary and capital 
 principle of interpretation — that " no prophecy of Scrip- 
 ture is of any private interpretation." 
 
 The maxim thus announced has been variously ex- 
 plained ; but, taken in connection with the reason assigned 
 for it, I apprehend its meaning to be somewhat to the 
 following effect. If the Scripture were a collection of 
 separate and independent treatises, composed by different 
 authors, then each treatise might be expected to contain 
 within itself the means and materials of its own interpre- 
 tation. We would count it enough, in that case, to let 
 each writer explain himself. We would give him the 
 benefit of collating or comparing the passages in his own 
 book fitted to qualify or throw light on one another; but 
 we would not consider it necessary to travel beyond what 
 he himself had written, to ride the marches, as it were, 
 or adjust the terms of agreement, between him and the 
 other authors whose works happened to be bound up in 
 the same volume. But the Bible is not such a miscellany. 
 Properly speaking, it has but one author — the Holy Ghost 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 67 
 
 ■ — throughout. All the books in it are of his composi- 
 tion. He is responsible for them all. And that being so, 
 he is entitled to the same measure of justice at our hands 
 which an ordinary writer may claim. We are to take 
 his writings as a whole, and interpret them by the help 
 of one another; by allowing them to shed light on one 
 another ; sometimes, perhaps, to limit and restrict one 
 another's meaning, and at other times greatly to en- 
 hance and enlarge it. This is the correct view of the 
 Bible as the Word of God. It is the work of one author; 
 and of an author, let it be remembered, whose object it 
 is not to declare his whole mind and will at once, but to 
 let it come out only very gradually, in a sort of frag- 
 mentary way, bit by bit, in detached portions. He pur- 
 posely at first, and for a long time, restrains himself; and 
 of necessity leaves many things, especially in his earlier 
 communications, unexplained. It ought not, therefore, 
 to be matter of surprise to us, nor ought it to be felt as 
 impeaching the infallibility of the Bible, when we find 
 the dealings of God with men in the days of old, as the 
 Bible records them, to be in some particulars such as, at 
 this distance of time, we cannot have cleared up to our 
 entire satisfaction. It was impossible for him, consis- 
 tently with the plan of a progressive revelation, to make 
 known always all the reasons of his procedure. Even 
 with the clearer and fuller discoveries of the later revela- 
 tion, as a key to the earlier, we may be sometimes unable 
 to ascertain these reasons now. In contemplating some 
 of those sterner aspects of the character of God which the 
 earlier revelation exhibits, or those rigorous severities in 
 
68 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 his providence which it narrates, we may be apt to won- 
 der if this is the same being whose love shines so conspi- 
 cuously in the face of Jesus Christ. But when we 
 candidly consider the nature of the case, compelling, if I 
 may so speak, this glorious being, for a long season, to 
 hide himself and his doings behind a cloud only partially 
 dispelled, we see that we may well be expected to 
 acquiesce in explanations not at all points free from 
 doubt ; — and for the rest be silent. Nay, more, we begin 
 to suspect that we may perhaps err seriously, if we dwell 
 only on what appears to be the milder view of the great 
 Father presented to us in his Son, and to ask if, before 
 all is over, and this very dispensation of grace has run 
 its course, there may not be things seen and done on the 
 earth that will but too terribly identify him whom men 
 will persist in misrepresenting as the vengeful God of the 
 Old Testament with him whom, to their cost, they may 
 find that they have been equally misrepresenting as the 
 all-indulgent and all-merciful God of the New. 
 
 IT. It was the design of God that the revelation of 
 his will to man should be, not theoretical and ' ideal, but 
 practical, and, as it were, business-like, arising out of the 
 circumstances, and adapted to the events and exigencies, 
 of human history and human life. Whatever God 
 revealed at any time of his mind and will, he revealed, 
 as we say, pro re nata, for the occasion. "What was 
 revealed, therefore, took to a considerable extent, more or 
 less, the form and mould of the occasion. 
 
 Even apart from this consideration, independently of 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 69 
 
 the occasion, the agency employed, being human agency, 
 necessarily affects the substance as well as the form and 
 manner of the revelation. 
 
 I suppose that truth, absolutely pure and perfect, can 
 dwell only in the divine mind. To lodge it in the mind 
 of a creature, exactly as it is in the mind of the Creator, 
 may very probably be an impossibility. 
 
 It is said, indeed, that in the future state, <c we shall 
 know even as we are known." That, however, may not 
 literally mean that our human knowledge is then to be 
 completely assimilated to the divine knowledge, and made 
 absolutely equal to it. It is rather intended to mark 
 strongly the contrast, in this respect, between that future 
 state and the present, in which " we know in part, and 
 prophesy in part." In this life at all events, as is clear 
 from that statement of the apostle, revelation, even when 
 fullest and clearest, does not transfer truth identical and 
 entire from the divine mind to the human; it does not 
 give perfect, but only partial knowledge. 
 
 Now it is a true maxim of the schools, that " whatever 
 is received, is received according to the capacity of the 
 receiver." This maxim applies to a divine communica- 
 tion as well as to other things. Hence it may be freely 
 admitted that gospel truth — the truth as it is in Jesus — 
 even w r hen communicated directly and immediately — to 
 the inspired apostles for instance — was not to them, 
 absolutely and perfectly, what it is to God. Even they 
 " knew in part, and they prophesied in part." 
 
 Nay, more: it may be granted that it was not to any 
 one of them exactly what it was to any other of them ; 
 
70 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 that no two of them saw it in exactly the same light 
 themselves, or could present it in exactly the same light 
 to others. 
 
 They were men of like passions with ourselves. They 
 had their several idiosyncrasies; their individual peculi- 
 arities of thought and feeling ; their distinctive tempera- 
 ments and tastes. He must be either very blind or very 
 bigoted, who refuses to admit that Paul, and James, and 
 Peter, and John, had each his own conception of the 
 revealed way of life and duty ; and that, in writing their 
 apostolic letters, they taught it each according to his own 
 conception of it. Had it been otherwise, the New Testa- 
 ment would have been a very dull book; and what is 
 worse, the mind of God would have been far less fully 
 and adequately conveyed to us than as we have it now ; 
 unless, indeed, the writers were to be mere machines. It 
 is the fact of our having the truth of the gospel presented 
 to us by different men, looking at it from different stand- 
 points, and conceiving of it somewhat differently from 
 one another that enables us to obtain something better, 
 at anyrate, than a merely one-sided view of that great 
 mystery of godliness, which yet, after all, until our earthly 
 house of this tabernacle is dissolved, we can know only in 
 part. 
 
 But now, admitting and thankfully rejoicing in this 
 fact, I urge it as what to my mind is one of the strongest 
 of all arguments for the full and infallible inspiration of 
 the apostolic writings. I cannot bring myself to believe 
 that when God meant to reveal his will to me, to you, 
 to all. in a matter, not of life and death merely, but of 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 71 
 
 life and death for eternit}^; when he was about to com- 
 municate, as from himself, and on his own authority, the 
 knowledge of the one only way of salvation; and when, 
 for that purpose, he engaged the minds and pens of men, 
 who, being men, could at the very best know it them- 
 selves only in part; — and who, moreover, being men of 
 different habits and dispositions, could not but view it 
 and present it differently from one another — I say I can- 
 not bring myself to believe that he left these men to 
 write without a superintendence and unerring oversight 
 that would secure the literal and verbal accuracy of every 
 sentence they composed; its being literally and verbally 
 what he would have it to be ; literally and verbally 
 correct and true. I will not do my God so great wrong 
 as to imagine that he could so act. I may have to admit 
 that there are difficulties in connection with these precious 
 remains, which I have not, in this remote age and country, 
 the means of solving. But I for one will be no maker of 
 difficulties ; no eager finder of them ; nor will I make 
 too much of them when they force themselves upon me. 
 I will not refuse a probable, or even a possible, explana- 
 tion of them, merely because it does not clear up all, and 
 make all certain. And most assuredly, even in a despe- 
 rate case, I shall consider it infinitely more probable that 
 there is some mistake on my part, some error in my way 
 of looking at the matter ; that the puzzle I am in is 
 owing to my distance from the writers; that a few simple 
 words from them would at once remove it - r — and will 
 remove it when I meet them in a better world ; — ■ 
 than that either they should have undertaken, or God 
 
i'Z THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 should have permitted them, to handle, as his authorised 
 ambassadors, and the authoritative teachers of his Church 
 in all ages, the deep things of his righteousness and peace, 
 in any other words than those which his own Holy Spirit 
 sanctioned and approved. 
 
 Returning now to the point on hand, I observe that 
 not only must we take into account the human agency 
 employed, as modifying the revelation of which the 
 Bible is the record, but we must allow also for the human 
 occasions to which it was adapted. Divine truth, as 
 taught in Scripture, resembles mixed, rather than pure, 
 mathematics. It is not like the abstract science of num- 
 ber or extension, but rather like the science of number or 
 extension practically applied, in the mechanical arts, or in 
 the transactions of business. In the Bible we have not 
 merely God speaking from heaven, and man listening on 
 earth; we have God, as it were, coming down to the 
 earth, mixing himself up with its affairs, taking part in 
 the ordinary ongoings of the world's history, turning the 
 sayings and doings of men to account for the purpose of 
 conveying the instruction which he wishes to impart. 
 
 Hence there is need of continual discrimination, that 
 we may ascertain the true value and bearing of Scriptural 
 statements as expressive of the divine mind and will. 
 
 With ordinary candour, the task of exercising the 
 necessary discrimination is not really difficult. But it is 
 easy, if one is so inclined, to create embarrassment ; to 
 confound the earthly occasion with the heavenly lesson ; 
 and to take exception to some things in the divine pro- 
 cedure which may appear to be inconsistent with the 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 73 
 
 highest ideal of pure truth and perfect holiness, when in 
 all fairness allowance ought to be made for the constrain- 
 ing force of circumstances. We must regard God, in 
 those dealings of his with men which Scripture records, 
 as in some sense laid under a restraint. It is no part of 
 his purpose to coerce the human will, or to disturb and 
 disarrange the ordinary laws which regulate the incidents 
 of human life, and the progress of human society. There 
 must be, on his part, a certain measure of accommodation. 
 He cannot in his Word, any more than in his provi- 
 dence, have things precisely such, and so put, as the 
 standard of absolute perfection would require. In legis- 
 lating, for instance, for ancient Israel, it was not possible 
 to have the ordinance of marriage, the usages of war, the 
 rights of captives, the relation of master and servant, — 
 and other similar matters affecting domestic order and 
 the public weal, — regulated exactly as absolutely strict 
 principle demands. 
 
 If it had been the plan of God to reveal his will by 
 infallibly directing Plato in the framing of his idea of a 
 perfect republic, — or our own Philip Sidney in composing 
 his " Arcadia," — there would have been none of the appar- 
 ent anomalies which it delights the sceptic to detect, and 
 which it sometimes vexes the devout reader to find, in 
 the Mosaic writings, and in the books of Kings. 
 
 Even when the New Testament revelation was given, 
 some things which it might have been expected that our 
 Lord and his apostles would have regulated according to 
 the perfect law of liberty, were left, as it would seem, 
 undetermined. Evils were to be allowed to work them- 
 
74 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 selves out, as it were, gradually in the course of time, 
 through the growing Christian enlightenment of man- 
 kind; and the spirit of the gospel, as its influence was 
 to be felt from age to age in every department of human 
 experience, was naturally and spontaneously to effect 
 salutary and blessed reforms, which it would have frus- 
 trated the very purpose for which the gospel was given 
 to enact by formal statute, or enjoin in positive command. 
 The disappearance of polygamy — the elevation of the 
 female sex — the abolition of personal slavery in European 
 Christendom — and other similar improvements in modern 
 society, are instances in point. 
 
 In short, as regards both the teaching of truth and 
 the enforcing of duty, the principle on which divine 
 revelation has been given, " at sundry times and in 
 divers manners," is very much the principle on which 
 the Great Teacher himself acted in his personal ministry, 
 when " he spake to the people in parables as they were able 
 to bear it." And it is upon that principle, therefore, that 
 the record of the revelation ought in all fairness to be 
 interpreted and criticised. 
 
 If this common justice is done to it, not a few of the 
 objections urged in certain quarters against its infal- 
 libility will be found to be altogether groundless. Nay, 
 more, I am persuaded that if due regard be had to the 
 consideration now stated, the presumption in favour of 
 the infallibility of Scripture will appear to be very 
 strong. I cannot see how otherwise we have any 
 guarantee for the accuracy of a revelation, depending for 
 the right understanding of it on a knowledge of the 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCEIPTURE. 75 
 
 circumstances in which its separate and successive por- 
 tions were communicated, unless we have these circum- 
 stances reported to us under an unerring oversight. And, 
 I have no doubt that, were a comprehensive survey 
 taken of all the various intimations of the mind of God 
 contained in Scripture, viewed in the light of the 
 historical and circumstantial occasions by which they 
 were suggested, and to which they were accommodated, 
 a singularly cogent, cumulative hody of proof might be 
 built up. It is, in fact, impossible to account for the 
 wonderful harmony and consistency pervading the whole 
 of the divine volume, — as the record of a revelation of 
 God, growing out of, and growing into, the progress of 
 the race of man, — on any other supposition than that 
 the Spirit of God has so superintended the entire book 
 throughout, as to insure, from the highest discoveries of 
 heaven in it, down to the meanest details of earth, the 
 infallible correctness of all its contents. 
 
 III. Revelation was to be natural and free, not stiff 
 and formal. Those by whom it was to be given were 
 to speak and write freely. It seems somehow to be 
 imagined by some that men infallibly directed by the 
 Holy Spirit, and conscious or assured of their being so, 
 must feel themselves under the pressure of a strong 
 restraint, obliged to pick their steps, if I may so say, 
 with extreme nicety and delicacy; to be very scrupulous 
 and fastidious in telling what they have to tell ; carrying 
 their anxiety about the rigid accuracy of everything they 
 say to a pitch of punctiliousness that, in an ordinary 
 
76 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 speaker or writer, would be held to be either mere affec- 
 tation, or ridiculous precision and pedantry. I apprehend 
 that we might expect the very opposite effect to be 
 produced on their modes of thought and expression. I 
 can see no reason why the Holy Spirit, if he has any 
 communication to make, should not use the same lati- 
 tude that the most truthful of mankind allows himself 
 to use, when minute exactness is not necessary, and is 
 not pretended; as, for instance, when he thinks it quite 
 enough to state a sum of years, or of people, in round 
 numbers; or when he reports the speech of a friend, or 
 of an orator, whose precise words he does not profess to 
 give. Nay more, I can well believe that a man writing 
 under the assurance of divine guidance, might be even 
 less careful in matters of that sort than he would other- 
 wise consider himself obliged to be; and might take 
 liberties in dealing with certain subjects, which, if left 
 ^«7 , (mk to himself, he would by no means have considered it 
 
 warrantable to take. 
 ' r *AS Ctrx**.*. Let me illustrate what I mean by a very simple 
 <tf % &ta example, in a very trifling matter ; — and then endeavour 
 J^ott^t^ / to show how the idea or principle which I have indicated 
 t^a^c * # mav b e applied to things of greater consequence. 
 
 I find Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, in 
 his anxiety to meet the subdivisions among them — -their 
 //W'f-taking sides, " I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of 
 "Wfc* Cephas, and I of Christ" — asking, with some indigna- 
 
 tion, "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? 
 Or were ye baptized in the name of Paul Y* And then he 
 1 **** . adds, in his eager and anxious haste to disclaim his having 
 
 
 ' u. /t 
 
 ',*- 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 77 
 
 ever given them any occasion for imagining that they 
 should attach themselves to him, as if he had baptized 
 them in his own name, — that he had not been in the 
 practice of ordinarily baptizing them at all, and that it 
 was now matter to him of high satisfaction that he had 
 not: "I thank God that I baptized none of you, but 
 Crispus and Gaius; lest any should say that I baptized 
 in mine own name." Now this was a mistake; and I 
 can fancy the amanuensis or scribe who wrote to Paul's 
 dictation, stopping short to tell him so, and to refresh 
 his memory; or else Paul recollects himself; for he goes 
 on to say: "And I baptized also the house of Stephanas/' 
 Then, as if he felt that there might still be some omis- 
 sion, but that it was unnecessary to be more particular 
 and precise, he adds : " Besides, I know not whether I 
 baptized any other. For Christ sent me, not to baptize, 
 but to preach the gospel." I give this as a slight illus- 
 tration of the freedom with which an inspired apostle 
 might write; that freedom being all the greater, in 
 consequence of his being quite sure that in some way 
 or other the accuracy of what he wrote would be suffi- 
 ciently secured by the Divine Spirit, under whose infallible 
 superintendence he knew himself to be writing. 
 
 Now, the consideration thus suggested may go far to 
 explain not a few things that have been regarded as diffi- 
 culties and objections in the way of the infallibility of 
 Scripture. I shall mention only two. The one is, — the 
 variations in the evangelical narratives ; the other is, — 
 the manner in which the Old Testament is quoted and 
 referred to in the New. 
 
78 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 1. As to the first, let me make a supposition. 1 Our 
 blessed Lord, during his lifetime, or after his resurrection 
 and before he went to heaven, might have desired four 
 of his followers, who had been always with him in his 
 ministry, to write down, separately and independently, 
 what they could remember, and what they considered 
 most worthy of being remembered, of his sayings and 
 doings; and then to bring their several narratives to him, 
 that he might revise and correct them. The knowledge 
 that what they wrote was to be submitted to their Master s 
 eye, would be a stimulus to all of them to do their best. 
 But would it not also give them great boldness and free- 
 dom in executing their task ? They would not feel 
 themselves hampered by the constant fear of not giving 
 verbatim every sentence of a discourse, and not stating 
 every minute particular about a miracle ; nor would they 
 be haunted by the apprehension that their failing to do 
 so might give rise to apparent discrepancies in their 
 biographies. They would have little scruple in following 
 very much each the bent of his own mind, as to the 
 selection of materials, the order of their arrangement, 
 and the language employed in recording them. There 
 would be a free play and exercise of their faculties and 
 feelings. Theirs woidd be the "pens of ready writers." 
 
 And now, they put their manuscripts into their 
 Master's hands. What will be his treatment of them ? 
 
 Will he insist on reducing them to a tame uniformity ? 
 
 1 This is partly a repetition of an illustration used in the former Lecture, only 
 somewhat differently applied. I retain it for the sake of the completeness of this 
 Lecture, as veil as on account of the importance of the point at issue. 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. V 9 
 
 Will he be for retrenching here, enlarging there: over- 
 crowding the canvas with details in one place ; cutting 
 out graphic incidents, graphically told, in another ; alter- 
 ing and amending words and phrases, until the agreement 
 becomes so close and complete as to defy the most 
 captious fault-finder? Surely not. He will not thus 
 give the appearance of collusion to what he designs to be 
 distinct and independent testimonies. He will leave the 
 memoirs in the freedom and freshness of their original 
 spontaneous simplicity ; only taking care that there is 
 nothing in them for which he would not be willing him- 
 self to stand voucher. He prefers their easy and artless 
 reminiscences to an absolutely perfect history, as giving 
 really a truer and more life-like representation of himself. 
 He suffers them to go forth under his sanction, although 
 he quite well foresees that the different ways in which 
 they tell the story of his life may give rise to questions 
 that could only be solved by a fuller and more exact narra- 
 tive than any one of all the four professes to be. 
 
 Now the case, thus put as a supposition, is virtually 
 the case as in point of fact it actually is. Historians 
 and biographers, enjoying the infallible guidance of the 
 Divine Spirit, and knowing that they enjoyed it, would be 
 sure to write in the free and natural way which I have de- 
 scribed. The Spirit acting, if I may so speak, in the interest 
 of Christ, and consulting for his glory, would exercise his 
 superintendence, just as I have imagined Christ himsell 
 to conduct his revision. And the result, as might easily 
 be shown in detail, would be the very phenomena which 
 the Scriptural narratives, as we now have them, present. 
 
80 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 2. The manner in which the Old Testament is quoted 
 and referred to in the New, may also be explained, I 
 think, at least partly, upon the same principle. This is 
 a wide subject — far too wide to be discussed fully in this 
 form. A ver}^ few hints regarding it must suffice for the 
 present. 
 
 My notion is, that the apostles and evangelists may 
 have been led to use more freedom than they would 
 otherwise have ventured to use, in dealing with the Old 
 Testament Scriptures, and connecting them with the 
 New Dispensation, by the very fact of their being under 
 infallible guidance. Nor is it difficult to see a good 
 reason for this. The whole of the Old Testament has a 
 prospective reference to the gospel. Its historical details, 
 its typical institutions, its devotional pieces, its maxims 
 of wisdom, its prophetic intimations — all point to Christ 
 and the kingdom of Christ. Of necessity, however, all 
 these foreshadowings of more substantial good things to 
 come, are expressed in language less clear than what 
 might and would naturally be employed when the good 
 things had actually come. And let it be borne in mind, 
 that the New Testament writers, when they quote or 
 refer to the language of the Old, are not merely citing 
 it in proof of what they teach. They are authoritatively 
 interpreting it and applying it; drawing out its full 
 meaning as it is developed by the later revelation. In 
 these circumstances, their very consciousness, or assurance, 
 of an infallible divine superintendence being exerted 
 over them, might make them feel that they were warranted 
 in exercising a large measure of discretion. Being under 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 81 
 
 such a superintendence, they are not, like ordinary 
 teachers, subject to the Scriptures which they handle. In 
 an important sense they are masters of them : entitled to 
 put their own sense and meaning on the statements and 
 contents of these Scriptures ; and entitled consequently, 
 in large measure, to take their own way of making that 
 sense and meaning clear. 
 
