OBJECTIONS EXAMINED.

It is objected, that the individuality of the sacred writers, deeply imprinted on their respective writings, cannot be reconciled with plenary inspiration; it is objected, that the fallibility of the translator renders illusory the infallibility of the original text; it is objected, that the use of the totally human version of the Seventy, by the apostles, renders their theopneusty more than doubtful; the objector refers to the variations in the manuscripts, imperfections in the reasonings and in the doctrines, errors in the facts; he brings up the statements which appear absurd in the light of our more perfect acquaintance with the laws of nature; he states, finally, what he calls the admissions of St. Paul. We shall answer these objections in order, and then examine in succession, some of the theories by which the doctrine of plenary inspiration is evaded.

Section I.—THE INDIVIDUALITY, OR PECULIARITIES OF THE SACRED WRITERS, DEEPLY IMPRESSED ON THEIR BOOKS,

It is first objected, that this individuality, which so pervades the sacred. books, furnishes a powerful testimony against the doctrine of a full and constant inspiration. We are told that it is impossible to read the Scriptures, without being struck with the differences of language, of conception, of style, which each author presents. These differences, by impressing on these writings the indisputable features of their personality, betray, every where, the concurrence of their personal action in the composition of the Scriptures. Although the title of each book should not indicate to us that we are passing from one-author to another; yet we should quickly discover by the change of their character, that a new hand has taken the pen. This difference shows itself even between one prophet and another, and between two apostles. Who could read the writings of Isaiah and Ezekiel, of Amos and Hosea, of Zephaniah and Habakkuk, of Jeremiah and Daniel; who could study successively the writings of Paul and Peter, of James and John, without remarking in each one of them, the influence which his habits, his condition, his genius, his education, his circumstances. have exercised over his views of truth, over his reasoning, and his language? They describe that which they have seen, and as they have seen it. ‘Their memory has full play, their imaginations are exercised, their affections are drawn out, all their being is employed, and their moral physiognomy is clearly portrayed in their writings. We perceive that the composition of each book has depended greatly, both for its matter and its form, upon the peculiar circumstances and turn of its author.

Could the son of Zebedee have composed the Epistle to the Romans, such as we have received it from the hands of St. Paul? Who would have dreamed of attributing the Epistle to the Hebrews to him? And although the catholic letters of Peter should be deprived of their title, who would think of attributing them to John? It is so likewise with the evangelists. It is perfectly easy to re-cognize each one of them, although they speak of the same Master, teach the same doctrines, and relate the same incidents. This is the fact which none can dispute; but the legitimacy of their inferences we deny. It is said,

1. If it were God alone who speaks in every part of the Scriptures, we should see, then, a uniformity which now they do not possess.

2. We must then admit that two different forces have acted at the same time upon the sacred writers, while they were composing the Scriptures—their own natural force, and the miraculous force of inspiration.

3. From the conflict, the concurrence, or the balanded action of these two forces there must have resulted an inspiration variable, gradual, sometimes entire, sometimes imperfect, and often even reduced to the feeble measure of a mere. supervision.

4. The variable power of the Divine Spirit in this combined action, must have proportioned itself to the importance and to the difficulties of the matters treated by the sacred author. It must, in fact, have withdrawn itself, whenever the judgment and the recollection of the writer were competent to the work; for God performs no needless miracle.

“Man cannot say,” says Bishop Wilson,¹ “where this inspiration begins, and where it ends.”

“That,” says Dr. Twesten, “which is exaggerated in the notions of some, concerning inspiration, is not the extension of it to all parts, but the extension of it to all parts equally. If inspiration does not exclude the personal action of the sacred writers, neither does it any more destroy all the influence of human imperfection. But we may suppose this influence always feebler in the writers, in proportion as the matter relates more intimately to Christ.”²

“We should recognize,” says Dr. Dick, “three degrees of inspiration. There are, in the first lace; many things which the writers could know by the mere exercise of

‘their natural faculties; no supernatural influence was necessary to relate them; it was only requisite that they should be infallibly preserved from error. In the second place, there were other things, for which their understandings and their faculties needed to be divinely strengthened. Finally, there are many others still, which contain subjects that made a direct inspiration indispensable.”³

Hence it results, that if this full inspiration was sometimes necessary, yet, for matters at once simple and not vital to religion, there. may be in the Scriptures some innocent errors, and some of those stains which the hand of man always lets fall on that which it touches.

Whilst the energy of the Divine Spirit, by an action always powerful, and often victorious, was enlarging the understandings of the men of God, purifying their affections, and making them seek among all their recollections, for those which could-be the most usefully transmitted to the Church; the natural energies of their minds, left to themselves for all the details which were of no importance to faith or virtue, may have introduced in the Scriptures some mixture of inexactness and imperfection. “We must not then attribute to the Scriptures an unlimited infallibility, as if there were no error,” says Mr. Twesten, “Doubtless, God is truth; and, in important. matters, every thing which comes from him is truth; but if every thing is not equally important, then every thing does not come equally from him; and if inspiration does not exclude the personal action of the sacred authors, neither does it destroy all the influence of human imperfection.”

Such is then the. objection.—It assumes, in its suppositions and in its conclusions, that there are in the Scriptures, some passages of no importance, and others marred by imperfection.—We will hereafter repel with all our power, both these erroneous imputations; but we must defer it for the present, as we are here considering only the living and personal form under which the Scriptures have been given to us, and its supposed incompatibility with a plenary inspiration.

To this objection we may reply:

1, We commence by declaring how far we are from denying the alleged fact, while we resist the false inferences deduced from it. So far are we from overlooking this human individuality, every where impressed on our sacred books; that, on the contrary, it is with profound gratitude, with an ever-increasing admiration, we regard this living, real, dramatic, human character infused so powerfully and so charmingly into every part of the book of God. Yes, (we delight to say it to the objectors,) here it is the phraseology, the stamp, the accent of a Moses, there of a St. John, here of an Isaiah, there of an Amos, here of a Daniel, or St. Peter, there of a Nehemiah, there of a St: Paul. We recognise them, we hear them, we see them; it is all but impossible to be mistaken in regard to it. We admit this fact, we delight to study it, we admire it profoundly, and we there see, as we shall be called to repeat, more than an additional proof of the divine wisdom which dictated the Scriptures.

2. What bearing has the absence or the presence of the writer’s affections on the fact of theopneusty? Cannot God alike employ them or dispense with them? He, who could make a statue speak; can he not make even an infant speak as he pleases?’ He who reproved the folly of the prophet by a dumb animal; can he not put in another prophet the sentiments or the words which are best suited to the plan of his revelations? He who caused the dead hand to come out from the wall, and write these terrible words: “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin! could he not equally direct the intelligent and pious pen of his apostle to write such words as these: “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not; my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great sorrow and heaviness of heart for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh”?

Do you know how God acts, and how he refrains from acting? Will you teach us the mechanism of inspiration? Will you tell us what is the difference between his mode of influence, when the personal qualities of the writer show themselves, and when they do not? Will you explain to us how the concurrence of the thoughts, the recollections and the emotions of the sacred writers would impair their theopneusty; and will you tell us why this very concurrence does not make part of it? Between the fact of individuality and the inference which you draw from it, there is an abyss. And into this abyss your intelligence can no more descend to oppose the theopneusty, than ours to explain it. Was there not enough individuality in the language of Caiaphas, when that wicked man, full of the bitterest gall, abandoning himself to the counsels of his depraved heart, and thinking of anything but speaking the words of God, cried out in the Jewish council: ‘You do not understand nor consider that it is expedient that one man die for the people’? Surely there was in these words sufficient individuality; and yet it is written that Caiaphas did not speak them of himself, (ἀφ’έαυτού) but that being high-priest that year, he spoke as a prophet, without knowing what he said; announcing that Jesus was about to come, to gather the children of

God who are scattered abroad. (John xi. 49-52.) Why. then could not the same spirit employ the pious-affections of his saints for announcing the word of God, as well as use the hypocritical and-wicked thoughts of his most odious adversaries?

3. When they say, that if, in such a passage, it is the style of Moses, or of Luke, of Ezekiel, or of John, it can not. be that of God, they mean to tell us what is the style of God. They will point out to us the accent of the Holy Ghost; they will teach us to recognize it by the turn of his phrases, by the tone of his voice; and they will tell us what signalizes in the Hebrew language, or in the Greek, his supreme individuality. Since you know it, explain it to us.

4. It should not be forgotten that the sovereign action of God, in the different fields of its exercise, never excludes the employment of second causes. On the contrary, it is in their very enlistment, that he loves to manifest his powerful wisdom. In the field of the creation, he gives us the plants, by the combined employment of all the elements; of heat, moisture, electricity, atmosphere, light, the mechanical attraction of the capillary vessels, and of the various work of the organs. In the field of Providence, he accomplishes the development of his vastest. plans, by the unanticipated combination of a thousand millions of human wills alternately intelligent and submissive, or ignorant and rebellious. “Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles and the Jews (moved by so many different passions) have gathered themselves together to do what thy hand and thy counsel determined before, should be done.” In the field of prophecy, it is still in the same manner that-he leads the prophecies on to their fulfilment. He prepares, for instance, long before hand, a warrior-prince in the mountains of Persia, and another in those of Media; the first he had designated by name, two centuries before his birth; he unites them at a point named, with ten other people, against the empire of the Chaldeans; he leads them to surmount a thousand obstacles, and at last brings them into great Babylon, at the very moment which terminated the seventy years so long before assigned to the Jewish captivity. In the very field of his miracles, he is still pleased to use second causes. He might there have said: “let the thing be;” and it would have been: But he designed, even there, in employing inferior agents, to make us comprehend more fully, that it is he who gives power to the feeblest of them. To divide the Red Sea, he causes not only the rod of Moses to be stretched out over the abyss; but sends also an impetuous east wind, which blows all night, and drives back the waters of the sea: To restore sight to the man born blind, he moistens the clay, and with it anoints the eye-lids. In the field of redemption, in place of converting a soul by an immediate act of his will, he presents to it motives, he makes it read the gospel, he sends it preachers; and thus, although it is he “who worketh in us to will and to do of his good pleasure;” yet “he begets us according to his own will by the word of truth.” Why then, is it not so in the field of Theopneusty? Why, when he sends his word; should he not put it in the understanding, in the heart and in the life of his servants, as he puts it upon their lips? Why should he not associate their personality with that which they reveal to us? Why should not. their sentiments, their history, their experiences make part of their Theopneusty?

5. The error of the objection to which we reply, may be further shewed by the entire inconsistency of those who use it. In order to deny the plenary inspiration. of certain passages of the Scriptures, they allege the individuality impressed on them; and yet, it is admitted that other parts of the holy book, where this feature is equally produced, must have been given directly by God, even in their minutest details. Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and the author of the Apocalypse have just as much, impressed, each one. his own style, features, manner; in a ‘word, his own mark, on their prophecies; as Luke, Mark, John, Paul, Peter have on their histories or their letters. The objection then is not valid; if it proves any thing, it proves too much.

6. That which still strikes us in this objection and in the system of intermittent inspiration to which it is allied, is pits threefold character of complication, temerity and puerility;—of complication, for its advocates suppose that the Divine action, dictating the Scriptures, was interrupted or enfeebled in any passage, just in proportion to the diminished difficulty or importance of the passage; and thus they represent God as successively retiring and advancing in the spirit of the sacred writer, during the course of the same chapter or passage!—of rashness; for, not knowing the majesty of the Scriptures, they dare to suppose that they have, in some of their parts, no more—than a human importance, and that they required for their composition, no more than a human wisdom!—of puerility, we say too; for they fear to ascribe useless miracles to God; as if the Holy Spirit, after having, as they avow, dictated, word for word, one part of the Scriptures, would have. found it a less difficult task, in other parts, merely to illuminate or to superintend the writer.

7. But we go farther. That which chiefly leads us to oppose a theory that dares to classify the Scriptures as inspired, half-inspired, and not inspired, (as if this sad doctrine ought to be deduced from the fact that each book is. characterised by the peculiarities of its author); is its direct opposition to the Scriptures themselves. The-theory is, that one part of the Bible is made by man, and another part by God. Now hear the Bible itself.. It protests that ‘all scripture is given by inspiration of God.” It does not indicate an exception. By what authority then can any one make an exception which it does not admit? We are told indeed, that a part of the Scriptures required the plenary inspiration of the writer; that a part required nothing more than eminent gifts, and that still another part might have been written by an ordinary man. All this may be; but what bearing has it on the question? When the-author of a book is named to you; you know that every thing in the book is his, the easy and the difficult, the important and the unimportant.

If, then, “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God;” how does it affect our question, that there are passages, in your eyes more important, or more difficult, than others? The least of the companions of Jesus could have composed the fifth verse of the eleventh chapter of John:—“Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus:”’ as also the most insignificant schoolmaster could have written the first line of Athalia:—“Yes, I come into his temple, to adore the Lord.” But if some one had told us, that the great Racine had dictated all his drama to some village-mayor, should we not still continue to attribute all its parts to him; its first verse, the number of its scenes, the names of its actors, the directions for their entrance and their exit, as well as the sublimest strophes of its choirs? If, then, God himself declares to us, that he has dictated all the Scriptures, who shall dare say that this fifth verse of the eleventh chapter of John is any less from God, than the sublime words which begin the Gospel, and which describe to us the eternal Word? Inspiration may, indeed, be more clearly distinguished in some passages than in some others; but it is not, therefore, less real in the one than in the other.

In a word, if there were parts of the Bible without inspiration, it would no longer be truth to say, that all the Bible is divinely inspired; it would no more be entirely the word of God: it would have deceived us.

8. It is especially important to remark here, that this fatal system of an inspiration, gradual, imperfect, and intermittent, arises from a mistake which we have more than once found it necessary to point out. It is, that inspiration has almost always been considered as in the man; whereas it ought to be looked for only in the book. It. is “ALL SCRIPTURE,” it is all that is written, which is inspired of God. We are not told, and we are not asked, how God has done it. It is certified to us, only that he has done it; and all that we are to believe is simply that, whatever mode he may have adopted for accomplishing it.

"The contemplation of inspiration from this false point of view has given rise to the three following illusions:—

First, In contemplating inspiration in the sacred author, it has been usual to consider it in him as an extraordinary excitement, of which he was conscious, which carried him out of himself; which animated him, after the manner of the ancient Pythons, by a divine afflatus, or poetic fire, easily recognized; so that where the words are simple, calm, familiar, they must no longer be attributed to inspiration.

Consequently, by regarding theopneusty as in the persons, they have been naturally led to attribute to it different degrees of perfection; because they knew that the sacred writers themselves have received very different measures of illumination and of holiness. But if you regard ‘inspiration as in the book, rather than in the man, then you will perceive that it cannot admit of degrees. A word is of God, or it is not of God. If it is of God, it is not so in two different modes. Whatever may have been the spiritual condition of the writer, if all his writings are divinely inspired, all his words are of God. And it is on this principle, (mark it well,) that a Christian will hesitate no more than Christ, to place the writings of Solomon by the side of those ‘off Moses; or those of Mark or of Matthew, by the side of those of the disciple whom Jesus loved; yea, by the side of even the words of the Son of God. They are all of God.

Finally, by a third illusion; in considering the inspiration as in the writers, instead of seeing it in the writings, it has naturally been thought absurd to suppose that God  miraculously revealed to a man that which this man already knew. This has led to a denial of the inspiration of those passages in which the sacred writers have merely recounted what they have seen, or have written sentences which any man of sense could have uttered without the aid of inspiration. But the case is totally changed, when inspiration is regarded as belonging to that which is written; for then every thing will be recognized as written by Divine dictation; whether it be what the writer already knew, or that of which he was ignorant. Who does not perceive, for example, that the case in which I should dictate to a student, a book of geometry, “is very different from the case in which, after having more or less instructed him in the sciences, I should request him to compose one under my supervision. In the latter case he would, doubtless, have need of me only for difficult propositions; but then too, who would think of saying that the book was mine? In the other case, on the contrary, all the parts of the book, easy or difficult, would be mine; from the quadrature of the transcendental curves, even to the theory of the straight line or of the triangle. Now, such is the Bible. It is not, as some have said, a book which God has charged men, already enlightened, to make, under-his protection. It is a. book which God dictated to them; it is the word of God; the Spirit of the Lord hath spoken by its authors, and his words were upon their tongue.

9. That a child may know that the style of David, of St. Luke, or St. John, can be, at the same time, the style of God.

If some modern French author, at the beginning of the | century, in order to render himself popular, had imitated the style of Chateaubriand, could it not have been said, with equal truth, although in two different senses, that the style was his? And yet it was Chateaubriand’s. If God himself, in order to save the French nation from a frightful explosion, by introducing the Gospel among them, should deign to send some prophets, by whose mouth He would make himself heard, they would certainly preach in the French language. But then, what would be their style, and what would you require as characteristic of the style of God? God might choose that one of these prophets should speak like Fenelon, and the other like Bonaparte. Then it would be; in a certain sense, the pithy, barking, jerking style of the great general; it would be again, and in the same sense, the flowing style, the sustained and wire-drawn period of the priest of Cambray; but, in another sense, more elevated and more true, it would be, in the one and in the other of these two mouths, the style of God, the periods of God, the manner of God, the word of God.. God could, without doubt, every time he revealed his will, have uttered, from the highest heavens, a voice as glorious as that which shook the rocky Sinai, or that which was heard on.the banks of the Jordan. He could have deputed no less than the angels of light. But then, what languages would they have spoken? Those of the earth, evidently. If then, in speaking to men on the earth, he must adopt the words and the construction of the Hebrews and the Greeks, instead of the syntax of the heavens and the vocabulary of archangels; why should he not also-equally have borrowed their gait, their style, and their personality?

10. He has done so, without doubt; but do not think that he has done it by accident. “His works are known to him from the beginning.” See how he prepares with prospective wisdom, the leaf of a tree, wrapped first in its little case; then gradually unfolding, to drink the rays of light and breathe the vital air, while the roots send up to it their nourishing juices. But his wisdom has looked and provided still further; it has prepared this leaf for that coming day, when it may nourish the worms which are to burst their silky covering and spin their thread upon its branches. See how he prepared, first a gourd for the place and for the time when and where Jonas was to come and sit down on the east of Nineveh; and afterwards a destructive worm for the next morning, when this gourd should wither;—just too, as when he would proceed to the most important of his works, and cause to be written this prophecy which is to outlive the heavens and the earth; the eternal God knew how to prepare, long beforehand, each one of his prophets for the moment and for the testimony to which he had destined him from eternity. He has chosen them, one after the other, for their respective offices, from among all the men born of women; and he has perfectly accomplished in respect to them, this word: “Send, oh Lord, whom thou wilt send.”

