*' fV: SAelf. PRINCETON, N. J. "^'' Division.. Section .. Number,. ,.b.a.3. *•> %^ '^^ '•' '«?^'^i4t^.'^ / Btf; » !»- ♦ S f- . -^ I ' •». ' lit- 'V: :?r ,\' ,V ; ^ 'J. I, r -? - r < CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY ^g t^e sanw ^ut^or. CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON THE CHURCH OF CHRIST AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Crown Svo, 7s. 6d. CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY By the late FREDERIC TMYERS, M.A. PERPETUAL CURATE OF ST. JOHN's, KESWICK LONDON DALDY, ISBISTER & CO. S6 LUDGATE H ILL, 1879 COLSTON AND SON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. CONTENTS. THE THIRD BOOK. PAGE I. — Difference between the Bible and other books. . i II. — It is the Record of many Revelations. . . 3 III. — The Revelations are progressive. ... 5 IV. — They are based on the principle of Accommodation. lo V. — The education of man is progressive. . . 12 VI. — The Record of Revelation not necessarily infallible. 18 VII. — Imperfection of all vpritten language. . . 20 VIII. — Revelation invariable in substance, variable in form. 23 IX. — Divine communications not confined to past ages. . 29 X.— The Unity of the Bible. . . . . 31 XI. — Relation between the Jewish and Christian Scrip- tures. ...... 37 XII. — A spiritual interpretation of Revelation necessary. 40 XIII. — Arguments in favour of literal infallibility. . 43 XIV. — What kind of book the analogy of Nature would lead us to expect. .... 46 XV. — The lesson which is taught by the analogy of his- tory. ... ... 49 XVI. — The blending of the Human and Divine in the Bible — a reflex of God's spiritual dealings with men. ...... S^ XVII. — The Bible, a providential inheritance, not a miracu- lous gift. ...... 5^ sviil. — Formation and preservation of the Canon of Old Testament Scriptures. . . . . 5^ XIX. — Formation of the Canon of New Testament Scrip- 62 -Facts concerning existing copies of the Holy Scrip- tures. ...... CONTENTS. XXI.— Discrepancies between different parts of the Bible. XXII. — Contradiction between the spirit of Old and New Testament. .... XXIII. — Further remarks on the principle of Accommoda tion. ..... XXIV. — Our Lord's testimony as to the authority of the Jewish Scriptures. XXV. — Difference between substantial Divineness and literal Infallibility. XXVI. — Our Lord recognises the principle of Accommoda tion. ..... XXVII. — Principle of Accommodation apparent in our Lord': whole life and teaching. . XXVIII. — Testimony of our Lord with respect to the Law. XXIX. — Quotations from the Scriptures made by our Lord. XXX. — Principle of Accommodation apparent in the Teach ing of the Apostles. XXXI. — Differences and coincidences in the New Testament XXXII. — Quotations from the Old Testament in the New. XXXIII. — Objections to the views of Revelation here advo cated. ..... XXXIV. — The craving for an external standard of infallibility XXXV. — Revelation not imperilled by honest and reverent criticism. .... XXXVI. — Impossibility of drawing any definite line of separa tion between the human and divine. XXXVII. — The perpetual inspiration of the Holy Spirit. XXXVIII. — An infallible record would require an infallible in terpreter. .... XXXIX. — The principles here maintained are affirmative, not negative. .... XL. — Difficulties of the opposite view. XLI. — Qualifications of a student of Holy Scripture. XLii. — Qualifications of a student unacquainted with Hebrew and Greek. XLIII. — Human learning not opposed to spiritual insight. XLIV. — The simplicity and the difficulties of spiritualism. XLV. — Does criticism necessarily involve or lead to scepti cal unbelief. .... XLVI. — A plea for reverent criticism. PAGE 71 CONTENTS. vii PAGE XLVii. — Is the Bible thereby impoverished in significance? i6i XLViii. — Superiority of the Bible over all other sacred books. 163 XLix. — This superiority only enhanced by the principles here advocated. ..... 168 L. — The Scriptures contain an everlasting revelation, and lead us to perfect faith in God Himself. . 171 THE FOURTH BOOK. I. — Theology, or the study of the relations betvi^een God and man. ..... 181 II. — Theology a need of man's nature. . . . 184 III. — Various theological systems. Physical Theology. . 1S7 IV. — Metaphysical Theology. .... 190 V. — Biblical Theology. . . . . .192 VI. — Biblical Theology — its relation to systems of Philo- sophy. ...... 194 VII. — Biblical Theology, its relation to criticism and his- tory. ...... 198 VIII. — Systematic Theology at best provisional, not perfect. 205 IX. — Systematic Theology unknown to the Jews. . 210 X. — No Systematic Theology in the New Testament Scriptures. . . . . . 212 XI. — Objections to these assertions : faith opposed to reason. . . . . . .218 XII. — Faith opposed to conscience. . . . 223 xni. — Necessary assumptions in all theological arguments. 227 XIV. — Theology in relation to special dogmas : Election. 232 XV. — Teaching on Election in the Old and New Testa- ment Scriptures. ..... 235 XVI. — Theology in relation to special dogmas — Sin and Atonement. ..... 240 XVII. — History of the universal feeling of the need of sacrifice. 243 XVIII. — The Atonement the centre of the Christian religion. 247 XIX. — Revelation in relation to evidence : internal and external. . . . . . .251 XX. — Miracles. ...... 255 XXI. — Self-evidencing nature of revelation. . . 259 XXII. — External not to be placed before internal evidence. 263 viii CONTENTS. PACE XXIII. — Christianity based on the unseen and eternal. . 266 XXIV. — Christianity the revelation of the unseen in the seen — God in Christ. .... 269 XXV. — Relation of Judaism and Christianity. . . 272 XXVI. — ^Judaism a transitional dispensation. . . 275 XXVII. — Judaism typical of Christian truth, but adapted to a lower standard of ethics. . . , 278 XXVIII. — Facts concerning the civil and religious polity of the Jews — Moses and Solomon. . . . 282 XXIX. — Facts concerning Solomon and the Captivity. . 286 XXX. — Return from Babylon, and the advent of Christianity. 290 XXXI. — Future destiny of the Jews. .... 292 XXXII. — Present isolation of the Jews among other nations. 299 XXXIII. — General principles in the interpretation of Prophecy. 306 XXXIV. — Further illustration of these principles. . . 316 XXXV. — Prophecies of the New Testament. . . . 323 XXXVI. — The problem of Heathenism. . . . 328 XXXVII. — Objections to the methods here proposed — their justification. ..... 333 XXXVIII. — Requirements of the Christian ministry. . . 338 XXXIX. — Study of the history of Christian doctrine. . 342 XL. — Gradual and progressive development of Christian doctrine. .... . . XLi. — The dealing of Chrisitanity with the evils existing in the world. ..... XLI I. — Constitution of the Roman Church. XLiii. — Relative positions of the Roman and Protestant Churches. ..... 360 XLIV. — Central principles of Protestantism. . . 363 XLV. — The principles of Protestantism constructive as well as destructive. ..... 367 XLVI. — Possibilities of Christian union. . . . 372 XLVil. — Protestantism implies progression. . . . 374 XLViii. — Present position of Christians. . . . 378 XLix. — The Christianity of the future. . . . 381 L. — Christianity a final revelation. . . . 387 Postscript. ...... 397 347 352 357 PREF The object of the following pages is to present some suggestions respecting the study of the Bible and of Theology which may assist earnest inquirers in the forma- tion of opinions at once enlightened and spiritual. And such suggestions seem at this time peculiarly required : for the present ecclesiastical controversies cannot much longer continue to be of interest for the more thoughtful, but will probably for such be superseded by others relating to questions of far deeper import, and of far more difficult solution. Indeed after a few years it will probably seem simply humiliating that questions which had been so fre- quently and so fully discussed in past ages, with every- where uniformly the same kind of results, should have been supposed by us, without new data, to admit of any decisions essentially different from those which our fathers had so deliberately and repeatedly and emphatically pro- nounced. It cannot surely be long before it will be seen that there really never can be but one fundamental eccle- siastical question, which is this : whether the Idea of the Christian Church includes as essential a mediatorial priest- hood, or exclusive caste of any kind, through which alone the blessings of Christianity can be conveyed and received : for if this be decided in the affirmative, there can be no X PREFACE. doubt whatever but that the Church of Rome possesses least ambiguously such a prerogative of priesthood, and in submission to it all other questions are virtually deter- mined : or if it be decided in the negative, then there will be felt to be devolved upon the individual the respon- sibility of determining for himself, by the fullest and freest inquiry possible for him, the essential requirements of the Gospel. Now it is to any who have finely decided this great question in the negative, that these pages are offered as an aid in those further inquiries in which such a deci- sion must involve them. Among the first and chief of such inquiries must certainly be investigations respecting the authority and significance of that only remaining guide which professes to have special power to lead us heavenwards — the Sacred Scriptures : and then respecting the value of those Theological traditions which embody the results of our predecessors' interpreta- tion of these Scriptures. And in the first portion of such inquiries, it at present appears to the writer of these pages that, before any permanently satisfactory result can be arrived at, there must be spoken some words likely to disturb the present opinions and feelings of the Christian majority among us. It appears to him that the claims which the Sacred Scriptures make for themselves, and those which are commonly made for them, are in some consider- able measure diverse, and in some less degree incompa- tible : and that this being more and more felt to be the case, injury is constantly and increasingly arising to many from this conflict of claims — injury which might be greatly mitigated, if not wholly removed, by some calm and judicial adjustment of them. The existence of this injury is ad- PREFACE. X mitted very generally now, but of course the degree of it will be very variously measured by various minds according to their differing experience and sympathies. The present writer has been led to estimate that injury as very great. He knows that there are some — he believes that there are many — in almost every province of thought and of society, who are sufferers from popular injustice in this matter. There are not a few indeed who are driven into a very tumult of doubt, and are on the verge of more than scepti- cism, chiefly in consequence of claims being made for Holy Scripture which they believe that facts contradict, and of these claims being dogmatically declared to be the lowest which are consistent with elementary attainments in Chris- tian truth, or even with any honesty of Christian profession. And others there are who having coming to the conviction that the popular tenets are untenable by them, and yet being prevented by more practical duties, or incapacitated by their educational deficiencies, from engaging in the in- vestigations necessary to satisfy their minds as to the due extent of reserve which they ought to make in receiving the common traditions, are either on the point of giving up all independent thought on such matters and unintelligently acquiescing in the habits of those around them, or are al- ways in bondage to the fear of transgressing the legitimate boundaries of freedom and of reverence. Such persons, it is thought, have great claims upon the aid of any of their brethren who, though wanting in many of those endow- ments and acquisitions with which these are blessed, yet have what they have not — either the leisure or the faculty for such investigations : and it is for the sake of such per- sons — persons in a state of doubt and difficulty, dissatisfied xu PREFACE. with the old solution of scriptural problems but not know- ing of the new — that these pages will be written. All others are here distinctly forewarned that they will very probably meet in them with the discussion of subjects which it will require a very large measure of calmness and of courage for them to engage in, and that there is no prospect of any- thing but discomfort to them, if they are at present quite satisfied with the opinions more generally received among the religious of our time and country. Doubtless to any serious and sensitive mind it is a very grave thing to do, thus to enter into investigations which must almost unavoidably trouble any weak brethren into whose hands they may possibly fall : to the present writer it is one so grave as to be excitingly solemn, and nothing could encourage or enable him to undertake it but the belief that it is his duty to impart some of the best fruits which he has been, or may be, enabled to obtain from in- vestigations which he has been permitted peculiar oppor- tunities to pursue, and the consciousness that he has no inducement of any kind for forming any partial or unjust judgment. To do so is truly for him no act of intellectual, or other, self-indulgence, but rather one of considerable self-denial : and it is meant purely as an offering of Chris- tian charity to some few who, amid many other greater gifts, may lack that one with which he has been favoured — the opportunity of unembarrassed and unbiassed contem- plation. And after all it may not unfairly be said, that tenderness to the weak, though a high duty, is by no means the highest, nor is it nearly the only one, in such matters as these : and that so long as the claims of the less strong upon our sympathy are sedulously recognised and respected, PREFACE. xiii it may very lawfully be permitted us to attempt to furnish food more convenient for those who have their senses exercised to discern the subtler forms of good and evil. And he who knows much, or even only a little, of the modes of thought and feeling which exist among the more cultivated members of the various Churches of Christendom, will know that the questions herein discussed are no super- fluous novelties, but that they are emphatically the questions which have for some time already engaged the frequent and careful attention of some of the foremost minds of our time, and are now deeply interesting many of those who are the most earnest. For indeed it is not only the least spiritual, but often rather the most so, who are engaged in such investigations, and who have come to conclusions which widely diverge from those which are with us at present the most popular. Among such are certainly some who per- sonally realise the Christian ideal as fully as any who differ from them in opinion — men whose evangelical graces and good deeds might be coveted by any, and who in sympa- thy with the spirit of the New Testament, and in zeal for the propagation of its characteristic revelations, are not inferior to any of their generation. Doubtless, on the other hand, there are many most pious persons, who occupy prominent stations in their several churches, and who are doing admirable service on the whole to the great cause of christ, who are not aware, and cannot even be made so, of the difficulties which are felt by many on the subject of the composition and significance of the Sacred Scriptures, and who treat all expression of doubt concerning them as the mere indication of latent iniquity of heart, or of presumptuous abuse of the understanding, xiv PREFACE. They consider that state of mind which these pages would treat with sympathy and with reasoning so much a sin that it ought to be met only with stern rebuke and solemn warning, and if with pity yet also with denunciation equally commingled. For such this book can have but little in- terest, save of a painful kind : they can only regard it as an unlawful concession to the presumptuous claims of the natural mind, to be protested against on all fitting occa- sions, and if possible counteracted. But at the same time such should remember that in proportion to the greatness of the sin with which they charge their brethren ought to be not only their confidence in their own integrity, but the carefulness of their inquiries into the reasonableness of their own belief. So long as they merely follow the human traditions which they have received from their predecessors, and attach to them an uninquiring reverence, they are but too nearly repeating errors which have been Divinely re- buked to be worthy of especial respect ; and if while sus- pecting the truth, they refuse to seek it because they fear that it may be dangerous to their old habits of thought and feeling, or to any merely personal interests, their belief or unbelief, their assent or dissent, concerning the matters to be herein treated of, must be regarded by the present writer as alike indifferent. As regards the second portion of the inquiries with which these pages will be engaged, there will probably be found to exist the same difficulties and disadvantages, as Theology is with us so largely based on the letter of Scripture, and must of consequence be correspondingly affected by what- ever may affect our hermeneutical and exegetical principles in our Scriptural studies. But whoever is, or has been, a PREFACE. XV Student of popular English Theology, and has had an opportunity of comparing it with that of other churches, will assuredly deem it capable of improvement in many ways, and more especially by expansion. By such an one it cannot but be regarded as too much a product of our insular culture, and as bearing traces throughout it all of the various epochs which have characterised the progress of our national history. Nor will such an one fail to remark how singularly rigid it is : how it is textual, verbal, every way literal, beyond all others : not simply based upon Biblical principles, but chiefly constructed of Biblical ele- ments ; treating the Bible as the whole revelation of the ways of GOD, and professing to be governed equally by its letter and its spirit. The good and evil of such a state it is not intended here to weigh and adjust, but only to take occasion from the statement of the fact to suggest that, such being the case, it is above all things important for us to consider frequently with patience the grounds of our methods of Scriptural interpretation; inasmuch as where false views are admitted in these, the erroneous Theological consequences following from them in our case will probably be more numerous than in any other, and the eradication of them produce interferences with popular traditions more important. And what is true of our Theology, is true of all Theology hitherto propounded : in a less degree indeed, but still in a degree which renders it very desirable that the study of it should henceforth be more careful and less dogmatic than it has been. For truly the errors of Theology, as well as those of Theologians, have been the direct cause of much irreverence towards the Bible. It has been, and is, the fearful manner in which the xvi PREFACE. Bible's holy words and blessed revelations have been made to minister to human presumption and uncharitableness, and to sanction many kinds of ignorance, that has involved the Scriptures themselves in something of the same aver- sion with which almost all Theologies have not altogether unreasonably been treated : and it is this, too, which com- pels those who would fain speak only of the glory and the beauty of the Bible — of its heavenly power to heal the soul's sicknesses and to satisfy the heart's inmost needs — to define and to measure the limits of its mission, and to separate between the venerable vesture and the sacred substance which it clothes. But while speaking thus of the degree in which the writer foresees that these pages will probably differ from the more generally received traditions concerning both the signifi- cance of the Scriptures and the value of Theology, it must at the same time be said that at present he does not perceive that essential Christianity is in any way prejudiced by such difference ; but, on the contrary, he is full of hope that it may be hereby cleared from incumbrances which hitherto have impeded its progress and obscured its evi- dence. At present, indeed, he believes that it is by changes far less extensive than much of the later criticism would demand, that a conciliation may be honestly effected be- tween progressive scholarship and traditional faith : and that many recent speculations, both in this country and abroad, are in some considerable measure the mere tempo- rary consequences of that state of re-action which has almost always been found to take place after a period of undue exaction and restraint. And also so far as it may be allowable to prophesy at all, it may be said that the PREFACE. xvii ecclesiastical disputes of our time and country are likely to produce among us for some years to come an unhealthy scepticism as to more important matters, on the part of many of those who have been attracted to religious subjects by the large promises which these discussions held out to them, but have ultimately found such discussions to be only deceptive and unprofitable. Any effort to obtain unjust dominion which fails can scarcely do otherwise than in- crease disproportionately the desire for liberty ; and so much so, that for a while nothing is deemed liberty but that which at other times would be deemed licence. The faith of a healthy mind, however, tends always to calmness and to reverence, and when the excitement of the present ecclesiastical fever has passed off (as it assuredly must do soon), though it may leave a temporary exhaustion of strength and irritability of nerve, it will doubtless be followed by that normal state of the spiritual powers which will suffice for the impartial determination of the greater questions which must inevitably succeed. And it is sup- posed that such suggestions as may he here recorded, may have some special value for this very reason, that they will be the result of studies carried on with a clear foresight and full appreciation of the danger of such injurious and dis- turbing influences. Finally ; it is not within the plan of the following pages to enter in detail upon the criticism connected with the multipHed subjects herein intended to be spoken of: the object of this book rendering it unnecessary, as this is not to display generally the grounds for doubt and controversy which exist in connection with Biblical and Theological studies, but to meet the wants and remove the dissatis- xviii PREFACE. factions of those who have already been disturbed, and it may be distressed, by long being conversant with such criti- cism. But at the same time these thoughts are addressed not especially to the learned, but emphatically to the thoughtful of all classes — to the earnest truthful student whatever be his stage of scholarship — and every one of such will here be put in possession of such outlines of the case as may be necessary for forming a just judgment upon it, or at least of substantially the same means for so judging as the writer himself has. Implicitly indeed there may readily be traced many references to the opinions of many individuals and societies, of these and of other times, but explicitly there will be none designedly : it being desired to present the subjects herein treated of unencum- bered by the prejudices almost invariably accompanying names and denominations, individual and ecclesiastical. May THE HOLY SPIRIT guidc us into all necessary truth, and guard us from all considerable error, for jesus Christ's sake. Amen. 20th Septe?nber 1841. CATHOLIC THOUGHTS THE THIRD BOOK THE BIBLE ^OPERTY^ T3 T? T TT P, V. rnQTT THSOLOGIGi:L CATHOLIC THOUGHTS THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. THE Books commonly called the Bible contain special Difference between revelations of the will of god, and the only written ^^e Bible ones extant upon earth. They constitute a volume which and other is a Divine supplement to the laws of nature and of con- science : a body of doctrines and of precepts which, when rightly received, are able to make men wise unto salvation, and without which no man can be perfectly instructed in righteousness, or thoroughly furnished unto good works. These writings therefore as a whole are generically different from all others in character and authority: of incomparably greater dignity, of immeasurably higher worth, even em- phatically sacred : a special Divine gift to man wholly in- estimable, and one which it is impossible to regard with too much either of reverence or of gratitude. Indeed clearly on its first aspect there lies an impress of Divinity on the Bible not visible elsewhere : the Spirit of god so moves upon the face of its pages, that compared with all other Scriptures the Bible is holy, they profane. This book is a record not merely of the most valuable of man's speculations and dis- £ 2 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON coveries concerning truth, but emphatically of god's Re- velations and instructions concerning it : not merely an exposition of such laws and precepts as the reasonings and intuitions and sentiments of men have agreed to pronounce the wisest and the worthiest, but of such direct and special communications of the Divine Spirit to the spirits of indivi- dual men as disclose purposes of god, and sanctions of duty, and promises of help, which no man by searching could find out, but which it is the everlasting life of man to take heed to, and his spiritual death to disregard. And it is not only thus a providential depository of certain Reve- lations of truth and duty which have been made at sundry times and in extraordinary manners, without the anticipa- tion or effort of men, and even often contrary to their will, and ordained of god as a special scheme of education for a portion of His creatures on earth : but it is also a register of the workings of god's Spirit on man's in all ages of the world from the first, divinely ordered and preserved for the instruction of all men of all time, so that its facts, as well as its precepts, constitute a special manifestation of god's character and will. And also when we look even for a moment at the history of this book, and carefully endeavour to contemplate the influence for good which it has exerted in the world, and the grand web of interests and events which have been, and which are, connected with it, we must ever regard it with feelings such as never can be associated with any other on earth. The number of the individual souls which this book has nourished and blessed, and the magnitude and variety of the institutions to which it has given rise — how it has mingled itself with the deepest thoughts and THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 3 feelings and utterances of men, and how this has been more and more the case the more spiritual and cultured the ages have become — these, too, are considerations which at once and alone must compel every religious soul to render a homage to the Bible the most sincere and the most profound. But though the Bible is this, and very much more than it is the this, it is not either a Revelation concerning all necessary ^^^^o''^ knowledge, or wholly Revelation at all. It is rather only a Revela- Divine communication of such portion of necessary know- ledge concerning man's origin and destiny, his duties and his hopes, as he could not of himself conclusively deter- mine. Its whole aim throughout is ethical and spiritual : it is concerned altogether with the formation of man's character through the exhibition of god's; its subject and object are essentially one — the education of the soul of man for re-union with his Maker. And thus too the Bible is not merely, or chiefly, a book of maxims and of precepts every- where formally didactic, but it is a history also of Divine acts, and of the unfolding of Divine ideas, continually manifesting the superintendence of a Divine sovereignty : not a history of the world, or of all god's Providence in it, but only of one kingdom and society, which was elected out of the rest to exhibit principles applicable to all king- doms and societies, and to preserve certain privileges with which it was provisionally endowed in order that they might ultimately be extended to the whole race of man. And therefore though the Bible is a book so sacred and 4 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON unique as a whole, it is one of very composite character and very complex construction, made up of parts, and con- taining materials, of quite various kinds. It is not one record of one Revelation, but a series of records of many Revelations, made at sundry times and in divers manners. It is a collection of Scriptures which extend over a period of fifteen hundred years, the most modern of which is more than seventeen centuries old, and the earliest of which cannot have an antiquity of less than three thousand years. And these writings are as various in their forms as they are in their dates : comprising the earliest traditions of our race : genealogies and biographies : abstracts of national chronicles and details of domestic narrations ; visions and prophecies : songs and prayers : proverbs and parables and epistles : and varieties of composition nowhere else to be met with. In fact the Bible is not so 'much a book as it is a library : by no means mdeed an encyclopaedia, or sys- tematic exposition of all the truths and facts which it is necessary for man to know, but rather a vast series of documents more justly bound together by spiritual than by literal bonds : constituted into one coherent whole rather by the Providence of god than by any wisdom of man. The Bible therefore ought always to be considered only as a partial and not as an universal Revelation, and as rather a providential than a miraculous gift of god to man. It is but a part of a large system of Divine influence on man, the complete elements of which we cannot number, and the whole boundaries of which we cannot measure. Scripture Revelation is only that part of god's Revelation of Himself which is written — it is by no means the whole. All the constitution of the realms of matter and of spirit THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 5 with which we are conversant or of which we are conscious, are Divine adaptations and aids to human culture, and the Bible, as it has already been said, is but as a supplement to these, or rather perhaps their complement. And also, the Bible is not the Revelation itself, but only the record of the Revelation : and many modifica- tions of its value, and of our views of it, are introduced by this consideration. There may be a large element that is purely human thus connected with it. The Bible cannot therefore necessarily be considered as an utterance of pure truth, as if it were a Divine dictation registered as supernaturally as it was revealed : for however pure the Revelation may have been when first made, yet the recording of that Revelation may have been subject to all the infirmities which are characteristic of ordinary human Scriptures. III. And when we examine, however superficially, the contents The Re- of this composite volume which we so justly term Holy ^re pro- Scripture, we see further that it is naturally divisible, as it g^essive. is commonly divided, into two distinct parts — the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures — parts separated from each other by an interval of more than four hundred years in the dates of their composition, and by their being written in different languages. We see also that the Divine utterances which the older Scriptures contain are more frequently than otherwise addressed to special hearers and accommodated to their peculiar circumstances. And not only this : but by far the larger part of this earlier division is occupied with 6 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON history rather than with Revelation — a history doubtless which has a certain supernaturally didactic character con- nected with it, but yet one which is largely human and nowhere exemplary, and in which the better and the worse are not always supernaturally distinguished. And this his- tory is not that of mankind at large, or of any ordinary portion of mankind, but principally and professedly that of a peculiar people — of a people subjected to a special disci- pline for a special purpose ; not simply a people favoured with more of that kind of culture which would be equally applicable to all peoples, but with a scheme of polity and a mode of providential interposition which was essentially inapplicable to the whole race of man. It is true that the earliest Scriptures do illustrate the infancy of the race more than all other Scriptures whatever, while they are engaged with their own special purpose : but it is also true that as they proceed they become more and more limited in their human interest, save as they intensify by contracting our vision and fixing it on the Divine plan of introducing a Messiah for mankind, of whose history and teaching the latest Scriptures are the record and the exposition. But even these later Scriptures consist rather of outlines of that history, and of specimens of the nature of that teaching, than of an unfolding and application of the principles and precepts of the New Dispensation in their most complete and catholic form. And therefore in connection with, and in consequence of, this special character of Revelation, it ought to be very distinctly borne in mind that a large portion of Revelation must be for us but indirect. There is but very little indeed that is addressed to all men equally. The knowledge of THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. ^ god's will that comes to us through written Revelations is for the most part only inferential : it has to be extracted by us out of a mass of historical as well as expressly didactic documents : and none of it has been addressed primarily to ourselves, or to the generation in which we live ; nor is the existence of such a social and intellectual condition as that in which we live ever directly contemplated or referred to in the great majority of the teachings of the Old and New Testament. Not only is Revelation for the most part specially adapted and addressed to peoples and gen- erations very far removed from us — so far removed as to require from us a very considerable exercise of Imagi- nation before we can understand their position — but it is absolutely necessary that we should in most instances detach and disengage it from its circumstances before we can make it either intelligible or applicable in our own case. Unquestionably both the Jewish and the Christian Scrip- tures do contain Divine communications of a form the most general and of a character the most direct — Revelations of the essentials of Deity and of Humanity which are of perpe- tual and universal significance. And wherever these occur they may and must be considered as the most solemn and precious of all the contents of the Bible. But even of these it should be specially noted that they are for the most part progressive. The Bible contains, in fact, a series as well as a collection of Revelations : a series of which the earliest terms are the least, and which but very gradually, and not quite uniformly, rises to its height, and only after long cen- turies reaches its final terms in Him who was Himself the highest Revelation which man can be conceived capable of receiving in the flesh. 