 When, therefore, a passage of Old Testament Scrip- 
 ture assumes in their hands a different import and bearing 
 from what, as it stands in its original place, it seems to 
 have, the presumption is, that the apparent dilference 
 arises from the limit which, by the very necessity of the 
 case, was put upon the clearness of Old Testament dis- 
 coveries;- — that the apostle understands the prophet 
 better than the prophet could understand himself, and 
 expresses the meaning of the passage better than the 
 prophet himself, in the circumstances, could express it. 
 The same consideration may account generally for the 
 free manner in which the authors of the New Testament 
 cite the words of the Old. They do not study always 
 literal and verbal accuracy. They interpret while they 
 quote. They have respect to the use and application 
 which they are making of the words, rather than to the 
 mere words themselves ; giving the true evangelical sense, 
 if not the very terms in which originally that sense may 
 have been more or less imperfectly conveyed. 
 
 All this seems to be capable of a reasonable and satis- 
 factory explanation, on the supposition of an infallible 
 divine guidance being incessantly exercised over what 
 the apostles and evangelists wrote. I confess, however, 
 m 7 
 
82 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 that on any other supposition I consider it to be inex- 
 plicable. I can scarcely reconcile it, I would almost say, 
 with fair dealing. At all events, I cannot reconcile it 
 with that reverence for the very letter of their sacred 
 books which was a peculiar characteristic of Jewish 
 writers of old, and that sense of responsibility for even 
 verbal correctness which men in their position must 
 have owned. I am persuaded that the New Testament 
 teachers felt themselves at liberty to deal with the Old 
 Testament as freely as they did, solely because they were, 
 — and because they knew that they were, — under the 
 control and superintendence of the Spirit of Truth, who 
 would not suffer them to err. 
 
 There are other circumstances connected with the use 
 of the Old Testament in the New, which must be taken 
 into account, if we would do full justice to the argument. 
 I allude to certain Oriental and Jewish modes of thought 
 and ways of looking at things, which differ much from 
 the mental habits of Western and modern nations. They 
 were not so analytical and discriminating as we are ; 
 not by any means so abstract ; but rather prone to view 
 objects in the concrete, and to group together as one 
 person or thing what, when closely examined, may be 
 found to resolve itself into several. But this, and other 
 considerations bearing on the present topic, I must pass 
 over. 
 
 IV. The fourth condition under which I assumed at 
 the outset the divine revelation to be given, and the 
 record of it to be framed, is, that the revelation was to be 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 83 
 
 limited and restricted; not ranging over the whole field 
 of possible knowledge in science or in history; but em- 
 bracing only what concerns the moral government of God 
 and the salvation of men. 
 
 Here, it is important to understand what the problem 
 is which occasions difficulty. 
 
 What is it that the Divine Being, according to the plan 
 which he proposes to himself, has, I ask with reverence, 
 to do ? He intends to reveal his will, not in an abstract 
 form of ideal heavenly perfection, but in connection with 
 earth's changes and the affairs of men. Of necessity, 
 therefore, the revelation must not only touch the confines, 
 but enter and occupy the domains, of scientific truth and 
 secular history. But God did not mean to make either 
 those whom he employed as his agents in giving the 
 revelation, or the people to whom they gave it, wiser or 
 better informed on these subjects, than they would have 
 been without a revelation — except only in so far as it 
 might be necessary for spiritual and moral ends. Hence, 
 when the facts of science or of history come up, as it were, 
 in the course of the giving of the revelation, and are to 
 be dealt with or referred to, — this must be done in such a 
 way as, on the one hand, not to anticipate the discoveries, 
 or supersede the researches, which from age to age men 
 are to make and institute for themselves, in the exercise 
 of their natural faculties; and yet, on the other hand, 
 not to be inconsistent with them. Very plainly this is 
 a problem which the Divine Mind alone can meet and 
 grapple with. To say nothing that shall tell men what 
 God means that they should find out for themselves ; and 
 
84 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 yet, to say nothing that shall be at variance with what 
 they do ultimately find out for themselves; who can re- 
 concile these opposite terms of this condition under which 
 revelation is to be given, but God only? 
 
 And how, let me ask, may it be expected that the 
 reconciliation shall become clear and certain to men ? 
 
 At first, of course, there is no difficulty. The revela- 
 tion is given, and the record of it is written, in accordance 
 with the amount of information and the state of opinion 
 at the time. The inspired Word is abreast of the science 
 and literature of the age, but not in advance of it. By 
 and by, the progress of inquiry brings out new informa- 
 tion, and gives rise to new opinions, on those subjects 
 which men have been left to investigate for themselves. 
 The new information, and the new opinions, clash and 
 come into collision with the method of interpreting Scrip- 
 ture hitherto in use, and the current notions which it 
 has been supposed to sanction. Alarm is felt, as if the 
 very foundations of revealed truth were shaken. The 
 sun must move round the earth. Galileo dies, asserting, 
 with his latest breath, that it is the earth that moves round 
 the sun. " It moves ! it moves !" cries the martyr in the 
 cause of science ; — a martyr also, as it turns out, in the 
 cause of revelation too. 
 
 This is the second stage in the advance of man towards 
 the right apprehension of the plan and method of the 
 revelation of God. It is a natural and inevitable stage. 
 And we are not to judge too severely, either on the one 
 hand the students of nature, who may have been tempted, 
 in this stage, to raise reluctant doubts as to the scientific 
 
THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 85 
 
 accuracy of revelation ; or on the other hand the students 
 of revelation, who may have been led by these doubts 
 being raised to show an unworthy jealousy and fear of 
 the free study of nature. 
 
 But a better understanding comes. It is found, on 
 closer study, that while the Bible does not teach the 
 new doctrines of science, which it could not do con- 
 sistently with its general design, yet it does not teach the 
 opposite, or the reverse of them. And that is all that can 
 be reasonably asked. Not only so. When that is made 
 clear, it furnishes a most striking and irrefragable proof 
 of the infallibility of the Bible ; its having been composed 
 under the eye and hand of an infallible Mind, knowing 
 all things from the beginning, and taking care that what- 
 ever of truth is revealed and written down, from time to 
 time, partially and incompletely, to meet the successive 
 exigencies of human sin, and suffering, and sorrow, and 
 salvation, shall be, on the one hand, adapted to the 
 existing state of knowledge at the time; and, on the 
 other hand, consistent with all that ever can be known. 
 The Bible lias hitherto stood this test. The Bible alone 
 can stand it. All other pretended revelations teach, as an 
 essential part of themselves, positively false cosmogonies, 
 false deluges, impossible miracles. In contrast, the Bible 
 stands alone. 
 
 I may be allowed here to refer to a remark made some 
 years ago in conversation by the lamented Hugh Miller, 
 which at the time impressed me much, and which I have 
 never forgotten. It was to this effect. The geological 
 discoveries as to the earth's existence and history before 
 
86 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 the Adamic creation are consistent with a probable, or 
 possible, interpretation of Genesis: not indeed with any 
 interpretation that would naturally have occurred to any 
 reader before these discoveries were made — that would 
 have been to forestall the discoveries by revelation; but 
 still with an interpretation of which the inspired words 
 are fairly susceptible. The Confession and Catechisms 
 of the Westminster divines, on the other hand, in treat- 
 ing of the subject of the creation, use language that can- 
 not in any way be harmonised with the teachings of 
 science. Of course this is not wonderful. These learned 
 men, being uninspired, could not make provision for a 
 state of knowledge not yet reached. They gave their 
 judgment on questions actually before them, and cannot 
 be considered authoritative on a point which was not 
 then raised. But the argument which the contrast be- 
 tween them and the sacred writer suggests is very strik- 
 ing. There is reserve on the part of Moses. The inspir- 
 ing and superintending Spirit does not give him scientific 
 information in advance of his age. But care is taken 
 that, writing according to the scientific views of his age, 
 lie shall say nothing that is to be found ultimately in- 
 compatible or irreconcilable — in the judgment of any 
 candid mind, duly considering the conditions of the pro- 
 blem — with what the advancing march of inquiry is to 
 go on unfolding to the end of time. 
 
 ] have done, as I best could, what I proposed to do. 
 I have not only not exhausted the subject; I have scarcely 
 even touched its arguments. I have endeavoured simply 
 
I THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 87 
 
 to state the question; to lay down the conditions under 
 which it might be assumed beforehand, that the Bible, 
 as the infallible record of an infallible revelation, would 
 be written; and to suggest some of the features which 
 the Bible, written under these conditions, might be ex- 
 pected to exhibit. 
 
 Suffer one closing word. There is a very vulgar outcry in 
 certain learned quarters against bibliolatry. Some of our 
 learned Grecians positively cannot keep their temper, when 
 they have to speak of a believer in an infallible Bible. And 
 lesser scholars chime in. For it looks like manliness to 
 put an infallible Bible in the same category with an in- 
 fallible Church or an infallible Pope — to turn the tables 
 upon biblical Protestants, and taunt them with their sub- 
 mission to an infallible Book, as if that were equivalent 
 to their kissing the toe of an infallible priest. 
 
 With all deference to our iconoclastic friends, there is 
 some little difference between these two attitudes. 
 
 To stand erect in the presence of my God and Father in 
 heaven, and with his Book in my hand and in my heart 
 — the Book which he lias caused to be written, and 
 written infallibly, for my learning — to confer and com- 
 mune directly with himself about its contents, asking 
 him to open it up to me, and to open my eyes that I 
 may behold wonders out of it; and, on the faith of the 
 wonders I behold in it, to pour forth my inmost soul 
 before him, unbosoming all my grief, confessing all my 
 sin, accepting all his mercy ; — alone — myself alone with 
 him alone; — to settle and seal, upon this authentic re- 
 cord of his will, a holy covenant of peace; — who dare 
 
88 THE INFALLIBILITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 say — what Grecian pedant, what shallow sceptic — that a 
 transaction like that on my part with my God — so close, 
 so direct, so personal, so confidential — proceeding all 
 throughout on his speaking to me in this infallible Bible, 
 and my speaking to him in reliance on its infallibility, — 
 has anything at all in common with the blind, implicit 
 trust which allows a man — a mere man, though he be 
 clothed in scarlet, and wear a triple crown, and have the 
 backing of solemn conclaves and councils — to set the 
 Book aside ; — and himself come in between me and the 
 God of my salvation, asking me to receive the law at 
 his mouth, and let him negotiate for me the relation in 
 which I am to stand to Heaven? If I can dispense 
 with guidance out of myself altogether — if, while willing 
 to receive hints from all quarters, I am prepared to say 
 that I need not, and that I will not, take authoritative 
 instructions from any — then away equally with an in- 
 fallible Bible and an infallible Pope. But, if conscious of 
 my own ignorance and insufficiency, my guilt and misery, 
 I long for good news from heaven to meet my case, shall 
 I take the good news at second-hand from the mouth of 
 a poor mortal like myself? Or shall I thankfully wel- 
 come, embrace, study, meditate on, and pray over the 
 Book, the blessed Book, in which my heavenly Father 
 himself has taken care to have the message of his grace 
 in his Son unerringty recorded, — the Book which he has 
 also promised, by his Holy Spirit, to open up to me 
 sufficiently for my everlasting salvation, to his own eter- 
 nal glory? 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Conscience and the Bible have a common meeting-point 
 behind, as it were, or above, — in law; and a common 
 meeting-place in front, — in virtue. As they point 
 upwards or backwards, their lines meet in divine law ; 
 as they tend forwards or downwards, their lines meet in 
 human virtue. 
 
 This thought might be presented in a sort of diagram. 
 Look at an elongated diamond-shaped figure. At the 
 extremities of a line drawn across between the two larger 
 angles, let conscience and the Bible stand inscribed ; 
 conscience on the left, the Bible on the riofht. The other 
 two extremities, those of a line joining the smaller angles, 
 may indicate the relative positions, the one of law, the 
 other of virtue. Beginning at a point marked for law, 
 draw two diverging lines till they reach two other points, 
 opposite to one another, marked for conscience and the 
 Bible respectively ; thereafter let the lines converge till 
 they come together in a fourth point ; that point may be 
 marked as denoting virtue. 
 
 Such is a sort of geometrical representation of the 
 positions occupied by law, the Bible, conscience, virtue, 
 relatively to one another. Law is prior to both consci- 
 
92 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 ence and the Bible ; it is recognised as prior by both of 
 them ; both of them look up to it and do it homage. 
 Virtue again is under them ; it appeals to them ; they 
 judge it. Conscience and the Bible acknowledge law; 
 they approve virtue. And across the line joining law 
 and virtue, conscience and the Bible meet. 
 
 What then is law, as acknowledged by conscience and 
 the Bible ? What is the virtue which they approve ? 
 These are the two questions on the answer to which the 
 solution of a third question, as to the mutual relations of 
 the two authorities, — conscience and the Bible, — may 
 largely depend. 
 
 I. What is law, as acknowledged by conscience and the 
 Bible ? It is a moral law ; a law of right and wrong. 
 But of what nature ? 
 
 It is, perhaps, unfortunate that the word law is am- 
 biguous. It has one meaning when it is used as a term of 
 jurisprudence, and another meaning altogether when it is 
 applied to the phenomena of natural science. "What is 
 called the law of the land, for instance, is felt by all men 
 to be a thing quite distinct, generically, from the physical 
 laws, or the laws of instinct. These last are generaliza- 
 tions of facts observed ; the other is a rule authoritatively 
 promulgated and judicially enforced. The result of a fair 
 induction of particular instances is embodied and ex- 
 pressed in a general formula, to which we give the name 
 of law. It is a natural law, or a law of nature, thus 
 ascertained, that bodies gravitate towards one another, 
 and that the force of gravitation is inversely as the square 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 93 
 
 of the distance. To most minds this language conveys 
 a very different idea from what they receive, when they 
 are told that the laws under which they live as citizens 
 forbid and punish crime. 
 
 That the divine law is essentially the same in prin- 
 ciple with human law, both conscience and the Bible 
 clearly teach. The obligation to obey the law of God, 
 commends itself to conscience as identically of the same 
 kind with the obligation to obey the law of the land. 
 And in the Bible, the magistrate is represented as wield- 
 ing an authority of the same kind with the authority of 
 Deity. The rulers of the people are called gods. 
 
 The mere mention of this distinction must be enough. 
 But as it touches a point of supreme importance, and as a 
 view adverse to that now stated is widely prevalent in 
 influential quarters, it is necessary to go into the subject 
 more fully. 
 
 The order established in creation is one of the surest 
 evidences of a creative mind. The more thoroughly it is 
 observed, tested, ascertained and developed, by the in- 
 quiries of science, the more conclusively is it seen and felt 
 to be so. Ranging over the myriads of ages of which 
 our globe retains the traces ; subjecting the multitudinous 
 stars of heaven to her far-seeing telescope, and the all 
 but prophetic calculations of her exact mathematics ; em- 
 bracing all the living tribes that have ever peopled the 
 earth ; mastering all the relations of social life, and all 
 the conditions of social prosperity ; — science seeks to 
 reduce the whole complex mechanism and manifold move- 
 ments of the universe to a sort of uniformity, if not to 
 
94 
 
 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Ouray h* t 
 
 ':■»: i 
 
 f Cu*i. 
 
 *r 
 
 
 unity. And the more successful she is in this, the more 
 thoroughly does she establish the reign of one infinite and 
 omnipotent Intelligence, planning all, and presiding over all. 
 Now, law is the index, the assertor, the vindicator of 
 order. If there is to be order, there must be law. And 
 
 *^*~M III 
 
 it must be law with its appropriate penalty. The more 
 simple and universal the law — the more self-acting and 
 self- enforcing — the more perfect the order. Hence the 
 tendency, in the various departments of physical know- 
 ledge, to resolve particular inductions into more compre- 
 hensive general maxims — to trace a similarity of propor- 
 tion throughout them all — to find the principles of sound, 
 of colour, of form, of weight and motion, identical ; so 
 that music, painting, architecture, and the kindred arts, 
 are said to be based on similar ratios or relations of 
 number ; and such powers as those of light, heat, elec- 
 tricity, galvanism, gravitation, converge towards some 
 one radical element in the constitution of matter, that is 
 to cover the phenomena of them all. Even apart from 
 these higher speculations, the sense of law, as the security 
 of order, which is originally strong in the human mind, 
 
 Lains additional strength through the 
 
 to o o 
 
 nature 
 
 investigation 
 
 of 
 
 All things proceed according to law ; and law 
 implies intelligence and design. 
 
 It seems but another step in the same direction, to 
 reduce the moral world also under the same rigid unifor- 
 mity of rule and order with the physical. There, too, 
 the empire of law reigns. There are laws according to 
 which our intellectual, our active, our social, and our 
 moral faculties are respectively regulated in their exercise. 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 9 5 
 
 There are laws of association governing the intellect ; 
 laws of motive and habit guiding the active powers ; laws 
 of taste and feeling controlling the social propensities ; 
 and laws of truth, righteousness, and love, determining 
 the moral judgments. Thus man, as to his whole nature, 
 is the subject of law. He thinks and acts, he likes or 
 dislikes, he approves or condemns, according to law — 
 according to laws proper to the different departments of 
 his complex constitution. The violation of any of these 
 laws is his misfortune, or fault, — and his misery. It is so, 
 whichever of them it may be that is violated. The dis- 
 order, the evil, may be greater, when it is the law of a 
 higher department of his nature, than when it is the law 
 of a lower one. Kedress and reparation may be more 
 difficult. But it is an injury of the same kind that is done 
 in both cases ; it is a law of the same kind that is broken. 
 
 The apparent symmetry of a system like this has an 
 attraction for minds of a certain order. But how does it 
 stand the test of an appeal to consciousness ? Try it in / 
 a single instance. 
 
 I dash my foot against a stone. A physical law is 
 outraged by me. It vindicates itself: I suffer. But 
 look at the different circumstances in which this may 
 happen. It is a mere accident — I am pitied. It is the 
 result of gross carelessness- — I am pitied and laughed at. 
 It is an injury inflicted on me — I am pitied, and a desire 
 is felt to avenge me of my adversary. It is, on my part, 
 a deliberate attempt to put an obstacle in the way of a 
 crowded train — I am execrated as a monster. It is a 
 prompt impulse, at the risk of life, to take an obstacle 
 
96 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 out of its way — I am lauded to the skies for my benevo- 
 lence and bravery. 
 
 Here there are several distinct laws — call them laws 
 of nature if you will — under which the same act or event 
 is considered, tried, and judged. It is not with the same 
 sentiment, — it is not even with similar sentiments, — 
 that the violation or observance of these several laws is 
 regarded. The violation or observance of the physical 
 law which regulates the contact of two hard bodies, as of 
 my foot and a stone, cannot be reduced to the same 
 category with the violation or observance of the law 
 which injustice and wanton cruelty are felt to break, and 
 which courage in a good cause fulfils and honours. No 
 sophistry can identify things which differ so widely. 
 The instinct of mankind revolts against the attempt. 
 
 Let it be granted that God governs by law all his 
 creatures, from dead and shapeless matter, up through all 
 the gradations and developments of organization and life, 
 to the highest order of mind. Is it law of the same kind 
 throughout ? Does not mind, intelligent and free, as it is 
 found in man, come in contact with a law wholly unlike 
 what holds dominion in the region of matter, — and in the 
 region of mind, as it unfolds itself among the most saga- 
 cious of the other living races around us ? 
 
 Some points of contrast may be noted between this 
 higher law and all th-e other laws of nature and being. 
 
 In the first place, these other laws are, all of them, as 
 we apprehend them, the products of induction. That 
 higher law we have by pure and simple intuition. That 
 there are certain fixed and general laws to which the 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 97 
 
 processes of nature and the energies of life in the universe 
 are amenable, we learn — and what they are we learn — a 
 'posteriori, by observation and experience — the observa- 
 tion and experience of ourselves and others. The study 
 of these laws is an inductive study. The sciences which 
 treat of them are inductive sciences. It is true, that we 
 can and do bring to bear upon them the intuitions of 
 mathematics, — the a priori laws of thought which give 
 us the necessary conditions of time and space. It is 
 under these conditions that we investigate the phenomena 
 of creation, and systematize or codify its laws. Still, 
 essentially, they are laws forced upon us, a posteriori, by 
 induction. The moral law is impressed upon us, a 'priori, 
 by intuition. That there is a law of right and wrong, 
 we know — and what it is, we know — by an original and 
 primary intuition. It is a law of thought, exactly as 
 those laws are, out of which geometry and algebra are 
 evolved. The study of it is a deductive study. The 
 science of ethics is a deductive science. It is true, that 
 as we have to apply this law to the phenomena of 
 voluntary action, there is occasion for observation 
 and experience ; and the more there is of a large and 
 wise induction the better. In that view, the science 
 which deals with this law is a mixed science. It is like 
 the science which applies the axioms and demonstrations 
 of the pure mathematics to the phenomena of practical 
 astronomy. Still, the law itself is not one which we 
 arrive at through any process of induction. It is known 
 by intuition. It is given as an a priori law of thought 
 — an original principle of moral judgment. 
 (*> 8 
 
98 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE.. 
 