As a skilful musician, who has to execute alone a long score, will avail himself by turns, of the funereal flute, the shepherd’s pipe, the dancer’s bagpipe or the. warrior’s trumpet; thus the Almighty God, to proclaim to us his eternal word, has chosen of old, the instruments into which he would successively breathe the breath of his Spirit. “He chose them before the foundation of the world; he separated them from their mother’s womb.”⁴

Have you visited the Cathedral of Freyburg, and listened to that wonderful organist, who, with such enchantment, draws the tears from the traveler’s eyes; while he touches, one after another, his wonderful keys, and makes: you hear by turns, the march of armies upon the beach, or the chanted prayer upon the lake during the tempest, or the voices of praise after it is calm? Alb your senses are overwhelmed, for it has all passed before you like a vivid reality. Well, thus the Eternal God, powerful in harmony, touches by turns with the fingers of his Spirit, the keys which he had chosen for the hour of his design, and for the unity of his celestial hymn. He had before him, from eternity, all the human keys; his creating eyes embraced at a glance, this key-board of sixty centuries; and when he would make this fallen world hear the eternal counsel of its redemption and the advent of the Son of God, he laid his left hand on Enoch the seventh from Adam,⁵ and his right hand on John, the humble and sublime prisoner of Patmos. The celestial hymn, seven hundred years before the deluge, began with these words: “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to judge the world;” but already in the thought of God and in the eternal harmony of his work, the voice of John was responding to that of Enoch, and terminating the hymn, three thousand years after him, with these words: “Behold, he cometh, and every eye shall see him, yea, those that pierced him! even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly, amen!” And during this hymn of three thousand years, the Spirit of God did not cease to breathe upon all his ambassadors; the angels stooped, says an Apostle, to contemplate its depths; the elect-of God were moved, and eternal life descended into their souls.

Between Enoch and St. John, hear Jeremiah, twenty-four centuries after the one, and seven centuries before the other: Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee, and before thou comest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”⁶ It was in vain that this man in his fear exclaimed: “Oh Lord, behold I cannot speak, for 1 am a child;” the Lord answered him: ‘say not, 1 am a child; for, thou shalt speak all that I command thee.” Then the Lord stretched forth his hand and touched his mouth, and said: “Behold, I put my word in thy mouth.”

Between Enoch and Jeremiah, hear wee He debates too, upon Mount Horeb, against the Lord’s appeal: “Alas, Lord, I am a man slow of speech; send rather I pray thee, by whom thou wilt send.”⁷ But the anger of the Lord burns against Moses: “Who hath made man’s mouth? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.”

Between Jeremiah and St. John, hear Saul of Tarsus: “When it pleased God, who hath separated me from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, to reveal his-Son in me, that I might preach him. among the heathen.”⁸

We see then, it was sometimes the sublime and untutored simplicity of John; sometimes the excited, elliptical, startling, argumentative energy of Paul; sometimes the fervor and solemnity of Peter; it was the majestic poetry of Isaiah, or the lyrical poetry of David; it was the simple and majestic narrative of Moses, or the sententious and royal wisdom of Solomon;—yes, it was all that; it was Peter; it was Isaiah; it was Matthew; it was John; it was Moses; but it was God!;

“Are not these men who speak to us, all, Galileans?” cried one on the day of Pentecost. Yes, they are; but the word upon their lips comes from another country, it is from heaven. Hear it; for the tongues of fire have come down upon their ends, and it is God who speaks to you by their mouth.

11. Finally; we would show that this human personality which is pointed out to us in the Scriptures; so far from leaving any stain there, or from being an infirmity; on the contrary, impresses a divine beauty on the sacred ‘page, and powerfully proves to us its theopneusty.

Yes, we have said it; it is God who there speaks to us; but it is also man; “it is man, but it is also God. Admirable word of my God! It has been made human in its way, like the eternal Word! Yes, God has caused it thus to stoop even to us, full of grace and truth, like our words, in every thing but error and sin. Admirable word, divine word; but full of humanity, amiable word of my God! Yes, it must, in order to be understood by us, place itself on mortal lips, recite human things; and to charm us, must put on the features of our thoughts and all the tones of our voice, because God knows well of what we are made. But we have recognized it as the word of the Lord, powerful, efficacious, sharper than any two-edged sword; and the most simple among us, have been able to say in hearing it, like Cleopas and his friend: “did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us?”

With what a powerful charm the Scriptures, by this abundance of humanity, and by all this personality which clothes their divinity, remind us that the Lord of our souls, whose teaching voice they are, himself bears a human heart upon the throne of God, although seated in the highest places, where the angels can serve and adore him! By this too, they present to us, not only this double character of variety and unity which at once so embellishes and distinguishes all the other works of God, as creator of the heavens and the earth, but also that union of familiarity and authority, of sympathy and grandeur, of practical detail and mysterious majesty, of humanity and divinity, which we recognize in all the dispensations of the same God, as redeemer and shepherd of his Church.

It is then thus that the Father of mercies, in speaking in his prophets, has had not only to employ their manner—as well as their voice, and their style as well as their pen, but also often to enlist in it all their faculties of thought and feeling. Sometimes in order to show us his divine sympathy, he has thought proper to associate their personal reminiscences, their own experiences and their pious emotions with the words which he was dictating to them. Sometimes, in order to remind us of his sovereign interference, he has preferred to dispense with this unessential concurrence of their memories, their affections and their understandings.

Such ought the word of God to be.

Like Emmanuel, full of grace and truth; at the same time in the bosom of God and in the heart of man; powerful and sympathetic, celestial and of the earth, sublime and humiliated, imposing and familiar, God and man! It does not then resemble the God of the rationalists. After having, like the disciples of Epicurus, removed the Deity very far from man and into the third heaven, they have wished the Bible to put him there too. “Philosophy,” said the too celebrated Strauss of Louisburg, “employs the language of the gods; whilst religion employs the language of men.” Yes, doubtless, it does; it assumes no other; it leaves to philosophers and the gods of this world, their empyrium and their language.

Studied under this aspect, and considered by this character, the word of God shows itself without a parallel; it has unequalled attractions; it offers to the men of every age, place and condition, beauties always new, a charm which does not grow old, which ever satisfies and never satiates. In direct contrast with human books, it not only pleases you, it increases in beauty, extent and elevation of meaning, in proportion as you read it more assiduously. It seems that the book, the more you study and re-study it, grows and expands, and that an invisible and benevolent Being comes daily to sew in it some new leaves! This is the reason why the souls of the learned and the unlearned, who have long been nourished by it, equally hang upon it, just as those once-did on the lips of Christ, who are mentioned by Luke. (Chap. xix. 48.)⁹ They all find it incomparable; sometimes powerful as the noise of mighty waters, sometimes-amiable and sweet as the voice of the bride to her bridegroom; but always “perfect, always restoring the soul, and making wise the simple.”

To what book, in this respect, would you compare it! Would you place by its side, the discourses of Plato or of Seneca, of Aristotle, or St. Simon, or Rousseau? Have you read the books of Mohammed? Listen to him for one hour. Under the pressure of his piercing and monotonous voice, your ears will tingle. From the first page to the last, it is always the cry of the same trumpet, always the cornet of Medina sounding from the top of a minaret or of a war-camel; always a sybilline oracle, sharp and hard, in a continued strain of commandment and threat; whether he ordains virtue or commands murder; always one and the same voice, sharp and roaring, without compassion, without familiarity, without tears, without soul, without sympathy.

If after reading other books, you feel religious wants, open the Bible; hear it. “They are sometimes indeed the songs of angels, but of angels come down among the sons of Adam.

They are the organs of the Most High; but they come to charm the heart of man and to move his concience; in the cabin of the shepherd, as in the palace; in the garrets of the poor, as in the tents of the desert.

The Bible, in fact, instructs all conditions; it brings on the stage, the humble and the great; it reveals to them equally the love of God, and exposes in them the same miseries. It addresses children; and they are often children who there show us the way to heaven, and the great. ness of the Lord. It addresses herdsmen; and they are often herdsmen who there speak and reveal to us the character of God. It speaks to kings and to scribes; and they are often kings and scribes who there teach us the miseries of man, humility, confession and prayer. Domestic scenes, avowals of the conscience, secret effusions of prayer, travels, proverbs, revelations of the depths of the heart, the holy career of a child of God, weaknesses unveiled, falls, revivings, intimate experiences, parables, familiar letters, theological treatises, sacred commentaries on some ancient Scripture, national chronicles, military pageants, political censuses, descriptions of God, portraits of angels, celestial visions, practical counsels, rules of life, solutions of cases of conscience, judgments of the Lord, sacred songs, predictions of the future, accounts of the days which preceded our creation, sublime odes, inimitable poetry. All this is found in tarn; and all this is there exposed to our view, in a variety full of charm, and in a whole, whose majesty is captivating as that of a temple.

It is thus the Bible must from its first page to its last, associate with its majestic unity, the indefinable charm. of an instruction, human, familiar, sympathising, personal, and with a drama of forty centuries. “There are,” it is said in the Bible of Desmarets, “shallows, where a lamb may wade, and deep waters, where an elephant may swim.”

‘But mark at the same time, the peculiar unity, and the numberless and profound harmonies in this immense variety! Under all these forms it is always the same truth; always man lost, and God the Savior; always the first Adam with his race leaving Eden and losing life, and the second Adam with his people reentering Paradise, and finding again the tree of life; always the same appeal in a thousand tones: “Oh heart of man, return to thy God; for thy God pardons. Thou art in the abyss; come up from it; a Savior has descended into it—he gives holiness and life!”

“Can a book at once so sublime and so simple, be the work of man?” inquired a too celebrated philosopher of the last century; and every page has answered; no, impossible; for, every where, through so many ages, and whichever of the sacred writers holds the pen, king or shepherd, scribe or fisherman, priest or publican, every where you recognize that the same author, at an interval of a thousand years, and that the same eternal Spirit has conceived and dictated every thing; every where, in Babylon as at Horeb, in Jerusalem as in Athens, in. Rome as in Patmos, you find described the same God, the same world, the same men, the same angels, the same future, the same heaven. Every where, whether it be a historian or a poet who speaks to you, whether on the plains of the desert in the age of Pharaoh, or in the dungeon of the capitol, in the age of the Caesars,—every where, n the world, the same ruin; in man, the same condemnation and impotence; in the angels, the same elevation, innocence and charity; in heaven, the same purity and happiness, the same meeting together of truth and mercy, the same embrace of righteousness and peace; the same designs of a God who blots out iniquity, transgression and sin, and who will yet by no means clear the guilty..

We conclude then that the abundance of humanity which is found in the Scriptures, far from compromising their Theopneusty, is but another indication of their divinity.

Section II.—THE TRANSLATIONS,

We. come to the second objection.—You are sure, we are: sometimes told, that the inspiration of the Scriptures extends even to the words of the original text; but of what use is this verbal exactness of the holy word; since after all, the greater part of Christians must use only the more or less inaccurate versions? The privilege of such an inspiration is then lost to the modern Church; for you will not go so far as to say that any translation is inspired.

We have felt at first some repugnance to presenting this objection, on account of its insignificance; but it must be noticed, since we are told that it is frequently repeated, and that it is well received among us.

The first remark to be made on this objection, is, that it is not an objection. It is not raised against the fact of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, but against its-advantage. So far as respects the majority of. readers, it says; “the benefit of such an interference of God would be lost, since, instead of the infallible words of the original, they can have only the fallible words of a translation. But we are not at liberty to deny a fact, because we cannot at once perceive all its advantages; and we are not permitted to reject a doctrine, merely because we cannot perceive its utility, All the expressions, for ‘instance,and all the letters of the ten commandments were certainly “written by the finger of God, from the Aleph which commences, to the Caph which closes them. Yet would any one dare to say that the credibility of this miraculous fact is impaired by the necessity which the majority of unlearned readers now find, of reading the decalogue in some translation? No one would dare to say it. We must then observe that this objection, without attacking directly the doctrine which we defend, brings into dispute only its advantages; they are lost as to us, it is said, by the work of the translator; they disappear in this metamorphosis.

We are going then to show how even this assertion, when reduced to its last terms, is also without foundation.

The divine word, which the Bible reveals to us, passes through four successive forms, before arriving to us in a translation. It was first, from all eternity, in the mind of God. Then, he placed it in the mind of man. Then, under the operation of the. Holy Spirit, and by a mysterious translation from the mind of the Prophet into the moulds and symbols of an articulate language, it there assumed the form of words. Finally, when it had undergone this first translation, as important as inexplicable, man reproduced and transferred it by a new translation, in copying it from one human language into another. Of these four operations, the first three are divine; the fourth alone is human and fallible. Will any one say, because it is human, the divinity of the other three is to us a matter of indifference? At the same time, observe, that between the third and the fourth, I mean between the first translation of the thought by the sensible signs of a human language, and the second translation of the words by other words, the difference is immense. Between the doubts which. we may entertain upon the exactness of the translations, and those which would oppressed us, as to the accuracy of the original text, if it were not literally inspired, the distance is infinite. You say: What difference does it make to me, that the third operation is produced by the Spirit of God, if the last is effected only. by the human intellect? In other words, of what avail is it to me that the primitive language is inspired, if the versions are not? But you forget, in speaking thus, that we are infinitely more assured of the exactness of the translators, than we could be of that of the original text, provided all the expressions in it were not from God.

Of this we shall be convinced by the five following considerations;

1. The operation by which the sacred writers express by words, the thought of the Holy Spirit, is itself, as we have said, a translation, not of words by other words, but of divine thoughts by sensible symbols. Now, this first translation is infinitely more delicate, more mysterious, and more exposed to error, if God does not interfere, than that can be, by which we afterwards render a Greek word of this primitive text by an equivalent word in French or English. In order’ that a man may express exactly the thought of God, he must, if not aided from on high in his language, have entirely seized it in its full measure, and in all the extent and depth of its meaning. But this is not the case with a mere translation. The divine thought having already become. incarnate in the language of the sacred text, the object in translating, is no longer to give it a body, but only to change its dress; to make it say in English or French what it said in Greek, and modestly to replace each one of its words by an equivalent one.

It is comparatively a very inferior process, very material, without mystery, and infinitely less subject to error than the former. It requires in fact so little spirituality, that an honest pagan can accomplish it perfectly, if he possesses perfectly the knowledge of the two languages. ‘The more you reflect on this first consideration, the more the difference of these two orders of translation must appear incommensurable. It must not then be said; what good can it do me that the one is divine, if the other is human?

2. A second characteristic by which we can recognise the difference of these two. operations, and by which the work of translation will be seen to be infinitely less liable to error than the original text would. be, if uninspired, is, that, whilst the labor of our translations is performed by a great number of men of every tongue and country, who have been able to consecrate to it all their time and all their care; who have from age to age, been criticising one another, who have mutually instructed and improved each other; the original text, on the contrary, must have been written at a given moment, and by one man alone. No one was with that man but his God, to correct him if he erred, to improve his expressions, if he chose those which were imperfect. If then God has not done it, no one could have done it. And if this man has badly expressed the thought of the Holy Spirit, he has not had, as our translators have had, friends to point out his fault, predecessors to guide him, nor successors to correct him, nor months, years, ages to revise and complete his work. It is made by one solitary man, and it is made once and forever. We see then again, by this view, how much more necessary the intervention of the Holy Spirit was to the original writers of the Bible, than to their translators.

3. A third consideration which should also lead us to the same conclusions, is, that whilst all the translators of the Scriptures have been literary men, laborious, and versed in the study of language; the sacred authors, on the contrary, were, for the most part, ignorant men, without literary cultivation, unaccustomed to write their own language, and by that alone exposed, if not guided infallibly in expressing the divine revelation, to give us a defective representation of an infallible thought.

4. A fourth consideration full of force, and which will make us feel more sensibly still, the immense difference between the sacred writers and their translators; is that, whereas the thought of God passed like-a flash of lightning from heaven across the mind of the prophet; whereas this thought can no more be found any where upon the earth, except in the rapid expression which was then given it by the prophet; whereas, if he has spoken badly, you know not where to look for his prototype, that in it you may find the thought of God in its purity; whereas, if he erred, his error is forever irreparable, it must endure longer than the. heaven and the earth, it has stained remedilessly the eternal book, and no human being can correct it;—it is totally otherwise with the translations. They, on the contrary, have always there, by their side, the divine text, to be corrected and re-corrected from this eternal type, until they shall become entirely conformed to it. The inspired word does not leave us; we have not to go and seek for it in the third heavens; it is still there upon the earth, such as God-primitively dictated it. You may then study it for ages, to submit to its unchangeable truth, the human work of our translation. You can to-day, correct the versions of Osterwald and Martin, after a hundred and thirty years, by bringing them more rigidly to their infallible standard; after three hundred and seventeen years, you “may correct the work of Luther; after fourteen hundred and forty years, that of Jerome. The phraseology of God remaining always there, before our human versions, such as God himself dictated it, in Hebrew or in Greek, in the day of the revelation; and, our dictionaries in your hand, you can return there and examine, from age to age, the infallible expression which he was pleased to give to his divine thought, until you are assured that the language of the moderns, has truly received the exact impression of it, and has given you, for your use, the most faithful fac-simile of it. ‘Say no more then; of what use is a divine revelation to me, if I must use a human translation? If you wanted a bust of Napoleon, would you say to the sculptor, of what use is it to me that your model has been moulded at St. Helena upon the very face of Bonaparte; since, after. all, it will be but your copy?

5. Finally that which distinguishes still the first expression of the divine thought in the words of the sacred book, from its new expression in one of our translations, is that, if you suppose the words of the one as little inspired. as those of the other; yet the field of the conjectures which you might make upon their possible faults, would be, as to the original text, a boundless space, ever expanding; whereas the same field, as to the translations, is a very limited space, always diminishing as you traverse it.

If some friend, returning from the’ East Indies, where your father had breathed his last, far from you, should bring from him a last letter written with his own hand, or dictated by him, word for word, in the Bengalese language; would it be to you a matter of no importance that this letter was entirely his; simply because you were ignorant of that language, and because you can read it only through a translation? Do you not know that you can multiply translations of it, until there shall remain no doubt that you comprehend it just as fully as if you yourself were a Hindoo? Do you not admit, that after each one of the new translations, your uncertainty would constantly diminish, until it vanished completely; like the fractional and convergent progressions in arithmetic, whose final terms are equivalent to zero; whereas, on the contrary, if the letter did not come from your father himself, but from some stranger, who should avow that he had only repeated his thoughts, there would be no limit to your possible suppositions; and your uncertainty, carried into new and boundless regions, would continue to increase, the more you reflected; like the ascending progressions in arithmetic, whose last terms represent infinity? Thus it is with the Bible. If I believe that God has dictated it all; my doubts, as to its translations, are shut up in a very narrow field; and in this field too, as often as you re-translate it, the limits of these doubts are always diminishing. But if I believe that God has not entirely dictated it; if, on the contrary, I am to believe that human infirmity may have had its part in the text of the Bible, where shall I stop in my supposition of errors? I do not know. The Apostles, were ignorant, I must say; they were unlettered; they were Jews; they had popular prejudices; they judaized; they platonized; . . . I know not where to stop. I should begin with Locke, and I should finish with Strauss. I should first deny the personality of Satan, as a rabbinical prejudice; and I should finish by denying that of Christ as another prejudice. Between these two terms, in consequence of the ignorance to which the Apostles were exposed, I should come, like so many others, to admit, notwithstanding the letter of the Bible, and with the Bible in my hand, that there is no corruption in-man, no personality in the Holy Spirit, no Deity in Jesus Christ, no expiation in his blood, no resurrection of the body, no eternal punishment, no wrath of God, no devil, no miracles, no damned, no hell. St. Paul was orthodox, I should say, with others; but he did not rightly understand his master. Whereas, on the contrary, if every thing in the original has been dictated by God, even to the least expression, even to “an iota and tittle;” who is the translator that could by his labor, lead me to one of these negations, and make the least of these truths disappear from my Bible?