8 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON That there is such a progression in the Revelation of truth and duty in the Bible must be obvious at once to any one who considers the gradual manner in which those two greatest of all ideas — god and Immortality — are disclosed in it, and how that great duty of loving all men as ourselves and considering every man as our brother, was never at all insisted on under the older dispensations. Putting aside for the present any consideration of this latter point as one fundamently involved in the very texture of the constitu- tion of the peculiar people, we cannot but observe how limited were the Revelations which god is represented as making of Himself in the earliest Scriptures. The first Revelation indeed of god is that of Creator of the heavens and the earth, and of man : and then we have that which exhibits Him as the moral Governor of the primeval few and the fearful Judge of the whole earth, but nowhere at first have we more than a faint outline and a few elements of that great idea which His later Revelations have enabled us to embrace. The first Revelation of Himself in that character which we have come now to consider as the highest and most influential on the heart of man was con- fined to an individual, a family, a tribe : always in the earliest records He is represented as standing in such a relation only to a few, never anywhere as being the common Father of all men equally. In the Law of Moses His cha- racteristic Revelation of Himself is as a Lawgiver : in the earliest historical books the prominent idea of god is that of the Lord of Hosts — the god of the Jews only, and not of the Gentiles. In the Psalms we find the earlier representa- tions frequently superseded by more adequate ones, though in some of these the most limited would seem to reappear : THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 9 while in the Prophets the more nearly they approach to the times of the Messiah, there is a growing approximation to that idea which was first and fully revealed only by Him. But in no part of the older Scriptures have we any Revela- tion of GOD under that form which holds such prominence in the creed of Christendom, or any which has not always led the Jew to believe that such an idea was inconsistent with the fundamental teaching of his Scriptures. And so too with regard to the great doctrine of individual immortality. Glimpses of this doctrine were, it may be, granted to special persons — to Abraham and Moses and David, to Isaiah and Ezekiel and Daniel, for instances : but in whatsoever measure such knowledge was vouchsafed to such as these, and as extending to themselves and some small portion of mankind, it never seems to have been prominently revealed or impressively inculcated, so far as the great body of the subjects of Revelation are concerned. It had no sanction in Jewish Law, and it had no symbol in Jewish worship. It never was appealed to as any motive to exertion, nor upheld as any comfort in trouble. It never anywhere is recognised as a fundamental article of faith, or has any of that prominence given to it which we find in the Christian Scriptures. Indeed in the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures there is less said about a future life than there is in the small volume of the Apocrypha, and less even than there is in the records of many heathen nations, and in the remains of several heathen writers. CATHOLIC THOUGHTS CN IV. And not only is there Progression in the Revelations of the Bible but also Accommodation. By Accommodation is meant not merely the use of sensible images and purely human expressions in the conveyance of spiritual ideas, or of types and symbols, and parables and allegories, in the exhibition or explanation of invisible realities ; but more than this, namely, the temporary permission and sanction of existing modes of thought and feeling with regard to religious truth and duty which were not merely inadequate but partially untrue, and which it was intended subsequently to supersede by fuller Revelations. The earlier anthro- pomorphic representations of Deity are of this kind : and indeed throughout the whole Law of Moses god is spoken of in terms which require a translation into other language with which the later Revelations have furnished us before we can heartily accept them as Divine. It is only indeed on this principle of accommodation that we can learn willingly to associate some portion of the Hebrew Scriptures with the Revelations of the Gospel of christ. And when we turn from the region of Truth to that of Morality we find this assumption still more necessary. We find the polygamy of the patriarchs and of David and of Solomon, and the warrior spirit of the Judges, and many acts of treachery and of cruelty from Jael to Jehu, sanctioned rather than rebuked by prophetic communications. And throughout the whole of the Mosaic teaching there is a constant tendency to put the observance of rites and ceremonies on the same level with the performance of moral duties and the cultivation of spiritual dispositions : THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. ii and so ungraduated an estimate of duty as this bears on the face of it irresistible evidence that in the degree that it was a Divine Revelation it could be also but a tem- porary accommodation. Indeed what was Judaism itself — as a whole and in all its parts- — but a great system of accommodation — a signal instance of the special adaptation of perfect wisdom to the imperfection of its disciples ? The selection of one people — a people of slaves — from among many others, and the educating them so as to be always a peculiar people — a people not intended ever to exhibit a normal condition for all peoples, but only a condition introductory to something more perfect which might belong to all others but could not belong to them — and all this for a period of fifteen centuries — what is this but an indisputable concession to human infirmity ? And this people not being more influenced for good when they were influenced so much, what is this, too, but the same ? And then if we consider the Law of Moses in detail, how can we but be impressed conclusively with this great fact of accommodation ? When we see that much of his characteristic teaching was in accordance with his Egyptian learning, and that many of the statutes and ordinances which he gave his people derive their chief significance from their reference to Egyptian rites and institutions. And surely this influence of heathen modes of religious thought and feeling on the Law which is called the Law of the lord as well as the Law of Moses, is a most remarkable and conclusive instance of that accommodation which is elsewhere, almost everywhere, to be traced in the Revelations of the Bible. Doubtless this Egyptian influence in the Mosaic economy has been largely over-rated, and 12 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON was most especially so when first noticed, but still the most scrupulously just estimate of that influence leaves an amount of it which only an unscrupulously unjust cri- ticism can either ignore or contradict. The edu- Indeed if man is to be dealt with in any communication ^^jj|°" ° J.Q. from GOD by any process which shall not subvert his gressive. essential humanity, it is difficult to conceive how a Revela- tion commencing at an early period of his history, and extending over ages, should be otherwise than one of Progression and Accommodation. No assertion of analogy can be truer than that which is often said to exist between the childhood of the race and of the individual, and of growth in both. And if this be so, how can it be other- wise than that the spiritual education of both should proceed on the same principles ? And in such case must we not expect to find in the earliest revelations of the Divine nature and of human duty the same kind of condescending adaptations to infantine incapacity which we know to be indispensable in our own individual experience ? The fact is, that in all communication of knowledge, the mind of the recipient must be as much considered as the truth which is to be taught. In order to secure the greatest power of vision the light must be accommodated to the eye. The brightest light will not necessarily enable every man to see the best. Adaptation to the organ is a greater requisite in the medium of vision than intrinsic brightness. Thus if Revelation be considered as spiritual light, and man be considered as in a good measure spiritually blind, THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 13 it could hardly be wisely otherwise than that the transition from blindness to sight and from darkness to light should be gradual. And consider well what the problem (if it may be so said with reverence) of a gradual Revelation must ever be — how Progression must involve Accommoda- tion. To make a communication of truth and duty which shall satisfy the highest culture of any age, and shall at the same time be intelligible to the rudest ages, it must of ne- cessity be one which shall be universal and unchangeable only in its spirit, and not in its form. It is scarcely possible — at least it is scarcely conceivable by us — that it should be made in so general and inflexible a form as that it should never be interfered with in the process of the ages by that universal change and development which uninterruptedly goes on in everything elsewhere with which man is conversant and concerned. Such an utterance of truth would, as far as we can see or judge by any analogies of nature or of history, be out of keeping with our present condition in the flesh, and is certainly contrary to any experience which we have hitherto had. Truly to some minds the process of a gradual and growing Revelation seems no matter of wonder or apology, but rather to be so reasonable and so wise as to make the fact that the Bible recognises and exhibits it a stronger evidence to them of its being the book of god than the sum of all the details of its historical testimonials. The laws of nature and of spirit seem thus to be in harmony. The earth of herself brings forth first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear; and to those who meditate on this law for long, and compare it with what they feel within themselves and perceive everywhere around 14 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON them, there will appear a peculiar fitness in its being recognised and acted upon in any system of supernatural education. And man's progressive education, is not this one of the chief aims of his position on earth ? Does not the assumption of this justify itself by interpreting many difficulties otherwise insoluble ? And though at first sight it may not accord with the undisciplined instincts of some to associate the tolerance of imperfection in connection with the instrumentality of perfection, yet if we concede much to this immaturity of apprehension, we do away with one of the most forcible evidences of the Divinity of the Bible that can be afforded to many ; and for the sake of gaining or giving a proof of more immediate application, we are sacrificing evidence which though it may be but slowly appreciated, yet the more it is investigated will manifest itself every way the more amply. And really no objection to this scheme of gradual and imperfect Revelation can be of more force than that which asks. Why is this universe one of degree ? Why are not all things created in their most perfect forms ? And why are not only the most perfect things created ? Why growth of any kind anywhere ? Or why did indefinite ages pass away before man was created, and why some thousands of years after this, before he was redeemed ? Verily what men count slackness seems to be an essential condition of all manifestations of the Divine in the forms of time and space. And how can we conceive of any Revelation of the infinite which shall not be for ever imperfect to the finite ? How of any communication of the spiritual that can be made to men on earth as otherwise than less full and clear than that which shall be made to those who are free from THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 15 the burden of the flesh ? Nay, what can we conceive even of the future Hfe of the redeemed, but as of an eternal succession of progressive Revelations — a continually expanding development of the possible manifestations of Godhead ? And if this is the case with the Revelation of truth, so is it, and ought it to be, also with the Revelation of duty. The conscience, as well as the intellect, of man is ever under a process of education and of growth, and the commands of duty, to be either just or effective, must be proportioned to the moral condition of their subjects. The conscience of man is no invariable and definite endowment, the same in all men everywhere and always : it varies as much in different stages of man's social progress as it does in all the interval which lies between the first timid instincts of the untaught savage, and the large and prompt suscepti- bilities of the maturest Christian. A wide experience of good and evil is necessary for the due development of the moral judgments equally of a nation and an individual : and the father who should impose the obligations of manhood upon a yet lisping son, or the lawgiver who should enforce the prescripts of a high civilisation upon a people whom he was only for the first time attempting to reclaim from barbarism, would be as unjust as he would be unwise. Now the Hebrews at the time of the delivering of their Law were as low in mental and moral condition as any people probably ever were who have been organised suddenly into national life. For two centuries and more they had been slaves — Egyptian slaves — and of such inveterate habits of idolatry that amidst the very thunderings and lightnings of Sinai they made a calf to worship it for a l6 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON god. For such a people then a law enjoining all that ought to be done by man, and forbidding all that ought not, would have been a burden far too heavy for them to bear : and accommodated and imperfect as it was, it remained for a thousand years, in respect of the merely elementary prohibition of image worship, a law too high for them to obey, or perhaps even to understand. For it would seem that for long centuries, and under the most pious of their rulers, a certain modified idolatry was publicly tolerated, and that never until their captivity did they cease to conceive of the Unity of god as only relating to the Lord their god, or to believe in the real existence of other gods for other nations, though inferior and subject to their own supreme Jehovah. And even the highest Revelation ever given on earth did not profess to undertake to promulgate all possible truth and duty, or to correct all the wrong opinions and prac- tices which existed, or might exist, among mankind. There are several social evils, some individual sins, which are not rebuked even in the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ : and there are many private and public virtues which are not exhibited or enforced. Even the Christian teaching apparently proposed only to illumi- nate for all men their most important relations and duties by the enunciation of germinant ideas and principles, and then to allow a gradually clearer perception of these, and obedience to them, to work out the necessarily consequent rules for the improvement of the moral and intellectual habits of the race. But then if these things be admitted — if Revelation be thus indirect and progressive and accommodative, and THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 17 thus some portions of it may become superseded by others, or be only incidentally and inferentially instructive — let it be well understood that it by no means follows that any portion has become wholly useless or unprofitable. By no means : those portions which in their primary significance and direct obligation have become obsolete for us, do not lose all their worth. The use of them only changes, it does not cease. The spiritual mind which judges all things, even the deep things of god, discerns and separates be- tween the things which differ in excellence, and applies to new uses those things which have lost their old : it makes that which was once food for the understanding now food for the heart, and that which once was looked upon as the highest privilege which might be hoped for, material to enkindle thanksgiving that we have been so prodigally blessed as that we may consider it among the things which we have to leave behind in our striving after the prize of our high calling. In no other way, indeed, could we deal rationally or reverently with a progressive Revela- tion. For to consider a series of educational processes as in all its terms of precisely the same value — to give every part of a large system, historically developed, an equal absolute worth — to ascribe the same reverence to the acts of Joshua and the acts of the Apostles, or to the sayings of a Solomon and of a John— would be to produce a con- fusion among all our thoughts and feelings which must assuredly negative or neutralise some of the very finest lessons which Revelation was designed to furnish. And surely as we do not expect the full-grown man to revert to the lessons of his childhood for expositions or limitations of communications made to his maturer age, so neither ought c i8 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON we to expect the disciple of jesus to be referred from His teachings to the lessons of Moses, nor the inheritor of thirty centuries and more of specially Divine culture to be ruled by the instructions of even the most spiritual of the Patriarchs. VI. The Re- Such modifications of the absolute character of Revela- velaiion ^^^^ ^^^ introduced by a consideration of the imperfection not neces- of the recipients of it : there are others as considerable sarily infal- lible, which are the consequence of the imperfection of the agents and the instruments of it. The employment of the human mind as the agent, and of human language and writing as the instruments, this necessarily involves a measure of fallibility in the record of the Revelation. It ought indeed to be distinctly borne in mind that there is no necessary, or even reasonable, connection between a man's being the subject of a special Divine communication and his subsequent universal infallibility : nor can we have the assurance of such infallibility unless we could ensure not only the presence of the Divine Spirit in the man, but also the absence of everything else. Indeed carry as high as we can the conception of Divine influence acting on the human mind, short of the conversion of mind into mechanism, yet we cannot get rid of the possibility of imperfection. In such case the spirit infused cannot but be conceived as mingling with the spirit existing in him who shall utter its Divine dictates under the forms of human expression. The Divine cannot be separated altogether from the human where the essentials of both THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 19 are so much akin, and the nature of the one is, in some sense, the image of the other. The only case in which we can conceive of truth being uttered purely is in the case of Him who was the truth — its author and its essence : but confessedly He spake as man never spake ; and we now are not the auditors, but the mere readers of His words. And this is a difference which is so im- portant as to reduce the difference between this case (a case otherwise without a parallel) and the other cases very considerably. For we find the words of our Lord on the same occasions often repeated by the different evangelists with circumstantial variations ; and this fact cannot but suggest to us that to whatever extent Divine influence may have been exerted on the minds of the reporters of His words, it did not extend to the minutely verbal accuracy of their records. And surely this being so, we may justly suppose that if such accuracy was not deemed necessary in the case of the record of the sayings of Him who has given us the highest of all revelations of the mind of god, it could scarcely be deemed so in any more partial com- munications. Indeed if we consider that the persons who were the most under Divine influence of any who have ever been used to convey god's will to man, have variously reflected the mind of Him who equally taught them all, we cannot but see that our Lord did not use His Apostles as mere mechanical conveyances of truth. It would seem indis- putable that what their Master infused into their minds mingled with what it met there, and was reproduced with some of their peculiarities of thought and feeling, though not so tinged with earthly elements as that its essential 20 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON celestial qualities were materially impaired. Nothing can b e more obvious than that each of those who have had a share in the composition of the New Testament has a strongly marked individuality in his methods of presenting the truths he records, and all their characters as traceable in their histories are distinctly traceable in their writings. And the example of Apostolic history also teaches us that under the highest privileges and the most special aids, the sincerest minds came only gradually to a full perception of the truth as it was in Christ : and that when they had arrived at their maturest estate, they found it impossible to secure their best converts from considerable errors, or to make them intelligent participants of much of that high wisdom which they were longing to impart. And if this be the case with Christian apostles, how much more so may we presume it to have been the case with their predecessors under a less privileged dispensation ? In no case have we any proof, or even appearance, of truth having been as supernaturally conveyed by any men to their fellows as it has been conveyed by the Spirit of god to themselves. vn. Imperfec- And then we must consider the fact that Revelation has wrrtten^ been made in the common spoken dialects of men, not in language, any hieroglyphics, or specially created symbols. Now human thought is always superior to its expression, and language is most imperfect when feeling is most profound. No spoken language has yet been found exact enough to express the highest generalisations, or the subtlest processes of the intellect : but men have been obliged to invest THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 21 symbolical languages when they have wished to express the ideas of the pure intellect precisely — languages which though definite are arbitrary, and though pure are not popular. But though for the expression of ordinary prac- tical duties and natural feelings, common language is suffi- cient, and symbolical language may be made sufficient for the expression of the processes of the pure intellect, yet no vernacular or symbolical language has ever yet been found which has adequately interpreted the deepest feelings and aspirations and intuitions of the soul ; and therefore much less may we expect that such language would be sufficient to express those supernatural heights and depths of thought and feeling which are characteristic of a Revelation from heaven. And if it should be demanded why human language was not purified before it was employed for such high and holy uses, it is only asking why the conditions of man's existence were not reversed before he was redeemed, rather than Redemption itself made to be the means of the gradual improvement of these conditions. And to all such ques- tions as these a reverent silence is the only fitting reply ; our duty being simply to observe what god has been pleased to do, and to conform our conceptions to this. And all such observation leads us to the conclusion that god has from the first trace of His dealings with man limited Himself to the condition of working out human Redemption only through the gradual removal of human imperfections by human in- strumentality, and according to certain laws of a progres- sive Development and a condescending Accommodation, And to these considerations, and others of a like kind, connected with the necessary imperfections of human Ian- 22 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON guage, ought to be added others respecting the consequences of our profession of only a written Revelation. This pecu- liarity of our having to derive our knowledge of god's will and purposes from the mere record of a Revelation, and not from any Revelation either made directly to ourselves, or infallibly transmitted by some perpetual living oracle, involves many other peculiarities which ought to be care- fully attended to if we would receive accurate impressions concerning the degree of Divinity which there is in the pages of the Bible. For be it remembered that a record of a Revelation may be very different from the original Revelation itself. That a Revelation should be a written one is not either a necessary, or even a simple, condition or conception. The first Revelations for some thousand years of the world's history, it may be, were not written, and that Art which is the only one which has hitherto proved effectual for accurately preserving, as well as extensively promulgat- ing, varied knowledge, was not permitted to man's discovery until these latest ages. But Revelations when committed to writing, and to writing only, must in process of time par- take of the imperfections peculiar to this characteristically human mode of expression. The materials are perishable, and the scribes are both changeable and fallible ; and unless there be a series of admitted miracles for their preservation from errors and decay from age to age, it is contradictory to all experience to believe that any documents can be trans- mitted for a thousand years exactly as they were composed at first. When Revelation therefore was committed to a book, it became subject to the conditions of imperfection belonging to all books as such. And we find that the Bible as a book, or rather as a collection of books, has a history THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 23 of its own — the most remarkable and complex of all similar histories — and in this history we are able to trace continually the effects of external and purely human influences, without any kind of miraculous counteraction being at the same time discernible. VIII. These considerations alone, and in their most general Revelation r •/- 1 1 '11 1111 1 • • i-L invariable form, if duly weighed, would lead us to the conviction that jj^ ^^, the Divine influence which has been exerted on the compo- stance- variable sition of our present Holy Scriptures has been extended in form. indubitably only to the spirit and the substance of Revela- tion, and but doubtfully to the letter and the detail of its records : and even further suggest to us that the Bible, however divine as a testimony, may be always human as a literature, marked everywhere by the influences of the con- temporary age, and universal and everlasting and invariable only in its principles, and in its ideas, and its aims. But there are also other facts, lying very near the surface too, though often strangely overlooked or disregarded, which tend very much to strengthen and extend this conviction. A few of such facts are these. The books of Scripture have all the same external appear- ances, both in their history and present condition, that other ancient books have. There are just the same kind of literal imperfections in them that there are in all others. They appear to have been subject to exactly the same kind of deteriorating influences in their transmission which have acted upon others ; and if the degree of this influence has not been so great, yet the difference is not such as to require, 24 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON or even to admit, the supposition of a special Divine inter- ference to account for it. As there is no copy of any book in a dead language which is the same as its author's auto- graph, and none which probably preserves everywhere his sense unchanged, so is this the case with every one of the books of the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures. There have been examined more than a thousand manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures, and more than half that number of the Christian : and there have been found to exist many tens of thousands of verbal variations between them : and in very many cases it is not possible to determine certainly the original reading : so that the printed copies of the Bible (in the original language) most generally in use, and from which the most popular translations have been made, are not the literal transcript of any one manuscript, but only a conjectural composition out of many. Our present received text has been a growth — improved from many and various sources, and differing in many thousand words from other texts which have been received of old. But at the same time it is here said, and from time to time, it may be, it shall be repeated, that all the variations and imperfections which have ever been pointed out in the text of Scripture, amount to nothing considerable