 Iii the second place, this law is necessary, universal, 
 eternal. These others are contingent. There is no abso- 
 lute necessity, in the nature of things, for their being 
 always and everywhere the same. We can conceive of 
 a world in which the law of gravitation might be different 
 from what it is here. The idea is not felt to involve a 
 contradiction in terms, or an impossibility in thought. 
 But we cannot even imagine the possibility of an altera- 
 tion of the law of riff lit and wrono-. We can no more 
 conceive of its being right to commit murder, and wrong 
 to love our neighbour, than we can conceive of two and 
 two being five and not four. 
 
 It is easy, indeed, to make difficulties about this, as 
 sceptical writers have often done. Look, they say, at 
 the varieties of opinion among nations — some justifying 
 and commending as virtues what others condemn as 
 crimes : Sparta encouraging cleverness and success in 
 theft; the Hindoos admiring the conjugal devotion of 
 the widow, as she casts herself on her husband's funeral 
 pile, and commending the maternal piety which sends 
 the tender babe away from the pollutions and ills of life, 
 at once, through the holy river, into a better land. In 
 all such instances as these, however, the bare statement 
 of them, if it be a fair statement, shows that what really 
 is commended is some quality universally felt and allowed 
 to be commendable. The ill-informed and ill-regulated 
 mind, misled by a partial or erroneous induction, conies 
 exclusively to dwell on that quality, — to the omission of. 
 other features of the transaction which impart to it an 
 entirely opposite character. There is nothing, therefore, 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 99 
 
 in these instances that militates against the truth, which 
 consciousness attests, that the law of right and wron£ 
 is not contingent, — that it is not arbitrary or discretion- 
 ary, like those other law r s of nature which, for anything we 
 can see, might have been, and may yet be, different from 
 what they are, — but that it is necessary and universal, 
 like the axioms of intuitive science. In other words, the 
 law of God is, like God himself, eternal and immutable. 
 
 But thirdly, and chiefly, this law has in it an element 
 which none of these other laws, not even the laws of 
 number and extension, possess, — the element of command. 
 It speaks as having authority. It says, Thou shalt, and 
 thou shalt not. It makes me say, I ought, and I ought not. 
 
 The physical law of heat tells me a fact, that fire 
 burns ; and it suggests an inference, that if I go into yon- 
 der burning fiery furnace, I shall be consumed and perish. 
 It does not certainly say, Thou shalt go; neither, how- 
 ever, does it say, Thou shalt not go. And if the alter- 
 native be between that and worshipping the golden 
 image, there is a law which says, imperatively, Thou 
 shalt go; for it says, Thou shalt worship the Lord alone, 
 and him only shalt thou serve. 
 
 The physical law of health tells me a fact, that ex- 
 cessive toil and scanty food wear out the body; and it 
 suggests the inference, that if I toil the livelong day and 
 night, and give myself but a crust of bread to eat, I 
 must ere long sink and die. It does not certainly say, 
 Thou shalt thus work in thy want; neither, however, 
 does it say, Thou shalt not. And if the alternative be 
 between that and theft, there is a law which says, im- 
 
100 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 peratively, Thou shalt ; for it says imperatively, Thou 
 shalt not steal. 
 
 Even when the physical law comes nearest the moral 
 law, this distinction is to be observed. The physical law 
 of health tells the } 7 oung man a certain fact, that sinful 
 indulgence breeds disease; and it suggests the salutary 
 inference, that if he continues in the sin, he must expect 
 to reap the fruit of it in loathsome agony. Even here, 
 however, it is not that law which speaks with a voice of 
 command, but the law which says, Thou shalt not commit 
 adultery; Lust not in thy heart; Thou shalt not covet. 
 
 In the fourth place, it is a consequence of this element 
 of rightful supremacy residing in the moral law, and dis- 
 tinguishing it from all the others, that the breaking of it 
 is something radically and essentially distinct from the 
 breaking of any of them. 
 
 A man might be so wrong-headed as to insist on work- 
 ing a question in arithmetic in defiance of the law of 
 number, that two and two are four; or he might try to 
 master a problem in geometry by going in the teeth of 
 the law of extension, that two straight lines cannot en- 
 close a space. Of course he makes a mess of his sum 
 and his solution. It is an instance of mental aberration; 
 the man is mad, we say; and that is all. A similar 
 madness or wrong-headedness might lead some extrava- 
 gant idealist, out-Berkeleying Berkeley, to act upon his 
 theory of the non-existence of matter, so as to knock his 
 head against every post, — coming into collision with all 
 the material laws of force and weight. 
 
 But apart from extreme cases, what are the terms, 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 101 
 
 even the strongest terms, which we can fairly use in 
 characterizing conduct that is opposed to what these 
 natural laws would seem to recommend? It is ignorance, 
 or inadvertence, or imprudence. The worst we can say 
 of it is, that it is imprudence. And none of these terms 
 are terms of reproach necessarily — not even imprudence. 
 They are quite consistent with innocence, and indeed 
 even with merit. A strong sense of duty, an impulse 
 of patriotic or generous feeling, will be accepted, any day, 
 by the people, — the best judges by far in such a matter, 
 — as a set- off against the most flagrant disregard of all 
 the ordinary considerations of caution and wisdom. And 
 when either ignorance, or inadvertence, or imprudence is 
 alleged as a moral imputation against an}' one who has 
 acted otherwise than these natural laws, if they had been 
 duly attended to, would have led him to act, and who 
 has consequently brought misfortune on himself and 
 others, it will invariably be found that the higher law comes 
 in. Some precept or some principle of that law has been 
 outraged. And the measure of reproach is not the viola- 
 tion, more or less wilful, of those natural laws, but the in- 
 difference, or the opposition, which the act in question 
 involves, to the eternal law of rectitude and duty. 
 
 Then again, on the other hand, ignorance, inadvertence, 
 imprudence, — any of these pleas, — may explain or pal- 
 liate my conduct, viewed as in antagonism to the natural 
 laws. But none of them, nor all of them, will meet the 
 case when the moral law is concerned. I did it because 
 I knew no better; I did it without consideration and by 
 mistake ; it was very senseless and unwise in me to do 
 
102 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 it; — so you say when you Lave gone against any of the 
 laws which regulate the sequences of events, — their fol- 
 lowing one another according to a certain order in the 
 physical, mental, and social world ; so you say, and there 
 is no more to be said. You take the consequence. Or, 
 perhaps, by some happy chance, or some shrewd after- 
 thought, or some wise appliance under a system that ad- 
 mits of remedies and compensations, you escape the con- 
 sequence. At all events, learning by experience, you 
 are more wary in time to come. 
 
 Look now at Saul of Tarsus, consenting to the death 
 of Stephen. He does it ignorantly, not knowing what 
 he does, thinking that he is doing God service. He 
 does it inadvertent^, not considering sufficiently what 
 he is about. It is the height of imprudence ; even with 
 the light which he has he had better pause, according to 
 the sagacious counsel of Gamaliel. A wiser and calmer 
 man would not at that juncture commit himself against 
 the Christians. Is that all? Does that exhaust the 
 case ? Then, what is the meaning of the keen remorse 
 which seems always, in the midst of his happiest ex- 
 perience of mercy, to haunt the memory of Paul? — " For 
 I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be 
 called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God" 
 (1 Cor. xv. 9). 
 
 There is a law, the breach of which — whatever plea 
 of ignorance, or inadvertence, or imprudence, may be 
 urged — is a very different matter from the crossing or 
 traversing of any of the instituted laws of nature. It is 
 the eternal law, the transgression of which is SIN. 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 103 
 
 Hence, finally, in the fifth place, it would seem to follow 
 that the manner in which offences against these other 
 natural laws are dealt with, affords no safe analogy for 
 judging of the procedure on the part of the lawgiver, 
 which transgressions of this moral law may require. 
 
 Every law of nature is enforced, or enforces itself, by 
 an appropriate penalty. The penalty is the destruction 
 of whoever or whatever thwarts the law. It is a penalty 
 sure and inevitable, unless means are found to make the 
 person or thing offending conformable again to the law, 
 and to prevent or repair the injury which his or its non- 
 conformity might do to the system of which he or it is a 
 part. It is a principle of the divine government, even 
 in the lower spheres of material and sentient nature, that 
 the evil resulting from a breach of any of its laws is either 
 worked out of the system by the destruction of the pec- 
 cant member, or is repaired by some process of ameliora- 
 tion and neutralization ; amelioration as to the peccant 
 member, and neutralization as to the tendency of what 
 is peccant to grow and perpetuate itself. 
 
 I fall, and break my arm. I break a physical law, and 
 the penalty is the destruction of the limb. But there is a 
 provision of nature which not only knits the fractured 
 bone, but compensates the system for any harm that the 
 fracture might do to it. So I escape the penalty; I am 
 safe in the use of my forfeited member still; and my body 
 is all the stronger for the accident. 
 
 Upon this analogy, an attempt has been made, not 
 wisely, as I think, nor successfully, to explain the manner 
 in which,, according to the Christian system, the great 
 
104 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Lawgiver deals with sin as the transgression of his law. 
 That law is held to be of the very same nature with the 
 other laws on which the order of creation seems to de- 
 pend. And the wonderful provision made by God for 
 meeting the case of man's violation of it, is represented 
 as identical in principle with those remedial provisions 
 which abound in nature, and by which injuries happening 
 under the laws of nature are repaired and redressed, — 
 with no ultimate damage, either to the member offending 
 or to the system to which it belongs, but rather with 
 benefit to both. 
 
 It would be unsuitable to enlarge on this topic here, 
 and now. Let it suffice to say, that such a view is not 
 more dangerous in its theological aspect than it is inade- 
 quate, at least, if not unsound, in its philosophy. It con- 
 founds things that differ. It makes no sufficient account 
 of that moral government, that divine and eternal system 
 of jurisprudence, which such ideas as those of authority, 
 right, duty, obligation, responsibility, guilt, blame, crime 
 — ideas expressed in every language, and, therefore, indi- 
 cating a universal instinct or intuition of the human 
 mind — prove to be the highest order in the universe. 
 And surely we speculate somewhat too wildly when we 
 aspire to master the policy of Heaven ; as if we could 
 grasp, in some principle or formula of unity that we 
 think we have found out, the whole vast and complicated 
 plan of the divine administration. It is more in accord- 
 ance with the humility of true science, as well as with 
 the humility which does not seek to be wise above what 
 is written, to accept the facts of conscience and the 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 1 o 
 
 statements of revelation on the particular subject in hand, 
 — the transgression of the moral law, — in their plain mean- 
 ing, instead of aiming at so wide a generalization. And if 
 we do, we shall stand on surer ground. We receive the 
 combined testimony of conscience and revelation as to 
 the demerit of sin, the reality of judgment, the necessity 
 of satisfaction. And we adore the righteousness and love 
 of the mysterious propitiatory sacrifice of the cross. 1 
 
 Such, then, is law, as acknowledged by conscience and 
 the Bible; the law to which both do homage. 
 
 1. The homage which conscience does to it is the recog- 
 nition of its legitimate authority. That faculty or prin- 
 ciple of our moral nature asserts a right of supremacy 
 over all the particular affections, whether of self-love or 
 of social love, by which men are moved to action. It has 
 paramount authority within the domain of voluntary 
 choice. It is, however, a delegated authority, and it is 
 felt to be so. In fact> its own authority lies in its appre- 
 hension of the authority of law. To assert and vindi- 
 cate the authority of law is its proper function. It is 
 only in so far as it is competent to the discharge of that 
 function, that its own title to command is valid. Can, 
 then, its competency be relied on ? 
 
 To interpret and apply the law is an office requiring 
 information. The bearing of the law on any particular 
 case can be rightly determined only when the informa- 
 tion respecting that case is exact and full. It is not the 
 
 1 I refer here with regret, among other instances, to a recent work hy the 
 author of the " Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation." 
 
106 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 province of conscience to collect information. It calls for 
 information. It imposes the duty of inquiry. But the 
 conduct of the inquiry is devolved on the ordinary powers 
 of the understanding. These are liable to err through 
 their own infirmity, or the absence of the means of 
 knowledge. They may represent the case otherwise 
 than it really is. The obligation of the law of right and 
 wrong may, in consequence, be asserted erroneously. But, 
 strictly speaking, that is not the fault of conscience. 
 
 Again, if the power whose function it is to vindicate 
 the law is to discharge that function well, it must rule de 
 facto, or in fact, — as well as dejure, or in right. A usurper, 
 displacing it from its seat of authority, may succeed in 
 silencing it ; or he may impose upon it by false repre- 
 sentations ; or he may subject it to a torture that makes 
 it incapable of true discernment. Such a usurper is the 
 will — the masterful will — backed by his accomplice, 
 habit. No faculty or affection in us, except the will, can 
 set aside conscience. But the will can do it. And it 
 can do it so perseveringly. and so violently; it can so 
 imprison conscience in its own den, and so bandage the 
 eyes through which conscience sees, that law — the law of 
 right and wrong — shall be asserted very fitfully and very 
 feebly, and shall soon cease to be asserted at all. But 
 neither is this, strictly speaking, the fault of conscience. 
 
 Still, in so far as the understanding is fallible, and the 
 will powerful, the competency, or at least the sufficiency 
 of conscience, as the vindicator and assertor of law, is in- 
 directly, if not directly, affected. And if the understand- 
 ing is darkened, and the will debauched by sin, the risk 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 107 
 
 of fraud or force interfering with its fair and free dis- 
 charge of that function is immensely increased. 
 
 In itself, moreover, directly as well as indirectly, con- 
 science is injured and defiled by the entrance into the human 
 constitution of that blight of moral evil which has vitiated 
 the whole nature of man. The very facility with which 
 it accepts the representations of a darkened understand- 
 ing, and yields to the force of a debauched will, proves it 
 to be not only infirm and irresolute, but inclined towards 
 the side which these other powers would have it to tole- 
 rate, if not to favour. It has lost that high tone of 
 faithful and cordial loyalty to the law and the Lawgiver 
 to which, were man in a right state, both the understand- 
 ing and the will would be constrained to defer. 
 
 Nevertheless, as regards its capacity of recognising both 
 the character and the authority of divine law, the conscience 
 is upon the whole intact. The corruption of our nature 
 has not so vitiated the conscience as to invalidate its con- 
 clusions when it discriminates between right and wrong, 
 or deprive it of its right to rule and be obeyed. If it 
 had, our guilt would have been less, and our recovery would 
 have been impossible. For it is through the conscience 
 alone that a fallen, but }*et free, intelligence can be 
 reached. It is to the conscience that the violated law 
 appeals. It is the conscience that accepts the sentence 
 of condemnation. It is the conscience that pleads guilty 
 of sin as the transgression of the law, and welcomes the 
 assurance of a sufficient expiation, and an adequate satis- 
 faction. Liberated from the aberrations of an under- 
 standing darkened by alienation from God, and from the 
 
108 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 excesses of a will at enmity with God. — liberated from 
 both of these extraneous influences — quickened, also, 
 and purged, by the Spirit, through belief of the truth, — 
 the conscience rejoices in its recovered power, — a power 
 flowing from its own free and loving allegiance to the 
 law, as the law of liberty and love, — to be the effectual 
 as well as the legitimate vindicator of its authority. 
 
 There is another manner in which the conscience may 
 be set free — free to see, to know, to assert, the whole 
 melancholy and appalling truth — when the guilty com . 
 to be dealt with, not in mercy, but in judgment ; when 
 they stand to receive their sentence at the bar of God, — ■ 
 and pass away to endure it, — compelled, in their own 
 despite, to own the righteousness and majesty of law. 
 
 Such is the homage which conscience does to the law. 
 
 2. As to the Bible, not to speak of the glorious eulo- 
 gies, in either Testament, which extol and celebrate the 
 excellency of the law of the Lord, nor of the deep emo- 
 tions of reverence and delight with which holy men medi- 
 tate on its perfection; let the view which the Bible gives, 
 throughout all its revelations, of the actual present gov- 
 ernment under which the human race is placed, be well 
 considered. It is impossible to find consistency in the 
 sacred records on any other supposition than this — that 
 mankind are living on the earth under a respite. The 
 analogy of religion, natural and revealed, can be fully 
 brought out only upon that hypothesis. Men, here and 
 now, are spirits in prison. The whole human family is 
 under sentence of condemnation. The sentence is sus- 
 pended. For the race, it is suspended till what Scripture 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 109 
 
 calls the consummation of all things; for individual mem- 
 bers of the race, it is suspended till the moment of death. 
 It is, however, only suspended. And the condition on 
 which it is suspended, the end for which it is suspended, — 
 as well as the ultimate issues of the experiment in regard 
 to those who do, and those who do not, acquiesce in the 
 condition of its suspension, and reach the end which the 
 suspension is designed to serve, — are all unfolded in the 
 Bible. They are so unfolded, moreover, as to present and 
 submit to the free choice of all men the one only alterna- 
 tive of which the case admits, — the alternative of prompt 
 submission carrying with it an immediate, legal justifica- 
 tion, or of prolonged lawlessness and rebellion, sealing the 
 inevitable doom of legal condemnation. It is homage to 
 law throughout. 
 
 On this subject it is relevant to quote, as summing up 
 the argument, the closing paragraph of the "Examina- 
 tion of Maurice's Theological Essays" (p. 480), in which 
 the controversy at issue between him and his examiner 
 is reduced to a single question: — 
 
 "That question, as it seems to me, concerns the nature 
 of the government of God. Is it a government of law? 
 Does God rule intelligent beings by a law? Certainly, I 
 may be told. Who doubts it? The government of God 
 is a government of law, — of the law of love. But I must 
 be allowed again to ask, In what sense is it a govern- 
 ment of law? For the familiar use of the expression, 
 'laws of nature,' has introduced an ambiguity into this 
 phrase. What is a government of law, a government by 
 law? If I am absolutely dependent upon a being pos- 
 
110 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 sessed of certain tastes, under the influence, let it be sup- 
 posed, of a particular ruling passion, — if be and I are 
 inseparably bound together, so that I must make up my 
 mind to receive all nry good from him, and find all my 
 good in him, such as he is; then, in his tastes, in his rul- 
 ing passion, I have a law, conformity to which is the 
 condition of my wellbeing. Obviously, however, this 
 ruling passion in him is a law to me, in precisely the 
 same sense in which any quality in matter is a law to 
 me; in that sense and in no other. My intimate con- 
 nection with the material world makes conformity to the 
 unchanging principles, according to which its movements 
 proceed, a condition of my wellbeing as a creature en- 
 dowed with a physical nature. My intimate connection 
 with the being or person with whom I am living, and am 
 always to live, makes conformity to the unchanging prin- 
 ciples, or habit, or ruling passion according to which he 
 uniformly feels and acts, the condition of my wellbeing 
 as a being endowed with the capacity of feeling and act- 
 ing as he does. Let his ruling passion be pure charity 
 or love. Then, in one sense, there is a law of love 
 brought into contact with my will. The law of love is 
 unbending, and it has in it an element of wrath against 
 the unlovely. My will is perverse, apt to incline towards 
 subjection to a usurping tyrant or an intruding tempter, 
 capable of almost infinite resistance. But the law of love 
 works steadily on. It unfolds and reveals itself, it em- 
 bodies itself in action, it is manifested wonderfully in a 
 redeeming and regenerating economy, and ultimately one 
 cannot see how it can fail to bring my will, and every 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 1 1 ] 
 
 reasonable will, into accordance with itself. For any- 
 thing I can perceive, government by law in any other 
 sense than this, is not recognized at all in the theology of 
 these Essays. It is needless to add, that the whole 
 theology of those who are commonly considered orthodox 
 and evangelical divines, is based upon an entirely differ- 
 ent conception both of government and of law. Accord- 
 ing to them it is an administrative government that God 
 exercises, — a government embracing in it legislation, 
 judicial procedure, calling to account, awarding sentences. 
 It is an authoritative law, with distinct sanctions an- 
 nexed to it, that God promulgates and enforces. This is 
 what they understand when they speak of God being a 
 moral Ruler as well as a holy and loving Father. They 
 cannot rid themselves of the impression that both Scrip- 
 ture and conscience attest the reality of such a govern- 
 ment and such a law. It is under that impression that 
 they draw out from Scripture, to meet the anguish of 
 conscience, those views of the guilt of sin and its com- 
 plete expiation, the corruption of nature and its thorough 
 renovation, — those views of pardon, peace, reconciliation, 
 reward, which they delight to urge upon all men in the 
 name of Him who " hath no pleasure in the death of the 
 wicked, but that the wicked should turn unto him and 
 live." And it is under the same impression that they 
 think they find, in the essential freedom of the will of 
 man as a responsible agent, an explanation, on the one 
 hand, of the possibility of evil entering into the universe 
 under the rule of a good and holy God; and on the other 
 hand also, a probable explanation of the impossibility of 
 
1 1 2 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 there being any provision of mercy brought within the 
 reach of men, which does not imply a provision also for 
 the case of that mercy being neglected or refused." 
 