Who does not there perceive, at what an immense distance all these considerations place the original text from the translation, in respect to the importance of verbal inspiration! Between the translation of the divine thoughts into human words, and the simple version of these words into other words, the distance is as great as that between heaven and earth. The one requires God; the other needs only man.. Let no one then repeat, of what use is a verbal inspiration in the one, if we have it not in the other; since between these two terms, which some would make equivalents, there is an almost. infinite’ distance.

Section III.—EMPLOYMENT OF THE SEPTUAGINT.

It has been said and insisted on; we agree that the fact of modern translations could not affect in the least, the question of the original inspiration of the Scriptures; but there is much more. The sacred authors of the New Testament, when they themselves quote the Old Testament, use the Greek translation, called the Septuagint, made at Alexandria, two centuries and a half before Jesus Christ. Now, no one will dare, among the moderns, to pretend, as among the ancients, that the Alexandrian interpreters were inspired. Would any one now dare to advance, that this version, still human in the days of Jesus Christ, has acquired, merely by the fact of its citation by the Apostles, a divinity which it had not originally? Would not this strange pretension resemble that of the council of Trent, declaring divine the apocryphas, which the ancient Church rejected from the canon, and which St. Jerome calls “fables, and a mixture of gold and dross;”¹⁰ or declaring authentic the latin version of St. Jerome, which at first had not been, for Jerome himself, and afterwards for the church, for more than a~ thousand years, any thing more than a human work; respectable, without doubt, but imperfect? Would it not resemble still the absurd infallibility of Sixtus V. declaring authentic his edition of 1590; or that of his successor Clement VIII; who, finding the edition of Sixtus V. intolerably incorrect, suppressed it in 1592, to substitute for it another very different, and yet likewise authentic.¹¹.

We love to bring up this difficulty; because, like many others, examined more closely, it changes objections into arguments.

It is sufficient in fact, to study the manner in which the Apostles employed the Septuagint, in order to recognize in it a striking index of the verbal inspiration which led them to write.

If some modern prophet were sent by God to the churches of France, in what language, think you, he would quote the Scriptures? In French, doubtless.. But in Which version? Those of Osterwald and Martin being the: most extensively used, he would probably make his quotations from both of these, whenever their versions should appear to him sufficiently exact. But likewise, notwithstanding our habits and his, he would take great pains to alter these two versions, and to translate in his own way, as often as the thought of the original should appear to him defectively rendered. Sometimes he would do even more. In order to make us better understand in what sense he designed to apply such or such a passage, he would paraphrase the quoted passage; and in citing it, would be confined to the letter, neither of the original text nor to that of the translations.

That is precisely what has been done in regard to the Septuagint by the writers of the New Testament.

Although the universal custom of the hellenistic Jews in all the East, was, to read in the Synagogues, and to quote in their discussions, the Septuagint version,¹² yet the Apostles, by the three different modes of quotation, which, they used, shew us the independence of the spirit that guided them.

First. When the Alexandrian translation appeared to them exact, they did not hesitate to gratify the reminiscences of their hellenistic audiences, and to quote literally from this version.

Secondly. And this case occars frequently; when they are not satisfied with the work of the seventy, they correct it, and quote from the original Hebrew by retranslating it more accurately.

Thirdly. In fine, when they wished to indicate more clearly, the sense in which they quote such or such a declaration of the sacred Scriptures, they paraphrased it in quoting it. It is then the Holy Spirit, who, by their mouth, quotes himself in modifying the expressions which he had formerly dictated to the prophets of the ancient Jews. We may compare, for instance, Micah v. 2, with Matt. ii. 6, Mal. iii. 1, with Matt. xi. 10, Mark i. 2, with Luke, vii. 27, &c. &c.

The learned Horne, in his introduction to the Scriptures, (vol. i. p. 503), has placed in five distinct classes, the quotations from the Septuagint version of the Old Testament by writers of the New Testament. We do not here guarantee all his distinctions, nor all his figures; but our readers will comprehend the force of our argument, when we shall have told them that this writer counts eighty-eight verbal quotations conformed to the Alexandrian version: sixty-four others borrowed from it, but with some variation; thirty-seven which adopt its meaning, but change the language; sixteen which translate the Hebrew more accurately; and: twenty-four in which the sacred writers-have paraphrased the Old Testament, in order to make the sense in which they quoted the passage, more obvious.

These numerical data are sufficient to show the independence exercised by the Holy Spirit, when he would quote from the Old Testament, to write the New. They then not only answer the objection; they establish our doctrine.

Section IV.—THE VARIATIONS.

Other objectors will say, “We have no such difficulty, for it is evident that the translations have nothing to do with the question of the inspiration of the original text. But in this very text, there are numerous differences between the several ancient manuscripts consulted by our churches, and those on which the admitted editions are founded. Before the evidence of such a fact, what becomes of your verbal inspiration, and of what use can it be to us?”

The answer here too is easy. We might quote already upon the variations of the manuscripts, what we have said concerning the translations. Do not confound two kinds of facts totally distinct; that of the first inspiration of the Scriptures, and that of the present integrity of the copies made from them. If God himself dictated the letter of the sacred oracles, that is a-fact accomplished, and none of the copies nor translations since made, can undo the fact of the original inspiration.

A fact once consummated, nothing that follows can erase the history of that which is past. There are then here two questions to be carefully distinguished. First, Is the whole Bible divinely inspired? The second is, Are the copies made by monks and learned men, ages afterwards, exact, or are they not? This question can in no degree affect the other. Beware then of subordinating the first to the second by a strange confusion; they are independent. A book is from God, or it is not from God. In the latter case, I should in vain transcribe it a thousand times. with accuracy, I could not make it divine. And in the first case, I should in vain have made a thousand inaccurate copies; my ignorance and my unfaithfulness could not make it any less the work of God. The decalogue, we repeat once more, was entirely written by the finger of Jehovah upon two tables of stone; but if the manuscripts which now give it to me, contained some variations, this second fact, would not hinder the first. The sentences, the words and the letters of the Ten Commandments would have been none the less written by God. The inspiration of the first text, the integrity of the subsequent copies; these are two orders of facts absolutely different, and separated from one another by thousands of miles and thousands of years. Beware then of confounding that which logic, time and space oblige you to distinguish.

It is by a precisely parallel reasoning that we reprove the indiscreet admirers of the apocrypha. The ancient oracles of God, we say to them, were committed to the Jews, as the later oracles were afterwards to the Christians. If then the book of Maccabees was merely a human book in the days of Jesus Christ; a thousand decrees of the Christian Church could not afterwards cause, that in 1569, becoming what it never was before, it should be by transubtantiation, metamorphosed into a divine book. Did the prophets write the Bible with words which human wisdom dictated to them, or with words given by God? That is our inquiry. But have they been faithfully copied, from age to age, from manuscript to manuscript? That is, perhaps, your inquiry; it is very important undoubtedly; but it is totally different from the first., Do not then confound what God has made distinct.

It is true, without doubt, some one will say, the fidelity of a copy does not render the original divine, when it is not so; and the inaccuracy of another copy will not render it human if it is not so already. To this, therefore we have made no pretension. The fact of the inspiration of the sacred text, in the days of Moses or in those of St. John, cannot depend on the copies of them which men may have made in Europe or in Africa, two or three thousand years after them; but if the second of these facts does not destroy the first, it at least renders it illusory, in taking away its importance.

This is then the real objection. The question is now changed; we are no longer inquiring after the inspiration of the original text, but the integrity of the present text. It was at first a doctrinal ‘inquiry: “Is it declared in the Scriptures, that the Scriptures are inspired, even to their language?” But it is now a question of history, or rather of criticism: “Have the copyists been accurate? are the manuscripts faithful?” We might then be silent upon a thesis, the defence of which is not here committed to us; but the answer is so easy; nay more, God has made it so triumphant, that we cannot withhold it. Besides, the faith of the uninstructed has been so often disturbed by a phantasmagoria of science, that we think it-may be very useful to state the case as it is. And although the objection diverts us a little from the direct pursuit of our subject, yet it may be important to follow it.

We do not doubt that if this difficulty had been presented in the days of Anthony Collins and the Free Thinkers, we should not have been without a reply; but we should perhaps have felt some degree of embarrassment; because the facts were not yet completely developed, and the field of conjecture yet unexplored; remained perfectly unbounded. We remember the perplexities of the excellent Bengel on this subject; and we know that from them proceeded, at first his laborious researches upon the sacred text, and then his admiration and devout gratitude at the wonderful preservation of that text. Of what advantage, would the objector have said to us, can the assurance be, that eighteen hundred years ago the primitive text was dictated by God, if [have no more the certain assurance that the manuscripts of our libraries present it to me now in its purity 2 and if it be true (as we are assured,) that the variations of these manuscripts are at-least thirty thousand?

Such was the ancient objection; it was specious; but in our’ day it is recognised by all who have investigated it, to be but a vain pretext. The rationalists themselves have avowed that it can no longer be urged, and that it must be renounced.

The Lord has miraculously watched over his word. Facts have shown it.

In constituting for its depositories first, the Jewish, then the Christian Church, his providence must have exercised its vigilance, that by this means the oracle of God should be faithfully transmitted: to us. It has done so; and to secure this result, it has employed diverse causes, of which we shall hereafter have occasion to speak. Recent scientific researches have placed this fact in a strong light, Herculean labors have been pursued during the last century, (especially in the last half; as well as during the present century,) to re-unite all the readings or variations, which could be furnished by the detailed examination of the manuscripts of the Holy Scripture preserved in the several libraries of Europe; by the study of the oldest versions; “by a comparison of the innumerable quotations of the sacred books in all the writings of the Christian Fathers;—and this immense labor has exhibited a result admirable for its insignificance; imposing, shall I say, by its diminutiveness.

As to the Old Testament, the indefatigable investigations and the four folios of Father Houbigant, the thirty years’ labor of John Henry Michaelis; above all, the ereat critical Bible, and the ten years’ study of the famous Kennicott, (upon his five hundred and eighty-one Hebrew ‘ manuscripts,) and, finally, the collection of ‘the six hundred and eighty manuscripts of Professor Rossi:—as to the New Testament, the not less gigantic investigations of Mill, Bengel, Wetstein, and Griesbach, (into the three hundred and thirty-five manuscripts of the Gospels alone,) the later researches of Nolan, Matthei, Lawrence, and Hug; above all, those of Scholz, (with his six hundred and seventy-four manuscripts of the Gospels, his two hundred of the Acts, his two hundred and fifty-six of Paul’s Epistles, his ninety-three of the Apocalypse, without counting his fifty-three Lectionaria); all these prodigious labors have established, in a manner so convincing, the astonishing preservation of this text, although copied so many thousand times, (in Hebrew, during thirty-three centuries, and in Greek during eighteen centuries,) that the hopes of the enemies of religion from this quarter have been overthrown; and that, as Michaelis¹³ remarks, “they have thenceforward ceased to hope anything from these critical researches, at first earnestly recommended by them, because from them they expected discoveries which no one has made.” The learned rationalist Eichhorn himself also acknowledges, that the different readings of the Hebrew manuscripts collected by Kennicott, offer scarcely sufficient compensation for the labor they have cost.¹⁴ But these very failures, and this absence of discoveries, have been, for the Church of God, a precious discovery. She looked for it; but she rejoices to owe it to the very labors of her enemies, and to the labors which they designed for the overthrow of her faith. “In truth,” says a learned man of our day, “if we except these brilliant negative conclusions to which they have come, the direct result obtained by so many lives of men consumed in these immense researches, appears to be a nullity; and we might say, that time, talent, and science have been foolishly spent in arriving there.”¹⁵ But, we repeat, this result is immense by its nothingness, and almighty in its impotence. When we reflect that the Bible has been copied during three thousand years, as no book of human composition has ever been, and will never be; that it has undergone all the catastrophes and all the captivities of Israel; that it has been transported for seventy years into Babylon; that it has seen itself so often persecuted, or forgotten, or interdicted, or burned, from the days of the Philistines to those of the Seleucide; when we recollect, that since the days of our Savior, it has had to traverse the first three centuries of imperial persecutions, when they threw to the wild beasts the men that were convicted of possessing the sacred books; then the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, when false books, false legends, and false decretals were everywhere multiplied; the tenth century, when so few men could read, even among the princes; the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, when the use of the Scriptures in the language of the people was punished with death; when they mutilated the books of the old Fathers; when they retrenched and falsified so many ancient traditions, and the very acts of emperors and those of councils;—then we understand how necessary it has been that the providence of God should always have held its powerful hand outstretched, to hinder, on the one side, the Jewish Church from impairing the integrity of that word which recounts their revolts, which predicts their ruin, which describes Jesus Christ; and on the other, to secure the transmission to us, in all their purity, by the Christian churches, (the most powerful sects of which, and especially the Roman, have prohibited to the people the reading of the Scriptures, and have in so many ways substituted the traditions of the middle ages for the-word of God,) of those Scriptures which condemn all their traditions, their images, their dead languages, their absolutions, their celibacy; which say of Rome, that she shall be the seat of a frightful apostacy, where shall be seen “the man of sin sitting as God in the temple of God, making war on the saints, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats which God has made;” which say of images, “thou shalt not worship them;” of unknown tongues, ‘thou shalt not use them;” of the cup, “drink ye all of it;” of the Virgin, “‘woman, what have I to do. with thee?” and of marriage. “it is honorable in all.”

Now, although all the libraries containing ancient copies of the sacred books have been called to testify; although the elucidations given by the Fathers of all ages have been studied; although the Arabic, Syriac, Latin, Armenian and Ethiopic versions have been collated; although all the manuscripts of all countries and ages, from the third to the sixteenth century have been collected and examined a. thousand times, by innumerable critics, who sought. with ardor, and as the recompense and glory of their fatiguing vigils, some new text; although the learned men, not satisfied with the libraries of the: West, have visited those of Russia, and carried their researches even to the convents of Mount Athos, of Asiatic Turkey and of Egypt, to search there for new copies of the sacred text;—“they have discovered nothing,” says a learned writer already quoted, ‘not even a solitary reading which could cast doubt upon any passage before considered certain. All the variations, almost without exception, leave untouched the essential thoughts of each phrase, and affect only points of secondary importance,” such as the insertion or omission of an article or a conjunction, the position of an adjective before or after a substantive, the greater or less exactness of a grammatical construction.

Do we ask for a standard for the Old Testament? The famous Indian manuscript, recently deposited in the library of Cambridge, may furnish an example. It is now about thirty-three years since the pious and learned Claudius Buchanan, in visiting the western peninsula of India, saw in the hands of the black Jews of Malabar, (believed to be the remnants of the tribes scattered at Nebuchadnezzar’s first invasion), an immense scroll, composed of thirty-seven skins died red; forty-eight feet long, twenty-two inches wide, and which, in its perfect condition, must have been ninety English feet long. The Holy Scriptures had been copied on it by different hands. There were left a hundred and seventeen columns of beautiful writing; and nothing was wanting but Leviticus and a part of Deuteronomy. Buchanan-procured this ancient and precious monument, which had been used in the worship of the synagogue, and he has recently deposited it in the Cambridge library. There are features which give satisfactory evidence that it was not a copy of a copy brought there by European Jews. Now Mr. Yeates has recently examined it with great attention, and has taken the pains to compare it, word for word, letter for letter, with our Hebrew edition of Van der Hooght. He has published the results of these researches. And what has he found? Even this; that there do not exist between the text of India and that of the West, more than forty petty differences, of which not one is sufficiently serious to make the slightest change in the meaning and in the interpretation of our ancient text; and that these forty differences consist in the addition or retrenchment of an ι or a υ, letters, whose presence or absence in Hebrew cannot change the power of a word.¹⁶ We know who were the Masorites, or teachers of tradition among the ‘Jews; men whose whole profession consisted in copying the Scriptures; we know how far these men, learned in minutiæ, carried their respect for the letter; and when we read the rules of their profession, we understand the use which the providence of God, who had confided his oracles to the Jewish people, knew how to make of their reverence, of their rigor, and even of their superstition. They counted, in each book, the number of the verses, that of the words, that of the letters; they would have said to you, for example, that the letter A recurs forty-two thousand three hundred and seventy-seven times in the Bible; the letter B thirty-eight thousand two hundred and eighteen times, and so of the rest; they would have scrupled to change the situation of a letter evidently misplaced, they would merely have ‘advised you of it in the margin, and have supposed that some mystery was connected with it; they could have told you the middle letter of the Pentateuch, and the middle letter of each of the books that compose it; they would never suffer an erasure to be made in their manuscripts; and if any mistake was made in copying, they would reject the papyrus or the skin which was stained, to renew their work upon another scroll; for they were equally forbidden to correct a fault, and to preserve for their sacred scroll, a parchment or a skin that had undergone any erasure.

Thus much for the Old Testament. But let it not be supposed that the Providence which watched over the holy book, and which had entrusted it to the Jews (Rom. iii. 1, 2,) has any less protected the oracles of the New Testament, committed by it to the new people of God. It has not left to them any feebler incentives to gratitude and confidence.

We would first cite here the recent experience of the authors of a version of the New Testament just published in Switzerland, and in the protracted labor of which we participated. One single fact will exhibit to every class of readers how completely insignificant are the different readings of the different manuscripts. The translators just referred to, followed without exception, the received edition, that is the Greek text of Elzevir 1624, so long adopted by all the French churches. But, as the original plan of their work required them to introduce into the original text the variations the most approved by the critics of the last century, they were often embarrassed by finding the impossibility of expressing even in the most literal French, the new shade introduced into the Greek by this correction. The French language, in the most scrupulous version, is not sufficiently flexible to adopt these differences, so as to exhibit them; as the moulds made on the face of a king reproduce his noble features in the brass, yet without’ shewing all the wrinkles and veins.

At the same time we are desirous of giving to those of our readers who are strangers to sacred criticism, two or three other more impressive proofs of this providence, which, for thirty centuries, has watched over our sacred text.

First; let us compare the two Protestant translations of Osterwald and Martin. ‘There are few modern versions more like éach other. Both made from the ancient version of the Geneva pastors, written nearly at the same time and in the same spirit, they differ so little from each other, especially in the New Testament, that our. Bible Societies distribute them indiscriminately, and that it is embarrassing to state which we prefer. Yet, if you will take the trouble to notice their differences in every particular, as we have done in comparing together our fourhundred manuscripts of the New Testament, we affirm in advance (and then we think, below the truth), that these two French texts are three times, and in many chapters, ten times more distant from each other, than the Greek text of our printed editions is, we do not say, from only the least esteemed Greek manuscripts of our libraries, but from ALL THEIR MANUSCRIPTS TAKEN TOGETHER.—We ‘mean to say that if some skilful and malicious man (as the unhappy Voltaire or the too celebrated Anthony Collins,)-had made his selection from all the Oriental and occidental manuscripts, of the worst readings, and the most discordant variations of our received text, with the perfidious intention of composing a text the most false; such a man, we say (even in employing these variations justified by one alone of the four or five hundred manuscripts of our libraries,) would not be able, with all his bad intention, to produce from his labor a ‘Testament less like ours, than that of Martin is like that of Osterwald. You might distribute it in place of the true text, with as little inconvenience as you would find in giving to the French protestants, that of Martin rather than Osterwald’s or Osterwald’s rather than Martin’s, and with much less scruple than you feel in spreading among the members’ of the Romish Church, the version of Le Maître de Sacy.

It is true these latter books are only translations, whilst all the Greek manuscripts present themselves as originals; and it must be agreed that our comparison, in this respect, is very imperfect. But it is not the less adapted to establish the friends of the word of God, in making them comprehend how utterly insignificant the variations are.