so far as the essence of Revelation is concerned, though they do amount to something considerable so far as the nature of the vehicle of the Revelation is concerned. As regards the understanding of the characteristic doctrines and duties of the Jewish and Christian religions — but as regards this only — it makes the least possible difference whether we take the very worst or very best copies of the Bible now in exist- ence : a fact which should be a relief to all earnest and THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 25 spiritual inquirers, though it may not be satisfactory to the mere theorist or formalist. All the collations of the Holy Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testaments, show con- clusively that there is no considerable corruption of the great body of the text, though there are abounding infirmi- ties in various portions of its surface. And this fact at once strengthens the great truth of there being a Divine Life in the mass, while it opposes the notion of there being any absolute incorruptibility in the material. Other facts of this kind there are, arising not only from the successive transmission, but also from the original com- position of the Bible. With regard to the Old Testament, the names of the writers of many of the books are unknown, and the dates of their composition, save within large limits : and by what authority, or at what period, they were incorporated into a sacred canon, is also unknown. And generally it may be said with regard to a large portion of the Jewish Scriptures, that if viewed by themselves, and apart from the traditional claims which have been made for them, they would not suggest, must less require, the belief that they were docu- ments wholly Divine. And again : There are irreconcilable differences of his- toric detail between one book and another of the Hebrew Scriptures. And again : It is obvious that many of the books could have been composed only many hundreds of years after the events that they relate, and that even some of the earlier must have been altered or added to since they were written, inasmuch as they contain references to events of much later history. Indeed the whole of the Old Testament 26 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON Scripture has the appearance of having been edited by some unknown hand, and in being so edited, of having been altered — to no great extent, it may be, yet to an extent which we cannot define. And with regard to the New Testament, these are facts which demand careful consideration : That the writings which constitute its canon have been collected into one volume by no authority known to be especially Divine, or professing to be so : That some of the books do not claim to have been composed by Divine dictation ; and others confessedly have been composed by persons whom we do not know to have had any Divine commission or qualifica- tion for delivering infallible truth : That we do not know certainly w^ho were the authors of some of them : That there are indisputable inaccuracies and discrepancies in some of them. A patient consideration of such facts as these will pro- bably lead most to the conclusion that whatever may have been the extent of Divine interposition in the composition of the sacred Scriptures, it has not been such as to make them certainly such a record of Divine utterances as to be throughout verbally and literally true. We shall the rather be led to believe that the special influence of god has been exerted on the minds of their writers only in such measure as to enable them to reveal so much of His will and pur- poses as He would have known from time to time as a rule of faith and duty, directly to those of old time, indirectly to those of all time — with clearness and precision enough to guide the immediate recipients of the Revelation to higher degrees of moral and spiritual life than they had before attained to, and with only such obscurity and inaccuracy as THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 27 need be no stumbling block to those who should live under the light of subsequent Revelations. This influence we may believe to have extended sometimes to the very words of the Revelation, but far more often only to the substance of it : so that most generally where the message is Divine the language of it is human : and we may believe that almost all the intimations of the Spirit of god to the spirit of men, have not been reproduced to us in the form in which they were made to them, but have been, as it were, translated from one mode into another, in their passage through the minds of the recipients. Thus while whatever in the Bible professes to be pure Revelation, and to be transferred to us as it has been re- ceived from above, is to be received as such, whatever does not claim to be such, we need receive only as a translation of the Divine : and while it is necessary to believe that dis- tinct Oracles of god are contained in the Law and the Prophets, the Evangelists and Apostles, it is not necessary to believe that the connecting links — the framing and setting — of these Revelations are all of the same quality as the Revelations themselves. Even in the case of those who have received the Spirit of god in the largest measure — the Apostles of CHRIST — and who were so exclusively ordained and qualified by Him to be the promulgators of His Gospel to all men of all times as to be entitled to the highest re- verence which it is lawful to ascribe to any who have the Spirit but by measure — it may not be necessary to believe that either the mode or the instrument by which they com- municated their Revelations to others was precisely as per- fect as that by which they were communicated to themselves. It is necessary to believe that an apostle was adequately 28 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON instructed in all things which he undertook to teach, but it may not be necessary to believe that in his mode of teach- ing any of his particular disciples he was otherwise influ- enced than as a mature Christian father may be in teach- ing his infant child. It is necessary to believe that he was divinely guided in all his chief aims and principles, and entirely imbued with the love and spirit of his Master and of his work, but it may not be necessary to believe that he was equally guided in all his modes of argument and illustration in his teaching, nor so controlled in what- ever he wrote as to be universally infallible in all un- spiritual minutiae. Indeed as by far the largest portions of Holy Scripture are history rather than law, and more biography than pre- cept, the idea of Revelation must of necessity be modified considerably for these. Of these portions it may suffice to believe, that the great historic outline, both in its substance and in its expression, is conveyed to us faithfully as it appeared to minds the most divinely influenced of their age : and not only this, but that Scripture as it is, with its selection of facts and moral judgments of them, has been ordained of god to be written thus rather than othei^wise, because on the whole the instruction of men in righteous- ness would be thus best provided for. But while the his- tory of the Bible is thus considered essentially authentic and providentially ordered, it may also be considered as incidentalUy inaccurate and often incomplete : and that while the moral and spiritual welfare of all generations has been consulted, the purely human and tempered elements of the documents have been allowed to be governed by only ordinary laws. THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 29 IX. If it should be thought that this is not an adequate Divine conception of the extent of the Divine interposition which commum- has taken place in the composition of the Scriptures, it confined to must be said, that to define it more accurately does not seem reconcilable with facts, or consistent with the small knowledge we possess either of the operations of the Divine or the capacities of the human. But at the same time it may be here emphatically declared once for all, that all such difficulty or inadequacy of definition as may be manifested in this book arises from no desire to limit the extent of Divine influence on the mind of man, but from the very contrary conviction of that influence being indefi- nite from its greatness. The preliminary and pervading assumption of these pages, and of the writer's view of the Church of god, is that there is, and ever has been, a constant commerce between the Spirit of god and the spirits of men, and that the idea of Divine influence is so much in accordance with the highest aspirations of man, and so inseparable from any idea of a Providence over the affairs of men, that it must lie at the base of all speculation that can hope to deal intelligently with any of the great problems of human history and human destiny. Consider well that in some sense all men live and move and have their being in god : that god is present and active in all spirit as well as in all space ; that we cannot say, and dare not conjecture, where god is not ; that there is a certain Divine influence omnipresent in all souls — a Word of god always very nigh to every man, even in his heart : and therefore when we ponder well what we mean 30 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON by these things, how can we but believe that ahvays and largely, and now as ever, a Divine effluence and influence must be operating in that great realm of human spirit which constitutes more especially the kingdom of god on earth ? And how distinguish between spiritual influences which may differ in degree only and not in kind ? How need an intuition of truth differ in kind from a Revelation of it? And if any thought be spontaneous, how is it certainly not miraculous? Every mind accustomed to self-contemplation must be frequently conscious of there arising within it thoughts which are unexpected and un- accountable, but at the same time most rational and most moral : and these surely seem to assert that the intellect, as well as the will, has a certain portion of life in itself. The origin of all thought, as of all birth, is mysterious, and no philosophy can in all cases suffice to discern between what is spontaneous and what is supernatural. Nay, even the testimony of the best men morally as to the immediate origin of their thoughts and feelings may conceivably not be trustworthy. If a man bear witness of himself in such case his witness may not be true, though he himself may be most truthful. There is surely a state of mind real and frequent, in which thought seems in a process of formation — using instruments of its own inexplicable and unutterable — of which language is only the subsequent translation — a state too dim indeed for speculation, but one exhibited equally in the earliest emotions of the infant's spirit and in the loftiest meditations of the wise. And will not every religious soul be capable of conceiving that in the noblest spirits of our race there may have been seasons when communion with god has become a consciousness of His THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 31 indwelling : when love of Him has become as rest in Him, and faith as sight : when the sympathy between the individual soul and the soul of all has become so complete that there seemed no distinguishable life, but god has dwelt in it, and it in god ! And if this be so, will not such an one be able to understand that in such a high hour of religious visitation and in this ethereal region — in some dream of the intellect and slumber of the will — when the soul knows not whether it is unclothed or only clothed upon — immortality seeming begun but mortality not wholly swallowed up — at some such season as this, it may be, the Divine Spirit may mingle with the human, and mingling overmaster it ? But — the wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. Most important is it for the student of Scripture that he The Unity should have his mind open to some such considerations ^■j', ^ as these : for he who sets out with the assumption that the Bible is throughout a Revelation of pure truth, and nothing else, will assuredly in the course of his studies, if they be long continued, have much either gradually or suddenly to surrender, and all the multiplied mortifications which usually attend an important erroneous element in a complicated argument. An honest, earnest searcher of the Scriptures commencing his investigations with this pre- possession cannot be long before he will find many things in his search which he had not anticipated, and will encounter difficulties of which an uneducated or superficial 32 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON reader will not be aware, and which even he may not be able, when they are pointed out to him, fully to com- prehend. To such an one there is always much of Scripture which is at best a blank to him, and he is consequently as ignorant of the difficulties as he is of the profitableness of what is there written for his learning. But one whose professed object is to search below the surface, and to allow nothing which may be precious there to escape him, will assuredly have his faith troubled as well as cherished, and strengthened only by exercise and by struggle. His only safety and wisdom he will then find to be in laying his mind as completely open as he can to the impressions which the Scriptures themselves may produce upon him, and though not dispossessing himself of any reverence which he may have been taught to bring to the study of them, yet in holding all theoretical tradi- tions concerning the modes of the Divine operations so loosely that they may adapt themselves to every fact, and exclude none. For surely he who brings with him the notion that the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures contain a Divine utter- ance, or presuppose even a Divine influence, in every sentence, if not in every word and letter, binds upon himself a burden which those Scriptures do not call upon him to bear : and therefore being thus unnecessarily encumbered and oppressed, will probably stumble at obstacles which freer limbs and a lighter tread will find it easy to overstep or to remove. If such an one is truly conscientious in his researches, he cannot but find that uncertainty rests often where he had thought that all had been clear and conclusive, and that there really do appear THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 33 inaccuracies of detail where he had presumed that all had been circumstantially infallible : and therefore there must come a collision between his prepossessions and his acquisitions which it is but wise, if he can, to mitigate by anticipating. And it will also most probably be the case that if he comes to the study of the Bible with the deep but simple belief that it is a gift from god of indefinite, though of unspeakable, grace : that it contains, rather than consists of special Revelations : that the spiritual nourishment which it offers has to be sought with the same diligence, and to be applied with the same discretion, as the provisions for man's life in material nature ; and that emphatically Divine though it be essentially, and providentially constructed as a whole, it may be expected to be nevertheless in many of its parts but of earthly material and of human aspect — then his faith in the Divine wisdom which has presided over its composition will rather tend continually to increase than to diminish, inasmuch as his continued communion with the Divine Spirit which obviously and indubitably dwells in large portions of it, will so strengthen and purify his spiritual vision as to enable him to recognise a providential adaptation, in other portions where many find only a con- tradiction to their understanding or a trial for their faith. At least as far as some assertions and facts which disturb the minds of many are concerned, he will find that they are true only in a sense and to an extent in which it would be a continual miracle if they were not so, and will gain an intelligent conviction that there is no single error in Holy Scripture which need affect the essential well-being of his own spiritual nature, but that rather the sum of all its D 34 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON infirmities and imperfections is less in proportion to its holy truths than the chaff is to the wheat in any har- vest — yea, is even only as the small dust of the balance compared with the greatest weight which that balance will weigh. By such considerations too it is, and by such it may be alone, that we are enabled cheerfully and consistently to combine both the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures into one canonical volume of truth and duty. This has ever been felt in all ages as an exceeding difficulty, and scarcely any one requirement has been the cause of so much error and unbelief as the demand that the Old and New Testa- ments should be received as alike Divine. And probably no thoughtful student of the Bible has always been free from this difficulty : none at least has failed to perceive that there is often such a discrepancy of character in some of the earlier asserted Revelations when compared with the spirit of the Christian Scriptures, that it requires a con- straint upon natural impulse to permit their incorporation into the same code of spiritual law. Every one must probably feel that there are passages in the Old Testament which could not be transferred to the New without appear- ing wholly out of harmony even with its letter, and that there are multiplied declarations and acts and characters approved in the one, which would be altogether disallowed by the other. There is no need to particularise, and formally to contrast the one with the other — instances will arise at will — it shall only be said that in our own days the difficulty is yet felt to press as hardly as ever of old, and that therefore it is but a work of charity to relax the claim of the universal equal obligation of the letter of all the THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 35 Scripture, and to proclaim a more flexible rule of judg- ment, if on independent grounds we think we legiti- mately may. And the facts and inferences above stated being fairly weighed, we do seem at once to gain some principles of interpretation which lessen this fearful difficulty. Con- sidering that the Divine communications from the very first have been progressive and accommodative — special adapta- tions to the circumstances and infirmities of those to whom they were immediately addressed — we derive from this the important principle, that these communications are for us but partial and indirect Revelation : obligatory and instruc- tive by inference and analogy rather than positively, and only in so far as we are under the like circumstances with those to whom they were originally vouchsafed. The mere fact of a presentation of Deity or a command of duty being given to them of old time, is by no means conclusive proof that the same would have been given to us now, or that we should be justified in moulding our characters or our conduct in conformity with it in these latter days, when so many old things have been abolished, and so many other things have been made new. The Hebrew Revelation, it must be repeated, was not one for all mankind any more than it was one to all mankind. It was made up of various Revelations, given under different circumstances, and having direct and intimate relation to these circumstances, and to a com- plicated abnormal constitution so unlike anything of which we have experience that it requires a high effort of historic imagination approximately to estimate either the similarity or the difference. In order in fact to interpret aright such 36 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON communications, we must consider the Bible as a whole having a symmetry, which it behoves us never to impair : and in detaching any part of it for any other purpose than that for which it was primarily given, we must take heed to do no violence to the proportion of that with which it is immediately connected. Not only therefore must the special circumstances under which an assertion or a precept is laid down in the Bible be carefully studied, and the letter of such assertion or precept be interpreted in the light of these, but also no large inference must be drawn from the mere words of Scripture without a consideration of the term of the progression in which it is, and a modifica- tion of its positive significance which shall bring it into accordance with the characteristic spirit of the latest Reve- lation. When a passage, for instance, meets us from the older Scriptures which involves an idea of god, or a standard of duty, we must, before intrepreting or applying it, above all things first consider its date, and deduce its universal signifiance by deducting all the accidents of time and place, and retaining only that which will expand indefinitely. And if we find, as we often shall do, views of GOD which are most frequent in the earlier Scriptures less and less frequent in the later, and other views come into existence at first but dimly, but as time goes on become increasingly more prominent, only giving way to still brighter lights, then we not only may but must believe that this last light is that by the help of which we ought to work, and in the warmth of which we ought to live. Verily we who have had so very much brought to light for us through JESUS CHRIST, and so much done, at such a price, to put us into the position of full-grown men — to exalt us from the THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 37 old estate of servants into that of children, and very friends — not only may but ought to put away the thoughts of GOD which were given only to those who, while they had neither the docility nor the innocence of childhood, had all its ignorance and all its infirmity. XI. In order to exhibit more clearly the nature of the Relation principles necessary for the enlightened interpretation oftheTe^wish the whole Bible, and also to prevent any misconception and Chris- concerning the degree of sacredness attached in these turgg. pages to the older Scriptures, it may be well to state here distinctly the relation which it is supposed exists between the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures. Unquestionably then the elder Scriptures are a divinely provided introduc- tion to the new. In them we see, providentially recorded, the outlines of the process by which it has pleased god to prepare and educate man for that ultimate restoration to His image, and reunion with Himself, which He has reserved for a portion of our race through christ. And as this process was founded upon the election and peculiar training of a single people, the Old Testament contains the record of the idea according to which this people was moulded, and its historic manifestations : and of that special symbolic and suggestive method of instruction and of discipline by which this people was made a prophetic depository of the full and final Revelation which was to come through a Messiah to spring from them. The Old Testament therefore throughout is prophetic and symbolic of the Revelations of the New, and derives its worth for us 38 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON not so much from itself, as from its relation to that to which it was introductory and preparatory. The Hebrew Scriptures therefore have a different value for us from that which they must have had for those to whom they were first given, inasmuch as they were for them the highest Revelation known, and the only means of understanding the purposes of god with regard to the redemption of man, while for us they do not reveal a single attribute or purpose of Deity, or a single command- ment of duty, which we have not more fully revealed in our own Scriptures, and omit many truths which are fundamental and characteristic doctrines of the gospel, and which give a new aspect to the whole history and destiny of man. Though the relation therefore of the Old Testa- ment to the New must always be recognised by us as close and inseparable, it ought at the same time to be distinctly understood to be that of type to antitype, of porch to temple, of dawn to day. To us the Hebrew Scriptures are chiefly illustrative of our own, making us understand how god has been from man's first creation in constant intercourse with him : that no part of the long history of our race which precedes us has been destitute of divine teachings and consolations : and that we are the latest links of a long chain, and not isolated instances of god's providential trainings. The Old Testament is for mankind at large a Divine first lesson book : a series of accommodated instructions linking themselves on to a low stage of moral and mental life, and leading men on from that to a higher by degrees and gently : a record suitable throughout to those for whom it was first recorded, and of a structure and a material consistent with the dispensation THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 39 itself to which it ministered. The spirit which pervaded that dispensation was of the same kind indeed as that of which the New displays the highest type, but it was often of so low a degree of it as to seem its opposite, and therefore though the two Testaments may justly be considered as organically connected into one living whole, yet the elements of the Old Testament must ever be accounted as the less honourable members of that body, and those of the New the head and heart of all. While the Old Testament therefore ought to be looked at as prefigurative and performative throughout, it must also be regarded equally throughout as inferior and subordinate to the New. The Old Testament, in fact, was faithful as a servant for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after, but the New Testament is chief over its own house, which house are we. The Old Testament made nothing perfect, and parts of it which were glorious to the Jew, though really only a ministry of condemnation to them and to all, to Christians have but little glory, by reason of the excelling glory of the New. What was good as preparatory is not best as permanent : the scaffolding, the blade of the corn, the portrait, compared with the building, the corn in the ear, the person. But compared with any other writings whatsoever except the Christian, the Hebrew Scriptures are indeed superior, and even generically different throughout : revealing an idea of god such as nowhere else is to be found among the records of men, and inculcating principles and precepts which cultivated the conscience of the Jew to a degree elsewhere unknown. Indeed there is no way of becoming so impressed with their dignity and their worth as by comparing the highest and deepest philosophy of 40 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON heathenism with the popular and fundamental faith of the Hebrew people. The speculations of Plato and Cicero are among the strongest evidences for the reality of the Revelations of Moses and of Isaiah. XII. A spiritual The views then of the significance of the Bible suggested mterpreta- j^ these pages are of a character intermediate between the tion oi ^ ° Revela- literal and the rational — such as would fain have charac- tionneces- . . ,, , ,. .^ , .... sary. teristically the reality, if not the name, of spiritual. The literal principle viewing all parts of Scripture as equally and directly Divine, both in origin and authority, considers all the representations of the Divine nature, and all the particulars of moral commandment which are to be found in the Bible as portions of one universal and permanent law : and endeavours to reduce all these dis- tinct utterances into a consistent and coherent whole by argumentative deductions from their letter. It considers the Bible practically as a collection of contemporaneous utterances equally addressed, in all but ceremonial ordinances, to all men of all time : and strives to make a Divine Philosophy out of a Divine Revelation, by blending metaphysical processes with Scriptural assertions. Owing little to any contemplation of Revelation as the gradual development of a scheme even not yet perfected, or rather founded on assumptions which such a view would seem to subvert, it is sternly opposed to whatever transfers attention from the literal significance of detached passages, or attempts to discriminate between things more and less excellent in the Scriptures. THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 41 The rational principle proceeds on the assumption that if Revelation be conceivable at all, it will reveal nothing which man's reason does not approve when revealed, though it might not be able to discover it ; and that therefore there can be nothing which is really Revelation but that for which a place can be found in a philosophy independently constructed, and which that philosophy can account for. All else it considers as human addition, which need be dealt with without any particular reverence. It thus makes a philosophy the test of a religion, and the standard for the interpretation of its records. It is based on a disbelief of any special Divine influence having established any source of knowledge or authority supple- mentary to the laws of nature and of conscience, and makes the mind of man practically the measure of what is to be believed, or can be revealed. The Rationalist, indeed, makes the whole subject of Religion and Revelation, their facts and doctrines, a matter of sensible evidence or intellectual demonstration, and reduces all belief to an impartial estimate of the probabilities furnished by a past experience. The Rationalist thus walks by sight only and by faith not at all : measuring supersensual objects only by logical and other terrestrial apparatus, and neglecting or distrusting, or being destitute of, those spiritual affinities and aspirations which afford a legitimate and especial evidence of their own. Far different indeed from this is that Spiritualism which these pages would inculcate. It considers all true Religion as a Revelation of god to man : god communicating Himself to His creatures, as the Father of their spirits, and man recognising and reverencing the communication as 42 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON Divine. And it therefore is always open to any super- natural visitation, its instinct being to hope for such : but at the same time its reverence is equal to its hopefulness, and it therefore scrutinises vi^ith a severity with which it would care to scrutinise nothing else, whatever presumes to be Divine. It considers faith very much as a moral act : as at least a yielding to our natural veneration and aspiration wherever these cannot be pronounced false or wrong by our reason or our conscience. It does not make any independently established notions or systems of man the test of Scriptural Revelations. It does not at all assume to say what ought, or ought not, to be revealed beyond the mere irrepressible instincts and interdicts of the conscience and the reason. Its funda- mental principle is to observe what appears to be revealed, and then to make the substance of that Revelation to interpret the detail of it — the spirit of it to explain the letter — and most especially the latest Revelations to modify and illustrate all others. Considering all systems of philosophy hitherto promulgated as too uncertain to be iised as measures of the worth of anything which may pos- sibly be more certain than themselves, it uses them only sug- gestively and not conclusively ; and though it does not reject any light which may come from any quarter whatsoever, its main endeavour is to get at some idea of the significance of the Bible as a whole, and of the relation of its parts to each other — believing that though there is no complete system of truth in it, yet that there is a certain symmetry and propor- tion in it which it is essential to recognise, and that it pos- sesses prominent aims and a peculiar spirit to which every specified statement ought to be referred and subordinated. THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 43 XIII. But to many minds quite other views of the sacred Arguments r j-o- r ''^ favour Scriptures present themselves, which give a far different form of literal and colouring to the Revelation of god. bilitv To such it seems, that the sacred Scriptures must be