CHAPTER V.

ORTHODOX IDEA OF THE INSPIRATION AND AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE.

§ 1. Subject of this Chapter. Three Views concerning the Bible. The subject of this chapter is the Orthodox idea concerning the inspiration and authority of the Bible. We shall consider the conflict of opinion between those who believe in the full inspiration of every word of Scripture, and those who treat it like a common book, and endeavor to see how far we ought to believe a fact or a doctrine, because it is asserted, or seems to be asserted, by some writer in the Bible.

Such questions are certainly of great importance to us all at the present time, when opinions on these subjects are unsettled, and few people know exactly what to believe. Especially in regard to the Old Testament, not many persons have any distinct notions. They do not know what is its inspiration or its authority; they do not know whether they are to believe the account of the creation and of the deluge in the book of Genesis, in opposition to the geologists, or believe the geologists, in opposition to Genesis. Certainly it is desirable, if we can, to have some clear and distinct opinions on these points.

And, first, in regard to Inspiration: there are three main and leading views of the inspiration of the Bible. There cannot be a fourth. There may be modifications of these, but nothing essentially different. These three views

(a.) Plenary Inspiration. That is, that everything in

the Bible is the word of God. All the canonical books are inspired by God, so as to make them infallible guides to faith and practice. Every word which really belongs to these books is God's truth, and to be received without question as truth, no matter how much it may seem opposed to reason, to the facts of nature, to common sense, and common morality.

This is the Orthodox theory even at the present time. Any variation from this is considered a deviation into heresy. No doubt, in practice it is deviated from, by very Orthodox people; but all Protestant sects, claiming to be Orthodox, profess to hold to the plenary inspiration of the Bible.

(b.) The Rationalist or Naturalistic View of the Bible. The Bible is not inspired at all, or at least in no way differing from any other book. Its authors were inspired, perhaps, just as Homer, or Thucydides, or Cicero were inspired, but not differently. It has no authority, therefore, over any other book, and is just as liable to be in error as any other. If you should bind in one volume the histories of Herodotus, Tacitus, Gibbon, and Mr. Bancroft, the poems of Horace, Hafiz, and Dante, and the letters of Cicero and Horace Walpole, this collection would have to the Naturalist just as much authority as the Bible.

(c.) The mediatorial view of the Bible, or the view which mediates between the others. This view endeavors to reconcile the others, by accepting the truths in each, and eliminating their errors or defects.

To this third division of opinions belong those of a large class, who are not prepared to accept either the first or the second. They cannot believe every word in the Bible to be the word of God, for they find things in it contradicting the evidence of history and the intuitions of reason, and also contradicting other teachings of the same book. They cannot see why, as Christians, they should believe everything in the Jewish Scriptures. As Christians, they go to the New Tes

tament as a main source of faith and practice, but do not see why they should go to the Old Testament for Christian truth. On the other hand, they cannot look upon the Bible as a common book. They remember that it has been a light to the world for thousands of years, that it has been the means of awakening the human intellect and heart, of reforming society, and purifying life. Even in the Old Testament they find the noblest truth and the tenderest piety. The Bible has been the litany, prayer-book, inspirer, comforter of nations and centuries. They cannot and would not emancipate themselves from the traditions in which they were born, nor cut off history behind them. The Christian Church is their mother; she has taught them out of this book to know God, and out of this book to pray to him, and they cannot regard it without a certain prepossession.

To this third class I myself belong. I would not be unjust to the past or to the future. I would be loyal to truth, and not shut my eyes to what God reveals which is new; and I would not be unfaithful to what has already been taught me, or ungrateful for the love which has taught the world by the mouths of past prophets and apostles.

§ 2. The Difficulty. Antiquity of the World, and Age of Mankind. Let us then see, first, what the problem before us is; and this can perhaps be best understood by means of an example.

The common opinion among Christians is, that the world was made four thousand and four years before Christ, and that all mankind are descended from Adam and Eve. These opinions are derived from the book of Genesis, which tells us that after God had made the world and other things in five days, on the sixth day he made man in his own image; and that, when the first man, Adam, was a hundred and thirty years old, he had a son, named Seth; and from Seth, according to Genesis, are descended, by a genealogy given in the fifth chapter of Genesis, Noah and his sons; and the ages

being given from Adam down to Abraham, and from Abraham to Christ, the age of the world and the age of the human race have been computed.

As long as there was no reason for supposing any different period for the antiquity of the world, these numbers were quietly accepted. But various new facts have been noticed, and new sciences have arisen, within the past fifty years, which have thrown doubt upon this chronology. In the first place the great science of geology has examined the rocky leaves which envelop the surface of the earth, and has found written upon them proofs of an immense antiquity. It is found that the earth, instead of being created four thousand years ago, must have existed for myriads of years, in order to have given time for the changes which have taken place in its structure. This evidence was long doubted and resisted by theologians, as they supposed in the interest of Scripture; but the evidence was too strong to be denied, and no intelligent theologian, however Orthodox, now believes the world to have been made in six days, or to have been created only six thousand years ago. With some, the six days stand for immense periods of time; with others, the whole story is considered a vision, or a symbolical account of geological events; but no one takes it literally. This result has come from the overwhelming amount of evidence for the antiquity of the earth, derived mainly from the fossil rocks. Of these fossiliferous rocks there are over thirty distinct strata, lying superimposed, in a regular series, each filled with the remains of distinct varieties of animals or of plants. These rocks must each have been an immense period of time in being formed, for the shells which they contain, although very delicate, are unbroken, and could only be slowly deposited in the quiet depths of a great ocean. There are also evidences that after these strata were formed, violent and sudden upheavals took place, throwing them into new positions, then slow uprisings of the bottom of the sea, or slow

subsidings of the land. At one time the northern parts of Europe and America were covered with ice. Great glaciers extended over the whole of Switzerland, and icebergs floated from the mountains of Berkshire in Massachusetts upon a sea which filled the valley of the Connecticut River, dropping erratic blocks of stone, taken from those mountains, in straight lines, parallel with each other, half way across the valley, where they still lie. Similar icebergs floated from Snowdon, in Wales, and Ben Lomond, in Scotland, over the submerged islands of Great Britain. At one time the whole surface of the earth, instead of being covered with icy glaciers, was filled with a hot, damp atmosphere, laden with carbonic gas, which no creature could breathe, but in which grew great forests of a strange tropical vegetation. Then came another period, in which all these forests were submerged and buried, and at last turned into coal. Long after this hot period had passed, and long after the cold, glacial period, which followed it, had departed, came a time when the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus covered the whole of Europe, and the mammoth roamed in North America. Such facts as these, incontestably established by the amplest evidence, have made it impossible for any reasonable man to believe that the earth was made in six days, or that it was made only six thousand years ago. But this question being thus disposed of, other questions arise in their turn. Are all mankind descended from one pair, or from many? Has the human race existed on the earth only six thousand years, or during a longer period? Was the deluge of Noah a real event? and if so, was it universal or partial? Did the sun stand still at the command of Joshua? or is that only a poetic image taken from an ancient book of poems the book of Jasher? Is there any truth in the story of the passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites? of the passage of the Jordan? of the walls of Jericho falling when the trumpets were blown? of the story