But we advance to ‘something more direct and more precise.

In order 'to give all our readers some estimate, at once of the number and the innocence of the received readings in the manuscripts of our libraries, we will present two specimens. The first table contains any THE VARIATIONS IN ALL THE EASTERN AND WESTERN MANUSCRIPTS, in the first eight chapters of the epistle to the Romans. The second contains the entire epistle, with ALL THE CORRECTIONS which the celebrated Griesbach, the oracle of modern criticism, thinks ought to be introduced,

These passages have been selected promiscuously; and we declare that no reason, relative to our argument, has made us prefer them to others.

We delight in presenting here these short documents to those persons, whose position does not call them to pursue the investigations of sacred criticism, and yet who may have been somewhat perplexed by the at once mysterious and important’ language so often employed on this subject, by the rationalists of the last century.-To hear them, would you not have believed that modern science was about to give us a new Bible, to bring down Jesus Christ from the throne of God, to restore to man calumniated by our theology, all his titles of innocence, and to reform all the doctrines of our antiquated orthodoxy?

As the first term of comparison, our columns present first; upon the first eight verses of the Epistle to the Romans, merely the differences of the text of Martin from that of Osterwald; whilst the following columns, instead of comparing only one manuscript with any other one, will show the differences of our text from all the manuscripts which every critic down to Griesbach has been able to collect. This indefatigable scholar searched for the Epistle to the Romans, first, seven manuscripts in Uncial Letters, or Greek capitals, believed to be from thirteen to fourteen hundred years old, (the Alexandrian in the British Museum; that of the Vatican, and that of Cardinal Passionei, at Rome; that of Ephremi at Paris; that of Saint-Germain, that of Dresden, and that of Cardinal Coislin; and finally a hundred and ten manuscripts in cursive (small letters), and thirty others, mostly brought from Mount Athos, and examined by the learned Matthei, who traveled much in Russia and the East for this purpose.

For the four Evangelists, the same Griesbach has been able to consult three hundred and thirty-five.

These differences of the two French texts are sufficiently insignificant; and if any one should tell us that in all the verses, one or other of the two is inspired of God, our faith would receive from it a great aid. Now you will see that the variations of the Greek manuscripts are still more insignificant.

Let us now observe on the same verses, the table of the received text, compared with all the differences, that the hundred and fifty Greek manuscripts collected and examined for the Epistle to the Romans, can present.

We shall not notice here the differences presented by the ancient translations, nor those which pertain to punctuation, (this element being nearly nothing in the most ancient manuscripts.)

We shall translate the first column (that of the received text) according to Martin, who is considered more literal than Osterwald; and we shall endeavor to translate as exactly as possible, the Greek readings of the second column.

We see it; these nine or ten different readings are unimportant in themselves, and moreover they have in their favor, only one or two out of the hundred and fifty manuscripts, which have been consulted upon these eight verses, if you except the last (“in regard to you all,” instead of “concerning you all,”) which counts for it twelve manuscripts, of which four are Uncial or capital letters.

The differences between Osterwald and Martin are three times as numerous; and ordinarily they have a much more important effect upon the meaning. This comparison, if you extend it to all the New Testament, would possess the same character and become even more insignificant.

Yet we presume it would be agreeable to those of our readers who are strangers to such researches, to offer them in a third table, still a new test of the innocence of the variations, and of the nullity of the objection drawn from them.

This table will contain the entire collection of ‘corrections, which the learned Griesbach, the father of sacred criticism, has thought proper to introduce into the text of the Epistle to the Romans, after the long researches which he and his predecessors have made upon the manuscripts.

To appreciate fully the immensity of such labors, we should have gone personally into this study.

At the same time we would remark to the readers of this third table:

First, that Griesbach is, in general, accused by the learned (such as Matthei, Nolan, Lawrence, Scholz and others,) of being too eager to admit new readings into the ancient text. The temptation is explained by the habits of the human ‘heart. The learned Whitby had already, and not without reason, reproached Dr. Mill for this; who, however, had not admitted so many corrections as Griesbach.

Secondly:—observe again, that we show in this table, not only the corrections which the learned critic has persuaded himself to adopt, but those also which he himself considers as only doubtful, and to be preferred to the sacred text with some remaining distrust.

We then see clearly how insignificant those variations, are, of which so much was said at first.

Such is the astonishing preservation of the Greek manuscripts which have transmitted to us the New-Testament After having been copied and re-copied so many times in Asia, Europe and Africa; in convents, in colleges, in palaces, or in parsonages; and that almost without interruption, for fifteen hundred years; after that, during the last three centuries, and especially the last hundred and thirty years, so many noble characters, so many ingenious minds, so many learned lives have been consumed in labors till then unrivalled in their extent, admirable in their sagacity, and scrupulous as those of the Masorites; after that all the Greek manuscripts of the New-Testament, buried in’ private or monastic or national libraries both eastern and western, have been searched; after that they have compared with them, not only all the ancient versions of the Scriptures, Latin, Salidic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Sclavonic, Persian, Coptic, Syriac and Gothic; but also all the ancient fathers of the Church who have cited them in their innumerable writings, both in Latin and in Greek; after so many researches; see, by our specimen, what they have been able to find.

Judge them all from this one Epistle thus put fully under your eye. It is the longest and the most important of the Epistles of the New Testament, “the golden key of the Scriptures;” “the ocean of Christian doctrine.” It has four hundred and thirty-three verses; and among its four hundred and thirty-three verses, ninety-six Greek words not found elsewhere in the New-Testament. And (admitting even all the corrections adopted, or only preferred by Griesbach,) how many readings have you found in it, which change even slightly the sense of any phrase? You have found four! And what are they? We will repeat them;

1. (Chap. vi. 6.) In place of: that in which. . . . being dead, Griesbach reads: “being dead to that in which. And remark that here, the difference in the Greek is in only one letter (an o in place of an e); and that on the other hand, the greatest number of the manuscripts were so much in favor of the old text, that since:Griesbach, Tittman, in his edition of 1824, has rejected this correction, and that Lachman has likewise adopted the reading of the old textin his edition of 1831; (Scholz, however, has preserved the new.)

2. Chap. xi. 6.—In place of: if by grace, then is tt no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace; but of it be of works, then it is no more grace, otherwise work is no more work.

Griesbach has retrenched the latter part of the phrase.

3. Chap. xii. 11.—In place of serving the Lord, Griesbach reads: serving the opportunity.

It will be observed, that this correction is of two Letters in one of the Greek words; and that also the number of the manuscripts does not justify the change. Again here, Whitby told Mill that more than thirty manuscripts, that all the ancient versions, that Clement of Alexandria, St. Basil, St. Jerome, all the annotators of the Greeks, and all the Latins, with the exception of Ambrose, followed the ancient text; and the two scholars we have just named, (Lachman and Tittman,) the one laboring at Berlin, the other a professor at Leipsic, have restored the ancient text, in their respective editions of the New Testament. Scholz, whom the learned world appears to prefer to all who have preceded him, has done the same in his edition of 1836.

4, Chap. vi. 16.—In place of: whether of sin unto death, or of righteousness—Griesbach reads: Whether of sin, or of righteousness; but he marks it with his sign, which indicates merely a faint probability; and Tittman and Lachman, in their respective editions, have also rejected this correction. Mr. Scholz has followed them.

We have omitted to re-notice the passage cut off from chap. vili. 1, because it is restored in the fourth verse.

We see, then, that such is the admirable integrity of the Epistle to the Romans. According to Griesbach, four insignificant corrections in the whole epistle—according to more modern critics, ONE ALONE, and that, the most unimportant of the four;—and according to Scholz, two!

We repeat, that we have not chosen the Epistle to the Romans, as a specimen, for any other reason than its length and its importance. We have not taken the time to examine whether it presents more or fewer variations than any other part of the New Testament.

We have just run over, for example, in Griesbach, while re-perusing these last pages, the EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS, written at the same time and upon the same subject as the Epistle to the Romans; and we have there found only the three following corrections which may affect the sense, or rather, the form of the meaning.

iv. 17. They would exclude us; say, they would exclude you.

iv. 26. She is the mother of us all, say: she is mother of us.

v. 19. Adultery, fornication, impurity, say: fornication, impurity.

These simple tables, we think, will speak to our readers more forcibly than all our general assertions can do.

There are some truths which must be seen with our own eyes. We have ourselves had the happy experience of this. We had unquestionably read what others have said upon the insignificancy of the different readings presented by the manuscripts; we had often studied the variations of Mill, and the severe reproaches of his opponent, Whitby;¹⁷ we had examined the writings of Wetstein, of Griesbach, of Lachman, and of Tittman; but when, twice, in taking part in the labor of a new version of the New Testament, we had to correct the French text by the most esteemed variations, first to introduce and then to cut them off, and then to replace, in French, the sense of the ancient reading; then we had twice, as it were, an intuition of this astonishing preservation of the Scriptures; and we have felt ourselves penetrated with gratitude towards that admirable Providence which has ceaselessly watched over the oracles of God, to preserve their integrity so fully.

Let the objection we are answering now be weighed. Let us be shown, for instance, how three or four variations, which we have just passed in review, in the Epistle to the Romans, and which, in the opinion of the most modern critics, are reduced to one alone, or to two, could render the original inspiration an illusion to us.

We admit that, in these three or four passages, as in the other sacred books, where the genuine word of the text might be contested; there, and there alone, of the two different readings of the manuscript, one is the inspired word and not the other: we admit that you must, in these few cases, divide or suspend your confidence between two expressions; but see just how far the uncertainty extends: there it must stop, it can go no further.

It is calculated that, in the seven thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine verses of the New Testament, there are scarcely ten verses where these differences, which. are, most frequently, merely of a word or letter, have any importance.

Thus, then, all the efforts of the enemies of inspiration, to overthrow our faith on this ground, have, in the end, only served to establish it. They have compelled the Church to follow them in their investigations, and immediately afterward to precede them in the same work; and what have we there discovered? It is, that the text is even more pure than the most pious men had dared to hope; it is, that the enemies of inspiration, and those of the orthodox doctrines, at least in Germany, have been forced to admit it. They had hoped, after the labors of Erasmus, of Stephens, and of Mill, to find, among the manuscripts of our libraries, readings more favorable to the Socinian doctrines than those which Beza and Elzevir employed. Many even imagined that the uncertainties would become such, and the discrepancies so grave, that all evangelical belief, positive, exclusive as they termed it, would be overthrown. But it is not so. It is now a process terminated;. the plaintiffs are non-suited; the inquest having been made by modern criticism, at their request; all the judges, even on the rationalist benches,¹⁸ have pronounced, with entire unanimity, that it is a lost case, and that the objectors must search elsewhere for arguments and. grievances.

When this question of the integrity of the original text presented itself for the first time to the excellent and learned Bengel, more than a hundred and twenty years ago, he was terrified at it; his honest and pious soul was profoundly troubled by it. Then began on his part, those labors of sacred criticism which gave a new direction to this science among the Germans. The English had preceded the Germans in it, but were soon left behind them. Finally, after long researches, Bengel, in 1721, happy and confirmed, trusting and grateful, wrote to his pupil, Reuss —“Eat simply the bread of the Scriptures, such as you find it; and be not disturbed, if perchance you find here and flere a little fragment of the millstone which has fallen into it. You may then dismiss all the doubts which have once so horribly tormented me. If the Holy Scriptures, which have been copied so often, and which have so often passed the imperfect hands of men always fallible, were absolutely without variations, the miracle would be so great, that faith in it would no more be faith.. I am astonished, on the contrary, that there has resulted from all the transcribings, a no greater number of different readings.” The Comedies alone of Terence have presented thirty thousand, and yet they are but six¹⁹ in number, and have been copied a thousand times less frequently than the New Testament.

We have said enough on this great fact. We were not obliged to do more than merely to state it, in order to repel an objection; since it took us away from our subject. Our mission was, to prove a doctrine, to wit the original inspiration of the Holy Scriptures; and some have supposed that they could oppose us with the objection that if this were a truth, yet it would be rendered ineffectual by the alterations which this holy writing must have undergone. We found it necessary to show that these alteration were a vain and innocent phantom. We presented. a doctrine, we say; but they have compelled us to make a history; we now return to the doctrine; but, before returning, we must yet once more assert, not only that the Scriptures were inspired in the day when God caused them to be written; but that this word, inspired eighteen hundred years ago, is now in our hands; and we can still, holding in one hand our sacred text, and in the other, all the admitted readings collected by science from seven hundred manuscripts,²⁰ exclaim with gratitude; I hold then in my happy hand, the eternal word of my God!

Section V:—ERRORS OR REASONING OR OF DOCTRINE.

We leave the variations, other opponents will say, and we admit that the Sacred text may be regarded as the original language of the prophets and of the apostles; but this very text, pure as it is, we cannot study, without perceiving the part of it which human feebleness has made. We find in it reasonings badly conducted and badly concluded, quotations ‘badly applied, popular superstitions, prejudices and other infirmities, the inevitable tribute paid by the simplicity of the men of God to the ignorance of their time and of their condition. ‘Saint Paul,” says Jerome himself,²¹ ‘“does not know how to develope a hyperbaton, nor to conclude a sentence; and having to do with rude people, he has employed the conceptions, which, if, at the beginning, he had not taken care to announce as spoken after the manner of men, would have shocked men of good sense.” Such being then the traces of infirmity which we can follow in the Scriptures, it remains impossible to recognize in such a book an inspiration that goes even to the lesser details of their language.

To these accusations against the Scriptures we have a fourfold answer.

1. We set ourselves at once, with all the energy of our conviction, against such reproaches. We maintain that a more attentive and more serious study of the Word of God would reduce then to nothing, and we protest that they have no foundation but in the errors and precipitancy of those who advance them. We might show it in repelling, one by one, all these accusations, in every instance in which they have been rendered. It would be a task of greater length than difficulty; and this is not the place for it, because the detail is immense. There is not in fact, a reasoning, there is not a quotation, there is not a doctrine, which the adversaries of the inspiration of the Scriptures have not at some time made a subject of reproach; and every one knows well enough that the greater part of the objections which are clearly stated in three words, cannot be refuted clearly in less than three pages. In proportion then as the men of the world renew their attacks, the Church must renew her replies; and like those respectful and indefatigable servants, who in the East, watch day and night around the head of their king, she must constantly hold herself by the side of the’ Word of God, to repel from it those swarms of objections which are seen, just as fast as they are driven from one side, rising on the other, and incessantly returning to plant. anew their sting. The experience of every age, and especially that of the latter times has sufficiently shown, that before an examination, these difficulties, which they set against the Scriptures, vanish; these obscurities are illuminated; and quickly, unexpected harmonies, beauties that until then no human eye had perceived, are revealed in the Word of God by the objections themselves. Today, objects of doubt; to-morrow, better studied, they are incentives to faith; to-day, sources of trouble, to-morrow they are proofs.

2. In the meantime we notice all these accusations which the adversaries of the full inspiration of the Scriptures raise against this: sacred book; for it is an advantage which they give us. Yes, we shall not hesitate to say it; in the hearing of such objections, we experience at the same time, two opposite impressions of satisfaction and of sadness; of sadness in seeing men who recognize the Bible as a revelation of God, not fearing at the same time to raise against it so hastily the gravest accusations; and of satisfaction, in considering with what force such language at last confirms the doctrine we defend.

In the mouth of a deist, they would be objections to which we must reply, but in that of a Christian who advances them, it is a flagrant abandonment of his own thesis, and an avowal of all the evil involved in such abandonment.

We would be understood: it is not before the professed infidel that-we here maintain the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures; it is before men who profess to consider the Bible as a revelation from God. Inspiration, we have said to them, is a doctrine taught in this sacred book: by its own testimony, all Scripture is given of God, it is perfect, it is pure, it is gold-seven times tried in the fire. What reply have they made? They do not reject, they say, such an inspiration, but in regard to the language, the forms of speech, and the unimportant details; otherwise they believe that a constant providence directed the minds of the sacred writers to keep them from every grave error. But how do they prove this thesis? Is it to the language alone, is it to the forms of speech, is it to insignificant details that they confine this rejection of inspiration? alas! hear them: there are in the doctrines, superstitions; there are in the quotations, misrepresentations, there [are in the reasonings, infirmities!|—You see then, that in order to attack the plenary ‘inspiration of the Scriptures, they come down thus into the ranks of the unbelievers, who are casting stones at the word of God; and if they do not. wish, like them, to take God from the holy Bible, they at least wish to correct God in the holy Bible. Which of the two is most outrageous, it would be difficult to say.

We conclude then, that since the. plenary inspiration can be combatted only by accusing the word of God of error, we must cling the more firmly to this declaration of the Scriptures, that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.”

3. But we have something yet more serious to add. We ask: where will you stop when you have once entered on this path?. And by what reasons will you in your turn stop those who wish to go still beyond you? You dare to correct one part of the word of God; by what right then will you blame those who may wish to correct the rest? Beings of yesterday, whilst they are traversing this earth as a shadow, with the eternal book of God in their hands, they dare to say: This, Lord, is worthy of thee, this is unworthy of thee! They pretend to select for themselves in the oracles of God, to ascribe one part of it to the folly of man, to separate the mistakes of Isaiah or Moses, the prejudices of Peter or of Jude, the paralogisms of Paul, the superstitions of John from the thought of God! Lamentable rashness! We repeat it; where will they stop in this fatal work; for they place themselves at the very table, on the one side of which, are seated the Socinuses, the Grimaldis, the Priestlys; and on the other, the Rousseaus, the Volneys, the Dupuis. Between them and Hichhorn, between them and William Cobbett, between them and Strauss, where is the difference? It is in the species, not in the genus. It is in the quantity of the imputations of errors and of irreverent remarks; it is not in the quality. There is some difference in their boldness, none in their profaneness. The one and the other have found errors in the word of God; they have pretended to rectify them. But, we ask, is it less absurd, on the part of a creature, to wish to correct in the works of God, the creation of the hyssop that cometh out of the wall, than that of the cedar of Lebanon; to pretend to rectify the organization of a glowworm, than to wish to shut up the light in the sun? By what right will ministers, who say that they see nothing but the language of Jewish prejudices in the accounts given by the Evangelists, of the demoniacs and the miracles of Jesus Christ driving out the impure spirits; by what right will they pronounce it strange that another sees in the miracles of Saul’s conversion, of the resurrection, of the multiplication of bread, or of the day of Pentecost, nothing but a discreet and useful compliance with the ignorance of a people fond of the marvellous? By what authority would a professor, who denies the inspiration of Paul’s arguments, blame Mr. De Wette for rejecting that of the prophecies of the old Testament,²² or of Mr. Wirgmann making his separation of the New Testament,²³ or Mr. Strauss changing into fable the miracles and the very person of Jesus Christ?

Three or four years since; a young minister of Berne, put into our hands a manual of theology which, he said,-had been handed him in an academy in Eastern Switzerland. We have not retained the name of the author, nor that of his residence; but having, at the time, taken notes of his principal arguments against the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, we can reproduce here the quotations by which he sought to prove that the holy books, containing evident errors, cannot be entirely the word of God. It will be understood that we do not mean here to reply to him. We wish only to give a specimen of his rashness.

“St. Paul says (1 Cor. v. 15,) that he had ‘delivered an incestuous man to Satan.’ This passage (evidently fanatical) could it be inspired!