 II. Conscience and the Bible approve virtue as they 
 acknowledge law. What is this virtue? And what is 
 the approbation with which not only man, but God 
 regards it? 
 
 The first of these questions it is not very important, 
 either for philosophical or for practical purposes, to 
 answer. What is virtue? Is there any common quality 
 that characterizes and identifies all the actions or disposi- 
 tions that are said to be virtuous? Yes, one may say; 
 they are all useful; useful to the individual; useful to 
 society. Utility is the test of virtue. It may be so. 
 Perhaps this is the simplest and most obvious common 
 quality that can be named. The habits and frames of 
 mind that win approbation are such as are useful. What 
 then? Is it for their utility that they are approved? 
 The instinct of mankind says, No. As supplying an 
 argument from final causes for the goodness of God, the 
 fact that the things which we approve as virtuous are 
 found invariably, on the whole, to be useful, may deserve 
 notice. That is not, however, the element which consti- 
 tutes their virtue, or, if the term may be allowed, their 
 virtuousness. Nor is much gained when we add the 
 element of intention or choice, and resolve all virtue into 
 a desire to be useful, or into benevolence, or good- will, or 
 any other single affection. The truth is, the affections 
 which we approve as virtuous vary indefinitely in their 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE, 1 ] 3 
 
 nature, and in the circumstances in which they are exer- 
 cised. No attempt to run them up into one common 
 attribute has succeeded. To discriminate, describe, and 
 classify them is all that can be done. That is the pro- 
 vince of practical ethics. 
 
 The second inquiry, into the nature of the approbation 
 with which virtue is regarded, or into the state of mind 
 which it occasions in one contemplating it, is more inter- 
 esting. Here, too, an extreme passion for simplicity is 
 to be deprecated. What we call approbation, is a com- 
 plex state of mind. It is not easy to give in short com- 
 pass an exhaustive analysis of it. But if allowance be 
 made for what, perhaps, may appear to some to be too 
 fanciful a theory, — I think the harmony of conscience 
 and the Bible on this subject may be placed in a somewhat 
 striking and graphic light. 
 
 Take one of those states of mind which are admitted 
 to possess a moral character, whether good or bad, and 
 trace it in its effects upon the moral observer. 
 
 In the first place, the mere conception of it — the bare, 
 naked apprehension of it in the mind — gives rise, instan- 
 taneously, to a double movement in the department with 
 which it first comes in contact. That department com- 
 prehends the power or faculty of distinguishing what is 
 true from what is false, as well as what is fair and beau- 
 tiful from what is the reverse. These two functions, the 
 judgment and the taste — the discernment of truth and 
 the sense of beauty — are intimately connected, if, indeed, 
 they are not all but identical. They are both of them 
 immediate and instantaneous in their action, and they are 
 (3) 9 
 
1 1 4 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 mutually the handmaids of each other. A mathematical 
 proposition or demonstration, seen to be true, is felt also 
 to be beautiful. It appeals to the taste, as well as to the 
 judgment; and in proportion as it satisfies and convinces 
 the judgment, it pleases and gratifies the taste. We 
 speak of a beautiful theorem, and it is the sense of beauty 
 no less than the perception of truth, which, when the 
 difficult}' of the search is overcome, and the discovery 
 successfully made, prompts the exclamation of delight, I 
 have found it! I have found it! On the other hand, in 
 the peculiar field of taste, if any object awaken the sense 
 of beauty, it will be found, at the same time, to command 
 the acquiescence of the judgment in it, as in what is true. 
 AVhen the eye rests on a fair form or a beauteous scene, 
 not only is it agreeable and soothing to the taste, but the 
 judgment also approves of it as consistent with the truth 
 of things. "When I am admiring a picture, or statue, or 
 landscape, I am conscious of a calm conviction of reality, 
 similar to what I experience when I assent to an abstract 
 demonstration, just as, in return, when I perceive the 
 conclusive certainty of an abstract demonstration, I feel 
 a gratification of taste, precisely such as the visible comeli- 
 ness of nature calls forth. Nor is this connection between 
 the judgment and the taste altogether unaccountable. 
 They are both simple acts or operations of the mind ; and 
 what is common to both is the apprehension of con- 
 trariety and disunion removed, and consistency, compact- 
 ness, or, in a word, unity, established or restored. 
 
 In morals, this blending of the judgment and the taste 
 is very discernible. Let an evil action or an evil state of 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 115 
 
 mind be contemplated, and there is an uneasy apprehen- 
 sion of its opposition to truth, along with a painful and 
 oppressive sense of its deformity and unloveliness. The 
 judgment finds the true relations of things divided and 
 dissevered, and the taste recoils from the dislocation. 
 Let the opposite virtue be observed, and the faculty of 
 comparison discerns agreement, coherence, union, in the 
 fitness of things as now adjusted, while the sense of beauty 
 rests and reposes in the harmony. 
 
 But there is a second and inner chamber into which 
 these actions or states of mind, apprehended, in the first 
 or outer chamber, as either true and beautiful, or false 
 and foul, must now pass; and that chamber is the seat of 
 the emotions. The transition here is from the head to 
 the heart — from the mind, sitting in judgment at the 
 gate, and looking out with quick eye for all that is grand 
 or fair, to the bosom in whose depths the springs of feel- 
 ing lie. Through the judgment and the taste, moral 
 actions or states of mind reach and set in motion the 
 affections; and, as in the department of simple apprehen- 
 sion, — the outer hall of the soul, — there is a double exer- 
 cise of vigilance, and, as it were, a double scrutiny of all 
 comers, so, in their reception within, there is a double 
 movement or excitement among the dwellers there. The 
 affections are doubly stirred Are both of the watchers 
 satisfied? Do both of them concur in warranting the 
 entrant ? Does the judgment attest his truth, and the 
 taste relish his beauty? Then, as he enters in, the emo- 
 tion of reverence or awe rises to bow before him; the 
 affection of love opens her arms to embrace him. Thus 
 
116 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 the moral action or state of mind which, in the seat of 
 the intellect, carries conviction of truth to the judgment, 
 awakens, in the region of the affections, the feeling of pro- 
 found veneration; while, again, in so far as it approves 
 itself as beautiful to the taste, it calls forth complacency 
 and love. For, as truth is venerable, so beauty is 
 amiable. What is true is to be revered; what is fair is 
 to be loved. 
 
 There is still, however, a third apartment in which 
 these objects of our moral cognizance and observation — 
 these moral actions or states of mind — undergo yet 
 another process. Behind, and farther in than the region 
 of the affections, lies the secret closet of the soul, the seat 
 of self-inspection and self-judgment. From the mind or 
 head, with its twofold faculty of judgment and taste — 
 the discernment of truth and the sense of beauty — through 
 the heart, deeply stirred with the emotion of reverence 
 and the affection of love — there is a passage to the con- 
 science, where the final act in this sifting trial is per- 
 formed. And here, again, there is a double function, cor- 
 responding to the double functions of the other depart- 
 ments. In that sanctuary, that inner court of last resort, 
 these states of mind come to have final sentence passed 
 upon them, and the sentence has respect to the discern- 
 ment wdiich the judgment has of what is true, and the 
 apprehension which the sensibility has of what is fair. 
 Truth, compelling conviction, and commanding reverence, 
 asks a verdict of acquittal or acceptance, and will have 
 nothing more. Beauty, again, gratifying the taste, and 
 winning the affection of love, solicits a warmer welcome, 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 1 1 7 
 
 rind would wish to receive approbation and applause. In 
 the one view, there is a demand to be justified; in the 
 other, there is a desire to be praised and to be embraced. 
 It may be some recommendation of this analysis, or 
 induction, that it combines different theories, and com- 
 prehends various principles of our moral nature, which the 
 framers of moral systems have been accustomed to isolate. 
 Thus, the accordance with truth, or the fitness of things, 
 which some have made the foundation of moral judgment 
 (Clarke, Ciichuorth, &&), and the moral sense or instinct 
 to which others have appealed (Hutcheson, &c), unite 
 and conspire in the first act of simple apprehension, by 
 which the mind takes in the conception of a moral action, 
 or a moral quality, as right and good. Nor is moral 
 rectitude and goodness, on this scheme, a matter of reason 
 exclusively, or a matter of instinct or taste. The emo- 
 tions and affections have a large share in the work of 
 identifying virtue, and giving it life and warmth (Sir 
 J'lmes Mackintosh). The emotion of reverence, and the 
 affection or sentiment of love, dealing witli what has 
 passed the calm scrutiny of the judgment and the taste, 
 touch the deep springs of holy awe and worship in the 
 soul, and open the fountain of its tears and gladness. 
 Nor does the trial end here. The judge, whose verdict 
 is final, sits within. The moral action, or moral quality, 
 under review, must enter within the vail — into the very 
 shrine, the holiest of all in this living temple — where, 
 on the throne, is the great arbiter, entitled authorita- 
 tively to justify what is true (Butler), and at the same 
 time, ready, with lively sympathy, to commend what is 
 
118 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 fair (Adam Smith). The award of this ruler of the soul, 
 which is the power or principle of conscience, is conclusive. 
 It determines what is just and righteous, and bestows the 
 rneed of commendation on what is excellent and worthy. 
 
 But the scheme, as it would seem, has a still higher 
 value. It is in fine accordance with the moral system of 
 the New Testament. For it is no rude or unskilful 
 artist, but a master-hand, that has constructed the noble 
 climax in the Epistle to the Philippians (chap. iv. 8, 9): 
 " Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatso- 
 ever things are honest " (Jwnesta, a-cfivd, venerable), "what- 
 soever things are just, whatsoever things are pure " (dyvd, 
 chaste, fair, clean, undefiled, and holy), "whatsoever 
 things are lovely" (^poo-faXy}, amiable, loveable), "whatso- 
 ever things are of good report " (eu^rj^a, commendable, 
 such as to move sympathy, approval, apploAise) ; " if there 
 be any virtue " (dperrj, power, stability, firmness), " if 
 there be any praise " («r<uvos, what solicits and excites 
 commendation), — "think on these things." There is 
 something more here than a casual enumeration of moral 
 motives. The apostle was too much a master both of 
 ethics and of rhetoric to heap up such materials miscel- 
 laneously and at random. There is symmetry in the 
 structure; there is method and system in his fervid appeal. 
 He traces and marks out the double line of approach or 
 entrance, along which actions or qualities, admitted at the 
 door of the mind, are conducted, through the heart, to 
 the conscience. For there are two sets of connected posts 
 of observation in this sketch — two distinct series of suc- 
 cessive mental acts. The six names read over in this 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 119 
 
 muster, or roll-call, fall into two ranks; and each of 
 these, at its termination, is represented by a single leader, 
 as in the following tabular view: — 
 
 " Whatsoever things are true," I " Whatsoever tilings are pare," (fair,) 
 
 ., ,, " honest," (venerable,) \ „ „ "lovely," (amiable,) 
 
 „ ,, "just," ., ,, "of good report," 
 
 41 if there be any virtue." ! " if there be any praise." 
 
 Thus, of these epithets, the first three — what is true, 
 what is venerable, what is just — rank as a column under 
 the one head, virtue; the remaining three on the other 
 hand — what is pure or fair, what is lovely or amiable, 
 what is of good report or commendable — are marshalled 
 in the line of praise. 
 
 Or, to change the application of the figure, let us trace 
 the subject of our scrutiny — the particular action or 
 quality, whose moral character is to be ascertained — from 
 post to post, in the citadel of our moral nature. At the 
 gate it is challenged by the faculties of simple apprehen- 
 sion, the judgment and the taste, the sense of natural 
 agreement or fitness, and the sense of beauty; is there 
 in it anything true? — is there in it anything pure? Let 
 it enter. Farther on it has to encounter the emotions or 
 affections, and they have to deal with it — the capacities 
 of reverence and of love must be satisfied ; is there any- 
 thing honest — venerable? is there anything lovely — 
 amiable? Let it pass, — the soul standing in awe of its 
 majesty, and rapt in the love of its gentler grace. But 
 once more it is arrested. One having authority, but at 
 the same time full of sympathy, calls it to account; is 
 there anything just — right, righteous, coming up to the 
 
120 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 high standard of strict duty? is there anything of good 
 report — worthy, commendable, meet for being warmly 
 honoured and approved? If there be any virtue, any 
 inherent strength of conscious rectitude — if there be an;y 
 praise, any moral beauty meet to be applauded — then, 
 by ail that is true, venerable, and right, in the stern 
 integrity and firm standing of that virtue, and by all 
 that is pure, amiable, and worthy in the fair and soft 
 charms of that praise or that commendableness, and in its 
 warm yearning for sympathy — let us be adjured, let us 
 be persuaded to give earnest heed and full practical effect 
 to that gospel, whose highest aim it is to restore and re- 
 adjust the whole moral nature of man, so that truth and 
 righteousness, grace and love, may once more meet and 
 embrace eacli other, in the holy home of a reconciled and 
 renovated soul. 
 
 Were further illustration needed of this complex system, 
 it might be found in the discrimination, so exquisitely 
 true to nature, which the same apostle makes between 
 two different kinds of character to be observed among 
 men. Magnifying the divine benevolence, as manifested 
 in the death of Christ, he puts it as an all but impossible 
 supposition that "a righteous man" should find a friend 
 prepared to lay down his life for him. He allows it to 
 be more conceivable that " a good man" might win affec- 
 tion thus devoted and self-sacrificing. And he places in 
 strong contrast that love of God, whose miserable objects 
 had neither "righteousness" nor "goodness" to recom- 
 mend them, but only sin (Romans v. 7, 8). 
 
 " A righteous man" is such a one as the poet describes, 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 121 
 
 "just and firm of purpose," one who is moved by neither 
 fear nor favour from his solid mind. Regulus, calmly 
 turning away from his weeping family and the awe-struck 
 Senate, to redeem his pledge to the Carthaginian enemy, 
 and meet the death prepared for him, with its worse than 
 Indian refinement of cruelty — Hampden defying unjust 
 power — Latimer cheering brother Ridley at the stake — ■ 
 Knox before Queen Mary, and Melville before King James, 
 maintaining allegiance to a Heavenly Master against both 
 the tears and the frowns of royalty — rise as examples 
 before the mind. In each there is a stern integrity — 
 which we apprehend to be "true" — which we feel to be 
 "venerable" — which compels us to recognize it as inex- 
 orably and inflexibly " just " — presenting, on the whole, 
 a spectacle of moral courage and steadfast "virtue," almost 
 beyond the reach of our commendation or compassion, 
 such as rather inspires a sort of deep and silent awe. We 
 scarcely presume to praise or pity — Ave stand apart and 
 reverently look oil But let a touch of tenderness mingle 
 in the scene — let it be the Roman matron presenting to 
 her trembling husband the dagger plucked from her own 
 bosom — " It is not painful, Paatus " — or Lady Jane Grey 
 bidding adieu to her lord, as he passed on to the scaffold, 
 to which she was soon to follow him — or Lady Russell, 
 pen in hand, gazing on the noble features she had loved 
 — or Brown of Priesthill's widow, meeting the rude taunt 
 of the persecutor as he interrupted her in her melancholy 
 task — " What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman? 
 — I thought ever much of him, and now as much as 
 ever " — or, coming down from the heroic to ordinary life, 
 
122 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 let it be a character marked rather by gentle inarm era 
 and kind affections than by strength of nerves, that is 
 exhibited to us : — and our moral taste is charmed with 
 its "pure" beauty — our heart is warmed with "love" 
 towards it — we speak of it as not only unimpeachably 
 correct, but positively " worthy," and we award to it 
 the meed of our cordial sympathy and " praise." The 
 combination of the two kinds of character, as in some of 
 the instances referred to, is the consummation of moral 
 excellence. To be true, yet, at the same time, not stern 
 or severe, but fair, pure, graceful — to be both venerable 
 and amiable, calling forth in equal measure the emotion 
 of reverence and the affection of love — to stand before 
 the tribunal of conscience and receive, not only the cold 
 verdict which strict justice, caring for nothing more, 
 extorts, I fiii d no fault, but that also, which a softer sen- 
 sibility asks, WeU done — in short, to be both great and 
 good — such is the idea of a perfect man. Such was He 
 who was not only "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate 
 from sinners," but also "meek and lowly in heart" — 
 "full both of grace and of truth." Such His Gospel is 
 intended and fitted to make all those who, following, at 
 a humble distance, His example, and changed, by His 
 Spirit, into His image, unite with the " faithfulness unto 
 death" which challenges "the crown of life," "the orna- 
 ment of a meek and quiet spirit," which not only is of 
 good report and praiseworthy among men, but, " in the 
 sight of God himself, is of great price." 
 
 III. Conscience and the Bible thus agreeing, on the 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 123 
 
 one Land, in the acknowledgment of law, and, on the 
 other hand, in the approbation of virtue, are of necessity 
 closely related to one another. Their mutual relations 
 form the third subject of inquiry, on which a slight in- 
 dication of the heads or topics must now suffice. 
 
 1. In the first place they are to be recognized as dis- 
 tinct from one another, and independent of one another. 
 It may be true, and probably is true, in point of fact, 
 that God never has left us to discover our duty by the 
 dictation of conscience alone, as he has never left us to 
 arrive at the knowledge of his own being and perfections 
 by the discoveries of reason alone. From the beginning 
 God revealed himself and his will, by means of words, to 
 men. He spoke to them of his own character, purposes, 
 and plans. He placed them under an explicit and for- 
 mal obligation of obedience to an explicit and formal 
 commandment. That, however, does not impeach either 
 the competency of reason to prove the truths of natural 
 religion, or the competency of conscience to establish the 
 principles of natural morality. It is of the utmost con- 
 sequence, for the interests of revelation itself, to vindicate 
 the independent validity, both of natural theology and of 
 natural ethics ; to assert, not the sufficiency indeed, but 
 the legitimac}^ and trustworthiness, of the light of reason 
 and the jurisdiction of conscience. 
 
 2. In the second place, conscience, when once for all 
 satisfied that the Bible is the word of God, bows in low- 
 liest reverence before its paramount authority. She asks, 
 and she has a right to ask, to be satisfied that the Bible 
 is the word of God. She asks this humbly and with 
 
124 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 docility — feeling how much she would be the better for 
 the guidance of Him who sees the end from the begin- 
 ning, who knows all things, and always judges right. 
 She asks it calmly, dispassionately — calling in the help of 
 manly reason to authenticate the voice of the Sovereign 
 Ruler. But being satisfied, she gladly takes her place, 
 beside her sister Faith, at the feet of Him who speaks 
 from heaven ; of Him who, coming from heaven, speaks 
 on earth, and speaks as one having authority. She re- 
 ceives the law at his lips. She learns of him what things 
 are true, honest, just; what things are pure, lovely, of 
 good report; what virtue is, and what is praise. And if 
 in any difficult or doubtful instance, there occurs any ap- 
 parent discrepancy between her conclusions and the clear 
 intimations of his mind, she remembers how an erring 
 understanding, and a wayward will, and her own infirmity 
 or vice, make her judgments at the best but probable, — 
 fallible, even when it is the conduct of man that is 
 judged, — still more fallible when it is the conduct of God. 
 And having confidence in the rectitude, truth, and love 
 of the great Being to whom she owns allegiance, — for 
 to none but a being possessed of these attributes would 
 she, who approves them so warmly herself, yield any 
 homage, — she is content to acquiesce, to adore, and to 
 wait ; the rather when she hears such words as these: — 
 What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know 
 hereafter. 
 
 3. In the third place, conscience looks to the Bible for 
 an explanation of much, in the present state of things, 
 that she feels to be anomalous and inconsistent, or at least 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 125 
 
 incomprehensible. In vain does she look elsewhere for 
 even a tolerable guess upon the subject. 
 