literally infallible, otherwise they would not be worthy of the name of a Revelation : that the Bible, Old and New Testament equally, is and must be in all its parts a Revela- tion of pure truth : and that no principle of Accommoda- tion, if any of progression, can be recognised with regard either to the letter or the spirit of the Old Testament, except in the case of the Mosaic ceremonial. To such it seems. That there can be no discrepancies or errors of any kind in the Bible, Old Testament or New, and that all appearances of such must be considered by the true believer as either results of his ignorance, or trials for his faith : and that to believe otherwise is to reject the express testimony of Christ and his Apostles. And finally to such it seems, that the principles of these pages, by admitting so much to be indefinite, under- mine, if they do not destroy, all certainty, and nearly all benefit, connected with a written Revelation, and by their general vague spiritualism must encourage the carnal scepticism, or injure the evangelical piety, of those who embrace them. Now, before examining in detail some of the assertions here presented, it may not be unadvisable to make the two following remarks : — Such a theory of Divine Revelation as these objections indicate is largely Judaic, or even Gentile, and wholly 44 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON traditional, and therefore not likely to be also purely or characteristically Christian. This theory is precisely the same as that which all heathen nations who have had, or have, sacred books, have always entertained ; it is the same as that which the Mahommedans entertain of theirs. It has therefore no antecedent presumption of spirituality to recommend it, but some considerable presumption of the natural mind to discountenance it. And it is more rigid even than the elder Judaism. We do not know indeed the theoretic opinion of the Jews before their captitivy concerning their sacred books ; we only know that their practical carefulness of them, or reverence for them, was so very inconsiderable, that it would seem as if they did not attach to them a respect equal to that which the most latitudinarian of modern theorists, who acknowledge them as a Revelation at all, would certainly ascribe to them. Indeed for all this long period no people on earth of whom we have any record, so generally treated their sacred writings with indifference as the Jews — a fact indeed proving now for us little more than the small amount of evidence of any worth which can be deduced in favour of any rigid theory from this large portion of Jewish History. Between the time of their return from captivity and that of our Lord's appearing, there would seem indeed to have been all the reverence and carefulness which we should have expected, but the precise belief of the most valuable authorities we have not the opportunity of learning. Whatever it might have been, or ought to have been, it would seem to have admitted of different degrees of Divine influence : the highest belonging to the Law, the second to the Prophets, and somewhat less to the rest. We know at THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 45 least that no other portions of what then constituted the Jewish Scriptures but the five books of Moses were for centuries of this period used in the public teaching of the nation ; and when afterwards portions of the Prophets were substituted for the Law, and some of the Psalms were used in the occasional services of the Temple, the other books were never used at all for such purposes. Doubtless the more modern Jews have very definite opinions concerning their Scriptures (though these admit of the doctrine of degree), but their opinions concerning most things being fundamentally false, may very probably be so concerning this. Until lately we know they believed, and taught us to believe, that all the manuscripts of their Law were immaculate, and the same to a letter : and under this belief in transcribing their standard manuscripts they preserved and perpetuated obvious inaccuracies, and made a science, falsely so called, of the mystical meanings of these errors; they also noted the number of words and letters in each book, and the number of times certain words occurred, and the position of certain others with regard to the first and last word, and many other minutiae of the same kind ; which notes of theirs have done much for the purity of the modern text, but have left the great dogma of Literal Infallibility demonstrably untenable. And then again, This theory has been gradually more and more refuted by facts as our scholarship has improved, and has been reluctantly but irrecoverably abandoned by all the most considerable of modern scholars, even by those whose reverence for the Scriptures is the greatest. A cen- tury ago it was believed by the best scholars that there were very few, if any, variations in Hebrew manuscripts, 46 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON and much was said and written concerning the miraculous- ness of this fact proving may things : but now it is admitted on all hands, in consequence of the subsequent examination of many hundreds of copies, that there are tens of thousands of variations among them. All therefore concerning literal infallibility which was founded upon this assumption falls to the ground at once, and henceforth it is not possible that there should be any question regard- ing this matter, but one as to the degree of fallibility. It is most important that this should be distinctly understood and continually borne in mind ; as it cannot but greatly simplify and clarify the subject of which these pages treat. XIV. What kind As to the saying, That the sacred Scriptures must be aiaw 'of literally infallible, otherwise they would not be worthy of Nature the name of a Revelation, it is replied, that we shall would lead ,, i , i • n i • i us to ex- assuredly do much better m all such questions as the pre- pect. ggj^)- |.Q examine what god has done than to pronounce what GOD must do — to study carefully and humbly the general outline and spirit of His special dispensations of grace towards man, rather than first to make up our minds as to what ought to have been done, and then to judge of what has been done by this. To many minds it must ever appear pure presumption to assert that no Revelation can be accepted from god but one which in no jot or tittle shall be mingled with human imperfections. To be grateful for the least Revelation, however conveyed to us, this is an essential predisposition, in every one who would profit by any communication from heaven : and to prescribe the very THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 47 vessels in which the water of Hfe must be brought to us, is either a morbid sensitiveness of taste implying an absence of real spiritual thirst, or an ingratitude of heart which is wholly irreligious. Some help and knowledge, and comfort of promise, according to our need, this we may humbly hope for, and reasonably expect : but to demand to be fed no otherwise than by perpetual miracle, is an irreverence which betrays an utter unconsciousness of our due position. And consider well whether there be any thing in god's pro- vision for man's use in nature, or in His dealings with man historically, which should lead us to any expectation of such perfectly unmixed nourishment and infallible guidance. Man's natural position on earth emphatically teaches him otherwise. Man comes into the world with very ill-ascer- tained, or at least very imperfectly-expressed, relations to all that it contains, and it is only by long schooling, silent and severe, from the great multitude of things about him, that he becomes assured of his position among them. His knowledge of the greatest duties of life and his obedience to them, are the results of most indefinite influences : and he has no self-interpreting infallible guide for half the actions which it is his highest interest to perform : no pillar of cloud or of fire to lead him in his march either through the desert or the throng of life. The world he lives in is full of poison as well as of food, and he has to nourish himself out of it rather through the exercise of a tentative experience than by the aid of an infallible instinct. There is nothing in the natural world which modern thought terms pure. Air is not, and water is not, and yet we live by these. There is a husk around many a wholesome fruit, or an unprofitable stone within : and the very staff of life needs to be sepa- 48 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON rated from its chaff, and variously compounded, before it can be used for the food of man. The nourishment that Hes in Nature is not disposed according to a scientific chemistry : rather there is a considerable portion of all natural food which is useful though not nutritious, serving rather for the vehicle than for the substance of our support. And perhaps so is it, so must it be, with all our spiritual food while we are in the flesh. Truth cannot be given us in essence, but only diffused and diluted in innutritions masses, for thus only, it may be, could it be so received as to be assimilated. And really are we to complain of this ? Are we indeed so spiritually refined that no bread will satisfy our hunger but that which is as angels' food — that there can be no slaking of our thirst but with distilled water ? Most vain thought this. Truly such as we have no reason to expect, and much more no right to demand, that if GOD condescends to make to man supernatural com- munications, these communications should have a heavenly form as well as a heavenly spirit — that they should be eternally true and purely perfect — allowing of no contact with earthly imperfections, no commingling with human infirmities. We have no title to require to be taught only by GOD speaking to us face to face, or writing with His finger on tables of stone, and not through the intervention of mediators of like passions and of like language with our- selves : but rather should be inexpressibly thankful to re- ceive His Law by the disposition of angels, and His Gospel by the hands of the friends of the Son of god. And would it not require a constant miraculous interven- tion to make such a body of Scripture as has been given us wholly infallible ? It is indeed conceivable that a Reve- THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 49 lation might have been given to us written supernaturally in an universal and perfect language, and might perpetually have been guarded by the same supernatural Power and Wisdom which communicated it : but at the very first aspect of it our Bible is not such a Revelation : its language is all such as has once been commonly spoken by whole nations, liable in its first delivery to the inadequacies of human utterance, and in its subsequent transmission to the falli- bilities of human care. XV. And if we look at god's dealings with man historically. The lesson and ground our expectations on these, we surely have no tauUt by encouragement to anticipate any such interposition as that the ana- logy of which a pure and mfalhble Revelation would imply. On history. the contrary, all analogies and precedents lead us very forcibly in a quite opposite direction. There is nothing which a study of the history of mankind (if the very minute portion of it which we can really make ourselves even most imperfectly acquainted with may permit the use of such large terms) more emphatically teaches us than that GOD has left large liberty to man — such liberty indeed as shows us the utter vanity of any special anticipations which we can in any case make as to the plan on which any portion of mankind ought to have been governed or guided. No scheme which we should have ever thought of, if the problem had first been submitted to us ab- stractedly, for the government of any one nation on earth which we know of, would at all have corresponded with what we see historically to have been the case. This we may say, because now that we have the history of the solu- E so CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON tion of the problem of the race in a good measure before us, we cannot at all adequately understand it, or intelli- gently prophesy from it of the future. The dim outlines of Providential interference we deem it not presumptuous to say we see in some portions of human history, and the indestructible persuasion that there must be everywhere a subtle influence for good which we do not see, may induce us sometimes to fill in these outlines with some colourable expression : but the most highly developed of mortal minds has not dared to claim for its sketch of any portion of the past any more than its being the very faintest image or imagination of the secret counsels of the Infinite Mind; and as to the future, has ever felt it an instinct of Reve- rence to allow clouds, if not darkness, to rest upon it. And then, too, consider what god's dealings have been with that very people to whom He vouchsafed these special Revelations. How gradually and indefinitely did His messages come, and how exceedingly much of liberty did He allow to the will of man even in the government of His peculiar people. How unlike is the history of the Theocratic people to anything we should have anticipated had we only known the principle and aim of their constitu- tion — so unlike that it has been found most difficult even to this day to get many pious students of it to understand, or even to admit as possible, several of its real charac- teristics. There are probably very few who represent to themselves in all its true carnality the life of the majority of Hebrew people for the greater portion of their history before their captivity ; and all of us Christianise that life to our minds unconsciously, because we do not separate sufficiently between the possession of privilege and the THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 51 improvement of it, nor understand distinctly how great liberty god has left to man to neglect and pervert the very choicest of His gifts. But even so far as privilege is concerned, we hardly conceive adequately what it was to live under a dispensation in which a future life was never in any way publicly and authoritatively made prominent as a matter of belief, or a motive of conduct, and in which the very cardinal article of a Christian's creed — the Incarnation of Godhead — was not so revealed as ever to be deemed by an ordinary Jew either an expected or a possible event. And then when that Messiah did come whom the Jewish nation was constituted to typify and proclaim, how without a shock it was — His advent blending with the events of ordinary history so as to develop itself without subverting them : abolishing the old Divine economy simply by intro- ducing one diviner still. That great Law which had been the wonder and worship of ages, and deemed by all its subjects as everlasting, was never authoritatively repealed or expressly commanded to cease : it was only superseded by being surpassed : made to melt away as the dawn does unto the day : abrogated in the letter by being more than fulfilled in the spirit. And with the history of the Chrstian Church has it not been also the same ? Has it not blended itself intimately with the history of the world, and so prevailed ? No human wis- dom would probably have permitted so great a commingling — so gradual a progress : for it yet remains a mystery to the thoughtful that it should have been so imperfect and so impure for so long, and that when it was established on earth at such a cost, so many ages should have passed away without more having been accompHshed by it than we see. 52 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON These things, and many more such as these, do not coincide with our expectations, but contradict them : where- fore it is suggested that we ought not to settle it in our minds that we are able to say beforehand what degree of Divine influence must be exerted in any special part of the great process of human education ; and that it is the only fitting position for us to occupy, to study the supernatural as the philosopher studies the natural — to make it its own interpreter as far as we can, and beyond this not to be dog- matic. Our observation of the course of god's providential dealings with the world at large, and with His specially favoured people, certainly renders it safe to say — what it would be wise to remember — that He is not prodigal of Revelation. The opening of the heavens is but a rare event in the history of mankind : so rare that we may henceforth be perfectly prepared to expect that miraculous communications will never be made only to secure human infallibility in unspiritualminutiae. Indeed no truth can be more plain, and few are more important to be ob- served, than that stability and silence are characteristics of god's government of the spiritual world no less than of the natural. xvi. The blend- Human^^ Truly the longer we ponder on the position of man on and Divine ^^ earth, of the individual and of the race, the more we Bible— a must feel the indefiniteness and complexity of the influences Go?s°^ by which his education has been and is always carried on : spiritual how immeasurable is that system of agencies which the with' men. Divine Will has provided to work together for unfolding his THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 53 spiritual capacities, and culturing his religious nature. And the more, too, probably we shall feel that this blending of the human and the Divine which we imagine we see so clearly in that special agency for man's religious culture which the Bible is, is a characteristic of all god's spiritual dealings with man. However mysterious may be such studies, and however vague may be our consequent impres- sions, it might be well for us if we gave some careful atten- tion to this course of god's Providence in general history, that we might better learn to recognise, if not to understand, the power of His presence among men at all times, and how His more special manifestations of that power are not anomalous and isolated instances of His Providence, but only instances which being more visible to human eye, may teach us to suspect that presence where we cannot see it. No adequate views of god's processes of dealing with His creatures can ever be taken by any who do not recognise this His constant Providence over them as a fundamental assumption — an article of faith indeed most difficult — wholly impossible — for us so to follow out as to make visible, but of all doctrines undemonstrable the most credible. The very existence of a will in man — of something in him, that is, which has a life in itself — seems to demand a Providence much more than Nature does. Dead matter when once made active may very conceivably continue so indefinitely without disorder : but a will once created, what that may do can never seem to us as certain. A power, therefore, establishing and maintaining the dominion and growth of moral influences in the world — directing men's path onwards, and helping them to walk in it — this would be credible with- out any Revelation concerning it. 54 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON And so far as we can venture to speak of such subjects at all as matters of sight, we might say that, apart from Revela- tion, we do see a constant and continuous co-operation of the Divine and human activities in some parts of the his- tory of the world commonly called profane, though such co-operation is undoubtedly obscured to our vision by being involved in that great mystery, everywhere underlying and overarching us, how the Creative Will can so withdraw from the created as to allow man to have any action of his own, and how it can also mingle itself with man's without over- whelming it. But if Divine influence in the education of man has probably been exercised in general history to a greater extent than is commonly recognised, it may also be said that in those cases where it is most especially contended for, the method in which it has been exerted on man has been dynamical rather than merely mechanical. It has ever been a vivifying and animating operation — heightening and deepening and widening the energies and capacities of the natural soul, and giving it a region of sensibility and a range of vision beyond those of its normal state, but yet it may be as much in accordance with that state as the microscope and the telescope are in accordance with the eye, when they extend for us so largely the capacities of our natural vision. It certainly seems a fixed fundamental part of god's plan to carry on the improvement of mankind by the instrumentality of men. The great stages of progress in civilisation have been wrought out by the accumulation of human labour, or by the mission among us of gifted individuals who have the power of unclosing new chambers, or even regions, of spiritual vision which all men may henceforth enter and abide in, as the common partrimony of the race. And in all THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 55 such cases where god has employed man as His agent, He has never employed him merely as His instrument. He has ever recognised in him an attribute of will which has ennobled him in some faint measure into an image of Him- self : and therefore it may be that in employing man in the noblest portion of that noble work, He may well be con- sidered as not to have superseded in him altogether those faculties of his nature which in many other portions of the same work have proved essentially adequate to their aim, but only to have heightened His illuminating influence, and extended His superintending Providence, in proportion to the importance of the aim to be accomplished. Such analogies therefore as these which have been adverted to may not unreasonably be adduced. For the exercise of Divine influence in the composition and preservation of the Bible is after all but a portion of god's Providence over the history of man generally, and of His Church especially. It is one act of that Providence, and therefore may not unrea- sonably be expected to be in general harmony with other acts of that same paternal mind. The gift of the Bible is but one of the many gifts of god for the education of man, and is therefore not to be judged of as an isolated act, com- prehending all that has been done, or is doing, for the guid- ance of man's spirit : more especially as it was a gift which was spread over at least some fifty generations of our race. It is rather to be classed most justly, not with those instances of Divine interposition which are most commonly called miraculous, but with those which we call providential — instances which imply indeed to our carnal apprehensions a more direct exercise of Divine volition than we recognise in the ordinary course of our observation, but which do not $6 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON for the most appear to us as signs and as wonders, startling the senses, and confounding the understanding, but blending themselves with human agency by connections inscrutable in their processes though palpable in their re- sults — causing no abrupt shock in human affairs, but at the same time altering irresistibly human purposes, and ordering the unruly wills of men to ends they thought not of XVII. The Bible, The whole history of the formation of the Canons both dential in- °^ ^^^^ ^^"^ ^^^ New Testament, and of the preservation hentance, j^d transmission of them to our times, confirms this Provi- not a mira- . . ... culousgift. dential, and not miraculous, character of the Divme m- fluence connected with the Bible. Here all seems to the ordinary eye (to which what we call miracles, be it remem- bered, are always addressed) to have been left to the action of influences which we do not call miraculous. With regard to the Jewish Scriptures we have these facts to consider : That many of the books which they contain are anonymous, and no one can now certainly say who wrote them, or when they were written, save within large limits — sometimes of several centuries : that certainly some could not have been written until many centuries after the events which they record ; and that equally certainly others could not have been left in their present state if written by the persons to whom popular tradition assigns them. Indeed almost all the books placed in our Bibles between the Pentateuch and Isaiah are of unknown date and authorship, except certain of the Psalms. And the composition of the Pentateuch itself, as we at present have it, is not entirely clear to us as THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 57 wholly of the Mosaic period : the first of its books contains documents obviously of a much older date than that of Moses, and also passages of a much later date : while the book of Deuteronomy seems to bear something of the same relation to the preceding four that the Gospel of St. John does to the Synoptic three. And throughout almost all the historic books we find traces of their having been edited by some later hand, and we have no means of knowing the extent to which this editorial influence has extended. For by whom the books of the Old Testament were collected into one volume, and by what authority made canonical, we do not know. Doubtless there is a popular tradition, and one widely received, that this work was done by Ezra : but this is but a tradition, and by no means has the dignity of a fact of history, and is not favoured by any amount of evi- dence which entitles it to be the foundation of any con- siderable superstructure. And on what principle the collection was made, this we do not know. Why Job or Ecclesiastes which make no mention of any special Jewish Revelation, and why Esther and Canticles which make no mention even of god, should be admitted into the Hebrew Canon, we do not know. And why the books appealed to in the existing Canon as of similar value with the Canonical should not have found a place in it, we cannot say. If it be said, that they were not in existence at the time when the Canon was formed, then we are presented with the remarkable fact, that as many historical and preceptive books once deemed authoritative by the Jews have been lost as have been preserved — and these books written by such as Samuel and Solomon, by Nathan, Iddo and Gad, by Isaiah and Jeremiah, besides S8 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON books of the Chronicles of the kingdoms both of Judah and of Israel And this is a fact which confirms the view- here taken of such uncertainty and indefiniteness attending the constitution of the Old Testament Canon as strongly to countenance the assertion that no miraculous intervention has taken place in its formation. Few questions affecting the faith of men could well be more important, if Divine virtue is to be ascribed to every portion of the letter of ScrijDture, than that sacred and profane Scripture should be broadly distinguished from each other. But the boundary line between them is really more indistinct than the un- studious would suppose, and it would be most difficult for such to pronounce self-justifying judgments between the claims of Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiasticus, or between those of the Song and of the Wisdom of Solomon. The book of Baruch is separated from the book of Esther by but a very slight difference in the character of its evidence, and the Canonical lists of some of the earliest Christian Churches included some of the Jewish books which we reject. When such uncertainty rests upon the formation of the Canon, can absolute sacredness be asserted of every portion of every- thing within it ? And if the Canon of the Hebrew Scripture has been formed without any visible special Divine interfer- ence, does it not render it probable that any rigid theory concerning such interference in its composition may not be necessary ? Formation XVIII. and preser- t'hrcanon -^^^ if it was thus with the formation of the Canon, so of Old j{. ^^s j^isQ ^yith the preservation and transmission of the Testament Scriptures. Sacred Books from the first. From the account of these THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 59 books themselves it would appear that no people could have been less careful of their Sacred Writings than the Jews were previous to their captivity. Indeed no nation on earth that we know of, while subsisting in its integrity, ever were so indifferent to their Sacred Law, or at least ever acted so continuously in disregard to it, as the Jews must have done, if they possessed it from the first in that completeness in which we have it now. One would have thought that the most natural, and even the altogether obligatory, method to be pursued would have been to have multiplied copies of it, and to have made the Levites the public guardians and teachers of it. But we have no reason for supposing that this was the case. From the time of Joshua to the time of David we find no notice of the existence of any Sacred Writings we now have (those writings to which reference is made not now existing :) and the state of political and social and religious life which we find to have prevailed for all these centuries did not admit of any literal or reverent observance of such a scheme of ritual as we see prescribed in the existing code. Only for half a century in the reigns of David and Solomon does such observance seem to have been possible. For imme- diately after this period, the idolatrous state of the ten tribes of Israel precluded any profession even of such observance there : and even in Judah — in the eighteenth year of the pious Josiah, which was but a little before the Babylonish removal — the very priests seem to have been ignorant of the existence of a written copy of the Law. For in the national chronicles preserved to our time we read that a ' book of the law of the Lord given by Moses ' having been discovered unexpectedly in the Temple, it was 6o CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON thought so considerable an event as to form an occasion for a thorough restoration and renewed regulation of the national worship. It may surely be said that there is nothing parallel to this in the history of any nation with which we are acquainted. And it is the more remarkable, inasmuch as in our present copies of that Law we find a most singularly anticipatory command, that every king on his accession to the throne should write out for himself a copy of the Law from that which was kept by the priests and Levites : and yet neither this omission, nor other violations of this law, were ever, as far as we read, the subjects of the rebukes or expostulations of any of the prophets in their exhortations to any of the kings. What- ever may be the full significance of these facts, they cannot but be deemed such as require us to pause for their patient consideration : and as furnishing us for our present purpose with an admonition, that in much relating to the course of Divine Providence in the history of Revelation we must expect to find our anticipations contradicted rather than confirmed. It is also a fact which may be illustrative of this unex- pected condition of things, that any definite body of Sacred Scripture is not distinctly appealed to, or commented upon, in the writings of the Prophets, as it is in the writings of the Apostles. We must remember too, that there is no Divine command that we know of — and even no Jewish authority, except that of Josephus — which would make us believe that the Historical or Prophetical Books were to be, or were, deposited in any sanctuary — much less placed by the side of the Law of Moses, which was com- manded to be placed beside the ark. THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 6l And consider well the significance of the fact already referred to, that there are probably as many historical books lost by the Jews as were preserved by them — books apparently of the same authority as those we now possess, because appealed to by them as confirmatory of their statements, or as supplementary to them. The books of Chronicles alone have references to ten such books. And these books were not destroyed by the hands of enemies, or at least are never said to have been so ; but simply lost, or allowed to decay through inattention. And so with regard to the original autographs of any of the books now preserved, their loss is never regretted, or even mentioned : nor is there