“He says to them (1 Cor. v. 3,) that ‘we shall judge the angels,’—a gnostic reverie without doubt. Could such a passage have been inspired!

“He goes on even to say to them that ‘in consequence of unworthy communion many of them are sick, and some are dead,’ (1 Cor. xi. 30). This passage could not be inspired!

“He says to them again, that ‘all die in Adam,’—(1 Cor. xv. 22)—Jewish superstition. It is impossible that such a passage can be inspired!

“And-when Saint Paul assures the Thessalonians, (1 Th. iv. 15,) and when St, James repeats (Jam. v. 8,) that ‘the coming of the Lord is near,’ could so manifest an error be inspired!”²⁴

It is then in this manner that they dare to judge the eternal word! We do not yet know, we have said, whether these doctrines, professed in Switzerland, ten or twelve years since, were so, particularly at Zurich, But, if they there had currency, we must exculpate the magistrates of that city.²⁵ It, was not they who called Strauss into their country; to overthrow the faith of an entire people; for Strauss was already in their professoral chairs, if such doctors as this were there giving instructions. They had seen them with great scissors in their hands, cutting out of the Scriptures the errors of the holy Apostles. What difference could they perceive between such men and him whom they were calling? A little more science, a little more boldness and consistency in his principles; with a longer and sharper instrument in his more skilful hands; but scarcely more contempt in his heart for the word of God! We see but little difference between the several judges of the Sanhedrim who struck Jesus on the face, because some struck fewer blows than others; and when sixty conspirators, in Pompey’s palace, overthrew Cesar from his golden throne in the midst of the Senate; Casca, who first slightly wounded him with his sword, was not less his murderer than Cassius cleaving his head, or than the sixty conspirators shewing him their blades on every side, and piercing him with twenty-three wounds. Is then the teacher who denies the inspiration of an argument: or of a doctrine of the Scriptures, less in revolt against the God of the Scriptures, than he who rejects the inspiration of an entire book? We think ‘he is not. We conclude that, since in order to deny. the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, we must enter into the road of rashness, and give, by the first strokes of the sword, the signal of all opposition to the word of God}; a closer attention should be paid to this declaration of the Holy Spirit: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.’’ But we have yet another reflection:

4, You do not understand the divinity, the propriety, the wisdom, the utility of such or such a passage of the Scriptures, and therefore you deny its inspiration.. Is that an argument of any real value, we will not say in our eyes, but in yours? Who are you? “When thou goest into the house of God,” feeble child of man, “keep thy foot; be swift to hear, be slow to speak, and do not offer” the sacrifice of fools; for. they know not what they. do. God is in heaven, and thou art upon the earth.”. Who’ art thou then, to judge the oracles of God? Has not the Bible said of itself beforehand, that it would be “a stumbling-block to some, and foolishness to others;” that “the natural man should not comprehend it, that indeed he could not, and that it is only to be known by the Spirit?’²⁶ Should you not then have expected to feel some repugnance in your mind, in your heart, even in your conscience, against its first instructions? Man must come back to his own place as an infirm, ignorant and depraved creature. He can understand God only by becoming humble. Let him bend the knee in his closet; let him pray, and he will comprehend. An argument is inconsequent because you do not apprehend it! a doctrine is a prejudice, because you do not admit it! a quotation is inaccurate, because you have not discovered its true meaning! What would remain in the world, if God should leave in it only what you can’ explain? The Roman emperors, being able to comprehend ‘neither the faith nor the life of our martyrs, threw them to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre, and caused them to be dragged to the ‘Tiber.’ It is thus that men throw their ignorance as a vile grapple ‘upon the word of God, and drag to the scaffold that which they could not comprehend and which they have condemned!

We recollect, in writing these lines, an author, otherwise honorable, but imbued with the wisdom of his age, who undertook to prove that the reasonings of St. Paul are not inspired. To show it, he cited, as a convincing example, the passage in Galatians, iii. 16, in which Paul designs not to PROVE, (observe it well, all the solution is there,) not to prove, but to AFFIRM that the promise made by God to Abraham and his posterity, regarded not all his descendants, (since it was sufficiently manifest that his descendants by Hagar, by Keturah and by Esau, had been rejected,) but a particular posterity, elect and personal. And what does this professor, in order to establish his thesis upon this passage? He lends the apostle an argument so puerile, that the smallest child of the Galatians might have reproved him for it. Saint Paul, according to him, instead of simply affirming a fact, should have reasoned from the singular of a collective noun to prove that such a word could mean to designate only one person! ‘Absurd to us,” he says; “this argument might have been good for Jews, or the rude Gauls of Asia Minor.” We give this one example. It were easy to produce a hundred like it.

Might the author be permitted to refer in this matter to his own experience, he would recal with as much humiliation as gratitude, his first and his last impressions’ produced by the Epistles of St. Paul. “He had already been convinced in his earliest years, that the Bible is from God; but he had not yet understood the doctrine it teaches. He wished to respect the pages of the apostle, because he had seen by other characters, that the inimitable seals of the most High God were attached to them; but a secret trouble agitated him in reading them, and turned him towards other books. St. Paul appeared to him to reason falsely; not to reach his point; to speak ambiguously and in an embarrassing manner; to make long, spiral windings around his subject; and to say the things committed to him quite otherwise than was designed by him who revealed them. In a word, he felt, in reading them, as would a tender and respectful son, by the side of a father who is declining, who has lost his memory, and _who talks stammeringly. Oh! how would he conceal from others, and not admit it to himself, that his venerable father is sinking, and seems no more like himself!. But as soon as Divine grace had revealed to us this doctrine of justification by faith, which is the ardent and brilliant flame of the Scriptures, then, each word became light, harmony and life; the reasonings of the apostle appeared to us as limpid as the water from the rock, his thoughts profound and practical, all his epistles the power of God to salvation to them that believe. We saw abundant proofs of divinity beaming from those very passages which had given us so long disquiet, and we could say with the joy of a discovery, and with the gratitude of a tender adoration, as we felt vibrating within us, in unison with the word of God, chords’ inimitable, and until then, untouched: “Yes, my God, all thy Scriptures are divinely inspired!”” But it is insisted that there are:

Section VI.—ERRORS IN TRUE NARRATIONS; CONTRADICTIONS IN THE FACTS.

“We will leave, say they, if we must, all these just repugnances against the reasonings or the doctrines of the sacred writers; in admitting, that upon these points, that which is difficult to some, may be easy to others. But if now we appeal to facts, if we show that there are manifest contradictions in the narrations of the Bible, in its dates, in its references. to cotemporary history, in its scriptural quotations; you may then, perhaps, reproach us for having seen them, for not being consistent. with ourselves, and for’ going in that beyond our own position. Notwithstanding this; those are facts which no inconsistency of reasoning can annul, and which no argument can destroy. An argument no more destroys, than creates facts. If, then, these contradictions exist, you may, indeed, convict our doctrine of insufficiency; but they rise three times as high against yours, to accuse it of error.”

We will commence by admitting, that if it be true that there are, as they say there are, erroneous statements and contradictory accounts in the holy Scriptures, their plenary inspiration must be renounced. But this is not the case. These pretended errors do not exist.

We shall admit, without hesitation, that, among the numerous attacks made on the minutest details of the statements of our sacred books, there are some which, at first sight, may occasion some embarrassment; but as soon as we contemplate them more closely, these difficulties are explained and vanish. We shall give some examples, taking care to choose from among those which the opponents of plenary inspiration have appeared to regard as the most insurmountable.

We shall preface them with some observations.

1. The Scriptures have had, in every age, their enemies and their defenders, their Celsuses as well as their Origens, their Porphyrys as well as their Eusebiuses, their Castellios as well as their Calvins, their Strausses as well as their Hengstenbergs. Sixteen hundred years ago, Malchus Porphyry, that learned and malignant Syrian, who lived in Sicily under the reign of Diocletian, and whom Jerome calls rabidum adversus Christum canem,²⁷ wrote fifteen books against Christianity.. In these fifteen books, the fourth of which was directed against the Pentateuch, and the thirteenth against Daniel, one of them (the first) was entirely consecrated to collecting all the contradictions (ἀντιλογίας ἑναντιοφάινῆ) which. he pretended he had found in the Scriptures.²⁸ From Celsus and Porphyry, down to the English infidels of the eighteenth century; and from them to Strauss, who had done little more than copy them, according to his own avowal; they have not ceased to seek new contradictions, in comparing Scripture with Scripture, line with line, word with word, detail with detail. It was easy then to multiply them, and even to find some that are specious, in a book, eminently composed of anecdotes, where the narratives of the same events are repeated under various forms, by different. historians, in different circumstances, with various objects, and with greater or less development. From that, the reader should perceive, that this fifth objection, which is composed of only detached observations, and which resolves itself into an infinitude of little details, can be refuted only in detail and by detached answers. It is, accordingly, an exhaust-:-less subject, To each passage an objection, to each objection a reply. Our only general answer then must be; examine, and the obscurity will vanish.

Moreover it is understood by all parties that the pretended contradictions which the enemies of inspiration present, have in themselves no religious importance, and regard only dates, numbers or other very minute circumstances. But, if they cannot affect Christian doctrine directly, they do not the less tend to overthrow the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. We must then reply to them. It is what the friends of religion in every age have done; ‘and what has just been accomplished with such honorable success, by Mr. Hengstenberg of Berlin. It is what has been lately done by Roussel in France, by Barett, Haley, Gerard, Dick, Horne and others in England.

2. It is very easy to say in a general way and with a peremptory tone, that there are contradictions in the Bible: and it has often happened that unreflecting Christians, although pious, have not given themselves the trouble of looking more closely into the subject, and have adopted loose maxims on inspiration, before having sufficiently studied on one side, the general testimony of the Scriptures on this doctrine, and on the other, the nature of the objections which they have made. We have seen them then looking into their own minds, rather than the Bible, for a mitigated system of inspiration, which might be reconciled with the supposed existence of some errors in the Word of God. Such was the doctrine of Socinus,²⁹ of Castellio,³⁰ and of some others in the sixteenth century; but it was then sternly rejected by all pious men. ‘ Hoc non est causam tueri adversus atheos,” said Francis Turretin³¹ “sed illam turpiter prodere.” “Non est eo concedendum, ad ea concilianda, ut-dicamus codicem sacrum mendosum,”³² said the learned and pious Peter Martyr, the “wonder of Italy,” as Calvin calls him. In our days, the respectable Pye Smith³³ in England, and the worthy Bishop of Calcutta,³⁴ have indulged in expressions, which we deplore, and which probably they would correct, if they had to make them anew. And in Berlin, the learned rector of the University, Mr. Twesten, whose labors and reputation we honor in other respects, has not feared to say in his Dogmatik,³⁵ that, “all is not equally inspired in the Bible, and that if we admit no errors in the details of the evangelical narrations, we shall be thrown into inextricable difficulties to explain them.” And what examples does he give to justify, in passing, such maxims? He quotes two of the passages which we are going to exhibit; (the first, that of the blind men of Jericho, the seventh, that of the census of Cyrenius.) The reader will be able to judge of the facility with which men abandon the testimony which the Scriptures give of their own entire inspiration.

We will then present here some examples, both of these imagined contradictions, and of the causes of this precipitancy in denominating contradictory, certain passages, which require only a little reflection to reconcile them.

We have said, and we repeat it, that not being able to introduce many instances, we have taken pains to select those which the opponents have considered most embarrassing.

FIRST CAUSE OF RASHNESS.—The complement of the circumstances of two events which occurred in the East, eighteen centuries ago, remains unknown, because the sacred historians relate them to us with an admirable brevity. Yet, men have hastened, because the story does not explain the mode of reconciling two of their features, to pronounce them contradictory! Nothing is more irrational. Suppose, to give an example not in the Scriptures, that a Hindoo Pundit had just been reading three succinct, but very accurate, histories of the illustrious Napoleon. The first shall inform him that the taking of Paris, preceded by a great effusion of blood at the gates of that capital, © made his abdication necessary, and that an English frigate was to transport him immediately to an island of the Mediterranean. A second relates, that this great captain, conquered by the English, who took possession of Paris without a blow, was transported by them to St. Helena, whither. Pichcrel Bertrand wished to follow him, and where he finished his days in the arms of this faithful servant. A third relates, that the fallen Emperor was accompanied in his exile by the Generals Gourgaud, Bertrand, and Montholon. All these statements are accurate, and yet, “how many flat contradictions in so few words!” exclaims the learned citizen of Benares. “St. Helena, in the Mediterranean!” Who does not know that it rises, a great rock in the Atlantic? First contradiction: one of these books is false, it must be rejected. And again, Paris taken without a blow; and Paris taken after a bloody combat at its gates! Second contradiction.—And again, here one general, there three generals! Third contradiction.

Compare now these supposed contradictions with many of the objections raised against the narratives of the Evangelists!

First Example—Mark (xvi. 5.) tells us that the women saw A YOUNG MAN (one only), seated on the right side . . . who said to them: Be not afraid . . . you seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified . . . he is risen again.

And Luke relates, (xxiv. 4.), that TWO MEN presented themselves to them . . . who said to them: Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, he is risen.

They present these passages to us as irreconcilable; but wherefore? There is a difference, unquestionably; ‘but there is neither contradiction nor disagreement between the statements. Must they be identical in order to be true? It is sufficient that they are true, especially in histories so admirably succinct. Does it not often happen to us, without ceasing to be exact, that we relate to two persons successively the same story in two very different ways? And why might not the apostles do the same? St. Luke tells us that two persons met the women, while St. Mark speaks only of that one, who having alone rolled away the stone, was seated at the right side of the sepulchre, and who spilt to them. Thus one of Napoleon’s biographers mentions three generals, whilst the other, without ceasing to be accurate, speaks of Bertrand alone. Thus Moses, after having shown us three men in the apparition of Mamre, (Genesis xviii,) immediately represents one of them speaking as if he were alone. (v. 2, 10, 17.) Thus I might. relate the same event twice successively and in a very different manner, without ceasing to be true: “TI met three men, who showed me the direct road. I met a man, who put me in the right way.” If, then, there is, in the quoted passages, a striking difference, yet there is not even the appearance of contradiction.

Second Example.—Matthew (xx. 19,) says; that as Jesus was going out of Jericho, followed by a great multitude, two blind men, sitting by the way-side, hearing that Jesus. was passing, cried, saying; Have mercy on us!

And Mark (x. 46,) tells us “as Jesus went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimeus sat by the way-side, begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began. to cry out, and say, Jesus, have mercy on me.” Luke, also, (xviii. 35,) speaks only of one blind man.

What is there here, we still ask, of contradiction or inaccuracy? Of these two blind men whom Jesus, in the midst of so many other works, healed at Jericho, one was more remarkable than the other, perhaps better known than the other; and who spoke to Jesusin the name of both. Mark speaks of him alone, he even tells us his name; but does not say that he-was alone. Matthew then has named them both. The narratives of the three evangelists are equally true, without being exactly alike. | What is there extraordinary in this?

But, we are told, there is a still greater difficulty in this same narrative; let us hear it:

It is a third example. Matthew and Mark inform us that the event occurred as Jesus was going out of Jericho; whilst Luke tells us. that it took place as Jesus was drawing nigh to Jericho. Palpable contradiction!. has been uttered more than once.

How can you prove that? What do you know about it 1 must be the reply. ‘The details of this event are unknown to you, how can you show that these statements are irreconcilable; while on the contrary, it is perfectly easy to harmonize them by a very simple supposition 2

St. Luke, as he does so often in the whole course of his gospel, has united in his narrative, two successive circumstances of the same event. Observe that it is he alone of the three historians, who mentions the first question of Bartimeus. Having heard the multitude who were passing, he inquired what it was. This question was. proposed by the blind man before Jesus entered the city of Jericho. Informed then as to the character of this great prophet whom he had never known until then, he followed him, and joined the crowd, who during the repast at the house of Zaccheus, were waiting to meet Jesus as he should go out. It was then they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing, (these words are in St. Luke.) He followed him thus for some time; the other blind man joined him; and their healing was not effected until the moment when Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem, was going out of Jericho, where he had stopped only to visit the happy Zaccheus at his own house.

This simple explanation dissipates all the pretended contradiction of these three texts.

Fourth example—St. Matthew (ch. xxvii. 5.) says that Judas hung himself; Peter, in the Acts (i. 18,) says that falling headlong, he burst assunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.

Some have said, that here is contradiction.

We remember, that at Geneva, in a public conference, where we were defending this very thesis with our dear friend, Professor Monod, then pastor at Lyons, he cited three analogous features of a lamentable death of which he had been almost the witness. An unhappy man in Lyons, to be more sure of his destruction, and to give himself a double death, placed himself upon the window-sill of the fourth story, and then shot himself in the mouth with a pistol. The very same narrator of this sad event might, said he, have made three different. statements; and yet all the three exact. In the first, he might have described the entire occurrence; in the second, he could have said this man died by a shot, and in the third, he threw himself down from the window!

Such was also the-voluntary punishment by which the wretched Judas went to his own place. He hung himself, and he fell down headlong; his body burst open, and all his entrails gushed out. The statement of only one more circumstance of this frightful death would have given us the connecting link. It has not been given us; but who would therefore venture to maintain that there is contradiction?

ANOTHER SOURCE OF RASHNESS.—Certain reigns, as that of Nebuchadnezzar, as that of Jehoiakim, and as that of Tiberius, have had two commencements; and the dates which relate to them are pronounced irreconcilable; the first, before ascending the throne, reigned three years with his father; the second, reigned ten years with his father; the third was associated with Augustus in the government, from the 28th of August of the year II of the Christian era, and yet did not succeed Augustus until the 19th of August of the year XIV. (Velleius Patere. ii. c. 121.)

Some examples.—2 Kings, xxiv. 8; and 2 Chron., xxxvi. 9. See also Daniel, i. 1; ii. 1; Jeremiah, xxv. 1; 2 Chron., xxxvi. 5-7. See also Luke iii. 1.

ANOTHER SOURCE OF RASHNESS.—It is frequently the case that the Holy Spirit has two very different designs in relating the same fact in two different Gospels; and yet it is demanded by these objectors, that the very same form should have been given in every case to the narrative of the same event. And when the narratives differ from each other, they pronounce them inconsistent, and, in fact, contradictory to one another!

Example.—The Holy Spirit, in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, written in Matthew (i. 1-7,) designs to shew the Jews that, according to the rigor of their law, Jesus Christ is the Son and heir of all the kings of Judah, by a legal descent; whilst the same Holy Spirit, in the genealogy given by Luke, (iii. 23-38,) designs to show the Gentiles, that Jesus Christ is the Son of David by a natural descent. And because, with this twofold design, they give us, the one his genealogy according to the Law, by Solomon, the son of David, and by Jacob, the father of Joseph, Mary’s husband; and the other, his genealogy by nature, through Nathan, another son of David, and through Eli, the father of Mary, these objectors have, in their ignorance, pronounced their narratives contradictory!³⁶

ANOTHER SOURCE OF RASHNESS.—A text badly translated produces a sense contrary to reason or to history; and immediately the sacred writer is accused of the grossest errors! They do not examine whether, in the purity of a better translation, the difficulty would not vanish.

First example, (it is likewise one of those cited by Mr. Twesten:)—Luke, they tell us, when he has spoken (ii. 1.) of the census ordered by Cesar Augustus, at the time of the birth of Jesus Christ, adds these words, in the second verse; “this taxing was first made, when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.”