 I cast my eye around the world, and long " for a lodge 
 in some vast wilderness." It is not merely that my heart 
 bleeds at the sight of suffering; my bosom swells under 
 the sense of wrong. In the abodes of squalid misery, in 
 the very haunts of reckless crime, what cases innumerable 
 meet my view, not only of injustice at the hand of man, 
 but, it would even seem, of most unequal treatment at 
 the hand of God! That shivering victim of another's 
 lust ; yonder little one, bred in filth and profligacy from 
 the cradle ; the children of Africa, crushed into brutal 
 apathy or lashed into brutal madness ; those sons and 
 daughters of our own happier clime, that, by the force of 
 circumstances, amid the cankering, festering sores of our 
 social state, become well-nigh as degraded as they ! — ■ 
 Why are they what they are ? What makes them what 
 they are? What chance had they of ever being other- 
 wise? How can these things be, and yet this goodly 
 world be justly governed? Alas! it is little wonder if a 
 sullen fatalism or an angry atheism, — begotten of sad 
 despair, and a vehement resentment of oppression, — reigns 
 among the outcasts, whom neither earth nor Heaven seems 
 to pity! No wonder if, looking on, conscience stands 
 aghast, and feels as if she had no plea to urge in justifi- 
 cation of God, nor any word in season to speak to weary 
 man! In vain you tell her of general laws of righteous- 
 ness and love, which, through inevitable evil, are slowly 
 and painfully working out the highest good. Bid her 
 go with that solution of the mystery into the streets, and 
 
] 26 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 see what a scowl of leering contempt or exasperated rage 
 darkens every brow. Let her take it into her own study, 
 and ponder it there: the memory of one beggar-boy, one 
 thin and naked girl, the gaunt face of famished manhood, 
 the sigh of a wasted frame, the sickening groan of a 
 broken heart, — one such dismal vision will scatter spe- 
 culations by the thousand to the winds. It is darkness 
 all — darkness more than ever. Conscience cannot say it 
 is well, it is good, it is right. But she opens her Bible; 
 she learns there why the race of man is so miserable as it 
 is. Yes. And she learns there also why it is not more 
 miserable still. Sin has entered into the world, and so 
 also has salvation. Sin has entered; it has tainted deeply, 
 it has doomed, the entire human family, and every mem- 
 ber of it. Hence these tears, these groans of creation. 
 But salvation has entered too. Hence these tears and 
 groans are not yet, bitter as they are, what otherwise 
 they must have been, — what elsewhere, if not in one only 
 way met and relieved here, they must inevitably be, — ■ 
 " weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth," amid the 
 irremediable anguish of " the worm that dieth not and 
 the fire that is not quenched/' Struck and startled; 
 struck with the truth of a representation which, bringing 
 so vividly out the sentence, the respite, the remedy, the 
 issue, really accounts at last for this condemned world's 
 strange and sad state; startled at the thought that, 
 wdiilo the respite lasts, the remedy is available for every 
 one, for any one, of its condemned inhabitants; — con- 
 science, the open Bible still in hand, rises in haste from 
 her study, from her knees, and rushes forth on the trem- 
 
CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 127 
 
 bling wings of fear and love, to speak of judgment and 
 of mercy to whatever child of Adam she can reach ; — to 
 speak affectionately, for the case is worse than had been 
 thought ; to speak wisely, for there is need of delicacy ; 
 yet to speak earnestly, for the crisis is urgent; to speak 
 promptly and at once, for the time is short. 
 
 4. Once more, in the fourth and last place, conscience 
 finds in the Bible the solution of a problem which vexes 
 her not a little, — the reconciliation of law and liberty. 
 How may virtue or moral goodness possess that element 
 of freedom, of voluntary and spontaneous choice, which 
 would seem to be essential, if it is to be approved as 
 venerable and lovely, and yet retain its original and in- 
 herent character of obedience to law? There is difficulty 
 in answering the question ; and, apart from the Bible, the 
 difficulty msiy be pronounced insuperable. The idea of 
 law, and of the supremacy of law, however it may be ac- 
 knowledged by conscience, is irksome to the will. That 
 masterful power is impatient of subjection to another, 
 and inclined to boast of what it will do if left to itself. 
 If it is to choose the good and reject the evil, it must be 
 of its own accord. To expect that it is to do so upon 
 compulsion and by command, for whatever reward or 
 hire, and yet feel itself to be acting freely, is as unrea- 
 sonable as it would be to imagine that bribes and blows 
 can give a sense of liberty to the slave, as he drudges 
 doggedly at his master's task. This attitude of the 
 will conscience is at a loss to meet. She owns her- 
 self perplexed and at fault. She cannot tame the 
 proud spirit, or win its consent to be under authority. 
 
128 CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 But she goes to the Bible, and there discovers the 
 charm. 
 
 And the charm lies mainly in the insight which she 
 gets into the heart of God, whose holy nature the law 
 expresses, whose just right of sovereignty the law asserts. 
 
 That great heart of the Eternal Father is opened up 
 in his Son. God is light ; God is love. That law which 
 conscience binds me to acknowledge, the everlasting God 
 acknowledges too. It is the law of his will, and he will him- 
 self see to it that it shall become the law of my will also. 
 
 Yes ; he will himself see to it. For this end, he rights 
 my position, my standing, in his Son, and renovates my 
 nature by his Spirit. The removal of the sentence of 
 condemnation, the passing of an opposite sentence in my 
 favour, — a sentence of acquittal, acceptance, justification, 
 — all in terms of the law, perfectly fulfilled, adequately 
 satisfied; this amazing harmony of law and love in the 
 Father's manner of dealing with me, as represented by 
 his Son, disarms me. My criminal grudge against law, 
 my servile jealousy of law, cannot stand out against treat- 
 ment like that. My whole soul undergoes a change. 
 The law is in my heart, as it is in the heart of God. It 
 is no more a yoke of bondage to me than it is a yoke of 
 bondage to him. Spontaneously, through his own Spirit 
 moving me, — more and more spontaneously as my heart 
 learns more and more to beat in unison with his heart, — ■ 
 I do the things that are true, honest, just; pure, lovely, 
 of good report; virtuous, praiseworthy. And I do them 
 in obedience to Him whose service is perfect freedom, 
 whose law is the law of liberty. 
 
PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 REASON AND REVELATION. 
 
 (5) 
 
 10 
 
PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS-REASON 
 AND REVELATION. 
 
 Acts xvii. 22-3 1. 1 
 " Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." 
 
 The discourse delivered at Athens is an admirable speci- 
 men of that sound and wise discretion, in the exercise of 
 which, without compromising principle, — nay, rather for 
 the very purpose of asserting and enforcing principle, — 
 the Apostle Paul " became all things to all men/' For 
 it was not his doctrine that he accommodated to the 
 views and feelings of his hearers; the truth which lie 
 taught was always the same, being the truth as it is 
 in Jesus. It was simply his manner of stating, proving, 
 and illustrating it that he altered, according to the dif- 
 ferent tempers and different states of knowledge that 
 he found among those with whom he had to deal, that 
 so the truth might have a fair and favourable hearing. 
 
 1 " Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, 
 I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, 
 and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE 
 UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I 
 unto you. God, that made the world, and all things therein, seeing that he is 
 Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is 
 worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth 
 to all life, and breath, and all things ; and hath made of one blood all nations cf 
 men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times 
 before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation : that they should seek the 
 
132 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 " He became all things to all men, if by any means he 
 might gain some." This indeed is plainly necessary in 
 every attempt to convince and persuade reasonable 
 beings. We must have some mutually acknowledged 
 principles — some common ground — on which to build 
 our argument; and that ground must be different, in 
 regard to different individuals and classes of men. Thus, 
 in arguing with Jews and with Gentiles respectively, on 
 the truth and reasonableness of the gospel, the Christian 
 teacher had a different course to pursue, according to the 
 different principles, or common ground, which they were 
 severally willing to recognise. With the Jews, he had 
 the common ground of the Old Testament Scriptures. 
 With the Gentiles, again, his common ground lay in what 
 are called the articles of natural religion. Still, the 
 faithful preacher always aimed at the same result, — to 
 brino- both Jews and Gentiles to the saving knowledge of 
 God in Christ. 
 
 Here, in particular, in the Areopagus of Athens, address- 
 ing the chief men of that learned and polite city, the 
 apostle takes a high tone of moral reasoning, well be- 
 fitting the place and the audience; — the place, that 
 venerable hall of judgment, where, in circumstances not 
 altogether unlike, he who was pronounced by the oracle 
 
 Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from 
 every one of us : for in him we live, and move, and have our being ; as certain 
 also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then 
 as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like 
 unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. And the times 
 of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to 
 repent : because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world 
 in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given 
 assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him frcm the dead." 
 
REASON AND REVELATION. 133 
 
 the wisest of men, once pleaded the cause of his sounder 
 faith against the bigotry of his more ignorant country- 
 men; — the audience, select and choice, claiming kindred 
 with those whose profound and meditative wisdom, on 
 all topics of human thought, is even yet the admiration 
 and delight of the world. Paul meets them on their own 
 field, and partly with their own weapons; yet not sparing 
 sharp reproof, nor shunning to declare the whole counsel 
 of God. For this discourse begins with a bold, uncom- 
 promising charge of ignorance regarding what they pro- 
 fessed much to study.. — the divine nature and the moral 
 state of man ; — and it ends with the solemn announce- 
 ment of an offensive and unwelcome doctrine, — the re- 
 surrection of Christ from his vicarious grave. Nay, 
 more, it makes a very pointed and personal application 
 of that doctrine, as proving both the present grace and 
 the future judgment of the Lord. It is thus that the 
 apostle fulfils his purpose, as intimated in these startling 
 words, — " Whom ye ignorantly worship, him declare I 
 unto you." 1 
 
 1 The following observations of the Dean of Westminster (Dr. Trench) on the 
 English Translation of this verse are interesting and important. — "A great 
 master of language will often implicitly refer in some word which he uses to the 
 same word, or, it may be, to another of the same group or family, which he or 
 some one else has just used before ; and where there is evidently intended such an 
 allusion, it should, wherever this is possible, be reproduced in the translation. 
 There are two examples of this in St. Paul's discourse at Athens, both of which 
 have been effaced in our version. Of those who encountered Paul in the market 
 at Athens, some said, ' He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods' (Acts 
 xvii. IS). They use the word KaTavuAev? ; and he, remembering and taking up 
 this word, retorts it upon them : ' Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, Him 
 set I forth (taTayye^w) unto you,' ver. 23. He has their charge present in his 
 mind, and this is his answer to their charge. It would more plainly appear such 
 to the English reader, if the translators, having used ' setter forth' before, had 
 
134 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 The words are startling, and the} r are full of mean- 
 ing. For the charge brought against these men of Athens, 
 placed as they were in the very centre and command- 
 ing stronghold of the best resources for the highest 
 cultivation of human reason, may be regarded as equiva- 
 lent to a charge of insufficiency or incompetency against 
 that reason itself in its best estate. And the apostle's 
 bold confidence in undertaking to instruct these learned 
 reasoners, may be held as an assertion of the fitness of 
 revelation to supply the defect, and to help the infirmity 
 of reason. These two points, accordingly, I propose to 
 consider; only premising further, that when I speak, 
 according to the common language used on this subject, 
 of natural religion, — or the religion of reason as distin- 
 guished from revelation, — I do not mean to hold, either 
 that natural reason is able to originate such a relioion, or 
 that God ever left religion upon earth to be so originated. 
 The first of these opinions is at least very doubtful, and 
 the second is opposed to all history and Scripture ; both 
 of which plainly indicate a primeval revelation, imper- 
 
 tbus returned upon the word, instead of substituting, as they have done, 'de- 
 clare' for it. The Rheims version, which has 'preacher' and 'preach 1 after the 
 Vulgate 'annunciator' and 'annuntio,' has been careful to retain and indi- 
 cate the connection. But the finer and more delicate turns of the divine rhetoric 
 of St. Paul are more seriously affected by another oversight in the same verse. 
 We make him there say, ' As I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found 
 an altar, with this inscription, To the Unknown God (ayvuJa™ Oe<Z). Whom, 
 therefore, ye ignorantly (ayvoow-res) worship, him declare I unto you.' But if 
 anything is clear, it is that St. Paul in ayvoowTes intends to take up the preceding 
 ayvtLo-rw; the chime of the words, and also, probably, the fact of their etymologi- 
 cal connection, leading him to this. He has spoken of their altar to an ' Un- 
 known God,' and he proceeds, ' Whom, therefore, ye worship unknowing, him 
 declare I unto you.' 'Ignorantly' has the further objection that it conveys 
 more of rebuke than St. Paul, who is sparing his hearers to the uttermost, in- 
 tended." — Trench on the Authorized Version of the yew Testament, pp. 54, 55. „ 
 
REASON AXD REVELATION. 135 
 
 fectly preserved and gradually corrupted by tradition. 
 All that I mean is to assert, that there is a certain 
 amount of religious truth, which natural reason, having 
 once got the hint, can ascertain and prove, — which, 
 therefore, in whatsoever way suggested, is to be received 
 on the evidence of argument, and which fitly prepares 
 the way for the more proper and peculiar discoveries of 
 revelation, that are to be received on the evidence of 
 testimony, or on the faith of the inspired record of God. 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 The religion, then, of these Athenians may be regarded 
 as representing the religion of natural reason, as it ex- 
 isted in the most favourable circumstances. And that 
 religion is pronounced to be insufficient, not by a jealous 
 and exclusive advocate of revelation, rejecting reason 
 altogether as quite inadmissible in such a question, but 
 by one who himself in this very discourse appeals to rea- 
 son as good and competent authority so far as it goes, 
 although he holds that it does not go far enough. 
 
 " I perceive/' says the apostle, " that ye are too 
 superstitious" (ver. 22); too prone, that is, to the 
 abject fear of invisible power. Such is the literal mean- 
 ing of the word. And such is the essence of supersti- 
 tion. It is to stand in awe and in dread of something 
 formidable, — that something being unseen and un- 
 known. According^, the apostle so explains his own 
 accusation : — " Ye are too superstitious ; for as I passed 
 by, I saw an altar dedicated to the unknown God " (ver. 
 23). Aptly and emphatically taking advantage of this 
 
136 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 inscription on one of their own altars, he holds them as 
 by their own confession ignorant regarding the object of 
 their worship, and therefore he charges them with being 
 superstitious in worshipping him. 
 
 And this ignorance of theirs was twofold. The} 7 knew 
 not what God, in his own nature, is ; for they believed 
 that he dwelt in temples made with hands, and that the 
 Godhead was like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by 
 art and man's device (ver. 24, 29). And, again, they 
 knew not what God is in relation to his creatures, — what 
 dispositions he shows towards them, and how he deals with 
 them ; for they conceived of him as likely to be pleased, 
 and capable of being benefited and propitiated, by the 
 offerings of men's hands (ver. 25). 
 
 Let these two defects in their religion be considered 
 separately. 
 
 As to the first, it consisted in this, that they wor- 
 shipped God in ignorance of his true nature. They knew 
 him not as a Spirit. They conceived of him as having a 
 bodily structure, and occupying an earthly habitation. 
 They thought that the Godhead might be well repre- 
 sented by graven idols, and fitly and literally lodged in 
 temples made with hands. 
 
 Now, in so far as ignorance on this point is concerned, 
 it is not chargeable as a defect on natural religion, or the 
 religion of reason; it is the fault of those who do not use 
 natural reason rightly on the subject. For it is to be 
 observed that the apostle, in refutation of such unworthy 
 and degrading views of God, appeals to natural reason 
 
REASON AND REVELATION. 1 37 
 
 itself as quite sufficient to have taught men better. He 
 argues with his hearers on the principles of their own 
 common sense : " God that made the world and all things 
 therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, 
 dwelleth not in temples made with hands " (ver. 24). He 
 who made and who upholds all things, the great First 
 Cause and Ruler of the universe, must be an intelligent 
 mind. He cannot be, as you suppose, like a stock or 
 stone, or any material creature. Your own reason might 
 show that his nature must be a spiritual nature. And, 
 again, this is further evident from the consideration of 
 your own mental and moral frame ; as " certain also of 
 your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. 
 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought 
 not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, 
 or stone, graven by art and man's device" (ver. 28, 29). 
 Your own poet has said — We are all his offspring. Now, 
 He whose offspring you are, must possess a similar nature 
 with yourselves. He cannot be a mere idol. There must 
 be a correspondence between the cause and the effect. 
 He who made you rational, intelligent, and spiritual 
 beings, must be a rational, intelligent, and spiritual being 
 himself. 
 
 "Whether, therefore, we consider the world around us, 
 so full of marks and traces of admirable design, or our 
 own spirits, so fearfully and wonderfully made, — natural 
 reason should suffice to teach us, that there must be a great 
 designing cause, a spiritual Being, whose intelligence per- 
 vades all his works. So far human reason, rightly exer- 
 cised, is a sure and competent teacher of religion, and as 
 
1 33 PAUL PKEACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 such it is elsewhere expressly recognised by this apostle. 
 He declares the apostate heathen to be without excuse 
 on this very account, because " the invisible things of 
 God from the creation of the world, even his eternal 
 power and Godhead, are clearly seen, being understood by 
 the things that are made" (Rom. i. 20). Ignorance 
 therefore, or superstition, on this part of the subject, is 
 not an evil for which natural religion is fairly responsible. 
 Reason, judging from the evidences of design, intention, 
 and contrivance, in the frame of external nature, and in 
 the constitution of our own minds, can confidently 
 announce this fundamental truth of religion, that there is 
 a supreme, intelligent, spiritual Being, w r hose all- wise 
 energy is above, and around, and in all. " The heavens 
 declare the glory of God." " All his works praise him." 
 And the more w T e know of the vast extent, as well as of 
 the minute and varied arrangement of these works, the 
 more shall we know of the wondrous, unsearchable depth 
 of the understanding of the Infinite Mind who planned 
 them all. 
 
 It is indeed a glorious and grateful reward of Science 
 ■ — as in her large view she grasps unnumbered w r orlds, 
 and, following the vast orbs as they roll in unmeasured 
 space, almost seems herself to regulate the majesty of 
 their movements, so that the wandering planet returns 
 after long absence, at the very instant of its appointed 
 time, as if at the bidding of her potent spell ; or, again, 
 as with keen and prying eye she searches every nook and 
 recess of this lower earth, and dragging to light the 
 tokens and traces of another w^orld, still finds in them all 
 
REASON AND REVELATION. 139 
 
 new proofs of exquisite adaptation, and beautifully j 
 adjusted harmony of design ; or, again, as she tortures 
 every substance of nature, with more than inquisitorial 
 cruelty, to extort the secret of its birth ; or pores with 
 ever-increasing intensity of interest over all the bones, 
 and sinews, and nerves of this marvellous and myste- 
 riously compacted frame of ours ; — is it not a glad, and 
 grateful, and glorious reward of Science, in all these her 
 various and wonderful paths, to see, at every step she 
 takes, the almighty hand and the intelligent mind of 
 God ? And, instead of impiously arrogating to herself 
 any poor honour for the discoveries which she makes, — 
 what a privilege is hers ! — Joyfully and thankfully to 
 ascribe to the Creator alone all the glory, and all the 
 praise, of that consummate, unerring, beneficent wisdom, 
 with which these discoveries show, more and more every 
 day, all his works in all corners of his dominions to be 
 full fraught ! 
 
 Far, very far be it from any devout mind, out of 
 an unwarranted, unreasonable, and most unnecessary 
 jealousy, to arrest or stay the progress of inquiry, or 
 look with a timid and suspicious eye on any honest 
 efforts made to extend and diffuse the knowledge of 
 nature. The upright search after truth can never be 
 dangerous to him who lovingly engages in it, or dis- 
 honourable to Him who is the God of truth. All scope 
 is given to inquiry into all the wonders, whether of the 
 material world without, or of the moral world within. 
 It is } r our dignity and your duty so to inquire. You are 
 men, and you are commanded to " be men in understand- 
 
140 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 ing." As men, you may assert your privilege of investi- 
 gating all the works of your Creator ; and in doing so, 
 you are to follow truth whithersoever it may lead. You 
 are not constituted the judges of consequences and 
 results. Your business is with the facts and principles 
 of truth itself. You are not to determine what should 
 be, or what might be — you are to discover what is. 
 This is the course becoming alike the power and the 
 infirmity of reason. "Within this limit you tread surely 
 and safely. Cast aside, then, all alarm as to what may 
 follow from your inquiries. Only prosecute these 
 inquiries with due caution, and put them fairly and faith- 
 fully together, so as to ascertain real facts and draw none 
 but legitimate conclusions. And we may fearlessly run 
 the hazard of any inferences which they may suggest, con- 
 fident that they will all tend to shed new light and lustre 
 on the wisdom in which the Lord hath made all his mani- 
 fold works. 
 
 Doubtless it may be said, and said truly, that such 
 minute and varied investigation of nature is not necessary 
 to evince the intelligence of nature's God. There need 
 not be any such accumulation of the proofs and evidences 
 of a contriving mind, as the PTeat First Cause of all. The 
 argument from design lies on the very surface of crea- 
 tion, so plainly written that he who runs may read. And 
 the statement of the argument, in a single clear instance 
 of indubitable adaptation, whether in the physical or in 
 the mental department of knowledge, is enough to show 
 the existence of a Being not confined to temples made 
 with hands, nor like to any material images, but a Spirit, 
 
REASON AND REVELATION. 1 4 t 
 
 infinite in power and wisdom. Even the unlearned, from 
 a single such instance, may apprehend the force of such 
 reasoning as the apostle uses, and may see the absurdity 
 of those gross conceptions of Deity which vulgar super- 
 stition forms. Still, it is not unsatisfactory to put the 
 question to a more rigorous test, by tracing out more 
 fully and particularly the operations of the divine under- 
 standing. And surely every pursuit is profitable as well 
 as delightful, which tends to open up new mines and 
 quarries of natural theology, and to enlarge our views of 
 the Eternal mind, — removing us always to a greater dis- 
 tance from those dumb idols which the heathens ignorantly 
 worship, and declaring to us more and more manifestly 
 the spiritual nature of Him who in wisdom made the 
 world and all things therein; who is Lord of heaven and 
 earth; and of whom we, the intelligent inhabitants ot 
 this earth, are all the offspring. 
 