anywhere any account of the fate of the second original Tables of stone. And the Jews lost both their spoken language, and the characters in which it was written, during their compara- tively short residence in Balylon : so that when they returned to their own land they could not understand Hebrew when read to them, but were obliged to have an interpreter : and the letters in which their Law was hence- forth written were no longer the same as those in which it had been originally written on the Tables of stone, or by the hands of Moses. We ! now of no instances of national carelessness equal to this. Indeed this may be considered as an under-statement of the case, if we listen to the Jews' own traditions, as conveyed to us through the early writers of the Christian Church ; for these represent the whole Jewish Scriptures as having perished during the residence in Babylon, and to have been revealed afresh to Ezra. Doubtless after the return from Babvlon when the 62 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON Canon was once fixed, and the Jewish poHty so com- pletely organised as we never read of its having been before, the Jews were exceedingly and beyond all other people, it may be, careful of their Sacred Writings, and reverent towards them, and have been ever since. Their treatment of the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach which was originally written in Hebrew, and of the First Book of Maccabees which is so like some that are, show very plainly their jealous guardianship of the established Canon, in times not long after its establishment ; while the minute and even superstitious care of later times is familiar to all. But still it may be justly and profitably suggested, that if so many important points in the history of the Hebrew Scrip- tures have been left in so great measure to the operation of ordinary laws, we cannot say beforehand what may not have been so left. Nothing could have been more different from the course which human providence would have taken for the securing of a permanent infallible Revelation : so different indeed is it that we must either abandon all attempts to understand it, or we must modify considerably our cherished prepossessions as to its being the intention of Divine Providence to give us through the Jews a Revelation which was to be literally and permanently infallible. XIX. Formation And as it has been with the Hebrew Scriptures, so it has f N^w been also in some measure with the Christian. We can Testament trace here nothing which bears the character of Miracle, though very much that is plainly Providential. Indeed in the case of the Christian Scriptures we are met at THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 63 the outset with facts which it seems impossible to make to conform to any rigid theory of Divine Influence. Before all we should note, that we know of no intimation from our Lord that His Gospel should be written, as the Law of Moses was commanded to be. Nowhere that we know of did He lay such a charge upon His disciples while on earth, nor in those special Revelations which from time to time He made to some of His disciples after He had ascended up on high, do we find that such a charge was added, except, it may be, in one limited and special and anomalous instance. Nor does any one of those whose writings compose the Christian Canon profess to be writing a Law at the dictation of christ, which should be a portion of a Code of universal obligation for the Church of all ages. It is rather obvious from the nature of their writings, that several of them could not have had such a calling or object present to their own minds. The personal and private nature of Luke's Gospel and Acts — which constitute so large and important a portion of our Scripture — is a notable instance of this : these writings of his being addressed pro- fessedly to an individual, and with a specified limitation of purpose : while the writer's preliminary declaration, ' It seemed good unto me,' is the faintest possible expression of the consciousness of any special Divine gift or com- mission. Nor do any of the writers seem to have ever seen the writings of any of the others (except it may be in one doubtful case) : nor do they seem to have taken any measures for the uncorrupted preservation, or the universal diffusion, of their writings : and neither separately nor conjointly to have intimated to the Church that there ever should be a body of Christian Scriptures which 64 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON should be a sufficient Rule of Faith and Duty for all time. Nor was the collection of their writings into such a Canonical body of Scriptures the result of any special Revelation, or the work of any Sacred commission : of any deliberate individual purpose even, or of any ecclesias- tical provision of any kind. It was not any act of the Church universal, nor was it any act of any age. It was a very complex and a very gradual process — the work of many Churches and of several centuries. It was a result accomplished by the ordinary methods of human judgment — the weighing and sifting of traditional testimony, and the estimate of internal wealth : and by each Church endeavour- ing to secure for itself as complete a collection as it could of Apostolic writings, and then of the Church Catholic adopting those which were common to the collections of the most considerable Churches. Instead therefore of being deemed one definite act, it must be deemed the indefinite result of that Christian instinct and Christian tact which is the consequence of the general inhabitation of the Chris- tian body by the Christian spirit — Christian principles and Christian sympathies operating according to their own laws, with unconscious tendencies in the members, but with the sure guidance of their Head. So much was this the case that the formation of that which was to be a rule for all else was not apparently itself framed according to any uniform rule that we can discover. Not only were the Gospels and Epistles which form that Canon a selection out of many others, some of which had the same preten- sions as they have, made by men to whom we do not know that any special gifts qualifying them above others for the THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 6$ purpose Avere vouchsafed, but the principles on which their judgments were made have not been delivered to us. Whatever these principles were, they were not such as apparently admit of a formal expression in rules : for while they admit as Canonical writings some which were certainly not Apostolical, they reject others which had an equal external claim to admission with some which have been admitted, being written by persons who were equally companions of the Apostles, and equally approved of by them. For instances, the earliest Churches did not deny that the Epistle of Barnabas was genuine, but they did not admit it as Holy Scripture, though Barnabas was a good man, and full of the holy ghost : and the Epistle to the Hebrews has been ultimately admitted, though its author- ship was never professedly determined. And what can be said of Mark or of Luke more than can be said of that Clement 'whose name is in the book of life,' but whose Epistle is not in the Scriptures of the Church? The Second Epistle of Peter and that of Jude have been spoken against from the first unto this day, and yet they have become Holy Scripture ; and so long was the Apocalypse deemed ambiguous that it was not received in the Greek Churches in the time of St. Jerome. But though this Canon of New Testament Scripture has been formed upon no rule that we can rigidly define, yet nothing need less be doubted than that such rule has been sufficient to secure to the Catholic Church and the indi- vidual Christian all that it is necessary for their spiritual life and growth to possess. Indeed this constitution of the Canon of Christian Scripture may ever be appealed to as a most illustrious instance of the reality and sufficiency of 66 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON that system of indefinite Divine Influence which is through- out these pages asserted as so often employed in producing the highest spiritual results in human history. No event has exercised greater influence on the character of the Church of Christ than the existence of the Christian Scrip- tures, and yet no event was less apparently miraculous as contra-distinguished from Providential. It was, it must be repeated, a result of the exercise of that enlightened and sanctified spiritual judgment which is the special con- tinuous endowment of all ages of the Church — which if duly honoured would be found equal to great tasks always, and which if unduly dishonoured will be found to leave us in difficulties which will be also dangers. This case of the Christian Canon is a case in point. For if none but a literal line and measure of canonicity will be accepted, in this case there is none forthcoming : if Christian tact and discerning of spirit be despised, there is nothing which remains in their stead. For consider, how is it possible to substantiate the claim of the directest Divine Influence on any literal rule in the case of a composition of which we do not know the author, which does not claim such influence for itself, and for which such influence is not claimed by any one who had better means or right than ourselves of testifying to the fact. And such is the case with the Epistle to the Hebrews. And who can guarantee to us the infallibility of Luke ? or what know we of the extraordinary gifts of Mark ? How is it possible for us to know that every word which we find written by these is to be taken as an authoritative expo- sition of the mind of god in christ ? Such claims as these — claims which are unrestrained consequences of the THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 67 notion of infallible Divine Scripture — are such as it is quite awful to make for any men, and which it is an instinct of reverence in any man to hesitate in receiving. It is but little for this purpose to say, that they were honest and spiritual men — veracious and well-informed : much more than this is required before we need, or dare, receive them as authoritative exponents of the truth of god. Admitting that they were the most truthful of all men, this is far, very far, from proving that they were infallible : nor would their possession of any limited measures of all the moral virtues and Christian graces be sufficiently strong ground to build such infinite inferences on as a direct Revelation from god would warrant. However scrupulously exact and exten- sively informed they might be, yet they might consistently omit actions and words of our Lord which if revealed would have modified the impressions we now receive from those which they have left us ; and in those which they have recorded they may very conceivably in some cases have confounded the universal and the particular — what was actually commanded and what was only permitted : they may have converted a prayer into a prophecy, or an utter- ance of thanksgiving into a fact of history — they may have misapplied a quotation, or misunderstood an allusion, or mistranslated an expression — so as to have coloured their narration, quite blamelessly as far as their own moral character w^as concerned, and quite innocuously when only general truthfulness is expected, but to an extent which may readily and widely niislead those who are irreverent enough to look in the words of a disciple of an Apostle for the infinite knowledge which dwelt only in the Apostles' Master. 68 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON Most earnestly therefore is it here exhorted that those who press on others a rigid theory of Divine Influence in the composition of the Scriptures, should take good heed that this their measure of hard dealing does not return upon themselves to their very serious hurt. The letter of a bond is often not worth its spirit, and certainly in this case if they will accept no title deeds for their heavenly in- heritance but Scriptures written with pen and ink, and signed and sealed with visible tokens, they will find that in the great day of need they will have over-reached them- selves, and be destitute indeed. XX. Facts con- The State of the existing copies of the Hebrew and Chris- existing ^''''■^ Scriptures may also well be considered as largely aid- copies of ii^g |;q disprove this supposition of literal Infallibility. For Scriptures, however desirable it may seem abstractedly that there should be some standard of such infallibility, it is a fact that there is none such. And god would have us take facts for lessons. Among such consider these : There is no original autograph of any portion of the Sacred Scrip- tures at this time existing in the world, and there is no copy of the Bible existing which is a transcript of any one manuscript. All the Bibles which there are now are made complete by the union of transcripts from many different manuscripts. The oldest manuscripts which are used in the construction of our modern Bibles are all imperfect, and most of them but fragmentary. And no manuscript which we have of the Christian Scriptures was written before the fourth century : and none of any part of the THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 69 Hebrew Scriptures was written before the twelfth century- after CHRIST. There are no two manuscripts, either of the Hebrew or of the Christian Scriptures, which are verbally- alike ; and there is not one of either which cannot be demonstrated to be verbally incorrect. Wherefore the very best copy of the Bible in the original tongues is in some measure a conjectural compilation made by human scholar- ship out of many thousand verbal and literal variations. Most true it is indeed that these variations, though so numerous, are not important in any spiritual view of Scrip- ture, and do not materially affect a single doctrine or duty of Jewish or Christian faith. Those in the Hebrew Scrip- tures are chiefly of so slight a character that very many of them can even scarcely be made intelligible to those who are not Hebrew scholars : and those in the Christian, though more considerable, need not materially impair a single article of the Catholic Creed. And this is a fact of very great significance for those who hold no rigid theory of Divine influence ; such know and feel that the errors which they meet with, though to them unquestionably errors, are so inconsiderable in amount that they never would have been considered as difficulties if they had not been asserted to be impossibilities : and even now they scarcely seem to them worthy to be dwelt on for more than a moment amid the vast treasures of truth in which they are imbedded. In fact they consider them to be but of infinitesimal consequence to any students of the Bible except to those who are accustomed to associate the attri- bute of universal infallibility with those minds which have been permitted to become in any measure the agents of Divine communications, and to believe that no record of 70 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON such communications can be accepted as sufficient, but one wherein the letter is as Divine as the spirit. But for these they are not inconsiderable : they are facts of the very greatest consequence : for Infallibility is not a matter of degree : its very aim is to preclude all doubt : and that which is regarded as altogether and equally Divine cannot wisely or intelligibly be divided into two such diverse parts as the essential and the unimportant. And if it be once admitted that portions of every copy of the Scriptures now extant in the world are not certainly Divine, are even demonstrably human — as probably it is now admitted by every one who is not justly obnoxious to rebuke if he speak at all on this subject — then it becomes of the utmost im- jDortance to point out indisputably which these portions are, and which only, and then also equally to pronounce what is the Divine truth which they supplant. Now it is impossible to prevent an-element of fallibility from entering here : if for no other reason at least for this, that the argu- ments and the evidence which have to be weighed for such determinations are among the most difficult and the most complicated that can be proposed to human faculties, and there is no Divine supplementary assistance vouchsafed t o influence or to authenticate our decisions. Of course it may be said, that though we have not now a literally infallible copy of the Scriptures, yet that the first Scriptures might have been so, and thus the expectation of a perfect Revelation have been fulfilled : but to this it is sufficient to reply, that this is a matter which we cannot decide but by assumption, as we have no facts but those which point in a contrary direction : and that if so decided, it would not be of any great interest to us who have not THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 71 that infallible Revelation which others may have had. But it has this argument against it, that it does not seem likely that so great a gift as that of Infallibility should have been given only to be immediately lost again or withdrawn. XXI. But verbal imperfections are not all that a careful student Discre- who searches the Scriptures without any other prepossession P^J^^i^^ than that of indefinite reverence will find in them. It is different not however intended here to dwell on that large class of the Bible, difficulties which are presented to us in all parts and periods of the Bible, from the contradictions between the knowledge which we now possess of the material universe and the history of mankind, and that more imperfect knowledge which was possessed by its writers, but simply to notice — and that most briefly — some which arise from a compari- son of one part of the Bible with another. It is so un- gracious and displeasing a task, however, to point per- manently to even the minutest specific imperfections of that which is deemed as a whole the most reverend of all things on earth, that it shall suffice to say that the verbal and numerical difficulties between the books of Chronicles on the one side, and of the books of Samuel and of Kings on the other, are not simply so frequent, but so systematic, that these alone would require some less inflexible theory than that of infallibility, and that he who would not deceive himself in sacred matters ought first to set about the task of honestly reconciling these books with a;ny such theory, before he rejects such suggestions as to whether it be not immaterial if they cannot be so reconciled. 72 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON Difficulties of the same kind occur in the reconciliation of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah : and of another but similarly cogent, though minute, kind occur in those re- markable passages in the historical books which recognise a chronology far subsequent to the time when the books themselves are generally supposed to have been written, as in those instances where we find in Genesis a list of ' the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel,' and in Nehemiah, the genealogy of the high priests continued to the times of Alexander the Great. And those who are aware of the peculiar structure of the earlier parts of Genesis : of the twofold composition of Judges : of the separable nature of the book of the Prophecies of Isaiah : of the difficulties attendant upon the books of Daniel and of Esther, and of the change of opinion which has of late become prevalent as to the dates of the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, and consequently as to their authorship, will know how much need there may be for some change also in the old opinion concerning their literal infallibibilty. And it may be added, that those who are not aware of these things, are not yet qualified to pronounce that when they do become so such facts may not interfere with their prepossessions. Doubtless the exaggeration of these difficulties, which has been often made, is very sad : but the denial of these diffi- culties, or the ignoring of them, has its sad side too : and if the one tendency betokens something more than the re- morselessness of a thorough criticism, the other exhibits also something more than the fair assurance of faith. And to one who is much more anxious about the result of the contest than the merits of the combatants, and who would THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 73 accept truth from the hand of an adversary, and reject untruth from any hand, it will probably remain yet apparent that there is a large amount of difficulty, and contradiction to old impressions, which has not been removed by the solutions which have been hitherto proposed. The opposing criticism has for the most part indeed served to confirm the impression of the general worth of the mass of the writings which compose the Sacred Canon, and thus given thoughtful minds some additional confidence in the future stability of that which has now been so often and so ably assaulted, and yet retains so much unshaken : but still there have at the same time been rendered manifest to such many weaknesses of construction and defence which cannot henceforth be wisely or safely disregarded. Doubtless for many the in- genious and confident solutions of various difficulties which have been brought forward will seem to be very satisfactory : but this is not so to all : and the degree in which these solutions will be considered successful cannot but vary with the varying qualifications of the judge. And in the case of those to whom there is a considerable residuum of difficulty unexplained, principles of interpretation which will permit us to consider some discrepancies and imperfections as in- nocuous, seem almost necessary for a peaceful faith in the large remainder of the Sacred Canon. XXII. Confining ourselves for a while to the consideration oftionbe- the Old Testament Scripture, though these remarks are in *^^.^^" *]^^ ^ ° spirit of some measure equally applicable to the New, it may be well Old and to return upon that peculiarity of its accommodation which tament. 74 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS OM was noticed above, in so far as it connects itself with the subjects just noticed, as they mutually illustrate each other. For of all the difficulties which present themselves in our reading the Hebrew Scriptures, by far the most urgent is the contradiction which we feel between much of the spirit which was there sanctioned and approved, and that which is the first commandment of the New. This has been so frequently and so forcibly felt by many in all ages — by the most pious as well as by the less so — that it has been a constant subject of difficulty and discussion. In the earliest ages of the Church this was so much the case that the Old Testament was supposed by many to have had an origin the most opposed to Divine, while in our modern times it has certainly presented to objectors the most fertile source of arguments and excuses for rejecting the Newer Testa- ment, wherever its claims have been placed on the same level with those of the Older Scripture. Most of the attacks against Christianity have come through the side of Judaism, and most of those against the New Testament through that of the Old. And however unfair or incon- siderate such attacks may be, and however unjust such conclusions, yet so long as the principle of progression and accommodation in god's Revelations is not recognised but rejected, there will always seem to some a certain measure of reasonableness and healthy moral instinct in the distaste which is felt towards much of the spirit of the Hebrew Scriptures. In such case no explanations or ex- positions will avail to remove the first impressions con- veyed by the fact of the slaughter of the Canaanites being said to be in its details the command of the Most High : nor will enable us to reconcile with the later Revelations of THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 75 Deity, the other suggestions and approvals which we find ascribed to god in the histories of several of the Judges : or the commands which were given, and the spirit which was exhibited, by several of the most conspicuous of the Prophets. The execrations of several of the Psalms ever have appeared, and ever will appear, incongruous with that peculiar spirit which the Christian is to be of, while many of the habits, and practices, and views of the most approved of old time will obviously not bear to be trans- ferred to our conception of any New Testament saint. So long as we are not permitted to believe that god gave precepts of Duty and Revelations of Truth to His people of old only as they could bear them, and tolerated the co-existence and commingling of much darkness of the natural man with the special illuminations of His Spirit, so long we cannot but contrast, and contrasting pronounce in many parts as contradictory, the spirit of the kingdom which was of this world and the spirit of that kingdom which was not of this world — the spirit of a Joshua, a Samson, or an Elisha, with the spirit of a Peter, a John, or a Paul — or the spirit of Moses or David praying against the enemies of Israel with the spirit of that prayer of JESUS, * Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do.' With regard, however, to the Revelation and the Rule of Duty and the Standard of the Moral State, there would seem to be now less difficulty than of old in gaining a hearing for the principle of accommodation. But as it is desirable that such concession should not be involuntary, and considered as anomalous, but, if it may so be, rather should be seen to be a consistent part of a systematic 76 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON whole, it may be worth while to notice some other points of such accommodation which, if duly pondered on, may serve to produce something of this feeling of a coherent Providential plan, XXIII. Further re- And first may it not be said, that the very phraseology the princi- which leads US to attribute such direct and special Revela- pleofAc- tion to many things which we find written in the Bible is commocla- . . tion. itself an Accommodation ? and cannot be taken in its letter, but must be taken only in its spirit ? To take instances at once : Are not the phrases, ' The Lord said unto Moses,* and the ' Thus saith the Lord' of the Prophets, themselves accommodations ? Do these expressions always mean that god spake audibly to Moses and the Prophets the words which we have written down ? or do they not mean at most that the thoughts so expressed by Moses and the Prophets were suggested by god ? Does any one believe — can they do so — that the minutice of the Levitical ordinances were spoken to Moses by a Divine voice? or that the words used by Ezekiel were heard by him, all as we have them, as heavenly utterances ? Probably no one who thinks much of what is implied in such a supposition does so believe, but rather acquiesces in the belief of some of the wisest, of Jews as well as of Christians, that though such expressions do sometimes signify the directest Revela- tions ever given by god to man, yet that more often they rather signify a deep and true impression on the prophet's mind that what he was saying was assuredly in accordance with the Will of god — either a necessary filling in of a Divine outline, or a consequent application of an indisput- THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 77 ably Divine principle. And in order to judge adequately of this it would be well if we carefully compared all, or very many, of the passages in both Testaments in which the Divine agency is directly introduced in narration, and see whether or not we are not only allowed, but even compelled to modify the meaning of such expressions so much in some instances that we may perhaps do somewhat so in most. And when we begin to do this we cannot but be struck with the fact that in the earliest stages of Revelation god is represented as revealing Himself least frequently but most directly, and as there is progression in the importance of the truths revealed, so there is a corresponding retrogression in the directness of the method of Revelation. The earli- est Revelations are represented as immediate manifesta- tions of Divine Personality : the later as continually fainter and fainter manifestations of the same. From Adam to Moses it is for the most part jehovah who is represented as appearing : from Moses to David it is almost exclusively The Angel of jehovah; while after the time of David communications are made not by Angels but by Prophets, and to these chiefly in dreams and visions and types and symbols, until at length even such things cease ; and some of the most important truths of which the Jews were in possession at the time of the Advent of our Lord, were educed into a prominence which they never had before, by yet more indirect means than these, or indeed than by any especial Revelations from Heaven. And not only this, but sometimes when we compare one passage of Scripture with another, we find the same com- munication spoken of as given indifferently by jehovah, by angels, and by m.en : and even in the New Testament we 78 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON find St. Stephen speaking of ' the angel who spake unto Moses in Mount Sinai,' and of the Law having been given by ' the disposition of angels : ' and we find these substitutions of angelic ministrations for Divine manifestations repeated in the Epistles to the Galatians and the Hebrews. And elsewhere in the Old Testament we find many diverse, and it would seem contrary, operations ascribed to the special agency of god. God is said to have taught Bezaleel and Aholiab to work — to have moved Samson to slay the Philistines, and Jehu to slay many of his brethren, and the like repeatedly. In one place we read that the Lord moved David to number the people, while in another Satan is said to have done so too : and twice over it is said that ' JEHOVAH hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets ; ' and indeed there is scarcely any kind of action or event which is not directly referred in the Old Testament to the agency of god. Even in the New we find the same kind of freer and fuller ascription of Divine Influence than we can construe to the letter, as when John the Baptist is said to have been filled with the HOLY GHOST from his birth, and mere miraculous powers, unaccompanied by any spiritual graces, are said to be gifts of the HOLY GHOST. And surely when we find such peculiarities in the use of expressions which in their letter denote the introduction of the most direct agency where we should have expected but a modification of such expres- sions, and where we are obliged to consider them satis- fied by more mediate manifestations of the Divine, we may be permitted, if not compelled, to interpret the ' Thus saith the Lord ' of Moses and the Prophets with a vague- ness which at first sight would not occur to us. THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 79 And then consider how Mosaic moraUty was in some points pronounced by our Lord Himself as an accom- modation to the low spiritual state of those to whom it was delivered. And what can any worship by symbols be but an accommodation — the symbols professedly deriving their Divine significance largely from their human ? And the localisation of Deity — the Shechinah and the Cheru- bim — the Urim and Thummim — the Brazen Serpent — the Ark and its Mercy-seat — the figures profusely graven and woven on the walls and the doors of the Tabernacle and the Temple, and even within the Holiest of all — what were these things but accommodations ? XXIV. The testimony of our Lord to the authority of the Jewish Our Lord's Scriptures yet remains to be considered. And it is at once at^t™the^ and unreservedly declared that this testimony, as popularly authority of the interpreted, does present great appearance of sanction to Jewish some of the views which are discountenanced in these Scriptures. pages. Wherefore it is here desired to speak with the greatest self-distrust, and with the highest reverence for whatever may but seem to have even but a probability in favour of being in accordance with His will. For that will is in these pages emphatically recognised as the highest authority before which the mind of man can bow, and to which its every thought ought to be brought into obedience. And for those who after due deliberation have come to the conclusion that this high will requires only probably that we should receive the Jewish Scriptures as all throughout equally Divine, the question is at an end. But for those 8o CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON not yet forced to that conclusion, these following considera- tions may have weight. And first we ought to consider what it is that it is pro- posed to establish by this testimony of our Lord. It is not the general sacredness of the Jewish Scriptures — their inestimable worth to the Jew— their containing a Divine Law which was not to pass away without being fulfilled — or their being a Divine testimony to Himself as the Messiah — this is here admitted, and much more : and not admitted only, but emphatically asserted in these pages. The question then here is not concerning the substantial Divinity of the Jewish Scripture, or the general Divine commission of Moses and the Prophets, but only con- cerning the difference between this and their universal literal Infallibility : not concerning the reality of Divine Influence on the Scriptures, but concerning the degree of it. That the way of eternal life might be learned by the Jew from his Scriptures, and that those Scriptures which testify of christ cannot be broken — there is not a moment's doubt : but that there is nothing else in these Scriptures but what is necessary to teach the way of eternal life, or to testify of christ — this is doubted. And these points are distinctly separable. It may surely be believed that all Holy Scripture is profitable for the highest spiritual interests of man, without at the same time believing it obligatory to receive the books of Esther and of Canticles, which make no mention of the name of god, as a direct Revelation from heaven : or to believe that prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of old spake as they were moved by the holy ghost, without also believing that the books of Joshua and of Judges and of Kings and of THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 8l Chronicles, which contain no prophecy, came not at all by the will of man, but wholly by the operation of the holy GHOST. Indeed all these admissions may be freely and fully made, and yet it be an open question whether some of the Psalms (one fourth of which at least are by unknown authors) are more than the outpourings of a soul under the ordinary influences of Hebrew life : or whether all the Proverbs, even of Solomon, are the utterances of Wisdom in its highest forms : or whether the Book of Job, which does not recognise the existence of Patriarch or of Prophet, of Abraham or of Moses, of Israehte or of Priest, is indubitably Divine. Unquestionably our Lord paid great homage to the Old Testament as a whole, on various solemn occasions. The fact that He used the words of Scripture in His first temptation in the wilderness and in His last agony on the cross : and that before he commenced His public teaching and after He arose from the tomb. He expounded the Scriptures : and that with Him It is Written is often the conclusion of an argument, and Have you not read in the Scripture ? is always a rebuke to an opponent — these things, and the like are, it is repeated, not only conceded but asserted in these pages. But this testimony does not de- cide, it is thought, the differential amount of sacredness between substantial Divinity and literal Infallibility, and though conclusive concerning the general question of the supreme authority of Scripture, leaves yet unclosed the special question herein discussed. 