From this it would appear, that Luke was in flat contradiction to cotemporary history; for, at the birth of Jesus Christ, Judea was governed by Herod, whilst Syria was governed by Saturninus, or rather, (from the fifth year before the Christian era,) by Quintilius Varus, who succeeded him; and during whose administration Herod the Great died. The Cyrenius, (Publius Syrius Quirinius,) under whom a second census was made, was not sent into the East until at least eleven or twelve years after the birth of Jesus Christ. The historian Josephus tells us,³⁷ in express terms, that this numbering was made in the thirty-seventh year after the defeat of Anthony; and Jesus Christ was born, at the latest, twenty-six years after that great event. It results necessarily, that St. Luke has confounded two epochs and two numberings that were separated by an interval of eleven years.

Before replying to this strange accusation, we would notice its extreme improbability, even if we regard St. Luke as an uninspired man. Can it be believed that Luke, the only one of the evangelists who was learned; Luke the physician, Luke who afterwards speaks of the census under Quirinius, in referring to that celebrated revolt under Judas the Gallilean, by which all Judea was agitated, and great numbers perished; (Acts v. 37,) Luke, writing for all nations, a book of history, of twenty-four pages; can it be believed that Luke was so far mistaken, as to place in the days of Herod the Great, an event so important, and which had occurred but thirty years before! What should we say of a physician in our day, who, even in a simple conversation, should put the battle of Austerlitz in the days ‘of Catherine II., and of the National Convention? And if he should publish an account, contain-ing such an anachronism, what reception would his work meet from his cotemporaries, even the most illiterate? It has thus often occurred, that in representing the sacred writers as contradicting themselves, they are also represented to be so stupid, as to involve almost a miracle!

But we return to the passage. It is a parenthesis. According to the accent which is placed upon the first word, (ἀυτη) it becomes a demonstrative pronoun, or a pronominal adjective; and, in this alternative, the phrase must be translated literally, in the first case, by this first enrolment; and in the second case, by the very first enrolment. It is in this last sense that this word has been rendered by the authors of the new version, published some months since by a society of ministers in Switzerland; and this we think to be the true rendering.

There is nothing, then, in St. Luke’s narrative, that is not entirely natural and exact. After having spoken, in the first verse, of an ordinance of Augustus, which began to be executed under. Herod’s reign, he apprises us, in the parenthesis of the second verse, that this enrolment must not be confounded with the too famous census of which all Judea still preserved such tragical recollections. The very first enrolment, says he, was made while Cyrenivs was yet governor of Syria. This is the simple and literal translation of the Greek.³⁸

Second example:—St. Paul, (1 Cor. xv. 44,) according to our translation, says: there is a natural body, (in French, animal body,) and there is a spiritual body; and this expression has been sometimes condemned as contradictory. That which is corporeal, we are told, cannot be spiritual, nor that which is spiritual, corporeal. “Settle ‘that; a spiritual body!” (says the professor of Theology in the academy of Geneva, in his treatise upon the use of reason in matters of faith.) But all the difficulty in settling that lies in the unfaithfulness of the translation. In the language of the Scriptures, the word so inappropriately rendered animal in the French, signifies endowed with a soul, moved by a soul, (γένομενος εἰς ψυχήν ζῶσανς) and the word which is translated spiritual, signifies moved by the Spirit, endowed by or with the Holy Spirit; (πνεῦμα ἔχων,) says Jude, verse 13; (γένομενος εἰς πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν,) says St. Paul. There is, then, nothing contradictory in speaking of a glorified body, endowed with the Holy Spirit and moved by the Holy Spirit.

Third example:—It has been alleged, especially in the bosom of the Romish Church, which uses the Vulgate, that the language of Elihu (Job xxxvii. 18.) is tinctured with error: “Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking-glass?” We give here the exact translation from the Latin of St. Jerome—Tu forsitan cum eo fabricatus es cælos, qui solidissimt quasi ere fusi sunt?

This passage, we are told, which contradicts so manifestly the truth of facts, is that which the great Galileo quoted, when defending before the court of Rome, the earth’s rotary motion. And he was perfectly justifiable, in quoting it; and others are justifiable, who still quote it for the purpose of proving that we must not expect to find the language of the Scriptures always exempt from errors, when they treat of truths belonging exclusively to the order and movements of matter.

But here again, all the mistake is in the translation. It has almost as many errors as words.

First fault.—It is not said in the Hebrew, as molten brass;³⁹ but it is there: as a brazen mirror; which shews that the comparison refers to the brilliancy, and in no wise to the solidity of the heavens.

Second fault.—Nor is it said in the Hebrew, thou hast formed; but, thou hast stretched, thou hast made an expanse; which shews that space is here referred to, and not a solid fabric.

Third fault.—In supposing (what is not true) that Elihu here speaks of the Heavens. This word, in the Hebrew, is not used in the objective case, but in the dative; although the prefixed preposition ל is sometimes, it is said, taken accusatively, after the manner of the Syriac. It should then have been rendered, not the heavens; but, for the heavens.

Fourth fault—There is not a word said here about the heavens. The word of the original is not שמים, but שחקים, The LXX, who translate the first of these words four hundred and thirty-seven times by the heavens, have translated the latter, in this verse, by παλαιωματα, a term which has no relation to the heavens, and the meaning of which in this place moreover, no one has been able to comprehend.

Whatever may have been the object intended by this Hebrew expression, whose meaning is uncertain, one thing at least is certain; it is that all idea of solidity is perfectly excluded here; and that on the contrary, the expression designates that which is most attenuated and subtile. Buxtorf has rendered it by res tenuissima et subtilissima; Kimchi: pulvis tenwissimus, qui exsufflatus, ob tenwitatem evolat; and its root appears to signify: to grind, to waste, to construct. (The waters wear away the stones, says Job xiv. 19,)—It must then have been a great mishap to make of it, a vault of the most solid brass in the heavens. This word, in fact, is employed in Isaiah, to designate the smallest dust which adheres to the balance, without changing its equilibrium (Isaiah xl. 15); it is twice translated by, the air (ἀήρ) in the LXX.⁴⁰ Eight times by cloud (νεφελὴ); and four times by cloud (νέφος)⁴¹ It is rendered only once by firmament, once by the heavens, and once by the stars (ἀστρα)⁴², probably because God has sown the stars in space, like dust.

Fifth fault—Finally, the Hebrew has not the superlative very solid, but the simple adjective firm, fixed.

What then must be the meaning of this passage? We have already said, that it is impossible to find any meaning in the frandfation of it by the LXX; as also nothing can authorize that of St. Jerome, on which the objection has been founded. If then we were now permitted to hazard the translation of a sentence which has been considered very obscure, we would render it literally by these words; “hast thou made with him an expanse for the fixed stars, pure and brilliant as a molten mirror?”⁴³

Fourth Example.—St. Matthew (iv. 5,) immediately after the first temptation, says; that THEN the devil led Jesus into the holy city; . . . and when this second temptation was ended, he adds (v. 2,) in commencing the description of the third; that the devil led him again upon a very high mountain, &c. . . St. Luke, on the contrary, (iv. 5,) immediately after the first temptation, says, that afterward the devil led him upon a high mountain; and when this second temptation was ended, he adds in commencing the account of the third: he led him also to Jerusalem. . .

Here then are two Evangelists in evident disagreement

as to the order of the three temptations. Necessarily one-of them is wrong, in placing the last before the second. Such is the objection.

You shall see this difficulty vanish likewise, as soon as you quit the human versions, and go to the original. We might cite here many other passages, chiefly in the Epistles, where the meaning is obscured by a want of sufficiently regarding the conjunctions and adverbs, καί, δέ, γάρ, οὖν, τότε, &c.

Every one knows that St. Luke in writing his gospel, has not described events in the order of time, but of nature. Each of these methods has its own advantages, in biographical writing. Among profane writers, for example, Nepos has adopted the one, and Suetonius the other. The translators of Luke, therefore, must pay special attention to his language, and not lend him adverbs of time, order and rank, which it never entered his mind to employ, and which so awkwardly change the meaning of his discourse. Restore here the Greek conjunctions, and you will quickly perceive the contradiction of the two French texts disappear.

St. Matthew, who always follows the chronological order of facts, is careful to employ the adverbs with great exactness, in the progress of his account of the temptation: τότε, τότε, παλιν, τότε, τότε, then, then, again, then, then.-But on the contrary, St. Luke, who has not intended to pursue the same course, and who had no other design than to shew us the three attacks to which the Son of God had to submit his holy humanity; St. Luke scrupulously abstains from employing any adverb of time or order, and contents himself with connecting the facts of his narrative, ten times by the copulative, AND (παι,) which our translations have so badly rendered by the adverb THEN, or AFTERWARDS.

The contradiction then does not pertain to the sacred text.

ANOTHER SOURCE OF RASHNESS.—It has not been sufficiently kept in mind, that speeches and actions, were repeated more than once during our Savior’s ministry; so that some have very imprudently imagined that they observed contradictions in certain statements of two evangelists, where they found only an imperfect resemblance, and where at the same time, they imagined themselves to be reading identical facts.

Examples. We: have in the twofold miracle S the multiplication of the loaves of bread, a very striking example of the facility with which we may be led into error in this way. Twice Jesus Christ, moved with compassion for the people, nourished a starving multitude in the desert. The circumstances of both miracles have many and striking points of resemblance. If it had happened that two of the evangelists had related only the first, and two others only the second; they had not failed to cry-out at the identity of the facts and the contradiction of the statements. What! in the one, five thousand men fed with five loaves; and in the other, four thousand men fed with seven loaves! In the one, twelve baskets full (κόφινους) carried away; in the other, seven baskets (σπυρίδας)! What disagreement! Happily, if St. Luke and John have mentioned only the first, Matthew and Mark have related both. But for that; what a noise had such a passage made in the school of the adversaries!

This remark may be applied to many features of the New Testament; for example, to the Lord’s Prayer, which was given, at least twice to the disciples, during the ministry of our Lord. (Matt. vi. 9; Luke xi. 2.)

See also, Matthew xii. 39, and xvi. 1, 4; Luke vii. 21, xi. 27, and Matthew xii. 49. Luke ix. 1, x. 1, and Matthew x. 1.

We will propose yet another example.

It does not appear, when we look closely at it, that the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v. vi. vii.) and that which St. Luke gives us in the latter half of his 6th chapter, were pronounced on the same occasion.⁴⁴ In fact: 1 Luke omits many sentences reported by Matthew,⁴⁵ and he adds some others (v. 24 to 26;) 2. Matthew notifies us that the Sermon which he reports, preceded the healing of the leper (viii. 353) and Luke, that his followed it (v. 12;) 3. Luke places Matthew among the number of those whom Jesus had already called to the apostleship, and who descended from the mountain with him before he delivered his discourse to them; while Matthew himself teaches us that the Sermon of which he speaks, preceded his vocation by many days. 4. Finally, one of the discourses was delivered upon a mountain, whilst Jesus ‘was seated, with his disciples around him; the other, on the contrary, was delivered in the plain, and under other circumstances. We pause at this remark to assure those who may have heard alleged against the doctrine of inspiration, the pretended contradiction of the sentence in which Matthew (ver. 40,) makes Jesus say; ‘If any man will take away thy coat, (χιτῶνα) let him have thy cloak (ἑματιον) also;” to that where, according to Luke, he said; “Him that taketh away thy cloak, forbid not to take the a also.” (Luke vi. 29.) No objection, we observe, can be made from this diversity, since these two sentences were pronounced on different days.

Yet, we ought also to say, because this remark is applicable to many other objections of the same kind; although it may have been true that these two passages had been quoted as the same fragment of the same discourse, their difference had not still caused us any kind of surprise. We believe that the Holy Spirit, when he quotes the Holy Spirit, is not limited to the employment of the same terms, provided he preserves the same meaning. A man of an exact mind, when he repeates himself or quotes himself, does not feel himself in the least degree bound to carry his imitation to the very words. And we think that the Lord’s commandment was equally represented in each of these two sentences of Luke and Matthew, (refer to what we say upon the same subject, chap. iii. sect. 2).

ANOTHER SOURCE OF RASHNESS.—Sometimes a variation critically respectable, which removed a difficulty, has not been noticed; and they have preferred to impute the contradiction to the sacred writer!,

Example.—According to the three first evangelists (Mark xv. 25, 33, 34; Matt. xxvii. 45, 46; Luke xxiii. 44.54), our Savior was suspended on the cross at the third hour of the day; that is, at nine o’clock in the morning; the sun was darkened at the sixth hour; and Jesus gave up the ghost at the ninth hour; whereas if St. John is to be believed, (xix. 14,) the punishment could not have commenced before the sixth hour, (at mid-day.) Palpable contradiction!

Before replying to this difficulty, we shall present a remark quite similar to that which we have already made concerning the enrolment under Cyrenius. Was it likely that the apostle John was ignorant of the length of time occupied by the punishment of his master; and could he make such a mistake as to substitute three hours for six; he who had remained before the cross!

But, if we consult the Greek manuscripts of St. John, we find four in small letters, and three in uncial or capital letters (among others, the famous manuscript of Beza preserved at Cambridge), which here read, the third hour instead of the sixth hour. The numbers, in the Greek manuscripts, are often written in figures, that is, by simple Greek letters; and the 3, and the 6 being expressed by two letters easily confounded (the γάμμα and the ἐπὶσημον), many ancients have thought that the variation was caused by this, Griesbach who has marked this variation with a sign of preference, quotes Severus of Antioch, and Ammonius in Theophylact; and adds that the chronicle of Alexandria appealed in favor of this reading to better copies, and even to the original autograph (ίδιοχεὶρον) of the gospel of St. John.

ANOTHER SOURCE OF RASHNESS:—The meaning of certain features of a narration is not seized; and they rush to the conclusion, that the writer was mistaken.

Example.—Mark xi. 11, 14. Jesus cursed a fig tree which had only leaves, because it was not the season of figs.

There is then doubtless an error there, one says: why seek fruits out of the season when they may reasonably be expected?

Yet there is nothing there that is not very simple. If it had been the season for gathering figs, this tree might have already been stript of its fruit, and its barrenness could not in that case have been determined simply from the absence of fruit.

But is a tree, the objector still replies, (to say in passing,) guilty for not bearing fruit? Why then punish it? We reply that in this miracle, which is a type, the tree is no more unhappy than it is guilty; and its suffering is no more real than its morality. The one is as completely symbolical as the other.

ANOTHER SOURCE OF RASHNESS.—This rule has not been heeded (which we love to express here in the very words of the great reformer of Italy, the excellent Peter Martyr:)⁴⁶ “when passages are obscure, as to their chronology, great care must be taken not to reconcile them by imputing faults to the inspired book. Wherefore, if sometimes it happens that we cannot account for the number of the years, we must simply avow our ignorance, and consider that the Scriptures are expressed with so much conciseness, that it is not possible for us always to discover at what epoch we must commence such and such a computation. It very often happens that in the histories of the kings of Judah and Israel, the respective numbers of their years cannot be easily reconciled; but these difficulties are explained and justified in many ways. 1. The same year, commenced by one of the two, and finished by the other, is attributed to both. 2. Often the sons reigned with their fathers for several years; which are imputed sometimes to one and sometimes to the other. 3. There were often interregnums which the Scriptures attribute sometimes to the predecessors, sometimes to the successors. 4. Finally, it sometimes happens that certain years in which oppressive and profane princes reigned, are regarded as not having existed, and are not counted.”

We think that the examples which we have cited thus far, are sufficient. We shall quote no more. What we have said, may shew the real value and weight of the objections;⁴⁷ for (we repeat it) we have taken pains to adduce those which are considered the most important. Warned by these examples, and by so many others, let us then learn,if hereafter any difficulties of the same kind present themselves to us, to think as did Julius Africanus the friend of Origen, sixteen hundred years ago; and as have done before and after him, all men of God. “At all events, (said he in reading the two genealogies of Matthew and Luke,) at all events, certainly the gospel is every where true!” Τό μέντοι Εύαγγέλιον πάντως άληθέυει.⁴⁸

Section VII.—ERRORS CONTRARY TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE.

It will be admitted, it has been sometimes said, that the apparent or real contradictions in the dates, the quotations and the narratives of the Scriptures, may be susceptible of solution by the resources of a more or less labored exegesis; but there are others which you cannot reconcile: they are all those expressions in which the sacred writers are in manifest opposition to the laws of nature now better understood. At the same time (we may add,) if this argument against the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, is irrefutable; it does not compromise, in the least, the divinity of their doctrines, any more than the truth of the great religious facts which they relate to us. In inspiring his apostles and his prophets, God would make of us not scholars, but saints. We might then, without danger, leave the holy Scriptures to speak ignorantly of the phenomena of the material world; their prejudices on such subjects are innocent, but unquestionable. Do you not often hear them speaking as if the earth was immovable, and the sun in motion? ‘This heavenly body, according to them, rises and sets: “its course is from one end of the heavens unto the other.” (Ps. xix.) The moon and stars are likewise in motion; the sun, by the command of Joshua, stood immovable in the mid-heaven; it stands still over Gibeon, and the moon in Ajalon. (Josh. x. 12.) “The earth is founded upon the seas.” (Ps. xxiv. 5.) ‘Taken from the water, it exists in the water.” (2 Pet. iil. 5.) “God has laid its foundations; it shall never be moved.” (Ps. civ. 5.) Can you admit that this is really the language of the Creator of the heavens and the earth, speaking to his creatures 1

We shall reply to this objection; and we rejoice to meet it on our way, because the examination of it must exhibit the glory of the Scriptures.

We freely admit, that if there are any physical errors, fully proved, in the Scriptures, the Scriptures could not be from God. But we mean to show that there are none; and we shall dare to challenge the adversaries, to produce one from the entire Bible. We are going still farther; and we shall show, on the contrary, how much latent science is concealed under the simplicity of its language.

We shall commence by saying something concerning the miracle of Joshua, because it has often been adduced for the purpose of combatting the plenary inspiration, or even the divine mission of the men of God. We have read the works of many infidels, who have attacked it with their ordinary pride, and with that severe irony which too often characterizes them. But it is easy to answer them. We do not think of discussing here the manner in which the miracle was performed; but we wish to show by this example, with what levity and precipitancy they have determined, that because they did not comprehend certain passages, they must, of course, be unreasonable.

The sun, on the day of the battle of Beth-horon, stood still in the midst of the heavens, it is written in the tenth chapter of Joshua; and, there never was a day like it, before nor since.

In Germany, it has been said: This phrase, taken in its natural meaning, appears to us absurd; then it is erroneous and totally human. Elsewhere it has been said: It is absurd; then we must give it another meaning. But both have reasoned from false premises. The fact is any thing but absurd; it is merely miraculous.

We will present the objection in the words of a professor of theology:⁴⁹ “The most intrepid Methodist,” says he, ‘would be constrained to admit that, in the system of our globe, if the sun should stand still for one single instant, or if the movement of the globe were retarded, the belligerent armies, and every thing on the face of the earth, would have been swept away like the chaff before the tempest. It is an expression which cannot be taken literally.” The enemies of inspiration produce this objection for another purpose. The sacred historian, they say, did not know the laws of nature—he is then uninspired.