 Thus far, therefore, natural reason is competent to the 
 task of removing, or at least reproving, the ignorance 
 which Paul charges against the Athenians, and giving or 
 establishing right ideas of God as an intelligent being, the 
 source of all design, the father of spirits. 
 
 But this is not enough. This does not fully declare 
 to us that God whom we worship. There is a second 
 defect in the religion of these too superstitious Greeks 
 still to be noticed. 
 
 To know what God is, as the great First Cause, and 
 the intelligent author of all being, is much. But some- 
 thing more is necessa-y. — even to know him in his rela- 
 
1 -i 2 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 tion to ourselves, or in his designs and dealings with 
 regard to ns. This is chiefly important, and is indeed 
 essential to all real religion. This is wanted to complete 
 our knowledge of God, and to impart to our religious 
 worship its distinctness and its depth. All other views 
 of God without this are insufficient. 
 
 Thus, if we try to conceive of God and to worship him 
 abstractly, as he is in himself, — apart from all manifesta- 
 tions and expressions of his attributes, — as the eternal 
 Jehovah, the self-existent, who was, and is, and is to 
 come, — dwelling in light that is inaccessible and full of 
 glory, — supremely excellent and blessed in his own in- 
 finite perfections; — the mind vainly and painfully labours. 
 Some image of vast and vague sublimity may rise before 
 us, as we strain our exhausted powers in the attempt to 
 hold immensity in our grasp, and to pierce with our 
 glance the gloom of the Eternal. An emotion of awe, 
 astonishment, and stupor may overwhelm us. But no 
 definite idea occupies the understanding; no distinct feel- 
 ing touches the heart. Our religion is merely a visionary 
 and ideal abstraction. 
 
 For relief, we turn the eye away from the direct effulgence 
 of the divine glory, to the reflection of it in the works 
 and operations of the divine hand; and we regard God 
 as the creator of all nature's wonders, and the upholder 
 of all her marvellous economy of the wisest means adapted 
 to the best of ends. Here we tread on solid ground. 
 Here we are in our own proper sphere, and have some- 
 thing substantial that we can seize and retain. And, 
 rising from nature up to nature's God, we can know and 
 
REASON AND REVELATION. 143 
 
 intelligently worship the Supreme Mind. Still, such a 
 religion, though not now a dim, doubtful, and sublime 
 abstraction, is essentially defective. It wasn't a definite 
 and pointed personal application. It does not come 
 home to us as moral beings. It does not meet the neces- 
 sity of our case. It does not satisfy the natural and in- 
 stinctive longings of our souls. 
 
 All men, says an ancient, — all men long for, all men 
 desiderate, or desire, or feel the want of, a God. 1 But 
 what sort of God do they feel the want of? or how do 
 they long to know him? Surely in his relation to them- 
 selves. We desire to know, not merely what God is in 
 himself, but what he is to us; or, in other words, what 
 his character is as it may be likely to affect us. This is 
 the question which presses most urgently upon us ; — and 
 this question we are bound to entertain. To evade it is 
 to evade what is by far the most important and person- 
 ally interesting view of religious truth. To rest contented 
 without an adequate and satisfactory settlement of it, is 
 to know God very partially indeed, and so to subject 
 ourselves, if we worship him at all, to the charge of 
 "ignorantly worshipping" him, and of being therefore 
 still "too superstitious." 
 
 You do not half know God if it be thus only that you 
 know him, — as the maker of all things, and the father of 
 an intelligent offspring. And yet, alas! there are too 
 many who count it enough so to know him. These are 
 men who profess to be religious, and to be very intel- 
 lectual in their religion, — far removed from everything 
 
 1 Ilaires 6e ©ewe vart'ovs' at'Opunroi. — Horn. Od. iii. 48. 
 
144 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 like that ignorant superstition which would " change the 
 glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like 
 to corruptible man, and to birds, and beasts, and creep- 
 ing things." Their Deity is a being of pure intellect, — 
 the spirit or the soul of the universe. And yet, even to 
 such refined worshippers it would not be difficult, accord- 
 ing to the apostle's definition, to bring home in another 
 way, and under another form, this very charge of super- 
 stition which they so strongly and scornfully disown. 
 
 But what! they will say, charge superstition against 
 us — the very folly which we most of all shun? What 
 religion can be more rational than ours? What view of 
 the Godhead more spiritual and sublime? All that in 
 the least savours of corporeal sense, or feeling, or emo- 
 tion, we carefully and scrupulously exclude — everything 
 like the movements of resentment or desire. The Infi- 
 nite Mind is regarded as reposing in blessed satisfaction 
 over the wisdom of his works, neither moved, nor at all 
 affected, by anything beyond himself. What is there 
 here of superstition? 
 
 So far well. But do you not studiously avoid the 
 consideration of God in his relation to yourselves? Do 
 you take any account of his moral government, his judi- 
 cial superintendence of your conduct, and his right of 
 authoritative interference in your concerns? And sup- 
 pose it should turn out, even according to the dictates of 
 sound natural reason, that there is something more to be 
 discovered and known concerning God, than merely that 
 he is the intelligent cause of the order, harmony, and 
 beauty which appear thrcrcjhout all his universe, — and 
 
REASON AND REVELATION. 145 
 
 yet you refuse to consider him in any other light ; — who 
 now are " superstitious F Who now are regarders of 
 invisible unknown power? Of whom may it be said, that 
 in so far as they have any God at all, he is one whom 
 they "ignorantly worship?" 
 
 Alas! it is the most melancholy of all delusions, worse 
 a thousand times than all the perverse vagaries of the 
 most whimsical idolatry, to acknowledge a God at all, if 
 you go no further than this. What though it be the 
 truth that you know concerning God, if you seek not to 
 know the whole truth? Are you not still superstitious, 
 — worshipping God ignorantly, and so deceiving your- 
 selves? You still worship an unknown God — known in- 
 deed in one view of his being, as the great creative Intel- 
 ligence — but unknown in what is infinitely more import- 
 ant, his relation to yourselves. To you, therefore, the 
 reproach may still be addressed on the part of those who 
 seek the Lord, — not merely, as you do, in the glorious 
 temple of nature, but, as Scripture teaches and the Spirit 
 enables them, in the temple of supernatural glory also, 
 which is the temple of grace. — " Ye worship ye know 
 not what ; we know what we worship." 
 
 And what, after all, is your worship? What is your 
 religion? A pleasing sentimental fancy — a poetic figure 
 of personification — a vision of glory and beauty, which 
 lends a living charm and grace to your abstruse researches 
 and laborious speculations. But, alas ! it is powerless to 
 reach the heart, and recall it to serious and holy thought. 
 It establishes no fellowship between the Creator and the 
 creature. It calls forth no emotion of reverence, and no 
 
 W 11 
 
146 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 sense of duty. It may amuse the mind occupied with 
 the works of God. It will not bring the heart near to 
 God himself. For " he that cometh unto God must be- 
 lieve," not only " that he is," but that " he is the rewarder 
 of all them that diligently seek him." 
 
 What, then, can reason do towards settling aright this 
 second and most important branch of our knowledge of 
 God — the knowledge of him as he stands related to us ? 
 
 Let it be observed how, in reference to this particular, 
 the apostle charges the Athenians with ignorantly wor- 
 shipping God. They not only worshipped him in ignor- 
 ance of his real nature ; they worshipped him also in 
 ignorance of his relation to themselves. They conceived 
 of him as in some way dependent upon them, — capable 
 of being in some way benefited or pleased by their offer- 
 ings and services, and likely to be propitiated and 
 appeased by means of them. His friendship, if they 
 desired it, was to be purchased by gifts, or won by 
 flattering obeisance. He was to be " worshipped with 
 men's hands, as though he needed" something from them. 
 
 Now mark how Paul treats this superstition of theirs. 
 He plainly and pointedly appeals to their own under- 
 standing, and calls upon it to condemn this, as well as 
 the former error. In refutation of such dishonouring 
 views as they had of God's method of dealing with his 
 creatures, the apostle challenges the judgment of natural 
 reason; — "He cannot be thus worshipped, as though he 
 needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, 
 and all things." " Thou art my Lord ; my goodness 
 extendeth not to thee;" — such is the Psalmist's language; 
 
REASON AND REVELATION. 147 
 
 and it is in accordance with the light of nature and the 
 dictates of man's own heart. All our goodness can never 
 profit God, or acquire for us any merit in his sight. 
 Nor can he treat with us on any such terms as are 
 inconsistent with his own absolute and independent 
 sovereignty. 
 
 But what then? What is God's method of dealing 
 with us ? Does natural religion tell us ? Hitherto it has 
 spoken negatively, to the effect that God is not wor- 
 shipped with men's hands, as though he needed anything. 
 Has it any positive information on this subject to give ? 
 Can it discover to us how he is, as well as how he is not, 
 to be worshipped ? 
 
 Two things, at all events, the voice of nature tells us, 
 regarding the way in which God deals with men on the 
 earth. In the first place, it tells us of God's impartial 
 bounty to all, as well as of his absolute control over all : 
 " He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things ; and 
 hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell 
 on the face of the earth, and hath determined the times 
 before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation" 
 (ver. 25, 26). Such is his impartial bounty, and such 
 his providential government, reaching to all circumstances 
 of time and place. But further, in the second place, the 
 voice of nature tells what is the design of that bounty 
 and that government; — "That they should seek the 
 Lord, if haply they might feel after him and find him, 
 though he be not far from every one of us; for in him 
 we live, and move, and have our being, and we are all 
 his offspring" (ver. 27). Such is the view of Providence 
 
148 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 sanctioned by natural reason. We find ourselves placed 
 under the universal care and kindness of God ; and con- 
 science suggests the purpose which that care and kindness 
 are meant to serve, — even to make us seek and find Him 
 who bestows them. We look abroad, and we see the pro- 
 vidential bounty of God, and his care of us, reaching to 
 the most minute particular. We look within, and we feel 
 his original design, — and our duty as resulting from that 
 design. Thus far all is clear. 
 
 But then, the fact of our sin materially alters the case. 
 For now it stands thus. The providential care and bounty 
 of God are continued and prolonged, while his original 
 design is not fulfilled ; — for men do not " seek the Lord, 
 if haply they may feel after him and find him/' Hence 
 arises a difficulty as to what God now intends, and how 
 he now appears in relation to us. And this is precisely 
 the knot which reason cannot untie without the help of 
 revelation. 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 It is at this stage of the argument, accordingly, that 
 the apostle calls in the aid of the peculiar discoveries of 
 the gospel ; and it is to meet this very difficult}^. He 
 states the simple scriptural account of the mystery of 
 God's providence, in regard to men, as consisting in a 
 dispensation of forbearance, subservient to a dispensation 
 of grace, and this again preparatory to a dispensation of 
 j udgment. 
 
 In the first place, he describes the past dispensation 
 of forbearance ; — " The times of this ignorance," — igno- 
 rance regarding his design in placing us on this beautiful 
 

 REASON AND REVELATION. 149 
 
 and bounteous earth, and watching over us and caring 
 for us while we are here, — " the times of this ignorance 
 God winked at." In the second place, he proclaims the 
 present dispensation of grace ; — " But now God com- 
 mandeth all men every where to repent." And in the 
 third place, he announces the coming dispensation of 
 judgment ; — " Because he hath appointed a day in the 
 which he will judge the world by that man whom he 
 hath ordained ; whereof he hath given assurance unto 
 all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead " 
 (ver. 30, 31). 
 
 Thus revelation takes up and completes the scheme 
 which reason in her impotency is compelled to drop. 
 
 For reason is perplexed, as well she may be, by the 
 contradictory suggestions of nature and conscience — the 
 wide world without, and the little world of the heart 
 within. Abroad, all nature indicates design, — benignant 
 and benevolent design ; we observe not a trace of the 
 reverse, no plan contrived for producing misery. So 
 far as there is manifest contrivance at all, it is wholly 
 for making us happy. The Author of nature is very 
 kind and bountiful. See how he causes the fair face 
 of creation to smile with ineffably attractive loveliness. 
 See how largely, how profusely and prodigally, he showers 
 down upon us the gifts of his bountiful liberality. Is it 
 not he who clothes the common grass with more than a 
 monarch's glory, and provides munificently for the fowls 
 of heaven ? Is it not he who made us in mind and body 
 for enjoyment, and who gives us all abundantly the 
 means of that enjoyment? Does not every object that 
 
150 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 yields us a moment's pleasure attest the good-will of Him 
 who imparts to it the power of pleasing, and to us the 
 capacity of being pleased ? Does not every day multiply 
 the proofs of his care over us, and his desire to bless us ? 
 Why else does he keep us in safety, and order our lot in 
 wisdom, and cause the lines to fall to us in pleasant 
 places ? Why does he load us with benefits, and supply 
 food and raiment, and send joy into our hearts, and 
 appoint kind friends to soothe and sympathize with us, 
 and hope, the bright seraph hope, to animate and cheer 
 us ? Surely it cannot be imagined that He who has 
 placed us amid so much that speaks of his own rich and 
 royal bounty, can be otherwise than well disposed towards 
 us. His relation to us must be entirely one of fatherly 
 and friendly indulgence. 
 
 And yet, even in the world of nature, full as it is of 
 proofs and instances of much loving-kindness, there are 
 hints of derangement and disorder whicli mi^ht make us 
 pause and suggest a doubt. There are traces and tokens 
 of something wrong, — of something sufficiently alarming, 
 — in the evils which we suffer and the judgments which 
 we bring upon ourselves. There is enough to make us 
 hesitate in interpreting too favourably the indications of 
 benevolence with which all the works and ways of God 
 abound. There may well arise some fear, lest, all-bene- 
 volent as the Creator plainly is, his benevolence may be 
 hindered in its exercise towards us by a sterner and 
 severer attribute. 
 
 And this fear is strengthened when we turn from the 
 world without to the secret sanctuaiy of conscience 
 
REASON AND REVELATION. 151 
 
 within. There too, a still small voice speaks to us of 
 God; — and of God as possessed of a holy character, and 
 holding a high supremacy; — himself the end as well as 
 the author of creation. Our own hearts, conscious of the 
 dignity and the duty of reasonable beings, tell us of the 
 purpose which, in all his treatment of us 3 God must be 
 seeking. 
 
 And they tell us too of that purpose being unfulfilled. 
 For it is on this very ground — the ground, namely, that 
 all his impartial distribution of this earth's advantages 
 fails to bring us, its inhabitants, to Him as alone entitled 
 to be our Lord, and alone capable of being our chief 
 good; — it is on this ground that our own hearts, con- 
 scious of guilt, testify of righteous judgment; — of present 
 condemnation, and of coming wrath. Now, therefore, 
 the question as to what God is in relation to us, becomes 
 more complicated by far; and the mind is involved in 
 painful uncertainty, unwilling to doubt that God is good, 
 yet compelled to believe that in all his goodness he has 
 a holy object in view, and that he is justly displeased 
 because that object is not attained. 
 
 It is precisely because " the trumpet thus gives so un- 
 certain a sound/' that men so grievously err in preparing 
 themselves to meet their God; and multiply the forms 
 and devices of blind superstition, to appease, as they sup- 
 pose, the resentment, and purchase the continued bounty 
 of him "whom they ignorantly worship." They feel his 
 care and kindness, — yet they cannot but fear his anger 
 on account of that very bountifulness of his, which they 
 have not suffered to produce its due effect of causing 
 
152 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 them to " seek the Lord." And in the vain attempt to 
 reconcile and harmonize these opposite views of kindness 
 and of anger, they almost necessarily go wrong. 
 
 And you who philosophically pity and despise their 
 error, — what can }ou do to put them, or to keep them, 
 right ? There is indeed a summary method of settling 
 the difficulty which it may suit your convenience to take. 
 You have but to suppress, or modify, or explain away all 
 the evidence on one side, and listen only to what obtrudes 
 itself on the other, — and so to worship God in wilful 
 ignorance of the most important feature of his character. 
 Shut your eyes and your ears to all that seems to indi- 
 cate any end beyond the enjoyment of God's present 
 bounty, or to threaten judgment for that end unattained; 
 and then you may quietly rest in the nattering belief, 
 that — whatever cause of disapprobation He who made 
 you to dwell on his richly-stored earth may have, because 
 you have not " felt after him and found him" — he will 
 nevertheless continue always, as now, to treat his way- 
 ward children with indulgent fondness. 
 
 Even you, however, thus partially considering God, are 
 fairly chargeable with superstition ; for he is to you in 
 great measure an unknown God. And think not, that 
 the mind really awakened to reflection, or the conscience 
 quickened to a sense of guilt, will be so easily soothed or 
 satisfied. Notwithstanding much experience of care and 
 kindness, — of liberality and love, — the sinner cannot 
 banish the idea of a righteous Sovereign, righteously 
 offended. He receives many blessings, but he trembles 
 lest these very blessings may become a curse. "His own 
 
REASON AND REVELATION. 153 
 
 heart condemns him," as not fulfilling the great end of 
 his being ; and there is One " greater than his heart," 
 whose condemnation he anxiously labours to escape by 
 all the vain expedients which abject terror can suggest. 
 
 "But whom he ignorantly worships, him the gospel 
 declares." It tells the guilty sinner of that plan of sal- 
 vation which explains all, and reconciles all. It points 
 his view to the cross of Christ, — to the single fact of his 
 atoning death. There, in the cross, love appears, — love 
 infinitely beyond anything that all nature's bounty could 
 ever have taught us so much as to imagine. There too, 
 in the cross, judgment is seen in stern and terrible reality, 
 more than confirming the darkest forebodings of con- 
 science. God is indeed, as nature paints him, nay, far 
 above nature's painting, a God of mercy. God is em- 
 phatically, as conscience testifies, a God of justice. Here 
 the conflicting hints which perplexed reason meet and 
 are at one. And now the mystery is unfolded. The 
 enigma is solved. The providence of God is for all prac- 
 tical purposes sufficiently understood, as a providence of 
 present grace and coming judgment. God is not aban- 
 doning his claim of sovereignty over us who are his 
 reasonable creatures, dependent on his bounty and sub- 
 ject to his control. He is not unconcerned about our 
 refusal to seek him. He has visited, and he will yet 
 again visit in wrath. That wrath, which Ciirist our 
 surety once endured, is still impending over us — certain, 
 terrible, inevitable. Meantime, in Christ, God is waiting 
 to be gracious ; Christ, our crucified and risen Saviour, 
 averts from us now the doom which we deseive ; and 
 
I 5 4 PAUL PKEACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 grace, free grace, is now proclaimed, and all may freely 
 partake of it. For God beseeches all to be reconciled, 
 and " commandetli all men every where to repent/' 
 
 But he will not always " wink at ignorance/' far less 
 at unbelief. The very cross of Christ, which makes 
 grace free now, makes judgment certain hereafter. Al- 
 ready God has fixed a time ; he " has appointed a day 
 in the which he will judge the world," by the very 
 " man " Christ Jesus, " whom he hath ordained " to be a 
 Ruler as well as a Saviour ; " whereof he hath given 
 assurance to all, in that he hath raised him from the 
 dead." He hath raised him up for the purpose of grace 
 now ; but soon for the purposes of endless wrath. 
 
 Two practical inferences may be drawn from the sub- 
 ject and argument of this discourse on Natural Theology, 
 delivered by Paul at Athens. 
 
 I. How important is a right knowledge of God above 
 all other knowledge ! How necessary is it to take that 
 view of God now which we must take at last. For if 
 we do not, then our noblest pursuits, however pleasing 
 now, will be found in the end to carry their own con- 
 demnation and their own punishment along with them, 
 when " that God whom we now ignorantly worship is at 
 last declared unto us." 
 
 There is an elevating and ennobling joy in the lofty 
 walks of learning and of science. There is a proud satis- 
 faction in the cultivation of high intellectual powers ; nor 
 need it be matter of wonder, if many can give themselves 
 up with intense and untiring zeal to the glorious labour of 
 
REASON AND REVELATION. 155 
 
 advancing the great cause of mental cultivation, and en- 
 larging the limits of knowledge. Independently altogether 
 of the triumph of success attained, and the value of dis- 
 coveries made, — in the very employment of their faculties 
 on themes of such absorbing interest, they experience a 
 sort of calm excitement, a refined and rapturous delight. 
 But, alas ! in too many an instance, with all their stores 
 of wisdom, they have not that wisdom which is from 
 above, and with all their gettings they get not under- 
 standing. In the almost infinitely diversified tracks 
 which they follow, they scarcely ever meet their God, 
 they scarcely ever fall in with him by the way, nor ever 
 once think of going to seek him, " if haply they might 
 feel after him and find him." Or if, amid the profusely 
 scattered traces of power, wisdom, and goodness, through 
 which they make their exulting progress, they cannot 
 shut out the evidence of divinity, — they may indeed 
 condescend to acknowledge a God ; but it is a God with 
 attributes of their own choosing, — a God of their own 
 hearts, not the God of Scripture, — a God of nature, not 
 the God of judgment and of grace. Him they dare not 
 recognise — him they do not like to retain in their 
 thoughts ; although in himself " lie is not far from every 
 one of them ; for in him they live, and move, and have 
 their being;" and although in his gospel he brings very 
 near to them his righteousness and his salvation. But 
 they will not retain him in their knowledge ; they put 
 away from them the sense and feeling of his presence. 
 For they cannot but be conscious that on the success with 
 which they contrive to prevent the idea of God from 
 
156 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS 
 
 mingling in their researches at all, — or strip that idea of 
 all that might painfully remind them of a yet unsettled 
 personal controversy with him, — much of the happiness 
 peculiar to their favourite lettered occupations must con- 
 tinually depend. 
 