82 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON XXV, Difference To establish this point conclusively would indeed seem to b^I^^t' 1 ^^Q^i'^s more exact evidence, and more definite data, than Divineness we are privileged to possess. It would at least require that and literal ,,,,,. , . . ^ Infalli- we should have before us the precise expressions oi our bility. Lord, and these used in judgments which directly deter- mine whether indefinite sacredness or circumstantial infalli- bility ought to be attributed to the Jewish records. But we have no judgment of His which contemplates this dis- tinction, and all the language ascribed to Him is of the popular form. In matters which pertain to questions with which the minds of those to whom our Lord's sayings were addressed were not conversant, and which depend for their decision upon differences of expression which it was not essential that they should receive, we cannot always be perfectly sure that in our present Gospels we have the very words originally uttered. Indeed probably in any of them we have but a translation of those words. They are all now in Greek, and our Lord appears to have spoken in Syro- Chaldaic — which is a fact of some consequence in such discussions as these with which we are now concerned. And not only this, but to assume that we have the most accurate possible translation of the words of our Lord, is to assume part of that which we have to prove. For it takes for granted not only the thorough truthfulness and entire his- torical worth of the Evangelists, but also that they are infallible verbally as well as substantially, which is a point which in strictness of argument ought to be first demon- strated on some independent ground before it is brought to decide something else. It must be remembered that none THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 83 of the Gospels have the character of an autobiography, or of any dictation by the great Object and Subject of them : but rather only of records of the impressions produced by Him, or only by reported accounts of Him in some cases, on the minds and memories and moral dispositions of men, differing considerably from each other, and certainly to some extent colouring their narratives with their own characters. And in the case of two of those Evangelists we do not know that they ever heard our Saviour speak, but we have reason rather to believe that they derived all their knowledge of His discourses from the report of others. And this is an important remark with regard to the present question : because some of the passages which give the strongest colouring to our Saviour's testi- mony in this case, occur in the Gospel of St. Luke.' But admitting to the fullest extent that an evangelist is wholly trustworthy historically, it does not therefore follow necessarily that he may be so verbally and minutely accu- rate as to preserve those delicate shades of expression which would suffice to confirm or to confound the distinctions which we are here seeking to establish. And if we have not the very words of our Lord, we may be sure that the re- corded words are (unconsciously) more favourable than otherwise to the side of a more direct Divine influence : for such doubtless was the natural prepossession of the writer, and of those from whom he received his accounts, and it would require the exertion of a strong deliberate restraint to prevent this from being the case. While these things however are considered as elements fairly to be taken into account in forming judgments concerning this matter, nothing further on this point shall be urged than 84 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON the exhortation to those who may be anxious for the exactest truth, to compare the differing accounts given by the different Evangehsts of the same conversations of our Lord. A critical and obvious instance of literal in- exactness in the Gospel narratives is the fact, that the words inscribed on the cross are recorded by each of the four Evangelists differently, which is clearly not to be accounted for by their being written in three different languages or letters. The variations, too, in the letter of the Lord's Prayer, and in the accounts of the institution of the Lord's Supper, are also notable, and the more so from the fact that they would seem so unlikely and so un- necessary. It should, however, not fail to be noted that however this question may be determined, it cannot be decisive as to the authority of the whole Bible, inasmuch as it does not apply, at least directly, to the question of the significance of the Christian Scriptures. As it has been already said, there is no allusion known to have been made by our Lord to the future existence even of any such Scriptures : no promise given that any New Testament should be composed to cor- respond to, or complete, the Old : no faintest intimation that any Scripture should bear the same relation to the Christian Church that the Jewish Law did to the Mosaic polity. Every portion of Divine testimony to the authority and significance of the New Testament is of an indirect and inferential kind. Doubtless there may be considered as justly arising from the old dispensation an analogy and an expectation which may have weight in confirming that which rests on other and more definite grounds, but such kind of inference cannot be considered as of itself affording THE BIBLE AISTD THEOLOGY. 85 a stable foundation for so wide-spreading a theory as that of an infalUble and exclusive guide. XXVI. But the considerations which may be the most fairly Onr Lord judged as rendering the testimony of our Lord not conclu- tj^g Princi- sively contradictory to the opinions maintained in these P^^ °f ^,^' ^ •' ... . comuioda- pages, are derived from no superficial or incidental forms in tion. which His teaching is presented to us, but from an atten- tive study of the very principles of that Teaching, and from His practical treatment of those Scriptures to which that Teaching refers. The Teaching of our Lord itself distinctly recognises that Principle of Accommodation which is contended for with regard to the older Scriptures. It is most important that this should be distinctly seen and understood, not only for our immediate purpose, but also on other grounds ; and therefore it shall here be dwelt upon for a while. And surely there is every antecedent probability that such should be the case. The more fully we enter into the feel- ing of the pure Divinity of Christ the more we must feel the necessity (if we may so speak) of such Accommodation in His whole converse with men. Men could not have borne the things which He could have told them at any time, and they did not at one time bear the things which He taught them to bear at another. How emphatically does He Himself tell His disciples this, and thus give us in the plainest and directest terms the lesson which now it is wished to inculcate. How gradually did He unfold the mystery of His Person and His Mission, and how still more 86 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON gradually did His Apostles come to the recognition of it. Surely this fact lies on the very surface of the Evangelical History, and is a fact full of lessons. And if we would humble ourselves duly we should deem it but most fitting, and not at all a thing to be wondered at or disbelieved, that the bright Light which He was should be veiled before such dim eyes as ours, and that the purely Divine in Him should pass through a temporary medium of the simply human before it could be adjusted to the various capacities of our inferior nature. And we may also remember (though not for the soothing of our wounded pride) that those to whom our Lord first made His Revelations were even not such as we in many things. Our mental vision has been purified and strengthened by that very light which at its first dif- fusion was too strong for any eye : and that light which then was brighter than the noonday sun, and blinded before it illumined, has now become but as the healing light of Day to the eyes which have been opened upon it after the Church's enjoyment of it for eighteen hundred years. To the mere hasty speculator indeed it might seem the wisest, that all of a Final Revelation should be unmixed Truth, absolute and universal : that if progressive it should be pure, and that if indirect it should be infallible : that its morality should be inflexible, its dogmas indisputable, and its whole character so marked off from all that is human and imperfect that its limits should never be fairly open to mistake, and its authority never for a moment be possible to be questioned. But let any one not in haste ponder well on the complexity of the problem of how Divine Ideas are to be completely and at once revealed through the medium of an ancient anomalous language — how many new Truths THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 87 are to be promulgated fully and finally in one generation, and how a Religion intended to be ever the same in essence is yet to be adapted to the ever-varying diversities of humanity. And this was the Problem (if we may speak thus humanly with due reverence) which a final Revelation had to solve. It had to make itself immediately influential in the world, and also universally applicable unto the end of all things. And therefore it must be both adapted to its first hearers in the modes of its expression, and at the same time be capable of being translated into other modes ; and consequently be a revelation of Principles rather than of Rules : flexible exceedingly in the letter, and unchangeable only in its spirit. It must therefore too use, for the most part, existing instruments of communication : it must link itself on at many points with the actual condition of the age in which it is delivered, and only refuse any participation with its imperfections when they are such as are essentially opposed to its spirit and its aim. At least without some such connections with the modes of thought prevalent in the age in which it was first promulgated, it would seem almost impossible to conceive how it could have taken such hold of the minds of the first generation as to have been trans- mitted with effect to that which succeeded. Unquestionably the popular nature of the language in which it was first con- veyed, made the ethereal truths which were its essence far more impressive on its first recipients. The truths would have been, it may be, more adequately expressed for the highest subsequent culture of mankind in other and purer language, but their effect on the great uncultivated multi- tude whom they were to be the great means of purifying and elevating, either in the first age or in any following one 88 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON would not have been so great if they had been originally conveyed in a vehicle more colourless, and tasteless, and insipid in proportion as it was more pure. It is true that by this means the records of such communications must almost necessarily present to after times more difficulties of interpretation than might have attended less accommodated Revelations : and there must by this means be devolved upon later times a growing labour to separate between the transient and the permanent — between the earthly and un- essential form and the heavenly and immutable spirit : but difficulty and labour are our lot on earth, and the only way of dealing with them wisely is to embrace them cheer- fully — not to rebel or even to murmur and sit still, but to encounter them thoughtfully and faithfully, patiently and earnestly, and thus through conquering them to convert them into means of self-culture. It may be even that the effort and the trial which this task imposes may be pre- cisely that which is most needed by us to counteract some of the evil effects by which our superabounding luxury of privilege is almost sure to be always attended. The evils and errors indeed which have arisen from man's dealings with the record we actually possess, in consequence very probably of his not sufficiently under- standing this peculiarity of its accommodative character, have been great : but they need not ever be so. Many, if not most, of them have been the mere consequences of human wilfulness and ignorance, which greater dispas- sionateness and a more intelligent method of interpretation may teach us to avoid for the future : and never have the efforts which are necessary to disengage the spirit from the encumbrances of the letter, and to reconcile the natural THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 89 progress and expansion of human thought with reverence for those principles which the Scriptures emphatically re- veal, been made with more of sincerity and of hopefulness than at present. XXVII. The instances in our Lord's own conduct and teaching Principle which distinctly recognise the principle of accommodation, j^^q iJ^tiQ^ it would be well for us to consider, not only for our present apparent m our purpose, which they largely illustrate, but also because we Lord's may hence see wisdom in many of our Lord's ways of |[j-^ ^^^ acting and speaking which otherwise will remain obscure to teaching. us. The great principle and fact which it is here wished to call attention to is this : Our Lord did and said some things, and suffered many things to be done and said, that were not absolutely and universally the best, in order that His life and words might connect themselves with previous facts in Scripture and certain prepossessions in the minds of those among whom He lived, so that there might be no abrupt line of separation between the Divine dispensations, but that they might join on to each other without a shock, and constitute one great scheme gradually unfolding itself from Law into Gospel. And to special instances of such condescending adaptation we should come after calm meditation on the earliest period of His life, and on all that which preceded His public baptism — a period of most mysterious being, which it must often confuse the clearest mind to conceive of or comprehend. And that baptism itself, what was it but the most illustrious of all special instances of that accommodation of which we are speaking ? How can it possibly be interpreted in a manner which shall 90 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON not make its significance depend upon a temporary adapta- tion to human infirmities of thought and feeling ? And the words which jESUS then spoke in answer to the instincts of the un adaptive Baptist, are they not words which may well serve as a key to many parts of His future ministry, and as a sanction for all that is here contended for — ' Suffer it to be so now ; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteous- ness.' And His Temptation — or at least the history we have of it — is not this too an instance of accommodation, which might have led us to anticipate, and which ought now to lead us to understand, that His ways may not be always only as our ways ? And why did our Lord for so long declare so little plainly who He was, and what was the significance of His mission? Why did He often even forbid His disciples to proclaim their own faith in Him ? Why did He so repeatedly and so strictly charge those whom He cured miraculously to make no mention of Him ? Why did He live so much in Galilee, so little in Jerusalem ? Surely these things, and such as these, were accommoda- tions of His own history to the state of Jewish prejudice, and that, too, of large significance. And as He thus continually adapted the manifestations of Himself to the existing state of imperfection amid which He came — frequently withdrawing Himself from opposition instead of overcoming it, and forbidding sometimes the proclamation of that which at other times He represented as an essential that all men should know — so He seems to have refrained from directly correcting every detail of misconception which came before Him, and in some instances to have accommodated His expressions or argu- ments to modes of thought which His own Revelations THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 91 must eventually avail to abolish. For instances : He did not ever expressly reveal the Levitical Law, but sanctioned it by His own practice, though for Him it could have no significance. Was not this an accommodation ? He conformed to customs respecting the worship of god which had no authority in the Hebrew Scriptures, and observed some ceremonies of Jewish practice which were contrary to its provisions. And did He not accommodate Himself to Jewish modes of argument (which we can but deem not absolutely the best) in that remarkable conversation with the Jews, in Solomon's Porch at the Feast of the Dedica- tion ? And how otherwise can we understand our Lord's words and deeds concerning unclean spirits ? Must we not suppose that all these things were in accordance with that notable use of popular and even proverbial sayings which we find so frequent, and with that characteristic teaching of His in Parables in which the general significance alone is true, and the details, if construed without acknowledgment of the principle of accommodation, would convey a meaning which would not be true ? Surely in place of striving to explain away such pecu- liarities or ignoring them, because they look contradictory to our expectations, it would be more humble and more wise to see whether we cannot recognise in them thoughts larger than our thoughts. Consider it which way we will, we never can get rid of the fact that multiplied minor imper- fections and adaptations must eventually be involved in that one great fundamental accommodation of employing human language as the instrument of Divine Revelation. And in the case of our Lord this accommodation was even greater than it might have been. For He did not com- 92 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON monly use that language which was the most perfect of all human languages, and the one into which ultimately His sayings have been translated by His disciples and have come down to us : but one of the least considerable dialects of the civilised speech of man — the Syro-Chaldaic, as it has been said. Might not such an extent of accom- modation as this be purposely employed in order to with- draw us from our natural tendency to depend upon the letter, by at once denying us any knowledge of what that mere letter actually was? But also it should be borne in mind, that our Lord Himself ever represented His Revela- tion of Himself as a limited one, and His mission, though of universal virtue, as yet not of immediately universal operation. And in accordance with this, our Lord did not represent Himself as correcting all errors of belief, though he did correct many, or as reforming all abuses of practice, though His driving the buyers and the sellers out of the Temple was a conspicuous instance of what He might have done in this respect if such had been His mission. For the most part He destroyed subordinate errors by simply proclaiming germinant truths : distilling healing virtue into bitter waters — inserting heavenly leaven into the corrupt mass — and then leaving the Divine to work its effect only gradually on the human. And thus in speaking of those subjects as to which there were already prevalent large theories among the Jews — especially of those which divided Pharisee and Sadducee — in proportion as they were at once regarded as of sacred importance by them and of sub- ordinate importance by Him — He allowed His language to differ as little as might be from the popular. Had He not done thus, He must have differed in almost every utterance THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY, 93 from the forms of expression which were used by those with whom He conversed : and had this been the case, then judging from what we see to have occurred under the actual circumstances of other parts of the history, we cannot but beUeve that attention would have been so much drawn to subordinate questions, and objections and cavils so multiplied, as would have more than overbalanced the advantages of the truest teaching, and have materially impaired the leading objects of His ministry. And in thus consulting the immediate interests, by condescending to the confirmed infirmities, of those whom He personally addressed, no necessary injury was caused to future genera- tions of His disciples; for whatever was not the truest concerning such matters would both not be prejudicial while it remained and would surely fall off in time, and they would be gifted with other advantages of interpretation which contemporaries had not, and all the fuller light of Apostolic teaching and a completed Scripture. XXVIII. Our Lord's words, too, in respect of some portions of the Testimony .,-,., of our Lord Old Testament — even of the Law itself, which was ever with re- considered the most sacred portion of it — can scarcely be ^^'\ *° said to ascribe to it the highest possible authority. He speaks of it surely in a way which renders it not possible for us to substitute for the Law of Moses the voice of god. Consider well those words of His which He spake under the very shadow of the Temple, — * Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law; Moses gave unto you circumcision (not that it is of Moses, but of 94 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON the fathers), and ye on the Sabbath day circumcise a man that the law of Moses should not be broken. Are ye angry at Me because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath day? Judge not according to the appear- ance, but judge righteous judgment.' Now does not the force of the argument here lie in the implicit assertion, A greater than Moses is here ? And do not those sayings in the Sermon on the Mount afford a like striking contrast between the authority of Moses and of christ — those of the form, ' Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time — but I say unto you.' Surely the pure utterances of GOD do not repeal each other. And reflect steadily on those other words recorded by St. Matthew : ' Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery.' Did these words stand alone they would be sufficient to prove what it is here wished to suggest. But they do not stand alone. They are accom- panied by various practical comments. At various stages of His ministry we are furnished with instances in which He treated portions of the law as of subordinate import- ance when compared with only the bodily benefit of man. The instances in which our Lord appeals to the conduct of David in eating the shewbread, as a sufficient precedent for setting aside a prescript of the law, is of singular signifi- cance in this matter. And the systematic and prominent manner in which our Lord not only vindicated for His disciples, and for all men, a freedom from the old Mosaic strictness in the observance of the Sabbath, but even THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 95 reduces one of the Ten Commandments written with the finger of god on stone to a position of inferiority with respect to all the others — this is surely a demonstration that the highest claims of the older law are not to be put into competition with that dispensation of the Spirit which had now come through Him. XXIX. The manner too in which our Lord practically treats the Quotations words of the Old Testament in quoting them for the instruc- s°rrptures tion of His disciples, confirms this view. But on this point made by our Lord. It shall only here be said that, so far as we have the means of judging from the records of the Evangelists, our Lord did not generally use the words of the Hebrew Scriptures, but most frequently used, and therefore sanctioned by His use, the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures by the Seventy — a translation' which is one of the least literally faithful of all the translations of the Bible in existence. It has no evi- dence in itself of there being anything specially Divine about it. It is not certainly known by whom, or when, this translation was made : different portions of it pro- bably being translated at different times and by different persons. It differs from the original Hebrew to an extent of which the following are instances : In the Pentateuch it follows the Samaritan in preference to the Hebrew in more than a thousand places, and in the book of Job there are between seven and eight hundred members of sentences omitted in the translation which exist in the Hebrew : In many hundreds of places it is a paraphrase rather than a translation, and the version of the book of Daniel has been 96 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON generally considered so erroneous that another has, by almost universal consent, been inserted in its place. To this translation the Jews of our Lord's time attached great reverence, and our Lord did not protest against or correct it, but used it without protest or correction : and it is quoted throughout the New Testament far more frequently than any other translation of the original Hebrew, And not only this, but there is not the slightest difference between the formulas with which quotations from the Seventy (and these the most inaccurate), and those which seem original translations from the Hebrew, are introduced. All that is said by our Lord concerning the sacredness of the Old Testament is said concerning these imperfect representa- tions of its words, and therefore to reconcile this language with truth we must give latitude of significance either to the testimony, or to that which is testified to. XXX. Principle The Teaching and Practice of the Apostles, too, were in modation conformity with those of our Lord Himself. apparent There is a difference, however, between the teaching of in the Teaching JESUS and that of His Apostles, as Avell as between their Aoosd practice, which it is necessary at once to notice. A voice from heaven attesting personal perfection — faultlessness of mind and character — fell only upon Christ : and we may hear none as we hear Him. And our Lord everywhere exhibited a form of truth unmodified by individuality — only modified at all for His disciples' sake, and to meet the infirmities of the minds of those whom He wished to instruct. When our Lord condescends to use the language THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 97 of those to whom He speaks, we ever feel that it is con- descension, and that His meaning is much higher and deeper than His words : that He utters not all things as they are to Him, but only as they need to be for them : that in Him is the water of life, pure and colourless as light — instinct with spirit — and that when it is given forth otherwise, it is only that it may be better suited to the receptive powers of those who were both weak and sick. But in the case of the Apostles, we see that their teaching is tinctured throughout with their own individualities, and we feel that we are drinking the living water only out of earthen vessels. Clearly no apostle knew all truth. The verbal promise that they should do so must obviously be restricted to all truth necessary for their own and for the Church's edification : just as we see that the other promise that they should be shown things to come did often not include the things of to-morrow, and never anything which should happen to themselves. They were sufficiently in- structed to instruct us sufficiently, and in all things were most earnest and affectionate and truthful disciples of the one only Master : but they were perhaps assisted in their teaching only as M'e may be in our learning : and indeed it might be said, that they will only present us with an adequate revelation of their Divine Master's mind, when the HOLY GHOST shall enable us to reconstruct, each of us for ourselves, an image of christ made up out of the various representations that they have given us of Him. The light of the knowledge of the glory of christ has been transmitted to us only through media tinged with individual peculiarities of character — the personal endowments and attainments, and phases of spiritual life, of each apostle h 98 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON and evangelist leaving a mark upon the truth as it passes through their minds. Who does not feel how different James is from John, and how different John is from Peter, and how still more different Paul is from all, and how their characters as they are known to us from their histories are reflected in their writings ? The human element in the writings of the Apostles will be denied by none but those whose eyes are spiritually dim, and ought very carefully to be studied by all those of a single eye who would cherish to greater brightness the light that is in them. In such case a high wisdom would be more and more recognised in what to others will remain unintelligible, and there will arise at once both