And yet, it is this very objection itself which is an error. In fact, if the miracle, in-place of arresting suddenly, in an indivisible instant, the rotation of our globe, took only the short space of a few seconds to accomplish it by a gentle and continuous action, then you have enough in this simple circumstance to assure you that such a phenomenon could not have, mechanically, any other sensible effect than to raise from west to east, the waters spread over the surface of the earth, A child might tell you, that a coach in rapid motion, rushing against an impediment, may be dashed to pieces, because the impediment is immovable; and all the travelers, thrown out forward, will be hurled to the ground. But let it be stopped by a continuous resistance, which is applied gradually, for three or four seconds: then the smallest children seated in the vehicle will remain unshaken from their seats; they will not even be aware of the impulse, which, three seconds before, they were receiving from the impetuous movement of the horses, and which, without this precaution, must have been sufficient to throw them to a great distance.

The rotation of the earth, is, at the equator, at the rate of 1426 feet a second; at Jerusalem, 1212 feet: It is the speed: of a bullet at the moment of leaving the cannon, discharged by one fifth its own weight of powder.—It is capable (deducting the effect of atmospheric resistance), of elevating this projectile to the extreme height of 24,000 feet; and yet a child of six years, in two-thirds of a minute, could, without danger, destroy all this force, by the elastic and continued action of its fingers. Commit to its little hands an eight pound cannon-ball for forty seconds; and during the same time, let another of the same weight fall freely through the air, and from the height of mount Himalaya. At the end of only forty seconds, the weight, after having acted by the same impulse upon the one and the other of these projectiles, shall merely, in regard to the first, have wearied the feeble fingers which hold it; while it shall have imparted to the other, a rapidity of motion, equal to that of the rotation of the earth impressed on the hill of Bethoron in the latitude of Jerusalem. ‘The child does not imagine that he has been able in two thirds of a minute, to destroy, by the continued action of his little hand, a force capable of projecting a ball eight thousand feet higher than Mount Blanc, and of cutting down at an immense distance, squadrons and ramparts in the day of battle!

Thus then, if God should have employed no more than forty seconds, in the days of Joshua, to arrest by a supple and successive resistance, the movement of our globe, the projecting impulse from west to east, which a-mass of iron of eight pounds would have felt in the plain of Bethoron, would have been no stronger than the pressure felt to-day by the hand upon which you lay such a weight. And if the mass instead of having the form of a bullet, had had that of a quoit or of a cube, there would not have been enough of that impulse to make it overcome the resistance of friction, and change its place upon the surface of the ground.

It will perhaps be objected, that the rotation of the globe at Bethoron was twenty-seven times more rapid than the movement: of a steam-carriage upon a rail-road. True; but since the retarding force necessary to exhaust a given impulse, is in inverse proportion to the time employed, suppose the miracle accomplished in eighteen minutes; take eighteen minutes instead of forty seconds, to stop entirely the movement of the terrestrial globe at the command of Joshua, and then “the contending armies instead of being swept away as by the tempest,’’ would no more have felt what was passing, than do, at each station, the thousands of travellers who are stopped upon a railroad!

Yet the Scriptures are reproached for having iodine upon the daily phenomena of nature, in a way that appears to show ignorance, and which is incompatible with a plenary inspiration. According to the sacred writers, the sun rises, the sun sets, the sun stops, the earth remains firm! It has been demanded that the Creator, in speaking to us through a book which he has inspired, should have showed us more clearly, that the Spirit who directed the sacred historians, knew before we did, the rotary motion of our globe, its periodical revolution, and the relative immobility of the Sun.

Let us still farther examine this reproach.

We will first inquire of those who make it, if they would have had the Bible speak like Isaac Newton. Would they forget,.that if God should speak about scenes of nature,—I do not say only, as he sees it, but as the scientific men of future ages will see it,—then the great Newton himself had understood nothing of it? Besides, even the most. advanced language of science is not yet, and never will be, after all, any thing more than the language of appearances. The visible world is, much more than you imagine, a figure which passes, a scene of illusions and of phantoms. That which you there call reality, is still in itself only an appearance relatively to a more elevated reality, and a more profound analysis. In our ignorant mouth, the word reality has nothing absolute; it is a term totally relative, and employed in proportion as we think we have reached a new round on the ladder by which we come up from the depths of our ignorance. The human eye sees objects only under two dimensions, and projects them all upon the same canvass, until the touch and some experience have rendered to them the reality of depth, or a third dimension. Colors are accidents, and belong only by reflection, and by illusion to the objects which present them to you. The very impenetrability. of bodies, their solidity, their extension, are after all, only an appearance, and present themselves to us as a reality only in expectation of a profounder science, which shall substitute another for it. Who may tell us where this analysis is to stop; and what would be our language concerning beings which are the most familiar to us, if we were only endowed with one more sense; with antenna, for example, like the ants and the bugs? The expression of appearances, provided it be exact, is then among men, a language philosophically correct; and is that which the Scriptures ought to adopt. Would you have the Bible speak to us of the scenes of nature otherwise than as we speak of them to one another in our social or domestic intercourse; otherwise even than the learned themselves speak of them to one another? When Sir John Herschell asks his servants to send some one to awake him exactly at midnight, for the passage of some star over his meridian lens; does he think himself obliged to speak to them of the earth, of her rotation, and of the moment when she shall have brought their nadir into the plane of her orbit? I think not. And if you ever heard him converse, in the Observatory of Greenwich, with the learned Ayrie, you. would see that even in this sanctuary of science, the habitual language of these astronomers is still just like that of the Scriptures. For them, the stars rise, the equinoxes recede, the planets advance and are accelerated, stop and retrograde. Would you then have Moses speak to all the generations of men, in a language more scientific than that of La Place, of Arago and Newton 2

But still farther; we adduce two general facts which shine with a great light, when they are studied; and which betray quickly in the Scriptures, the pen of the Almighty God. Here, as everywhere else, the objections when contemplated more closely, return back on the objector, are recanted triumphantly, and become arguments.

These two facts are analogous to that which you may observe in the words of a learned astronomer, conversing with his young children, and showing them with his finger, the earth and the heavens. If you followed him in these interviews, when his tenderness stooping to their level, presents to their new-born intelligence, images and words which it can comprehend, you would then quickly remark his respect for truth, by a two-fold sign. First, he would never tell them any thing that was not true; and secondly, there would be in his words many indications that he knows more than he sees fit to communicate to them. He doubtless would not pretend to teach them science; but on the one hand, nothing in his discourse would contradict its principles; and on the other, many of his words would already indicate, that although silent upon them, he comprehended them. Afterward, when his children, having become men, shall review his words; not only will they find them exempt from all error, but they will also recognize that, skilfully chosen, they were already in preestablished harmony with science, and presented it to them in its germ, although they could not comprehend it. In proportion as their own knowledge shall increase, they will see with admiration, under the reserve and the simplicity of his language, concealed wisdom, learned exactness, turns of phraseology, and forms of expression, which were in harmony with facts, then unknown to them, but long known by him,

Such then is likewise the double observation that every attentive reader can make of the language of the Scriptures. They speak poetically, but precisely, the true language of appearances. We there hear a father who condescends to speak to the smallest of his children, but in such a manner that the elder can never discover a single word of his conversation contrary to the true position of the things which he has made, and in such a manner too, that often he drops without affectation, words enough to show them that all that which they have learned of his works for four thousand years, he knew before them, and better than they now do. It is thus, that in the Bible, eternal wisdom addresses its children. In proportion as they. grow, they see the Scriptures made for their age, adapted to their developments, appearing to grow with them, and always presenting to them the two facts which we have noticed; on the one hand, absence of all error; on the other, indirect indications, but incontestable, of a science which preceded all that of man.

First fact. There is no physical error in the word of God. If there were, we have said, this book could not be from God. God is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should mistake. In order to be understood by us, he must, unquestionably, stoop to our feebleness; yet to stoop to it, is not to partake ofit; and his language will always attest his condescension, never his ignorance.

This remark is more important than it at first appears to be. It becomes brilliant when surveyed more closely.

Examine all the false theologies of the ancients and moderns; read, in Homer or Hesiod, the religious codes of the Greeks; study those of the Budhists, those of the Brahmins, those of the Mohammedans: you will there find, not only systems revolting in their views of the Deity, but you will there meet the grossest errors concerning the material world; their theology will doubtless be revolting to you; but wee natural philosophy too and their astronomy, always bound to their religion, will present the most absurd notions.

Read in the Shaster, in the Pouran, in the four books of the Vedham, or law of the Hindoos, their shocking Cosmogony,—the moon is 50,000 leagues higher than the sun; it shines by its own light; it animates our body. The night is formed by the descent of the sun behind the Someyra mountains, situated in the middle of the globe, and many thousand Teagues high. Our earth is flat and triangular, composed of seven stories, each of which has its own degree of beauty, its inhabitants and its sea. The first is of honey, the other is of sugar, the other of butter, the other of wine; and finally all the mass is carried on the heads of innumerable elephants who, in shaking themselves, cause the earthquakes. In a word, they have placed the whole history of their gods in the most fantastical, and yet the most indissoluble relations to the physical world, and all the phenomena of the universe. The missionaries to India too, have often declared that a telescope, silently placed in the. midst of the holy Benares or the antient Ava, would be a battery powerful as thunder, to overthrow all the system of Bramah and that of Budh.

Read again the philosophers of Greek and Roman antiquity, Aristotle, Seneca, Pliny, Plutarch, Cicero, How many sentences do you find, of which one alone would suffice to compromise all our doctrine of imspiration, if it should be found in any book of the Bible? Read the Koran of Mohammed, representing mountains as being made, to hinder the earth from being moved, and representing it as held by anchors and cords. What do I say? Read even the cosmogony of Buffon, or some of the ironies of Voltaire upon the doctrine of a deluge, or upon the fossil animals of a primitive world. We will go still farther. Read again, we say, not the absurd reasonings of the Pagans, of Lucretius, of Pliny, or of Plutarch, against the theory of antipodes, but even the fathers of the Christian church. Hear the theological indignation of the admirable Augustine, who said that it was opposed to the Scriptures; and the scientific eloquence of Lactantius, who believes it to be contrary to good sense. “Num aliquid loquuntur!” exclaims he; is any one so simple as to believe that there are’ men with their feet above their heads, trees having fruits hanging upward, rain, snow, and hail falling upward! “To answer you,” he says, “they pretend that the earth is a globe?” “Quid dicam de iis nescio, qui, cum semel aberraverint, constanter in stultitiâ perseverant, et vanis vana defendunt! One knows not what to say of such men, who once in an error, engulf themselves in their folly, and maintain absurdity by absurdity!”⁵⁰

Hear too Boniface the legate, representing Virgilius to the Pope as a heretic, for his views on this subject; hear Pope Zachary treating this unfortunate bishop as homo malignus: “If it be proved,” writes he, “that Virgilius maintains, that there are other men under this earth; assemble a council, condemn him, drive him from the church, and despose him from the priesthood!” Still later, hear the higher clergy of Spain, and especially the imposing council of Salamanca, indignant at the geographical system by which Christopher Columbus was seeking a world. Hear, at the epoch of Newton’s birth, the great Galileo, “who mounted, says Kepler, “upon the highest walls of the universe,” and who vindicated by his genius as well as by his telescope, the unknown and condemned system of Copernicus; see him, groaning, at the age of eighty years, in the prisons of Rome, for having discovered the movement of the earth, after having been compelled to pronounce these words, ten years before (the 28th of June, 1633), before their highnesses in the palace of the holy office: “I, Galileo, in the seventieth year of my age, on bended knees before your eminences, having before my eyes, and touching with my own hands the holy Scriptures, I adjure, I curse, and i detest the error of the earth’s movement.”

What should we not have been justified in saying of the Scriptures, if they had spoken of the phenomena of nature as all the ancient sages did? if they had referred every thing to four elements, as was done for so long a time? if they had called the stars crystal, as Philolaus of Crotona; and if, as Empedocles, they had enlightened the two hemispheres of our globe with two suns? if they had said, as Leucippus, that the fixed stars, heated by the quickness of their diurnal motion around the earth, enkindled the sun with their fires? if they had formed the heavens and the earth, as Diodorus Siculus and all the Egyptian sages, by the motion of air and the ascension of fire? or if they had said, as Philolaus, that the sun has only a borrowed light, and that it is only a mirror which Teflects back on us the light of the celestial spheres? if they had made it, as Anaxagoras, a mass of iron larger than Peloponnesus, and the earth a mountain, whose roots go infinitely deep? if they had spoken of the heavens as ‘a solid sphere to which the fixed stars are attached, as have done, with Aristotle, almost all the ancients? if they had called the celestial vault a firmanentum or a στερέωμα, as their interpreters, both Latin, Greek and English have done? if they had spoken, as has been recently done among a Christian people, of the influence of the movements of the heavens upon the elements of this lower world, upon the characters of men and upon the course. of human affairs? Such is the natural propensity of all people to this superstition, that, in spite of their religion, the ancient Jews, and the Christians themselves, have alike fallen into. it. The modern Greeks, says D’Alembert,⁵¹ have carried it to excess; scarcely is there found one of their authors, who, on every occasion, does not speak of predictions by the stars, of. horoscopes, of talismans; so that there was scarcely a house in Constantinople and in all Greece, which was not built according to rules of apotelesmatic astrology. The French historians observe, that astrology was so in vogue under Catharine de Medici, that nothing important could be undertaken ' without consulting the stars; and under Henry III., and even Henry IV., in the conversations of the court of France, inquiry was made of nothing but the predictions of astrologers. We have seen, toward the close of the last century, says Ph, Giulani,⁵² an Italian send to Pope Innocent XI., a prediction in the form of a horoscope, concerning Vienna, then beseiged by the Turks, and which was. very well received. And in our days, the count Boulainvilliers has written quite seriously on this subject.

But now, open ihe Bible; study its fifty sacred authors, from that admirable Moses, who held the pen in the desert, four hundred years before the Trojan war, even to that fisherman, the son of Zebedee, who wrote fifteen hundred years afterwards in Ephesus and Patmos, under the reign of Domitian; open the Bible, and search if you can there find any thing like this—No.—None of these mistakes which the science of every age discovers in the books of the preceding ages; none of those absurdities especially, which modern astronomy discovers in such great numbers in the writings of the ancients, in their sacred codes, in their philosophies, and in the most admirable pages of even the Christian fathers, none of those errors can be found in any one of our sacred books; nothing there will ever contradict that which, after so many ages, the investigations of the scientific world have revealed to us as sure, concerning the state of our globe and of the heavens. Go carefully through the Scriptures, from one end to the other, seeking for such spots; and whilst you give yourself up to this examination, remember that it is a book which speaks of everything, which describes nature, which recounts its grandeurs, which narrates its creation, which tells us of the formation of the heavens, that of the light, that of the waters, that of the atmosphere, that of the mountains, that of the animals and of the plants; it is a book which teaches us the first revolutions of the world, and which also predicts to us its last; it is a book which relates them in circumstantial histories, which exalts them in a sublime poetry, and which sings them in fervent hymns; it is a book full of oriental imagination, of elevation, of variety and of boldness; it is a book which speaks of the celestial and invisible world, and at the same time of the earth and of things visible; it is a book to which nearly fifty writers of every degree of cultivation, of every state, of every condition, and separated by fifteen hundred years from one another, have successively contributed; it is a book written first in the centre of Asia, in the sands of Arabia, or in the deserts of Judea, or in the courts of the Jewish temple, or in ‘the rustic schools of the prophets of Bethel and of Jericho, or in the sumptuous palaces of Babylon, or upon the idolatrous banks of Chebar; and afterwards, in the centre of western civilization, in the midst of the Jews and of their ignorance, in the midst of Polytheism and its idols, as in the bosom of Pantheism, and of its sad philosophy; it is a book whose first writer had been for forty years, the pupil of those Egyptian magicians, for whom the sun, the stars and the elements, being endowed. with intelligence, rected upon the elements, and governed the world by continual effluvia; it is ‘a book whose first writer preceded, by more than nine centuries, the most ancient philosophers of ancient Greece and of Asia, Thales and Pythagoras, Zaleucus, Xenophon, Confucius; it is a book which carries its descriptions even to the plains of the invisible world, even to the hierarchies of angels, even to the most remote periods of the future, and to the glorious scenes of the last day; now, seek in its 50 authors, seek in its 66 books, seek in its 1,189 chapters, and its 31,173 verses . . . Seek one alone ‘of those thousand errors with which the ancients and | the moderns are filled, when they speak either of heaven or of earth, or of their revolutions, or of their elements; seek, you will not find.

its language is unconstrained, open; it speaks of every thing, and in every strain; it is the prototype, it has been the inaccessible model, nay, the inspirer of all the most elevated productions of poetry. Ask Milton, the two Racines, Young, Klopstock. ‘They will tell you, that this divine poetry is of all the most lyric, the boldest, the most sublime; it rides on a cherub, it flies upon the wings of the wind. And yet this book never does violence. to the facts nor to the principles of a sound philosophy of nature. Never will you find a single sentence in opposition to the just notions which science has imparted to us, concerning the form of our globe, its magnitude and its geology; upon the void and upon space; upon the inert and obedient materiality of the stars; upon the planets, upon their masses, their courses, their dimensions or their influences; upon the suns which people the depths of space, upon their number, their nature, their immensity. So too in speaking of the invisible world, and of the subject of angels, so new, so unknown, so delicate, this book will not present you a solitary one of its authors, who, in the course of one thousand five hundred and sixty years of their writing, has varied in describing the character of charity, humility, fervor and purity which pertains to these mysterious beings; so too, in speaking of the relations of the celestial world to God, never has one of these fifty writers, neither in the Old nor the New Testament, written one single word favorable to this incessant pantheism of the Gentile philosophy;—thus also you shall not find one alone of the authors of the Bible who has, in speaking of the visible world, let fall from his pen one only of those sentences which, in other books, contradict the reality of facts; none who makes the heavens a firmament, as do the Seventy, St. Jerome, and all the Fathers of the Church; none who makes of the world, as Plato, an intelligent animal; none who reduces every thing below, to the four physical elements of the ancients; none who thinks with the Jews, with the Latins and the Greeks, with the better spirits of antiquity, with the great Tacitus among the ancients, with the great De Thou among the moderns, with the sceptical Michel Montaigne, that “the stars have dominion and power, not only over our lives and fortunes, but our very inclinations, our discourses, our wills; that they govern, impel-and agitate them at the mercy of their influences; and that (as our reason teaches us and finds it), all this lower world is agitated by the slightest movement of the heavenly bodies. Facta etenim et vitas hominum suspendit ab astris;”⁵³ not one who has spoken of the mountains as Mohammed did, of the cosmogony as Buffon, of the antipodes as Lucretius, as Plutarch, as Pliny, as Lactantius, as St. Augustine, as the Pope Zachary. Surely if there was found in the Bible one alone of those errors which abound in the philosophers, ancient as well as modern, our faith in the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures would be more than exposed; we should have to admit that there are errors in the word of God, and that these erroneous sentences appertain to a fallible writer, and. not to the Holy Spirit; for God is not a man that he should lie; there is in him no variableness, nor shadow of. turning; and he to whom lying lips are an abomination, cannot contradict himself, nor dictate that which is false.

There is, then, no physical error in the Scriptures; and this great fact, which becomes always more admirable, in proportion as it is more closely contemplated, is a striking proof of the inspiration which has dictated-to their writers, even in the choice of the least expression: But there is still another fact.