 But let us suppose a man of such a stamp to be so 
 placed, that he must exercise his powers and prosecute 
 his discoveries, if he is to do so at all, in the full blaze of 
 all the glory and dreadful majesty of " the just God and 
 the Saviour," intensely revealed to his now fully opened 
 eyes ; — let him be left to cany on his once quiet work 
 of inquiry, with a clear and startling apprehension of all 
 the moral attributes of God, — his holiness, his justice, 
 his truth, his love, — all as harmoniously manifested in 
 the Cross of Christ, and all still intolerably offensive to 
 his carnal mind and self-condemned heart; — and where 
 now will be the joy of his lofty enterprise ? where the 
 satisfaction of his increasing stores of knowledge ? Every 
 object he contemplates is now intimately associated with 
 the idea of a righteous God. Every subject he can examine 
 is full of hints and suo-wstions of a righteous God. Every 
 new ray of light now reveals to him with more intolerable 
 brightness the righteous God. Every sound carries to his 
 startled ear the name of the righteous God, repeated by 
 a thousand echoes. He can look at nothing, — he can 
 think of nothing which does not speak to him of God, 
 and remind him of duty unfulfilled, and announce the 
 inevitable doom. All his boasted discoveries of nature's 
 manifold works only serve as reminiscences of nature's 
 God, in the character, now terribly revealed, of the God 
 
REASON AND REVELATION. 157 
 
 of judgment. And the very capacity which was once 
 his pride and pleasure, the capacity of deep reflection and 
 enlightened inquiry, does but add new stings and tortures 
 to his reprobate mind, by suggesting always, everywhere 
 and in all things, new images and representations of that 
 awful Being, regarding whom he was once ignorant and 
 unbelieving, — but whom now at last he knows, — but 
 knows only as the devils know him, — that, like the devils, 
 he may "believe and tremble/' 
 
 Compare with this fearful prospect, the sure happiness 
 of him who, no longer ignorantly worshipping God, but 
 knowing him as declared in the gospel, can carry the 
 deep and grateful sense of his reconciliation to that God 
 alon# with him, in all his researches into the wondrous 
 depths of his creating intelligence and his preserving care. 
 At every new discovery he makes, as not in time only, 
 but throughout eternity, he goes on enlarging his know- 
 ledge of the boundless works of God, — he will see ever- 
 increasing lustre shed on the harmony of the divine per- 
 fections, which he delights more and more to study. 
 And it will be his blessed privilege to pause evermore in 
 rapture, over the things all fair, and glorious, and good, 
 wherewith the universe is stored, and, lifting an unpre- 
 sumptuous eye, to say — " My Father made them all." 
 
 II. And if the right knowledge of God is thus impor- 
 tant, how sacred is our obligation to diffuse it ! All sorts 
 of knowledge are interesting, entertaining, useful. This 
 alone is necessary. This will suffice without anything 
 else. Nothing else will do without this. 
 
1 5 8 PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS. 
 
 If Christ you know, enough, — all else unknown, 
 If Christ unknown, vain though all else you learn.* 
 
 Without undervaluing any branch of learning, may we 
 not now assume, according to the teaching of Paul, the 
 utter incompetency of all learning, merely human, to im- 
 part and impress those just and solemn views of God's 
 sovereignty and grace, which alone can make men truly 
 wise and good ? Men may be taught much out of the book 
 of nature, and yet they may not be taught to know God. 
 Either they will not worship him at all, or they will wor- 
 ship him ignorantly, and, by consequence, superstitiously. 
 It is the word of God — the Bible, the gospel — which 
 alone can fully declare to them that God whom otherwise 
 they must ignorantty worship, as the God of present grace 
 and of coming judgment. By all means, let all sorts of 
 knowledge be diffused. But above all things, let men be 
 taught to worship intelligently a God not unknown ; the 
 God who " commanding the light to shine out of dark- 
 ness, shineth into our hearts, to give the light of the 
 knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 * Ei XpiaTW fie'fiaes, Kav /xtj yvw; raWa. aoi apKfl 
 Ei fie jxlv ov fie'fiae? <rio ypafifxara Aijpo? ea<rt. 
 
THE DUTZ OF FREE INQUIRY AND 
 PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 
 
 AN ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 
 
 2^2g^|*!§4^=^ 
 
THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY AND 
 PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 
 
 •Trove all things; hold fast that which is good."— 1 Thf.su. v. 21. 
 
 These two precepts embody two antagonist principles, 
 which, when brought together in juxtaposition, mutually 
 qualify and correct one another ; the one, being opposed 
 to that dogged temper which clings to institutions and 
 opinions merely because they are old ; the other, to that 
 restless spirit which is enamoured of every proposal of 
 change, for little or no other reason than because it is 
 new. Nor is it simply on the plan of striking a balance, 
 and hitting an average or mean between two extremes, 
 that this combination of opposite maxims proceeds, — - 
 according to the doctrine of that ancient school of wisdom, 
 which made virtue to lie in measuring the middle path 
 between pairs of conflicting vices. — or according to the 
 less subtle, but more practical notion of not a few, who 
 would make duty merely negative, and count it the very 
 sum of morality to be free from this error or infirmity 
 on the one side, and the counterpart excess on the other, 
 with scarcely any positive spring of action at all ; — ae if 
 
 (5) 12 
 
162 THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY 
 
 the swinging of the vessel in mid-stream between the 
 whirlpools, were equivalent to the movement with which 
 it should sweep on towards the desired haven ; — or as if 
 the poising of the false prophet's coffin midway between 
 earth and heaven were fitted to be its final rest. Thus 
 to fling together two hostile sins, in expectation of one 
 holy grace resulting from the collision, or the rebound, is 
 but the poor expedient of a lifeless formality, putting the 
 cold and artificial sparks of earth's iron and flint, instead 
 of the glow of heaven's own fire. To say to any one, — 
 Be neither prodigal nor parsimonious; beware of credulity 
 on the one hand, and of scepticism on the other ; let not 
 wrath prevail, neither yet be too tame ; be not too bold, 
 nor yet too wary ; — so to construct elaborately your 
 antithetical see-saw of moral truisms, is to deal with the 
 living soul as if suspense or oscillation between two con- 
 trary attractions were its chief good, without either the 
 energy of an onward impulse of motion, or the charm of 
 a satisfying repose. 
 
 This is not the moral wisdom of the Bible. It makes 
 use, indeed, often of a kind of antithesis, guarding or 
 explaining a strong and sweeping generalization in one 
 direction, by a counter and corresponding generalization 
 in another. It does so, however, not on the principle of 
 an equilibrium of forces, but rather according to the Low 
 of their combination and composition. It gives impulses 
 to the mind, which, instead of neutralizing, conspire with 
 one another; and the result is, not the mere blamelessness 
 of a certain negative prudence, content to avoid extremes 
 and "to dwell in decencies for ever," but the healthy 
 

 AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 163 
 
 vigour of an earnest and exercised ambition, such as, 
 being temperate in all things, yet striveth for the mastery, 
 and runs the race, laying aside every weight. 
 
 In particular, the maxims which this verse unites are 
 not negative, but positive ; — " Prove all things; hold fast 
 that which is good/' They proceed upon two principles 
 essentially and intensely active, — altogether opposed to 
 mere indolent or passive acquiescence, whether in the 
 authority which would supersede, or in the scepticism 
 which would evade, the exercise of individual responsi- 
 bility, and the search after what is true and fair. 
 
 Thus the precept, "prove all things," casts the soul 
 abroad upon the trial of whatever is presented to us for 
 acceptance; — and enjoins the examination of whatever is 
 thus presented to us for acceptance, on its own proper 
 merits alone ; apart from any infallible guidance which 
 might summarily dispose of all questions regarding it. 
 The very thing itself is to be looked at, sifted, and tested 
 by each man on his own account — he is not to take another's 
 word for it. And again, lest this should merely rescue 
 him from the lethargy of uninquiring and irresponsible 
 submission to authority, and hand him over to the apathy 
 of bewildered helplessness, — or that listless feeling of 
 universal uncertainty which the multitude of counsels and 
 of counsellors is apt to cause, — it is intimated that, amid 
 the many things that are to be proved, there is that 
 which will stand the proof — which, in the trial, will 
 show itself to be good — and which, being thus proved to 
 be good, must be held fast. First, "Prove all things;" 
 Then, " Hold fast that which is good." 
 
164 THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY 
 
 In illustrating more fully the comprehensive verse 
 under review, we may first consider the general import 
 of the direction which it contains, and the kind of trial 
 which it enjoins; enforcing its practical importance. And 
 we may thus be prepared for considering afterwards the 
 value of the principle involved, in its special application 
 to the season of youth. 
 
 I. It is manifestly experimental proof that is here 
 intended, — the kind of proof to which the chemist sub- 
 jects, in his crucible, the substance which he is examining. 
 It is the testing of metals by fire that is alluded to, — 
 " Prove all things." For it is the same word which is 
 elsewhere used, — sometimes with a direct reference to 
 this process of the trying or refining of metals (1 Pet. 
 i. 7 ; 1 Cor. iii. 1 3) ; and with a covert allusion to it in 
 various other passages, in which it evidently denotes an 
 experimental trial (Rom. xii. 2; Luke xiv. 19; 1 Tim. 
 iii. 10; Gal. vi. 4; 1 John iv. 1). 
 
 To such an experimental trial, then, you are to subject 
 "all things." You are to cast them into your moral 
 crucible or alembic, and put them to a searching question 
 in the furnace of your spiritual experience. And you 
 are to deal thus with all things whatsoever that are pro- 
 posed for your acceptance, whether as remedies of evil or 
 as instruments of good; — you are to prove them all, with- 
 out exception and without reserve. Nor need you fear 
 to do so, or shrink from the hazard of this proof, lest all 
 the things which you prove should fail, and you should 
 be left to the unrelieved desolation of continual doubting. 
 
AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 165 
 
 There is among them that which will endure ; and if, 
 while " proving all things/' you are really determined to 
 " hold fast that which is good," the issue of the trial will 
 be assurance and peace. 
 
 But, in order to this result, the trial must be earnest, 
 and full, and fair, — earnest as a real, practical experiment, 
 and not a mere idle speculation ; full, as not partial and 
 limited, but comprehensive and complete, embracing all 
 the elements of every kind which should enter into the 
 solution of the problem ; and fair, as having it truly for 
 its object, not to find occasion for casting all away as 
 A r anity and dross, but to seize on what may be prized, 
 and used, and guarded as pure gold. "Prove," sa}~s the 
 apostle, in the first place. Secondly, " prove all things." 
 And thirdly, Prove all things, that ye may " HOLD FAST 
 THAT WHICH IS GOOD." 
 
 In the first place, you are summoned to a sort of 
 experimentum crucis, — a process of testing, as it were, 
 by fire. You are to prove whatever is presented to you, 
 as metals are tried and proved. In other words, the trial 
 must be earnest. It is as men bent on the settlement of 
 an urgent practical question, that you are to prove all 
 things ; as men awakened to feel that you have sins to 
 be forgiven, an eternity to be provided for, and souls to 
 be saved. You are to prove all things, not with the cool 
 indifference and affected impartiality of unconcerned spec- 
 tators, careless of the result ; but with the breathless 
 eagerness of men whose all depends upon the issue. 
 
 It might seem indeed, in one view, an advantage io 
 
166 THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY 
 
 go to the study of religion and the search after truth 
 with minds and hearts unbiassed and unmoved, with no 
 previous prejudice of education, and no excitement of 
 hope, or anxiety of guilt and fear. Accordingly there 
 are some, even among professedly Christian parents, who 
 have avowed this principle in the training of the young ; 
 and there are not a few of the young themselves who, as 
 they advance to manhood, deem it a point of wisdom, or 
 of honour, to qualify themselves for the exercise of a 
 certain philosophic calmness in their spiritual inquiries, 
 by getting rid of whatever impressions of seriousness or 
 of awe the prayers and pious lessons of a holy home have 
 made. 
 
 But, not to speak of the impossibility of realizing such 
 a state of absolute equanimit} T , — even if it could be 
 realized, it would but ill agree with the nature of the 
 inquiry to be set on foot, and the proof to be taken. 
 The things which belong to your peace — which touch 
 the relation in which you stand to the high and holy 
 God, and your eternal prospects of weal or woe — are 
 not to be dealt with as matters of mere abstract specula- 
 tion ; and if you find that you can so deal with them — 
 with the same coolness with which you would cast up a 
 sum in figures, or calculate the movements of a distant 
 planet — so far from being in a fitting mood for appre- 
 hending them aright, you show that you are without the 
 capacity of apprehending them at all. The names of 
 God and duty, of holiness and sin, of death, and judg- 
 ment, and eternity, may be like the symbols or formulae 
 with which you work an algebraic equation ; but of the 
 
AND PEIVATE JUDGMENT. 167 
 
 realities which these names denote you take no account, 
 and form no conception. 
 
 Not such is the spirit in which the message of Heaven 
 to dying sinners on earth must be treated by those who 
 would understand its import, and prove all its contents. 
 The very ability to prove all things regarding it implies 
 a previous awakening ; and no man will ever truly 
 grapple with this inquiry, until his spirit has been not 
 merely inclined from its even balance, but shaken and 
 deeply moved to its very centre. How vain, therefore, 
 and visionary is the notion of leaving the mind uninflu- 
 enced by any suggestions from without, like a sheet of 
 blank paper, equally and impartially open for any or for 
 all opinions to be taken up by it ! How entirely con- 
 trary is all this to what is implied in proving all things! 
 In fact, this proving of all things in religion never is, in 
 any instance, self-originated ; it never is the spontane- 
 ous act of the soul simply seeking to adjust its theoretical 
 notions on the speculative merits of conflicting tenets and 
 systems, — at least, that is not what the apostle means 
 when he says, " Prove all things." No ; the kind of ex- 
 perimenting which he enjoins is gone into on the spur and 
 impulse of necessity, — with all the interest of a hungry 
 man seeking food — a drowning man catching at a rope 
 — a banished and broken-hearted child longing for recon- 
 ciliation to his father's bosom. 
 
 There is no risk, therefore, arising from the partial 
 dealings and one-sided appeals of parental training and 
 spiritual instruction ; nor need you dismiss all your pre- 
 conceived ideas, from whatever source derived, before you 
 
168 THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY 
 
 begin to exercise your own judgment on spiritual mat- 
 ters. On the contrary, it is only when the Holy Ghost 
 has thoroughly aroused and awakened you to real per- 
 sonal concern, by means of these very ideas, put into you 
 beforehand, at home, or in the church, — or if not thus, 
 by some other instrumentality of preventing grace, — and 
 it is only in so for as the feelings of intense earnestness, 
 which the Holy Ghost so calls forth, continue to sway and 
 command your whole soul, — that you can either begin, or 
 carry on, to any good purpose, that practical and expe- 
 rimental proving of all things which the apostle here 
 enjoins. 
 
 Again, secondly, as the trial must be earnest, so must 
 it be full — complete and comprehensive — taking in all 
 the elements of a right determination. " Prove all 
 things," is the apostle's injunction : put to the question 
 and experimentally test them all. Take nothing upon 
 trust — leave nothing unexamined and unascertained — 
 probe every wound to the bottom — search into the minut- 
 est ingredients of every healing balm. See that you are 
 not leaving unexplored some nook or corner in the secret 
 chambers of imagery within ; see that you are not over- 
 looking some flaw in the foundation of your house, which 
 seems to stand so sure ; make thorough work of your in- 
 quiry into all that concerns your relation to the eternal 
 God, and the state of your heart toward him. 
 
 Here, especially, there is room for self-deception — for 
 premature confidence and half-unconscious guile. When 
 the spirit of serious inquiry is awakened in any heart, 
 
AND TRIVATE JUDGMENT. 169 
 
 and the disposition to question what has hitherto been 
 assumed or taken for granted, — on a subject of such in- 
 terest as the saving of the soul, — the anxiety, which can 
 no longer be stifled, must in some way be met and satis- 
 fled ; and for this purpose the adversary plies all his arts. 
 He would gladly prevent the rising of this prying tem- 
 per altogether, by the manifold expedients of worldly dis- 
 sipation or religious formality, — soothing you in your 
 unconcern, and encouraging you to live at ease, as others 
 do. But when he finds that impossible, — when thoughts 
 of unforgiven sin, and an angry God, and a coming eter- 
 nity, prove too much for him, and the question of your 
 salvation can be staved off no longer, — he must contrive 
 to dispose of it. Nor is he at a loss how to do so. He 
 can shift his ground. But yesterday, he would persuade 
 you that it was fond dotage to trouble yourselves with 
 such matters at all. To-day — now that, in spite of his 
 persuasion, you have troubled yourselves — he must 
 manage you differently. Now, he commends your ear- 
 nestness : you do well to be interested, and even anxious; 
 you are right in thinking that these things are far too 
 serious and momentous to be left all at sea ; they mast 
 be proved, tested, ascertained, and settled. And so they 
 shall be ; there shall be no blinking of the question now, — ■ 
 no trifling with its awful magnitude; it shall be de- 
 cidedly grappled with and disposed of. The things about 
 which such uneasy doubts and misgivings have been 
 raised, shall be proved. 
 
 And proved they seem to be. For the subtile foe can 
 accommodate his procedure to this change of circum- 
 
170 THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY 
 
 stances, whether in the individual or in the public mind. 
 He would rather, perhaps, that these questions were not 
 raised ; but if they are raised, — if men insist on ceasing 
 to be frivolous, and become earnest and serious, — he can 
 deal with that fit or fashion also, and turn it to his own 
 account. He has his plausible solutions of difficulties, 
 when they are started, — his summary and shorthand 
 receipts for cutting inconvenient knots, and patching un- 
 seemly and uncomfortable rents in troublesome consciences. 
 If you must look into these things, which perhaps were 
 better let alone, you shall see how they may be arranged 
 and adjusted to your entire satisfaction. You may ex- 
 amine the whole machinery, and try it for yourself. And 
 so the adversary introduces you to a display of skilful 
 legerdemain, and passes upon your unpractised eye many 
 imposing changes and evolutions of specious forms, — as of 
 sacramental mysteries, and church order, and apostolical 
 succession, and fasts, and holidays, and penances, and 
 priestly absolutions, — till at last you begin to think that 
 you have got to the bottom of the whole scheme of salva- 
 tion. And so, having proved it all, and seen how it is 
 all set in order, you may be contented, and say — Return 
 unto thy rest, my soul ! 
 
 Such is the subtlety of Satan, and the fond simplicity 
 of the heart, slow to believe the truth of God, but credu- 
 lous of all besides. Alas ! how ready are men to be 
 imposed upon! Even when indifference gives way to 
 earnestness, as in the days in which we live, and things 
 once treated with entire neglect must be searched, and 
 proved, and settled, how slight a proof will do ! How 
 
ATsD PRIVATE JUDGMENT. lTl 
 
 easy is it to raise a cloud of dust, under cover of which 
 the bewildered eye, dazzled by some show} T visions in 
 the space between, shall miss the apprehension, both 
 of the bright glory that shines from heaven, and of the 
 pure peace which, under the shining of that glory, may 
 dwell on earth! 
 
 But it is not thus that you can comply with the 
 advice ; — Prove all things. On the contrary, the aim of 
 these devices of the adversary is to turn you away from 
 making any personal and experimental trial of these 
 tilings at all, and, certainly, to prevent you from trying 
 them thoroughly. In truth, the very art of such contriv- 
 ances lies in the skilful shifting of the question. Instead 
 of the things about which it really concerns you to in- 
 quire, and which really need to be proved to the utter- 
 most, other matters are substituted which can be more con- 
 veniently and more ostentatiously disposed of. What 
 else can be intended by this thrusting in of the things 
 which concern the Church, and the mystical value of its 
 ordination and its ordinances, when it is the tilings which 
 concern your own individual \ eace with your God that 
 have really awakened your anxiety, and which really 
 require to be immediately adjusted ? 
 