pleasure and gratitude at discovering fresh proofs of that condescending accommodation elsewhere so often apparent, by which the writers of the New Testament were so providentially selected that each considerable class of minds, both of their time and of all time, have found them- selves, as it were, consulted and represented in their writings. The case of St. Paul, as exhibited by himself, most em- phatically in many ways shows us that he knew of no claim to universal and literal infallibility, for himself or for others. He more than once distinctly recognises in words a generic difference between his teaching and that of his Master : and the whole tenor and manner of his writings throughout show that he always felt it deeply. He never silences false teachers by the mere assertion of his infallible authority, but almost invariably only attempts to do so by argument and persuasion, and by comparison of the spiritual worth of his teaching with that of theirs. And consider how St. Paul deals with his fellow-labourers THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 99 and speaks of them, and whether such conduct or such speech could consist with any view of their universal in- fallibility. Paul withstood Peter to the face not on account of any merely moral blameworthiness, but on account of his conforming to what he thought unjustifiable Jewish doc- trinal prejudice : and he says of certain other Apostles, even of the chiefest, * whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me.' And how could the principle of accommodation be more directly professed, and more plainly sanctioned, than by such words as these of Paul's, * To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews .... to them that are without law, as without law, that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak : I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some'? or what words can be more largely significant in this great question than those which he used to the men of Athens when, expounding god's general dealings with His creatures, he said, ' The times of this ignorance god winked at ' ? XXXI. But the most remarkable evidence with regard to this Differences subject, and that which of itself seems conclusive to many cldences'in minds, is that afforded by the Differences and Coincidences the New /-IT-. ,• »T 1 /- -1 1 1 Testament. of the Evangelists. No one can have failed to remark some of the more obvious of these ; but the more care- ful our investigation, the more notable become the facts presented to us. A mere cursory view will show us that in Matthew's Gospel much is accommodated to the Jewish loo CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON mind : in Luke's much to the Gentile : while Mark's would seem little more than a composition from the two. But the most obvious and striking peculiarity is seen in John's Gospel, when it is compared and contrasted with the co- incidences between the other three. It is then seen to have not merely a greater degree of the same kind of difference which exists between them — mere discrepancies of detail and slight accommodations — but a difference of tone and complexion given to many actions and sayings of JESUS — quite another scene of action, and a character- istically different method of discourse ; the three omitting the most surprising doctrines which John expounds, and John omitting the most surprising facts which they record. These things alone suggest to us that any one of the Evan- gelists presents us with but a partial and peculiar view of the character and teaching of Him who was confessedly immeasurably more than all of truth and love which they could comprehend or reproduce. And when we pursue this subject with any degree of care, we soon find other facts which render more impressive this view of the Gospels. Let us place some of them more distinctly before us. The first three Gospels confine themselves principally, though not quite exclusively, to our Lord's ministry in Galilee : they speak only of one, or perhaps two, visits of His to Jerusalem, and generally give a reason for His leaving Galilee whenever they narrate His doing so. They represent jesus chiefly as going about doing good, casting out demons frequently, and preaching publicly much. The subjects of His preaching are principally things moral and temporal, present and preceptive : and the method of it is very characteristically a speaking in parables. In these THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. loi Gospels, the kingdom of heaven or of god is a charac- teristic expression and one of very frequent occurrence, while there is no mention either of the Word or of the Paraclete. They simply describe or relate facts and sayings without any apparent object beyond the individual worth of each ; seeming to have no special aim in their narrations towards which all the parts continually tend, save indeed that very general one of exhibiting jesus to the adoration of all, as at once the Son of god and the Son of Man, the Messiah of the Jews and the Saviour of mankind. St. John's Gospel confines itself principally, though not quite exclusively, to our Lord's ministry in Jerusalem and its neighbourhood : it speaks of jesus being at several of the annual feasts there, and generally gives a reason for His leaving Jerusalem whenever it narrates His doing so. It represents jesus chiefly in His intercourse with His dis- ciples, never once as casting out demons, and preaching publicly but little. The subjects of His preaching are generally things unseen and eternal — the significance of His mission and His relation to mankind — and never once is He represented as speaking to the multitude in parables. In this Gospel, the expression of the kingdom of heaven or of GOD never once occurs, while those of the Word and the Paraclete occur in it so often as to be quite charac- teristic of it. St. John's Gospel professedly has a particular object in view, and all its parts seem designed to subserve this one leading aim. It is indeed all of one tone through- out — so much coloured by John's peculiar modes of thought and expression that we can at once distinguish any detached passage from John's Gospel from a passage from any of the others, and cannot sometimes distinguish in a series of I02 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON connected passages, which are the Evangelist's words, and which are the words of jesus. And finally : St. John's Gospel does not seem to be either complete in itself, or simply supplementary to the others. It records what the others record, as well as omits what they record. It gives quite a different view of the same fact or discourse — as for instances, of the ministry of John the Baptist, and of the Last Supper of the Lord. It seldom quotes Scripture, but when it does, the quotations are generally quite different, or differently applied, from those of the three. It does not dwell much on miracles as evidence of power, but rather as illustrative of character or introductory to discourse : and seems to set forth jesus, not so prominently as being the Messiah of the Jews, as being the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, the Ideal of the human and the Divine, and of the union of the two. And yet further, there are other facts connected with the constitution of the first three Gospels which ought to be borne in mind, both in reference to this present subject and to several others, and as particularly valuable always as affording a check to that tendency which is so prevalent and so prejudicial in all such matters as those with which these pages are conversant, namely, the tendency to pronounce beforehand what must be. Consider then these following points of coincidence between the first three. There are sixty-five passages which are common to all the three : twenty-three which are common to Matthew and Mark : thirty-nine which are common to Matthew and Luke : and eighteen which are common to Mark and Luke. And again, while there are forty-two passages in Luke's Gospel THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 103 which have no parallels in either of the other two, there are only thirty-three in Matthew's, and only seven in Mark's, which have not such parallels. With such facts before us we cannot but consider a close connection between these three Gospels as indisputable : but the nature and extent of it is at present inexplicable historically, A very simple conjectural solution might doubtless be found, either in the assumption of an Aramaic original, or in a cycle of oral traditions : but neither of such solutions would be completely satisfactory or sufficient ; either might do much towards accounting for the coinci- dences, but neither would do much towards accounting for the differences. And it is also notable that in respect of quotations from the Old Testament, the facts presented to us by these Gospels increase our difficulties. For while Matthew quotes often from the Hebrew (or perhaps rather corrects the Seventy from the Hebrew), and does so more accurately than the others, Luke quotes invariably from the Seventy, and less often literally than otherwise : yet the quotations of all the three often harmonise with each other where they do not harmonise either with the Hebrew or with the Seventy; and generally the instances of abridgment and composition of quotations coincide in all. XXXII. Indeed this subject of Quotations from the Old Testa- Quotations 1 • 1 • , 1 1 /- 1 , ,- horn the ment is one which it would be for the advantage of any one old Testa- to pursue who is anxious to form a just judgment in this J?^"!.'". matter of the degree of sacredness which is practically I04 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON attached in the New Testament to the mere letter of the Holy Scripture. It is one the details of which it is wholly without the plan of these pages to deal with : but at the same time it may not be irrelevant to state the kind of results which the examination here recommended is likely to produce for any able and open mind. Such results are of this kind. We find, That the writers of the New Tes- tament never quote the original words of the Old Tes- tament, every quotation being a translation. That this translation is more often taken from that of the Seventy, than made by themselves from the Hebrew accurately : That this inaccurate translation of the Seventy they do not always quote accurately where it happens to be so : That many of their quotations do not agree substantially either with the Hebrew or the Seventy : That the different writers quote the same passage from the Old Testament differently, sometimes not one of them agreeing verbally with either the Hebrew or the Seventy : and that passages are apparently quoted from the Old Testament which are not now to be found there. And the applications of the quotations are often as notable in this respect as the mode in which they are made. They assuredly indicate a freer mode of using Scripture than will accord with any assumption of the special sacred- ness of its words. There are hundreds of instances in the New Testament where the Old Testament is made use of for purposes for which (if we may decide anything in such matters) we may decide that it could not have been originally written. Most inconsiderable, it is admitted, are such facts as these to those whose theory of Divine influence in the THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 105 composition of the Scriptures is at all expansive : but it must be repeated that they are not inconsiderable to those whose theory is rigidly literal. No open mind can but infer from such facts as these (and there are more of a like kind) that the precise words of Scripture cannot be of so much importance as they would have been had they been the very dictations of the Almighty. Does not the lawful- ness of a translation depend really upon the implied admission that they are not such as these would be? or at least that the substance of Revelation is not depend- ent upon any inflexible forms of expression, but that the essence of it can be transfused into any speech of man ? yea, even that whatever modes of utterance can avail to express the wants of the human heart can also avail to render intelligible the Divine provisions for their supply ? If the Bible be the Words, as well as the Word, of god, these words must be absolutely the best : and therefore can it be lawful to translate these words into others, and in so translating them to alter them so much ^s we see to have been so often the case ? But is it not the fact that the Scriptures, both Jewish and Christian, have been almost exclusively known to mankind, not through their original tongues, but through most imperfect, and wholly human, translations of them? But if by these considerations we are deprived of one kind of support, are we not furnished by them with others instead ? In the case of the differ- ences of the Gospels, for instance, by all their varieties of narration are we not only the more deeply and distinctly impressed with the profound spiritual unity which pervades them all — an unity constituted by the character of jesus and the spirit of His doctrine ? Do they not show us io6 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON plainly how immeasurably more He was than any four could portray, and how the exuberance of His grace and truth would require more books than the world would receive to embody and express it all ? And with regard to the quotations of the Old Testament in the New, do we not gain more by the naturalness of the present mode than we should by the supernaturalness of one more rigid and more Hteral? This naturalness often affords us at once a confirmation and an explanation of the writings of the Evangelists and Apostles. We see how the very minuter shades of quotation vary with the circumstances of the persons writing and of the persons written to, and how adaptations were made to suit the differing positions in which Hebrew and heathen minds stood towards the Old Testament. And surely that the whole tone of thought and expres- sion of the evangelical writings should be, as it were un- consciously, moulded on Old Testament forms, as they both so conspicuously and so implicitly are, is exactly what we should expect to be the case, when we consider that the Old Testament and the Apocrypha (with the Rabbinic comments) were the whole of the literature with which a Jew was permitted to be conversant. Every cultivated Jew, however, was familiar with the sacred books from his youth : and thus living amongst those who were as familiar with them, and them alone, as himself, and ever accus- tomed to appeal to them, and to hear them appealed to, as the ultimate judge of all controversies in opinion or in practice, he became completely imbued with their peculiar savour : the words of Scripture came to him almost involun- tarily, and seemed to furnish him with the most fitting forms THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 107 of expression for even the most common thoughts : and so entirely must his mind have been prepossessed by them, that it could only be by continual constraint and contra- diction of his impulses that he could avoid appropriating and adapting the words of Scripture as his own. We ought also to remember, that the Old Testament Scriptures were the records at once of the religion and the law of the nation, and the only code and standard of national and social organisation, as well as the complete Encyclo- paedia of Jewish literature. And after all, perhaps the greatest object intended and effected by the manifold quotations of the Old Testament in the New, is the binding both into one providential whole : the demonstration that the New is but the completion and realisation of the ground-plan of the Old, and that no jot nor tittle of its prophetic scheme has been made to pass away without being fulfilled. And if this be so, then the recognition that a felicitous religious tact has always so guided the writers of the New Testament as that when they have failed in the universal literal expositions of the elder Scripture, they have always comprehended its spirit and found for it a legitimate application, will ever be sufficient to satisfy every real need of our reverent expectation. XXXIII. To all such considerations — here purposely rather indi- Objections cated than enforced — it is almost impossible but that there views of should be the instinct to object on the part of many, Revelation ' '■ -I here advo- especially of those who have not long been engaged in cated. Biblical studies of the higher kind. And the first form of io8 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON their objection will probably be, that such principles, by- admitting so much of Holy Scripture to be of indefinite authority and significance, undermine all certainty, if they do not destroy all confidence, in interpretation, and conse- quently diminish very greatly the benefit and the comfort, connected with a written Revelation. Now concerning such remarks it may first be said, that the principles of these pages have at least been simply deductions from the facts presented by the Revelation which we have, and not deductions from any assumptions of what we think ought to be, or must be : and that whatever theory be adopted, it ought to be framed on this method, and ought to be reconcilable with these facts, and one might say, ought to interpret them. But no rigid theory hitherto promulgated is reconcilable with these facts, or does interpret them. Some degree of departure from inflexible infallibility has always been practically made, and is now making more and more in the later theories. The question really has become one relating only to the degree of departure which is permissible. This ought to be especially noted, as it has been already said, for this lies at the root of all discussion of these matters now. The concession of fallibility in the minutest particular, or the admission of anything whatever being unessential in Revela- tion — this is the great concession, and that which contains within it the germs of all the danger that may lie in the theories which are fairly constructed on it as a base. For who is to determine the degree of the fallibility — the limit of the unessential ? this is the question always pressing, but most pressing now. The Scriptures do not give us any rule by which thus to judge themselves. They do not define THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 109 the degree of Divine influence which has been exerted upon them, either as a whole, or in their various parts : nor do they point out the limits of those human elements which have been allowed to mingle themselves with the Divine. They do not even recognise their own existence as a whole : the Old Testament makes no mention of itself as a whole, nor does the New Testament make mention of itself at all — either as a whole or in part. And as has already been remarked, the whole process of constituting the Christian Scriptures into a Canon of Truth and Duty was apparently a human work, the effect of Christian tact merely, not at all of what is ordinarily termed Divine Revelation. But is there any external authority vouchsafed to us which may be supplementary and co-equal with that of the Scriptures, determining that which they have left undetermined ? Those to whom alone these pages are addressed are supposed to be unanimous in answering that there is not. The question then of the degree of Divine influence which has controlled the composition of the sacred Scriptures, and indeed all those other great questions which relate to their interpretation, are necessarily referred to private judgment. And as to this tribunal, which in these later centuries has for so many been found capable of deciding, with approximate truth, some of the greatest questions which can possibly occupy the human mind, we are absolutely obliged by the providence of god to have recourse on other occasions, we may do so on this with the faith, that if we consult it without a bribe either of fear or of prejudice, we shall receive a sentence which will authen- ticate itself as equitable and true. Truly that sound mind which is a promised Christian grace, and such scholarship no CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON as is now within the reach of many, with conscience and common sense, can do great things : and the same faculties which suffice for translating the Scriptures out of their own dead languages into our living ones, and for expounding them with spirituality and intelligence, may very conceiv- ably suffice for the decision of all the questions relating to them on which god will cause the safety or the salvation of any of His children to depend. XXXIV. The crav- The tendency, however, which there is, and ever has ing for an ^ggn, among mankind to desire, and to set up, some external standard external standard or instrument of infallibility, by means bilitv^ ' '^^ which truth may be sought and found, as it were mechanically, and thus all mental and moral struggle be avoided, and religion be reduced to obedience — this is the real root of all over-measure of belief with regard to the literal infallibility of the Holy Scriptures. Most men are ever looking out of themselves, but not above, for strength ; leaning, and loving to lean, on any arm (not invisible) that they think may support them without their own constant effort, on what they feel to be the most rugged of all ways — the way of thought. They are quite willing to gather themselves up to make one great exercise of faith — the choosing of their guide — but having once chosen this, they desire and decide that all else shall be included in this choice. Indeed it is very noticeable how much easier any amount of this kind of obedience is to many than any seemingly small burden of doubt. As in other departments of the religious life it is the commonest phenomenon that THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. in men will more readily perform the most painful acts than cultivate the most elementary graces : so also in this we as often see that men can far more easily be made to subjugate, or even to sacrifice, their understanding than to exercise it. To walk by sight, in fact, and not by faith, this is the universal craving of the natural man. And with this disposition the notion of an infallible literal rule to believe by, entirely concurs, and is therefore clung to so closely, and parted from so reluctantly, by so many; and this notion it is which supplies many with a substitute for their surrender of allegiance to that grand claim of perpetual infallibility which the greatest Church of Christendom asserts to be its rightful and exclusive inheritance. Verily there is no harder task — no more intolerable burden — for many, than the responsibility of choice — the necessity of thought — in matters of religion. The most fearful of all afflictions to such is doubt, and the most welcome of all friends is an authoritative guide. But are these the worthiest, and is this state of mind to be commended ? Is it a disposition befitting spiritual manhood? Is it not characteristically childish ? or rather not even this, for the unconsciousness and instinctive self-surrender of childhood are wanting here, and there is nothing but the tremor of its weakness. Such a state as this is never encouraged, but frequently rebuked in the Gospel. Individual veracity, honesty, effort — opinions formed by our own investigations, or at least based upon our own intelligent convictions — not derived from forcible external imposition, or passively received without being assimilated to our own needs — to these are we now called by every voice which is capable of a spiritual signification. And the possession of an 112 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON infallible guide or standard, in proportion as it should be capable of being readily used by man, would tend to destroy this condition of exercise, and this sense of responsibility, in one large domain of our being, that of our intellect, and thus very materially abridge that great process of education which god has ordained for us on earth. If doubt were impossible in this region, we should lose very much of our discipline of faith, and our walk on earth would be altogether changed. One very prominent aim of the Gospel is to cultivate those very faculties which the gift of an infallible external authority would repress : and GOD now offers, instead of such authority, to give us light from within to read the outwardly obscure, and spiritual power to discern and to separate between the things that are universally good, and those which are so only temporarily and incidentally. Our lot here on earth is one of great dignity because one of great difficulty and capacity : and we may not put off at will its high prerogatives because we feel reluctant to undergo its toils. In a condition of probation for the prize of immortality, we have no choice but to wrestle or to run : and He who is the Author and Finisher of our faith would have us, while we do so, ever look unto Him, and to none else. In our striving after perfection we must struggle ever with imperfection, and we must get spiritual guidance and strength by perpetual personal application to the invisible Saviour of our souls, and not chiefly by resort to any visible guide, however sacred, or by the intervention of any human agency, however reverend. And it may be for the very purpose of stimulating us to this ever fresh effort, that the written Revelations which god has given us THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 113 should have associated with them many human elements — that we should have in spiritual things as much labour in extracting purely that which is most profitable, as we have in separating the gold from its ore : and therefore, if this be so, we should take especial heed, lest by any wilful prepossessions we should, by mistaking the nature, lose the benefit, of our discipline. But however this may be, and wish for it as we will, there seems no prospect of attaining to any other state on earth than that of fallibility. While we live in the flesh we live under the condition of a nature which forbids the spiritual becoming visible. Concerning the unseen there is no device of man which can preclude the possibility of doubt. There can be no government of man wholly by rule, and there can be no law which does not admit of a doubt in its application. This has been man's lot from the first, and there is no exemption from this noble but painful position promised even in that Revelation which is the last we may look for on earth. XXXV. Doubtless on these principles there is large room for Revelation error, and it may be said very forcibly, that if there be this perilled by uncertainty about what is special Revelation and what may honest and _ _ _ _ reverent not be — if this passage be considered an accommodation criticism. and that an interpolation — then the whole Bible may be explained away, and the oracles of god be rendered as enigmatical as the oracles of man : there is really then nothing fixed in the Scriptures for faith to lay hold of — no rule to mark off the human from the Divine, and 114 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON therefore all that repose of soul which has ever been the portion of the believer in the Bible as the pure truth of GOD is done away. Now to such language as this it is replied, what is said is not wholly unjust in its letter, but it is very far from being true in its spirit. Doubtless the whole Bible may be explained away professedly on these principles, as it is practically by some on every other system of principles. All folly and all wickedness is probably possible to man : and certainly a disingenuous spirit generates both with a fearful rapidity. There can be no cure for this but the conversion of a dishonest mind into an honest one. But here the question is, as has been said from the first emphatically and unequivocally, only with minds which are both honest and earnest — minds to which truth is a necessity and conscience a law : and that such as these must nullify the essential Revelations of the Bible because they do not receive the infallibility of every letter of it, is a consequence which is not obvious to many, and is not credible to some. Such a supposition proceeds on the assumption that the great- est truths with which the mind of man can be conversant are dependent on the uncorrupted preservation, as well as original Divine dictation, of a mass of documents of extreme antiquity, and all written in languages no longer spoken on earth ; and that such truths cannot be sufficiently influential unless they be absolutely pure ; which assump- tions are matters neither of Christian faith nor of rational demonstration, and may more probably than otherwise be not unwisely or unsafely supplanted in our minds by their opposites. For really can this magnifying of the letter and diminishing of the spirit — this sanctifying of the THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 115 instrument — this consecration of the husk — be something superior in spirituaHty ? Are the Tables of stone the only sufficient authorities for the Law, or the imagery of the Prophets the only vehicle of a Thus saith the Lord ? Were the garments of the christ as sacred as His Person, and His very vesture Divine? And how can it magnify the mercy of god, or consist with the privileges of a last Dispensation, that our position in this life, and our destiny in the next, should be made dependent upon the accuracy of the letter of documents which reach back three thousand years and more, and over whose composition there is no indisputable evidence of an exclusively Divine Influence, and for whose preservation there has not certainly been vouchsafed any known superhuman safeguard ? It could not but be considered such a measure of hard dealing, and so unlike the general tone and character of the dispensation under which we live, to make our greatest hopes depend on such matters, that we must require the most positive assertions from heaven that such is indeed the case, before we can reverently bow beneath our lot. The Divine origin either of Judaism or of Christianity can scarcely be dependent not merely upon the sacredness of every book in the first established Canon, but upon the Divinity of every sentence or sentiment, of every fact or date, which are to be found in them at this day. One cannot indeed but think that the Divinity of the book of Job may be reasonably separable from that of Judaism, and the Divinity of the book of Jude from that of Chris- tianity \ but surely we can scarcely hesitate to believe that no essential of Jewish faith would be compromised by doubting the Divine dictation of the Proverbs of Agur, or Ii6 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON of those of the mother of King Lemuel : nor any serious loss be necessarily incurred to the Christian if he cannot receive as wholly infallible the genealogies of Matthew or of Luke, or as a special Revelation the assertion of Michael contending for the body of Moses. Extreme instances, it is admitted, but pertinent, and sufficient for the purpose of showing what it is wished much to enforce, that the question here is, and can be, but one of degree, and that if the reasonings of the literalists were consistently carried out they would lead to the imposition of a yoke which thoughtful men, and their children, will probably find themselves less and less able to bear. And would that it were felt by all most deeply, that it is a most unfair and unwise alternative to reduce a man to, either to acknow- ledge the Bible as throughout equally a Revelation from GOD, or to renounce it altogether as no Revelation at all. Truly this is a dangerous thing to do, and deserving to be denounced as an act at once of ignorance and of injus- tice. To require a man to believe that every statement of the Old Testament is as much revealed as the name of GOD to Moses ; or that every precept in it is as directly written with the finger of god as those of the awful Ten : or that in the New Testament Apostles were as infallible as their Master, or the disciples of Apostles as Apostles themselves — this is an undue taxing of any man's faith, and a requirement neither authorised by the letter of the Scriptures themselves, nor in harmony with their spirit. For those surely, and at least, who have been taught from childhood to cast off the notion of an infallible authority on earth, and are continually exhorted to stand THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 117 fast in this liberty wherewith it is asserted that christ has made men free — to prove all things — to search the Scriptures for themselves, and to believe nothing which cannot in their own judgment be proved thereby — for such as these it is an injustice. For they can only be justly required to proportion their faith to evidence : and the evidence for the Divinity of different portions of the Scriptures is different — different indeed to a degree which those who have not examined into these things cannot duly judge of. Those who have, however, will testify that the difference is large in the evidence of Divinity between that for the books of the Law and that for the books of the Chronicles : or between that for any epistle of Paul and that for the Second Epistle of Peter. There is not even the same kind or amount of evidence for the infallibility of the New Testament which there is for that of the old : none of that external Divine Testimony which is really the only support of any rigidity of theory. And if theories do not vary with varying facts, faith will. XXXVI. But doubtless the constant pressing question will from Impossi- time to time recur, Where draw the line between the drawing human and the Divine in Scripture? And to this ques- f"y .'^^^"r ite line of tion the one true answer is : No man can draw such a line separation — scarcely sufficiently for himself, and certainly not so for theTuman any other than himself. If this be contradicted, then let and . . Divine, those who think that they can draw such a line, draw it. Many have tried to do so already, and all have failed to satisfy any but themselves : and the lines so drawn have ii8 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON remained to this day merely to mark the approximate boundaries of their knowledge, and the assured regions of their ignorance. We may often be able to pronounce where the spirit is, and where it is not — as we may pro- nounce between the living and the dead : but how divide spirit from sense in the living body ? Truly we can no more draw a sharp line between the activity of god and that of man in spiritual things, than we can between the nature of man and that of god — and in neither case more than between the atmosphere of the earth and the ether of the heavens. No harsh transitions Nature knows — much less Spirit. For god created man in His own image, yea, in the image of god created He him : and though so much of this image be lost, yet is not all : and much of what has been lost, in the Christian is being regenerated. And are we not told, on the very highest authority, that while man is being thus restored, the Regenerating Spirit can be no more defined than the wind — that we cannot tell whence it comes or whether it goes. Truly if we would think of it well, we should not find it difficult to believe that that which is spiritual cannot be otherwise than indistinct to the natural eye, or that that which is invisible cannot be other- wise than indefinite. But is there nothing real but that which is palpable — nothing believable but that which is measurable? Is not the Christian's especial calling to walk by faith, and not by sight ? and are not those things which are only spiritually to be discerned greater than all other things ? And not only in man's nature are the limits between the human and Divine not sharply marked, but also in the Moral Law is not the line between the essential and the THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 119 variable, the permanently obligatory and the occasionally permissible, left often but dimly known ? Is not indeed the notion of a mechanical rule — a rule ever ready and ever applicable — in spiritual things altogether out of place ? And is it not also almost a contradiction to suppose that the Almighty Wisdom would give a Revelation of essential truths to mankind exclusively or primarily, in obscure and doubtful portions of voluminous writings ? Or that the Divine does not in the main authenticate itself? Or that there is so little revealed altogether that a few phrases may disconcert and repeal it all/ Surely it is a better and a nobler faith to believe that the Bible has been given us to reveal something inherently luminous — something not so delicate and evanescent as to be dependent upon the un- corrupted preservation of innumerable minutiae, but some- thing so great and real and electric, that when uttered even only stammeringly by any tongue, it must find an echo in every humble and earnest heart. Assuredly we ought not to be so faithless as to doubt that the Revelation of god in JESUS CHRIST is such that its sum and substance may be influentially conveyed to men in any language under heaven, by any man who has himself received it, in the love of it, into his own heart. xxxvii. Due meditation on what is implied in that condition of The per- Divine influence which is the privilege of every true Chris- spirationof tian, would also tend to lessen our feeling of the necessity the Holy of so large an assumption as that which is so often made, and to impress us wath the sufficiency and suitableness of a I20 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON Scripture which should be specially Divine, though not circumstantially so. A characteristic gift of Christianity is that of the holy ghost to all its genuine disciples — a special indwelling and illumination of god in the soul, by which it is enabled to rise to a higher power of spiritual discernment than it otherwise could do — an influence not strictly miraculous but yet strictly supernatural, which by purifying the heart strengthens the mind, and, in whatever way working, practically constitutes for man a real Revela- tion. It is the same Spirit which has embodied truth in the Bible that infuses the love of truth into the Christian, and no magnetism gives more assurance of its reality in material things than such sympathy gives in spiritual, that the sincere seeker shall ultimately find all such truth in the Bible as there is a moral fitness, or necessity, that he should possess. The same Spirit too which was promised to guide the Apostles first into all truth, was promised also to abide with the Church unto the end : and an unction from the Holy One by which we may know all things, is asserted by an apostle to be an attainable prerogative of Christians generally. He who knows anything of this — or even he only who has that within him which responds to the voice of the Divine whencesoever it may issue, and who is ever listening devoutly that he may catch its faintest sounds — such an one will feel the least inclined to require that every word should present itself to him with miraculous claims to his attention and belief : this will oftenest be the case only with those to whom the things of the Spirit are notions of the intellect rather than the experience of the heart, and who feel that unreserved submission to authority is a light burden compared with the necessity of perpetual choice. THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 121 Thus after all it may be that the holy spirit may have influenced Apostles only in a greater degree, and not in a different method, from that in which He influences private Christians. We believe that He influences in some degree all Christians so as both to lead them into some truth, and to preserve them from some error ; and we know that He did not influence Apostles so as either to lead them into all truth, or to preserve them from all error. And if Apostles had not the Spirit without measure (but only the lord jEsus) and we know not the precise measure in which they had it, the suspicion of their infallibility, or even the demon- stration of their fallibility, ought not to surprise or perplex us. Indeed the more fully we enter into this distinction between christ and His Apostles — the more fully we recognise in Him the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in them the existence of a remainder of the original cor- ruption of humanity — the less necessary, or even probable, we shall feel it to be, that there should have been any generic difference between the influence of the holy spirit upon the minds and hearts of Apostles in the perception of some kinds of truths, and that which has been promised to, and possessed by, believers in all ages of the Church. What that might be which the holy spirit did do for every apostle equally, and which He has not done since for any saint, we do not know : and we do know that there is nothing which is really for the spiritual good of any Chris- tian which He now cannot, and now will not, do. It is , written. He that is spiritual judgeth all things — let us well consider this — what it may mean, and what it must. If no man can say that jesus christ is Lord but by the holy GHOST, what must be the increased endowment of those T22 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON who can say much more than this? If the least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than John the Baptist, and he greater than any Priest or Prophet who came before him, must it be necessarily irreverent if any one who has been blessed with the full light of the New Testament from infancy to manhood, should consider himself competent to judge concerning the details of the Old ? If indeed we have no such privilege as this of being taught of GOD in some measure in these ages as they of old had in a greater — if there is not any reality in a perpetual inhabitation of the Church by the Spirit — if all individual communion and commerce with Heaven is mere delusion and conceit — then indeed much in these pages is false, and so is much elsewhere besides. But if these things be true — if the doctrine of the holy ghost be a greater reality, and the Pentecostal gifts be symbolical of those which are Perpetual — then may we have in this grand endowment of an indwelling Spirit more than a compensation for any fallibility of the letter, and hereby be enabled to judge, as well as to discern, things spiritual and sacred sufficiently for our needs. XXXVIII. Aninfalli- It might be asked, then, Where is the necessity, and would^re- where the satisfaction, in the rigid theory of Divine quire an influence in the case of the letter of the Sacred Scrip- infallible interprelei. tures? So far as we can see, a large portion of the historical Scriptures (which is a large portion of the whole) may have been just as substantially well composed without any special Revelation to the minds of the writers, or special guardian- THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 123 ship over them, as with it. It is only by magnifying to an unnatural degree the importance of historical minutiae, that such extraordinary Divine guidance is supposed to be either necessary or profitable. Very many of the facts which we find recorded in large portions of the Hebrew Scriptures are apparently but of very limited significance for even the maturest Christian, and in the record of them diligence and truthfulness seem the principal qualities re- quired, and these are not commonly classed among mira- culous gifts. No necessities of human education, or of Christian, apparently require infallibility in such historic details : and it is even difficult to define what amount of merely circumstantial error in such writings must neces- sarily be of essential injury to the soul of any man who would be benefitted by their infallibility. It would seem, therefore, only reasonable to believe that wherever in the Law or History of the Bible we cannot but conscientiously believe that the essential needs of a devout soul would not certainly be injured by the existence of error, there error may not have been rendered supernaturally impossible, but have been allowed to be regulated as to its existence or its absence by those general laws by which god ordinarily allows the minds of men to be governed. And not only as respects facts may this be, but also as respects what may be distinctively termed truths, or techni- cally doctrines. For if a declaration relating to the nature of GOD or the duty of man be true, it does not therefore necessarily follow that is a direct and exclusive Revelation to him who utters it. It may be a part of that Light which lighteth every man who comes into the world — an element of that fundamental spirituality in man which makes him a 124 CATIIOLIC THOUGHTS ON being capable of being benefitted by a Revelation, or a legitimate product of the due use of some human gift, or special endowment, or a fairly consequent deduction from some primary intuition or some former Revelation. For be it remembered that all truth that is essential and obligatory for man is not (what we commonly call) revealed : much of it is either instinctive, traditional, or discovered. The supposed necessity, however, of this theory, and its satisfaction, will ever ultimately be found to rest on the (Roman) ground, that there is a certain fixed form of doctrine which it is necessary for all men equally to receive ; or at least that the salvation of man depends on his receiving a series of doctrinal propositions which are traditional inferences from Scriptural assertions, and can be substantiated by literal proofs. But even here the most infallible Revelation which is not self-interpreting (which ours confessedly is not) will be liable to fallibility in the process of interpretation. We cannot get rid of the exercise of merely human judgment (on Protestant principles) in the interpretation of Scripture. In order to interpret a very large portion of the Bible, and to decide some of the most difficult and important of its questions, we cannot avoid relying largely on our own understandings, and giving ourselves up to the guidance of purely human rules, gram- matical and other. The Bible does not furnish us with any infallible principles or rules for its own interpretation : what, then, can we do but make the best principles and rules that we are able for ourselves ? And in doing this, how shall we surely not err? It would seem impossible to extract infallibility out of such conditions as these. If indeed the mind to which imperfect documents be subjected THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 125 be supematurally helped, the problem might be solved : and an approximation to the solution will be obtained in proportion as the mind of the reader is thus strengthened to discern between the perfect and the imperfect. In this direction alone is it hopeful to seek for infallibility. And in this direction the difificulty has been overcome by the Church of Rome. That Church by claiming to be a perpetual infallible interpreter of the written Word has given to its members an assurance which none others can have. For those who deem themselves privileged to dissent from that Church, their privilege will ever be accompanied by the deduction of a constant sense of fallibility : a deficiency which they can never wholly remove in the flesh, but which they may continually lessen by becoming more and more partakers of that Divine Spirit which is promised in the Bible to guide believing minds into all the truth it is really necessary for them to know. And such may take further courage and comfort from the recollection that it is not necessary to know all truth, and that even our real ground of safety does not lie in the present perfection of our knowledge of the Will of god, but in the degree of our sincerity in obeying it as far as we know it, and in seeking to know it better. The fact is, our ultimate Judge and Saviour is not the Bible but the Author and Giver of the Bible, and He can and will discern the thoughts and intents of our hearts in this matter as in all others, and justify or condemn us according as these have been right or wrong. Our salvation depends more upon our faith than upon our knowledge, and perhaps more upon our love than upon either. These will not preserve us from all intellectual error in reference to the Divine 126 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON Will, but they will preserve us from all final harm in consequence of that error. So long as the love of god in CHRIST is the ruling motive of a man in his search after truth and duty, in the Bible or elsewhere, no error he may fall into will endanger his final happiness : and therefore our chiefest anxiety should be directed not to the fancied consequences of our creed, but to the actual purity of our conscience. Let it then be patiently considered, whether a falllible record with an infallible interpreter would not be as valuable for man as an infallible record with only a fallible interpreter ; and then, whether that which would seem most suitable alike to our needs and to our capacities be not precisely that which we have — something between the two — a record substantially influenced by that same Divine Spirit which is promised substantially to influence the reader — which is the Spirit equally of Holiness and of Truth. XXXIX. The prin- Let US now review, and reviewing compare, the position ciplcs here maintained of that theory of Divine Influence on the Sacred Scriptures are affir- vvhich these pages commend, and of the more rigid one mative, not ^ ° ■ . . negative, more commonly held, but which these pages discounte- nance. The belief herein contended for holds, that the Bible contains a Revelation from god, and all such Revelation as is necessary and sufficient for man's salvation : that within the limits of the Jewish and the Christian canon lies a wisdom which can, and which only can, make man wise unto everlasting life : that in fact no words which can be THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 127 used on the more rigid theory to express the sacredness of the letter can be too great to characterise the worth of what that letter contains, and will convey to all who study it aright. It also holds that the Bible is more and other than a Revelation : that it rather contains many Revelations and some things beside which are not Revelations : And also that the Revelations are to be constituted into one Revelation, not simply by indiscriminate addition, but by arrangement as a series ; and that therefore ii> the interpre- tation of the whole, especial attention must be paid to the fact that Revelation has been progressive — has been given at sundry times and in divers manners, and only according as men were able to bear it : and that in all such Reve- lations there has ever been an express adaptation to the capacity of its original recipients. And also, that together with the subject of special Revelation there is often com- mingled something that is extrinsic ; something that may be considered as simply the vehicle necessary to convey healthfully to the soul of man the powerful nutriment and medicine which pure truth must ever be ; and that it is neither wise nor reverent to confound the transitory and special form with the characteristic and permanent essence. And thus finally, while it holds as essential, and professedly assumes and asserts, an immediate influence of GOD acting on the minds and hearts of men throughout the composition of the whole, it does not consider every portion of it so specially the result of Divine interference as to have an independent and universal authority of its own : but that our judgment of the worth of many portions may and must be influenced by considerations arising from the necessarily progressive nature of all culture of the human 128 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON faculties : and that it is the especial duty and calling of the spiritual man to discern between the things in it which differ, and to subordinate the less excellent to the more so, not according indeed to any independent measure of value which he may invent for himself, but according to that which is taught him by the fundamental principles and pervading spirit of that final Revelation which has been given us by jesus christ. Some of the advantages attendant upon this view are these. To the spiritualist the uncertainties and imper- fections which criticism has hitherto made manifest in the letter of the Bible are of very little importance. Suppose there be many irreconcilable discrepancies between the books of Kings and of Chronicles, or many latter interpola- tions in the books of Genesis or of Judges — or that some of the proverbs of Solomon, or his Song of Songs, be only questionably in any special sense Divine ; or suppose that we cannot but acknowledge that there is an inextricable confusion in the evangelists' accounts of some portions of our Saviour's history — or that St. Paul and St. John were mistaken in expecting in their generation a coming of the Lord, and an end of the world, quite different from that which was intended by their Master, and from that which really did take place in the destruction of the divinely- instituted polity of Judaism — these things can have little prejudicial effect upon him who does not expect infallibility in matters on which he does not feel that the interests of his soul in any way depend. Were the ambiguities of the letter much greater than they are, they would still leave the great foundations of his Creed untouched. He founds little upon particular passages or expressions standing THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 129 alone, and if these were withdrawn from him they would draw with them but a few of the outworks of his edifice of faith. This is constructed by him rather according to the principles, than exclusively with the materials, of Scripture, and until the very substance of its Revelation be destroyed, he may indeed be disturbed in the arrangements of his habitation, but he will be without fear as to its essential stability. His principles recognise the possibility, and even enforce the necessity, of extracting the spirit from the letter. They assume indeed that this is the special calling of the Christian, and his gift. They regard the Scriptures as a depository of particular truths rather than as a Revelation of absolute truth, and therefore consider it not only per- missible, but even obligatory, to distinguish between that which is intended to be conveyed, and that which it only used as an instrument of conveyance. And not only do such views exhort that the imperfections of the human should not be confounded with the glory of the Divine, but they also assume a spirit in the Christian sympathetic with the spirit which the letter of the Scripture is intended to convey — a spirit which is generically the same with that which dwelt in the writers, and which alone can make the letter to give life. If then the indefiniteness herein spoken of should be so great as to leave it in uncertainty whether in our Bible we do not exclude something that was originally written for our learning, or include some apocryphal writings, it would not be of much consequence on the principles herein stated. St. John expressly tells us that there were many other sayings and deeds of jesus besides those of which we have any record. Now these words and works, being K I30 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON Divine, must have had an immense and expansive signifi- cance : and though we have no reason for supposing that they would materially have modified our conception of the pervading spirit and general purposes of our Lord's Reve- lations, yet they may very probably have shown us that no one evangelist has adequately presented to us the fulness of His mind. We see indeed that this is so on the careful comparison of the various accounts which we now have from the four — the impression derived from the record of an event or saying by any one of them being different from that which we ultimately receive when we have filled in that record with all the details which are furnished by the other three. But can any one say that we have not enough recorded of jesus to make those believe that He is the Son of GOD who would have believed had they been afforded more ? If not, then may we not suppose that there is some lesson which it was meant that we should learn by this limitation and iridefiniteness, which is worth the learning, and which we should probably have failed to learn if it had been otherwise? And may not that lesson be of this kind, that the Christian Bible is to be to us as a depository of principles and not of rules, and to furnish us with specimens of the kind of spirit and of life which we are to be of, rather than with the precise form of outward action — that it was to give us not minute and circum- stantial, but large and spiritual, guidance, that we might grow in grace from within, and not be moulded only from without — and that it was in fact to be to all ages not as the details of a legal document, but as the free counsels of a living Friend. And is it not also true that, let the imperfections and THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 131 indefiniteness of the Christian Scriptures be magnified to the uttermost, they are insignificant in the judgment of any spiritual mind, when compared with the grand truths which they assert and reveal ? It might suffice to ask. Has any individual, or church, or nation, ever yet come up to their generally acknowledged requirements ? or come so far within sight of their limits as to be practically impeded by them even in aspiration ? And if not, what can it be but intolerable presumption to say that we need more than we at present possess ? XL. The more rigid theory, which is more popularly received, Difficul- and which holds that there is no separable human element opposite in the Bible — that its several books not only contain the ^^^^^• Word of GOD, but are constituted of the Words of god, and of them alone, and that all therefore is throughout of equal and supreme authority — this is a belief which involves in it many difficulties and disadvantages. By disallowing any human element, or any condescending adaptation, we are deprived at once of much feeling of sympathy with the writers of the Bible — as in such case they become but as mere instruments rather than agents of the Supreme — and we are put out of harmony with what we think we see to be the condition of god's dealings in all other parts of His influence on man that we know of; we find broken that chain of analogies which we appear able to trace throughout the varied economy of His educational processes : and thus a preliminary difficulty — the source of other consequent difficulties in detail almost innumerable — is introduced — which if gratuitous is certainly unwise. But not only this ; 132 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON we are henceforth exposed to attacks of criticism quite countless and endless : and our faith is ever liable to rude shocks, if not more, at each fresh difficulty which can be raised as to any sentence, or even word, throughout docu- ments extending over a period of the ancient history of man for fifteen centuries and more. The literalist depend- ing much on particular passages and on certain expressions being of one form and not of another, is in continual danger of having the large inferences which his system allows and even requires him to erect upon them brought to the ground by a progressive scholarship. The fearful anxieties which have been caused to those who maintained such opinions, even in our days, by the progress of science, ought not to be readily forgotten by themselves, and will not be so by others : and though now gradually these are subsiding everywhere, they ought not to be allowed to do so wholly, without leaving us the lesson of the fallibility of even the devoutest dogmatism. The greatest importance used to be attached, for instance, to the passage of the three witnesses, and to some others of like significance and of equally doubtful authority, in the New Testament ; and it was long and loudly declared that the surrender of them would be dangerous to the very foundations of the Christian faith. Good scholars who are also confessedly good Christians now no longer contend for their authenti- city, and yet the anticipated consequence has not followed. Those dishonesties, too, of theological controversy, and those intellectual immoralities of many kinds, which have been the scandal of the Church, while they have not all, or nearly all, been the result of conscious unfairness, have been largely attributable to false principles of interpretation THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 133 founded on this fundamental misconception of the charac- teristic aim and nature of Bibhcal Revelation. And also, under the more rigid theory, the earnest but free mind is continually fretted by the opposition of re- straints which bear upon them the character of human rather than of Divine imposition, and is perpetually required to regard that as sacred which seems to it not to be so — and this is a condition which must instigate to resistance in the most pacific, and to rebellion in the more militant : while the indolence and prejudice of the well-meaning are fostered delusively by the supposition, that a Divine authority has interposed to decide questions once for all which are really left to be decided afresh from age to age, by the exercised faculties of each spiritual mind. And what have been historically the advantages of the more rigid theory ? Has the result which has attended the assertion of it been such as to satisfy any thoughful mind, or to gratify any religious one ? Has it prevented contro- versies ? or rather has it not given rise to them more abun- dantly ? Does it solve any of those great difficulties which have been common to all ages ? Has it not introduced new ones ? Does it not rather ignore the anxieties of the most earnest, and contradict the acquisitions of the most enlight- ened ? Has it even secured to the most simply devout any theoretic unanimity ? or what result is there which^ it has accomplished which might not have been accomplished by a less rigid theory, and may not yet be? Almost every difficulty which is presented by the less definite theory is presented also by that which is the most so : and the his- tory of exposition testifies most clearly that there are very few who hold the strict theory who are not compelled to 134 CATHOLIC THOUGHTS ON make practical relaxations of exposition which impair the consistency of their principles, and who do not transfer to their rules of interpretation a licence which amounts to an equivalent for what elsewhere they are anxious to deny. Such criticism as in these pages is recommended is such as only encourages and enables men to do thinkingly and openly — consciously and thoroughly — what many of the best do now with no other science than that of the heart, and no other wisdom than that of a pious experience : and it seems at once both the most wise and the most honest to do all that we do in so great a matter with a single eye and an open heart. But whatever may be the real fact with regard to the absolute infallibility of the letter of Scripture, it would be well to bear in mind that a belief that it is infallible is one which it is almost impossible that the great majority of men should intelligently entertain : and that therefore probably it is not, and cannot be, required of them. For if ever this infallibility should be proved, it can only be by a kind and an amount of evidence which is utterly inappreciable and unattainable by any but the very few. A judgment to be given on a fair examination of such evidence is one of the very hardest requirements which can be made of the most cultivated mind. It involves considerations of the highest scholarship — a knowledge of tongues and of their interpre- tation the most accurate, and a discerning of spirits, which are the gifts only of the fewest among mankind. And finally. Has the Bible ever conveyed truth infallibly to men ? to any one known man in all known history ? Has ever any man held — does any man now hold — infallible, unchangeable truth, concerning any of its characteristic THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. 135 spiritual Revelations ? Nay, can any of us have infallible thoughts about infinite objects ? Are we not at all spiritually as children while here on earth ? But infallible children ? XLI. With these views, then, let us consider the relation ofQualifi- the scholar towards the original Scriptures, and that also of ^\tu