 But prove ye these things for yourselves — prove them 
 all — and prove them thoroughly. Make full proof of 
 your personal reconciliation to God. Be not deceived by 
 any slight healing of the hurt of your soul. Be not 
 diverted from what first and most urgently presses you, — 
 the subject of your peace with God, — by any extraneous 
 considerations, however plausible, — far less allow it to be 
 
172 THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY 
 
 thus superseded and set aside. Prove all things, — even 
 the things which the adversary would fain impose upon 
 you as a solution or a settlement of the question between 
 you, a sinner, and the holy God. Prove them, test them, 
 practically and experimentally try them, in reference to 
 that very question. Do they really solve or settle it ? 
 Do they really provide for the upholding of the sove- 
 reignty of the holy law, or the purging of the conscience 
 from dead works to serve the living God? Do they really 
 bring God's controversy with yon, and your enmity 
 against God, to an end, and give you enlargement of 
 heart in your walk with God ? Or may not this, after 
 all, be better accomplished by the free gift on God's part, 
 and the frank acceptance on yours, of instant and com- 
 plete forgiveness and favour, on the footing of that perfect 
 righteousness of his beloved Son, which his blessed Spirit 
 enables you to appropriate as your own ? " taste and 
 see that the Lord is good ! " 
 
 Once more, accordingly, in the third place, the trial 
 must be not merely earnest and full, but also fair. You 
 are to prove all things ; not that you may cast all aside 
 as naught, but that you may c! hold fast that which is 
 GOOD." If, indeed, the spirit in which you make trial of 
 the things of religion be the spirit of awakened personal 
 concern, and of a thorough-going determination to sift 
 matters to the uttermost, it will be the spirit, not of one 
 impatient of repose, but of one longing for rest and peace. 
 The spirit of impatience, which would unsettle all things, 
 and leave them all unsettled, is desultory and superficial. 
 
AND PKIVATE JUDGMENT. 173 
 
 But you are in search of a foundation on which you may 
 build; you look for that which, while " proving all things/' 
 you may " hold fast as good/' 
 
 But how, it may be asked, are you to recognize this 
 good ? By what test are you to ascertain it ? Surely by 
 the test of experience and experiment. For, undoubted^, 
 the appeal is here made to the self-evidencing power of 
 the truth, and the quality by which that which is really 
 good approves and commends itself to the earnest and 
 honest mind. What that quality is, it may be difficult 
 very precisely to define ; for it is a quality to be felt 
 rather than analyzed. But that there should be such a 
 quality is not unreasonable. For, on the one hand, what- 
 ever is good is itself of God ; and, on the other hand, the 
 trial of it, on the part of the anxious inquirer, is of God 
 also.- Both objectively, therefore, and subjectively, God 
 has a hand in this work of apprehending, among the " all 
 things" which are to be proved, the one tiling which is 
 to be " held fast as good." Objectively, he ordains the 
 good, and appoints it to be what it is : subjectively, he 
 dwells in you, opening your understanding and renewing 
 your will ; and hence a blessed harmony and correspond- 
 ence between his good and your apprehension of it. 
 And if we observe further, that the distinguishing feature 
 in what is good, according to the ordinance or mind of 
 God, is that it bears the impress of his glory, shining 
 forth in it as its chief end ; and that the ruling principle, 
 wrought by God in the heart of him who rightly proves 
 all things that he may hold fast that which is good, is 
 entire submission to his sovereignty, and the full recog- 
 
1 74 THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY 
 
 nition of his glory as being ever of necessity the first 
 and chief consideration to be attended to, — have we not 
 a sufficient explanation of the assurance of faith, grounded 
 on experience ? And have we not, at all events, ample 
 warrant for holding that God can verify and attest his 
 own good word to his own people, without the need of 
 any human authority of church or college to countersign 
 it ; nay, if lie so please, without the intervention of any 
 external testimony whatever ': 
 
 Surely to teach otherwise, — to allege that one who is 
 moved by God's own Spirit to prove all things, that he 
 may hold fast that which is good, cannot know that good, 
 or be sure of it, on Gods mere word alone, unless so-called 
 apostolic men come in with their traditions and mysteries, 
 to set to their seal, — is great presumption, to say the least 
 of it. The ministry and the sacraments are holy and 
 good as instruments ; but when they are made to come 
 in between the individual sinner and that God with whom 
 the individual sinner must settle his account alone, — 
 either in or out of Christ, the only Mediator, — they are 
 t<> be repelled and repudiated, as savouring of the spirit 
 of that man of sin who sitteth in the temple of God, 
 speaking as God, and showing himself that he is God. 
 
 Doubtle>> it is important to have arguments and rea- 
 sonings of a more palpable nature, by which you may 
 vindicate that which you hold fast as good, and be ready 
 to give an answer to every one that asketh you a reason 
 of the hope that is in you. In this view outward 
 and historical evidence i> valuable. But to your own 
 mind, the best and surest proof is, that you have tasted 
 
AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 1?5 
 
 and seen that God is good. " You have cast your burden 
 on the Lord, and have found that he sustains it, — you 
 have ventured your soul's peace on his word of promise, 
 and it has not failed you, — you know in whom you have 
 believed, and are persuaded that He is able to keep what 
 you have committed to him against that day, — you have 
 heard him yourselves, and know that this is indeed the 
 Christ, the Son of the living God." Yours is neither 
 the shrinking suspicion which, affecting to search all 
 things, will make proof or actual trial of none ; nor the 
 supercilious complacency which, with an air of superi- 
 ority over them all, will condescend to make a selection 
 of what pleases it in each. Yours is neither the vanity 
 of a sceptical, nor the pride of an eclectic, philosophy. 
 You give yourselves to this exercise of proving all things, 
 not as if you were the master of them all, but expecting 
 to find that which will assert the mastery over you, — 
 which will first of all lay hold of you, and which, there- 
 after, you will do well to hold fast. You go forward in 
 faith, — you go to meet your Lord ; and when he makes 
 himself known to you, you are wholly his. 
 
 In this spirit you search the Scriptures, and you find 
 that they carry their own authority and their own inter- 
 pretation along with them. Willing now to do the will 
 of God, }^ou know of the doctrine whether it be of God. 
 Prepared to recognize, as in God himself, so in every- 
 thing that is of God, the high attribute and prerogative 
 of absolute sovereignty, you see written -as with a sun- 
 beam, on every page of the Bible, the uncompromising 
 majesty of his law, and the unfettered freeness of his 
 
176 THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY. 
 
 grace. And convinced of sin on the one hand, and of 
 righteousness on the other, judged also yourselves by the 
 very things which you have been spiritually taught to judge 
 ■■ — you find yourselves " apprehended of Christ Jesus." 
 And you cannot but " hold fast that good thing for which 
 he has first of all laid fast hold on you" (Phil. iii. 12). 
 
 In this manner the word of Christ is proved by you ; 
 and being itself " quick and powerful, sharper than any 
 two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder 
 of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, a discerner of 
 the thoughts and intents of the heart," — that word, as the 
 candle of the Lord, searches your inward parts, and leads 
 you captive to that Saviour of whom it testifies, filling 
 you with "all joy and peace in believing," yea with "all 
 the fulness of God." Blessed experience, surely! Experi- 
 ment well worth the making ! Nor need there be an^ 
 delicacy or hesitation, any scruple or reserve. God's 
 word can certainly stand the test ; and you, fairly test- 
 ing it, may assure your hearts before God. 
 
 So David found, as he repeatedly testifies in his Psalms: 
 " As for God, his way is perfect ; the word of the Lord is 
 tried." It is tried or refined, — tested, as silver or fine gold, 
 in the experience of his people. God's word thus stands 
 the experimental test ; and accordingly " he is a buckler 
 to all them that trust in him" (2 Sam. xxii. 31 ; Ps. xviii. 
 30). " The words of the Lord are pure words ; as silver 
 tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times ;" — for 
 " Thou shalt keep thy poor ones, O Lord" (Ps. xii. 6, 7). 
 " Thy word is very pure " — well-tried or refined ; — ■ 
 " therefore thy servant lovetii it" (Ps. cxix. 110). And 
 
AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 177 
 
 Agur also bears a like testimony: "Every word of God 
 is pure" — it will stand the proof of any trial; — " He is a 
 shield to them that put their trust in him" (Prov. xxx. 5). 
 
 So also the Lord himself invites this trial of his words : 
 " Prove me now, and see if I will not open to you the 
 windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that 
 there shall not be room enough to receive it" (Mai. iii. 
 1 0). " Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." Prove 
 Him — not as the fathers did in the wilderness, when 
 they tempted God in unbelief, asking a sign, and saying, 
 " Can he give us meat in the desert ?" — but prove him by 
 proceeding on the faith of his blessed word, and making 
 trial of the grace which it provides. Prove him in all 
 things, — and prove all things in him ; and see if " his 
 grace will not be sufficient for you, if his strength will 
 not be made perfect in your weakness." 
 
 And the more helpless you are in your destitution and 
 infirmity, — the more utterly at a loss, — so much the more 
 satisfactorily may the experiment be made. Have you 
 sins that are going over your head and sinking you to 
 the lowest hell? Have you a heart that is hard, and 
 stubborn, and rebellious? Are you weary and heavy 
 laden? Are you restless, and dissatisfied, and disquieted 
 with many anxious thoughts and questions which you 
 cannot solve ? Ah ! go not to any earthly teacher, — 
 build not on any human authority; — prove all things for 
 yourself. It is your own case, and no other than yourself 
 can deal with it — no priest, no confessor, no holy father 
 or reverend brother in the Lord. Call no man master on 
 earth. Devolve on no man the care of your soul. Alone, 
 (5) . 13 
 
178 THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY 
 
 as if in all the universe of God there were no other poor 
 sinner besides thyself, — nor any saint whose goodness 
 might reach to thee ; alone, none of the people or of the 
 priesthood with thee ; alone, thou must dispose of this 
 question of thy relation to God, and of all the weighty 
 questions which hang on it. Thy sin is thine own ; thy 
 sorrow is thine own ; thy responsibility is all thine own. 
 And oh ! blessed be God, his word, his grace, his strength, 
 — all, all that is his, is thine own ; — thine directly and 
 immediately — thine freely and fully, without any inter- 
 vention of church or churchman, or sacrament or ceremony 
 — thine through the free Spirit " taking of what is 
 Christ's and showing it to thee •" if only thou wilt 
 consent to " know the things which are freely given to 
 thee of God," — if only thou wilt " prove all things, and 
 hold fast that which is good." And wherefore shouldst 
 thou refuse ? 
 
 Such, then, is the kind of trial which the apostle enjoins 
 you to make, in reference to all the things which belong- 
 to your peace, or which affect the glory of your God. It 
 must be an earnest, full, and fair inquiry ; and an inquiry, 
 above all, directed, not to the unsettling of all things in 
 the spirit of captious scepticism, but to the settlement 
 of the soul in quiet assurance and peace. That he has 
 never deeply believed who has never painfully doubted, 
 is almost a truism, as applicable to the experience of all 
 the higher order of minds. But there are two kinds of 
 doubt, — the scoffing and the sincere. And the distinction 
 between them may be briefly stated. The one class 
 
AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 179 
 
 prove all things, that they may find all to be naught; 
 they travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say it is all 
 barren. The other class prove all things, with hearts 
 yearning after something that they may hold fast, and 
 determined to hold fast that which is good. 
 
 Such also we hold to be the great Protestant doctrine 
 of the right, or rather the responsibility, of free inquiry 
 and of private judgment; as opposed, on the one hand, 
 to the sceptical philosophy which would deify man's 
 natural understanding, and on the other hand, to the 
 Homish or semi-Romish superstition, which would lay 
 prostrate the individual conscience before the general idol 
 of traditional interpretation and ecclesiastical authority. 
 The true Protestant spirit is not a mere negation, as 
 some pretend, both among its enemies and its professed 
 friends ; nor is it to be confounded with the rationalism, 
 liberalism, and latitudinarianism, of modern infidelity. 
 It is not a mere discoverer and destroyer of error ; — it 
 is a builder up of truth. It is not a spirit of cold 
 indifference, equally unconcerned about all systems; — 
 it is a spirit of warm and intense zeal ; not disposed 
 to doubt, but, on the contrary, heartily eager and 
 anxious to believe. It is the spirit which led Luther 
 through the marvellous experience by which he was fitted 
 for his great work of reformation. He proved all things, 
 — not like the gay apostle of atheistic French philosophy, 
 to catch a flaw in each on which his flippant wit might 
 fasten ; he proved all things, if by any means he might 
 find anywhere a place for the sole of his weary foot, — 
 some good worthy to be the object of the yearning spirit 
 
180 THE DUTY OF FEEE INQUIRY 
 
 of faith that was in him, — the spirit that could have no 
 rest until it attained, not to that sense of universal 
 uncertainty in which the scoffing unbeliever found his 
 miserable satisfaction, but to that full assurance in which, 
 as a meek believer, he might rejoice in peace and friend- 
 ship with his Father and his God. 
 
 It is a poor device of controversy which would con- 
 found these two tempers together, and represent them 
 both as equally the legitimate types of the Reformation. 
 But be not ye deceived. Be not lightly defrauded of 
 your birthright, nor, with all its attendant anxieties and 
 responsibilities, be content to sell it for the mess of pot- 
 tage with which an apostolic Church, or a priestly order, 
 would stay the cravings of your hunger. Rather be 
 content still to hunger and thirst after righteousness that 
 you may be filled ; — filled, not with what comes through 
 man's hands, and is cooked up artificially to serve bis 
 purposes, — but with the bread of life which comes direct 
 from heaven, even Christ himself, in whom is all the 
 fulness of God, — and with the water of life, which Christ 
 gives, and which is in him who receives it "a well of 
 water springing up into everlasting life/' Thus taking 
 nothing upon trust or at second-hand, but hearing for 
 yourselves and judging for yourselves, you will find true 
 and satisfying rest to your souls ; and you will go on from 
 strength to strength rejoicing, until at last you appear 
 before God in Zion, where " in his presence is fulness of 
 joy, and at his right hand are pleasures for evermore." 
 
 II. The general views which we have been enforcing may 
 
AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 181 
 
 be applied to tlie season of youth, with special reference 
 to the aspect of the present times. 
 
 To explain and enforce the great principle of this text 
 is always seasonable; but it seems peculiarly so in its 
 application to the place which you occupy who are in 
 the prime and vigour of your opening manhood. Con- 
 sidering your position, — engaged as you are in the studies 
 and pursuits of youth, exposed to its temptations, and 
 looking forward to a speedy entrance on the scenes of 
 busy life and of an earnest age, — it is especially important 
 to press upon your earnest regard the precept, " Prove all 
 things; hold fast that which is good." 
 
 " Get wisdom," says the wise man ; " and with all thy 
 fretting, rret understanding." In the multitude of your 
 engagements and inquiries, forget not to ascertain the 
 chief good, and delay not to make it your own. " It is 
 good," says the apostle, " that the heart be established 
 with grace;" and it is especially good that }^our hearts be 
 so established now. 
 
 Ah ! who can calculate the amount of mischief which 
 has flowed to many a youth in generations now past and 
 gone, from their leaving the question of their relation to 
 God unsettled in their early days, and postponing even 
 the serious raising of it till a more convenient season? 
 How easily do they who so act become a prey to worldly 
 indifference, or religious formality, or spiritual delusion of 
 some sort ! Let a young man, who has never learned to 
 bring this question to a fair issue and a final settlement, 
 — who has been familiar with the influences and examples 
 of godliness around him, and has had his impressions, and 
 
182 THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY 
 
 misgivings, and awakenings, but has never made thorough 
 work of his soul's salvation, — let such a one find himself 
 among sceptics and scoffers, — or even among the gay and 
 the worldly, who care neither to believe nor to deny the 
 gospel; — how is he guarded against the frivolous liber- 
 ality which, treating with a light jest, or a quaint personal 
 remark, the things which should be thoroughly proved, — 
 the systems and societies, in every one of which there is 
 either God's truth or the devil's lie, — finds good worth 
 holding fast in none of them, or finds it equally in all ? 
 Or, — as in these days of increasing earnestness is perhaps 
 more likely, — should he fall into distress and disquietude 
 of soul — should old recollections haunt him, or new re- 
 lentings come upon him — when he meets with those who 
 have a charm for all his wounds, in the mere name of 
 baptism, or in the routine of church order and the multi- 
 plying of church ordinances, what is there to hinder him 
 from laying down his aching head to rest on the bosom 
 of the mother Church that so soothingly invites him to 
 repose in her arms ? 
 
 How necessary, therefore, is it that you should learn 
 now, ere these trials come, to " prove all things, and to 
 hold fast that which is good!" And be persuaded to 
 make a perfect as well as immediate work of this proof. 
 Begin it in good faith ; carry it through with good reso- 
 lution. Shrink from no pain which it may give, and no 
 sacrifice which it may require. Trifle not with any 
 movements of the good Spirit of God in you; and do not 
 seek a slight or partial healing of the hurt of your soul. 
 Rest satisfied with no plausible presumptions as to your 
 
AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 183 
 
 eternal safety, — no vague hopes as to your state, or your 
 heart, being right before God. Search the matter to the 
 bottom. Realize your actual position, as in the sight of 
 Him who is not mocked. Make a thorough surrender of 
 yourself, on the faith of His word who cannot lie. Take 
 nothing for granted, leave nothing unsettled, that at all 
 affects the footing on which you are to be with God, and 
 the dispositions and affections which you are to cherish 
 towards him. Let there be no suspense — no hesitancy 
 here. Why indeed should there be any? How, properly, 
 can there be any ? What is the inquiry ? Are you at 
 enmity or at peace with God? Are you still guilty and 
 estranged from him, or are you through grace reconciled? 
 Are you on the Lord's side, or on the world's and the 
 Devil's ? 
 
 Are these not points which can be ascertained? Are 
 they not points which should be ascertained? Was it 
 not for this very end that Jesus died, and rose, and 
 revived, and commanded his gospel to be preached, and 
 sent forth his Holy Spirit, — the seal of your calling and 
 the earnest of your inheritance, — that on these points 
 there mio-ht be no more uncertaintv, or ambiguous waver- 
 ing between hope and fear, but full assurance and perfect 
 peace ? 
 
 O that the young, while yet their minds are keen and 
 their hearts are warm, would consider this — that they 
 would consent to become as little children, and as little 
 children, with full, unhesitating trust, enter, once for all, 
 into the kingdom of God ! Be sure it is the vague and 
 unsatisfactory uncertainty in which the question of your 
 
] 84 THE DUTY OF FEEE INQUIRY 
 
 personal salvation is left, that exposes you to the danger 
 of being tempted to try Satan's refuges of lies. If only 
 you once make trial of God's own haven of rest, — the 
 heart and home of your reconciled Father in heaven, — 
 no seductions of an evil world, no sophistries of a corrupt 
 religion, will ever prevail with you to seek other relief 
 from sin, or other comfort in sorrow, than God's free 
 grace affords. If only you once realize, in your own 
 experience, the blessed gladness and unutterable joy of 
 that hour when, seems: you afar off, as with trembling 
 steps } T ou venture on the experiment of a return to him- 
 self, your Father meets you and takes you into his arms, 
 and with not a word or a look of upbraiding makes you 
 at once and for ever his dear child — never, never after- 
 wards, would you dream of going back to the husks which 
 you would once fain have eaten ! 
 
 And if any poor formalist would persuade you that it 
 is the ring on your finger, or the robe on your shoulders, 
 or the shoes on your feet, that constitute your title to 
 your Father's favour, and give you a place in your Father's 
 house — No ! you would indignantly exclaim — not these ! 
 — all precious as they are, and dearly as I prize them, 
 in their right place, as seals and pledges of my Father's 
 kindness ; — not these ! If they are to be so spoken of 
 and so applied, I cast them as worthless baubles away. 
 Not these at all are the warrant or ground of my assur- 
 ance — not any such gifts dispensed, or offices rendered, 
 by my Father's servants — but the free love and sure 
 word of my Father himself, as in the warmth of his 
 embrace I feel the kiss of reconciliation on my lips, and 
 
AND PEIVATE JUDGMENT. 185 
 
 hear his own gracious accents thrilling through all niy 
 frame, " This rny son was dead, and is alive again ; was 
 lost, and is found/' 
 
 We exhort you to seek assurance before God ; to be 
 satisfied with nothing but assurance. "We press this upon 
 you, not only as a privilege to be desired, but as a duty 
 to be discharged. It is your only safety amid the divers 
 and strange doctrines with which men are carried about ; 
 — it is your only safety amid the manifold devices of 
 Satan ; — it is your only defence against mental anarchy 
 on the one hand, and mental bondage on the other ; — to 
 have early and thoroughly ascertained for yourselves the 
 truth of God, and your own position before God — to 
 have proved all things, and to be holding fast that which 
 is good. 
 
 Be not afraid, in this matter, to go directly to the 
 point — to deal directly with God, and suffer God to deal 
 directly with you. Be sure that " the truth in the 
 inward parts" which God " desireth," and which his own 
 Spirit of truth implants — meeting with the truth which 
 came, with grace, by Jesus Christ, and which the same 
 Spirit of truth manifests to the conscience — this truth 
 within, meeting with that truth from without, from 
 above, and recognizing its majesty and its right to rule, 
 — must insure conviction, so that your soul may " return 
 unto its rest when the Lord hath dealt bountifully 
 with you" — and must give also enlargement of heart, 
 so that you may K run in the way of his precepts, and 
 walk at liberty when you have respect to all his com- 
 mandments." Pilate, in his helpless embarrassment, may 
 
186 THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY, ETC. 
 
 ask, "What is truth?" Priest, or prelate, or holy father, 
 in his fond dotage or lordly pride, may bid you take the 
 truth on trust from him or from his church, and tell you 
 that otherwise you can have no reply to Pilate's question 
 at all. But "if ye continue in Christ's words, then are 
 ye his disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and 
 the truth shall make you free." 
 

 
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