Not only has the Bible admitted no false sentence or expression, but it has also employed words which make us’ recognize, in a way that cannot be mistaken, the science of the Almighty. His great object, doubtless, was, to reveal to us the eternal grandeurs of the invisible world, and not the barren secrets of that which perishes. Yet it often happens that his language, when it is attentively regarded, gives a glimpse of knowledge which it is not aiming to teach, but of which he cannot be ignorant, since knowledge is in him a profound abyss. Not only does he never say any thing false to us, even incidentally; but also, you will often light upon words which shall betray to you the voice of the world’s Creator. You will often remark there, a wisdom, a prudence, an exactness, of which the past ages had never a suspicion, and which the discoveries alone of the telescope, of modern calculation and modern science, have enabled us to appreciate; so that its language will carry, in these features, the evident characters of the most entire inspiration. The discreet and unusual choice of its expressions, the nature of certain details, whose perfect propriety and divine harmony with facts were not revealed until three thousand years afterward, the reserve in the use of. words, sometimes its very boldness and-its strangeness at the time when it was written;—all these signs will shew you the learned one par excellence, the Ancient of days, who is addressing children unquestionably, but who speaks like the father, and who knows all his house.

When the Scriptures speak of the form of the earth, they make it A GLOBE!⁵⁴ When they speak of the position of this globe in the bosom of the universe, they suspend it upon nothing;ץל כלימה) ⁵⁵ When they speak of its age, not only do they put its creation,  as well as those of the heavens, at the beginning, that is, before the ages, which they cannot or will not number; but they are also careful to place before the breaking up of chaos and the creation of man, the creation of the angels, of the archangels, of the principalities, and of the powers; their trial; the fall of some, and their ruin; the perseverance of others, and their glory. When they speak afterward of the origin of our continents, and of the later creation of the plants, of “animals, and of men, they give then to this new world, and to our proud race, an age so young, that the men of every period and nation, and even our modern schools, have foolishly revolted from it; but an age to which they-have had to consent, since the labors of De Luc, of Cuvier, and of Buckland, have so fully demonstrated-that the surface of the globe, as well as the monuments of history, and those of science, were about to command for it the assent of the learned as well as the vulgar. When they speak of the heavens, they employ, to designate and to define them, the most philosophic and the most elegant expression; an expression which the Greeks, in the Septuagint, the Latins, in the Vulgate, and all the Christian Fathers, in their discourses, have pretended to improve, and which they have distorted, because it seemed to them opposed to the science of their day. The heavens, in the Bible, are the expanse; ⁵⁶(דקיץ)  they are the vacant space, or ether, or immensity, and not the firmamentum of St. Jerome; nor. the στερέωμα of the Alexandrian interpreters; nor the eighth heaven, firm, solid crystalline, and incorruptible, of Aristotle and of all the ancients. And although the Hebrew term, so remarkable, recurs seventeen times in the Old Testament, and the Seventy have rendered it seventeen times by στερέωμα, (firmament,) never have the Scriptures in the New Testament, used this expression of the Greek interpreters in this sense.⁵⁷ When they speak of the light, they present it to us as an element independent of the sun, and as anterior, by three epochs, to the period in which that great luminary was formed.⁵⁸ When they speak of the creation of the plants, they make them vegetate, grow, and bear seed, before the appearing of the sun, and under conditions of light, moisture, and heat quite different from those by which the vegetables of our day are nourished;⁵⁹ and it is thus that they reveal to us, for many ’ thousands of years, an order of things which the fossil botany of our day has just declared incontestable, and of which the necessity is attested by the gigantic forms of vegetables recently discovered in Canada and in Baffin’s Bay—some, as Mr. Marcel de Serres,⁶⁰ resorting, to explain it, to a terrestrial magnetism at that time more intense, or to aurore boreales more luminous; the others, as M. de Candolle,⁶¹ to a great inclination of the ecliptic (although in reality, according to the famous theorem of La Grange, the Mécanique Céleste confines this variation of the planetary orbits within very narrow limits).⁶² When they speak of the air, the gravity of which was unknown before Galileo; they tell us that at the creation, ‘ God gave to the air ITS WEIGHT (משקל), and to the waters their just measure.”⁶³ When they speak of our atmosphere and of the upper waters;⁶⁴ they give them an importance which modern science alone has justified;⁶⁵ since, from their calculations, the force annually employed by nature, for the formation of the clouds, is equivalent to an amount of labor which the entire human race could not accomplish in 200,000 years.⁶⁶ And when they separate the inferior from the superior waters, it is by an expanse, and not by a solid-sphere, as their translators would have it. When they speak of the mountains, they distinguish them as primary and secondary; they represent them as being born; they make them rise; they make them melt. like wax; they abase the valleys; in a word, they speak as a geological poet of our day would do. “The mountains were lifted up; O Lord, and the valleys were abased «in the place which thou hadst assigned them!”⁶⁷ When they speak of the human races, of every tribe, color and language, they give them one only and the same origin, although the philosophy of every age has so often revolted against this truth, and while that of the moderns finds itself compelled to acknowledge it.⁶⁸ When they speak of. the interior state of our globe; they declare two great facts long unknown to the learned, but rendered incontestable by recent discoveries; the one, relating to its solid crust, the other to the great waters which it covers. In speaking of its solid covering, they teach us that, while its surface gives us bread;. beneath, (תחתיה) it is on FIRE;⁶⁹ elsewhere, that it is reserved unto fire, and that it will be burned in the last times, with all the works which are found therein.⁷⁰ And when they speak of the waters that our globe contains, they refer to them as the only cause,-at least in this relation, of the immense inundations which have (according to the learned themselves) completely and for a

long time submerged it, at different periods. And while the learned tell us of the shallowness of the seas; while they assure us that an elevation of the land, only 656 feet, or less than twice the height of the tower of Strasburg would suffice to cause the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, St. George’s Channel and the British Channel to disappear; and that Mount Blanc, removed into the depth of the Pacific Ocean, would be sufficiently high, to appear there as an island; whilst La Place has thought we may infer from the elevation of the tides, that the mean depth of the ocean does not exceed 3280 feet, (the height of the Salene or Heckla); while they thus prove to us how insufficient the seas are for the immense inundations our globe has undergone—the Scriptures teach us, that “the earth is standing out of the water and in the water,”⁷¹ and that its solid crust covers A GREAT ABYSS (תהים וכה), whose waters broke out (נבקץי) with violent dashings,⁷² at the epoch of the deluge, as at that of the chaos and of the numberless ages which had preceded it.

When they speak of the deluge, they suppose an internal fire, which raising the temperature of the seas and of the deep waters, caused on the one side, an enormous evaporation and impetuous rains, as if the flood-gates of heaven were opened; and on the other, an irresistible dilation, which not only raised the waters from their depths, broke up the fountains of the GREAT ABYSS, and raised its powerful waves to the level of the highest mountains,⁷³ but which caused immense stratifications of calcareous carbonate, under the double action of a great heat and a pressure equivalent to 8000 atmospheres. When they would describe the state of our globe at the period preceding the breaking up of its chaos, they suppose an internal heat, and cover it entirely with waters in a state of liquidity.⁷⁴ When they tell us of the creation of the birds and of the fishes, they give them a common origin; and it is known that modern ‘naturalists have established between these two classes of animals, intimate relations, imperceptible to the eye, but revealed by anatomy, even in the microscopic form of the globules of their blood.⁷⁵ When they arrest the sun, that is to say, the rotation of the earth, in the days of Joshua, the son of Nun; the moon must also stay her progress in the same degree and for the same cause as the sun; a precaution, says Chaubard,⁷⁶ that an astronomy ignorant of our diurnal motion would never have imagined; since after all, the purpose of this miracle was but to prolong the day.⁷⁷ When they represent the Lord as coming like the lightning, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last day, they again bear testimony to the rotation of the earth, and to the existence of the antipodes; for at this solemn hour it will be, say they, day for one portion of ‘mankind, and at the same time night for another portion.⁷⁸ When they describe the past and future wealth of the land of Canaan,-to which a wonderful fertility of vegetation is promised for the latter times, they term it rich, not only in springs, but in subterraneous waters; and seem to “anticipate the excavations by which the moderns have learned to fertilize a sterile country.⁷⁹ When they speak of the languages of men, they give them a primitive unity that seems to contradict our first study of the different idioms of nations, but which a more profound examination confirms. When they describe the deliverance of Noah, they give to the ark dimensions which at first sight we pronounce too limited. Had we been charged with the narrative, we should have increased them a hundred fold; but a study of the subject has proved them sufficient. When they speak of the number of the stars, instead of supposing a thousand (1026) as does the catalogue of Hipparchus or of Ptolemy; while in the two united hemispheres the most practised eye can see but 5000; while the human eye, before the invention of the telescope, could perceive but 1000 in the clearest night;. the Scriptures. pronounce them INNUMERABLE; and’ like Herschel, they compare them to the sand of the sea; they tell us, that with his own hand and in infinite space, God has sown them like the dust; and that notwithstanding their number, “he calls them all by. their names.” When they speak of this immensity, listen with what learned and sublime wisdom they depict it; how prudent they are in their noble poetry, how philosophical in their sublimity; “the heavens declare the glory of God; the expanse showeth his handy-work; there is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.” When they speak of the. relation of the stars to this sublunary world; instead, like the ancients, of supposing them animated, instead of ever attributing to them an influence over human events, as did, for so long a time, the Christian people of Italy and of France, even to the period of the reformation; they are, say they, inert matter, brilliant, without doubt, but disposed and guided by a creating hand: the heavens, even the heaven of heavens move with the order, the entireness and the unity of an army advancing to battle. “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number; he calleth them all by names, by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power, not one faileth.” “Why sayest thou, oh Jacob, and speakest, oh Israel; my way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God?”⁸⁰ When they describe the heavens, they are careful to distinguish them; first, the heaven of—the birds, of the tempests, of the powers of the air, and of evil spirits; then the heaven of the stars; and lastly, the third heaven, even the heaven of heavens. But when they speak of the God of all that; how beautiful their. language, and at the same time, how tender! “The voice of his thunder is in the heavens,” say they, (Ps. lxxvii. 19,)—“but the heavens, even the heaven of heavens, cannot contain Him.” (1 Kings, viii. 27.) “To whom then, will ye liken Him? or what likeness will ye compare unto Him? He has set his glory above the heavens. Who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”⁸¹ But when they seem to have said enough of all these visible grandeurs; these are yet, say they, but the beginning of his ways; and how little a portion of Him is known! And lastly, when they seem to have told all the grandeurs of the Creator of all these immensities, listen yet again: ‘He counts the number of the stars, and calls them all by name; at the same time that He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.⁸² He puts your tears into his bottle; the sparrow falls not to the ground without his care; even the hairs of your head are numbered.⁸³ The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.⁸⁴ Oh, my God, how manifold are thy works; how excellent are they, but thou hast put thy mercy above all thy name. Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous. things. out of thy law.”⁸⁵ Again, in the midst of all these grandeurs—“Whence then cometh wisdom? And where is the place of understanding? The depth saith; it is not in me. God understandeth the way thereof and he* knoweth the place thereof; for he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth the whole heavens; to make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure.. When he made a decree for rain and a way for the lightning of the thunder, then did he see it and-declare it; he declared it; yea, and searched it out. And unto man he said; behold the fear. of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.”⁸⁶

Such then is the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures; thus then we see beams of light reflected from heaven, when we had thought to detect only error. If with-deferential touch you draw the obscure veil, with which they are sometimes covered for your sake, you will behold there a majestic light; for, like Moses, they descend from the sacred mount, and bring to you the tables of testimony in their hands! There, where you feared darkness, you have found light; there, where an objection has been started, God produces a fresh witness of the truth; where a doubt had existed, he puts an assurance.

So far as this seventh objection is concerned, we find difficulties converted into proofs of the inspiration of the sacred volume; and we see in the light of this and of many other facts, that every page gives evidence that the entire Bible is the word of God.

Let us listen to another and the last objection. %

Section VIII.—THE VERY ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF ST. PAUL.

We are sometimes told, that it would be superfluous to dispute the fact of the partial and interrupted inspiration of the Scriptures, since even the Apostle Paul has plainly decided the question. Has he not been ever careful to distinguish between those passages which he uttered by inspiration, and those advanced in his own name, as a Christian? Does he not, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, express very clearly, three several times, this distinction, in answer to different questions addressed to him on the subject of marriage?

And first, in the 25th verse of the 7th chapter, when he says; “Now concerning virgins, I have No COMMANDMENT OF THE LORD; yet I give my JUDGMENT, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.” Then in the 10th verse, where he writes; “unto the married I command, (YET NOT I, BUT THE LORD;) let not the wife depart from her husband, and let not the husband put away his wife.” And finally, in the 12th verse he adds; “but to the rest speak I, nor the Lord; if any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him; let him not put her away,” &c. It is then easily seen by these three sentences, that there are passages in the epistle of this apostle, that are of Paul, and other passages which are of God; that is to say, inspired passages, and passages uninspired.

The answer is obvious. When the objectionable passages are more closely examined, it will be found that they cannot be adduced as proof against the doctrine of a full inspiration.

Far from limiting the divinity of apostolic language, these verses, on the contrary, speak as only the fullest and most sovereign inspiration could authorize. St. Paul could speak thus, only by placing his. epistles, if I may so say, as St. Peter has done (2 Peter iii. 6,) ON THE LEVEL with THE OTHER sacred writings: nay, we must say; ABOVE THEM, (inasmuch as we there hear a more recent and binding expression of the will of our Lord.) Let us examine this point. What does the apostle of Jesus Christ seek in this chapter? He there treats of three cases of conscience; concerning one of them, God has commanded nothing and interdicted nothing. “So then he that giveth her in marriage, doth well. I speak this by PERMISSION, and not of commandment, but as an apostle I: give from the Lord, merely counsel; and he is careful to add in the fortieth verse; “I think also that I have the Spirit of the Lord.” The Lord would leave you free herein, says the apostle; he will place no snare in your path; and if you care not to follow the general advice that is. given to you, you violate no commandment, and commit no sin; only, “he that marrieth, doeth well; he that marrieth not, doeth better.”

In regard to the other case however, be careful; FOR HERE IS A COMMANDMENT OF THE LORD.—He has already made known his will (Matt. v. 31, 32; Mal. ii. 24,) and I have nothing new to declare unto you. But the Old Testament and Jesus Christ have spoken. It is nor therefore I, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, it is the Lord, who already has made known his will unto you. “And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord; let not the wife depart from her husband, and let not the husband put away his wife.” (v. 10, 11.)

For the third case, that of the brother who finds himself bound to an unbelieving wife; you had a commandment from the Lord in the Old Testament. I come to revoke it, and I think also that I have the spirit of the Lord. I abolish then the former commandment, and am charged to replace it by a contrary order. It is not the Lord (v. 12) who forbids you to put away an unbelieving wife; it is “I, Paul an Apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.”’.

We see then, with the clearness of noon-day:—the Apostle instead of appealing to the ancient word of the Lord, revokes it, to replace it by a contrary order; so that this passage, very far from weakening the inspiration, confirms it strongly; since it would have been nothing less than an outrageous blasphemy, if the Apostle had not felt, that in using this language, he was the mouth of God; and if he had dared to say by his own authority—It is not the Lord, it is I. I, myself tell you, and not the Lord: if any man have an unbelieving wife, let him not send her away.” The Lord had given a contrary commandment. (Deut. viii. 3; 1 Kings xi. 2.)

We must then acknowledge that these verses of St. Paul, far from authorizing the supposition of any mingling of human wisdom in the Scriptures of the New Testament; are there to attest that, in their epistles and in the most familiar details of their epistles, the Apostles were the mouth of God, and ranked themselves not only as successors of Moses and the ancient Prophets, but even above them as a second message from God must supersede that which was before it, and as the New Testament must surpass the Old, if not in excellence, at least in authority.

We have heard some oppose our doctrine yet again, by citing as an acknowledgment of the intermission and imperfection of his inspiration, those words of St. Paul; in which, after having related to the Corinthians his rapture to the third heaven, he adds: ‘“whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell, God knoweth.”⁸⁷ Can it be supposed, say they, that the Holy Spirit was ignorant how this miracle was accomplished? Such a passage must be from Paul, and not from God.

We answer that, although the Holy Spirit was ito ignorant of it, Paul was; and that the Holy Spirit chose that Paul should inform us of his own ignorance. Shall we forget that God has always employed the personality of the Sacred writers, in the Sacred Scriptures, to reveal himself to us; and it is thus that he has ever chosen to instruct his Church? When David speaking by the Spirit, cries in the Psalms, that he knows his transgressions, that his sin is continually before him,—and that he was conceived in sin; it is surely not the Holy Spirit who knows: his own transgressions, and whose sin is continually before him; but it is the Holy Spirit who for our sakes, has put the*language of repentance in the heart and-on the lips of his humiliated prophet. It is in a sense analogous to this, that he made St. Paul say: “whether it were in the body, I know not; God knows.”

We have not yet examined all these objections. Three now remain, which we would rather call evasions; because instead of resting as do the others, on some argument or facts; they are rather systems, by which a portion of the Scriptures i is withdrawn from the divine influence of Theopneusty. It remains for us to investigate them.

1) Lect. on Evid. of Christianity, p. 506,

2) Vorles. über die Dogmatik, Tom. i.

3) Essay on Insp. of Holy Scriptures.

4) Gal. i, 15. Eph. i. 4.

5) Jude, 14,

6) Jer. i. 5, 6, 7

7) Ex. iv. 10.

8) Gal. i. 15.

9) ὁ λαός ἅπας ὲξεκρὲματο.

10) Caveat omnia apocrypha; sciat multa his admixta vitiosa, et grandis esse prudentie. aurum in luto quærere. See. Epis. ad. Laetam. Prolog, Galeat. sive. præfat. ad lib. Regum.—Symbol. Ruffini, tom. ix., p. 186. See Lardner, vol. v. p. 18-22.

11) See Kortholt: de variis, 8. Scrip. editionibus, p. 110 to 251. Thomas James: Bellum papale, sive Concordia, discors Sexti V., Lond., 1600. Hamilton’s Introd. to reading Serip., p. 163 to 166.

12) The Talmud itself admits of the translation of the Scriptures, only in Greek (Talmud Megillah, fol. 86.)

13) Tome ii. p. 266.

14) Einleitung, 2 Th. 8. 700.

15) Wiseman, Discourse on the Relations, &c. vol. ii. disc. x.

16) See Chris. Obs. xii. p. 170.—Examin. of an Indian copy of the Pentat. p. 8.—Horne’s Introd. and Append. p. 95. Edit. 1818.

17) Examen variant. lectionum, J. Millii. Lond. 1710,

18) Read Michælis, tom. ii, p. 266. Eichhorn. aang 2 th. S. 700. Edit. Leips. 1824.

19) Archives du Christianisme, tome vii. No. 17.—Wiseman. Disc. on the Relations of Science, tome ii. p. 189.

20) Scholz has cited 674 for the Evangelists alone.

21) Comm. on Galatians (Bk. 11.)—Tit. (Bk. 1 on i. 1.) and Ephes.—Bk. 11. on 3. 1.)

22) That was his opinion some years ago. We do not know whether this professor, whose science and candor! in his translation of the New Testament we admire, may not have retracted such assertions.

23) That was the title of his book—‘He intends by it, the separation or division of the New Testament, into Word of God, or moral precepts, and Word of man, or facts of the sensible world,”

24) We have not thought it our duty to reply to such accusations. It would be to depart from our subject. The coming of the Lord is near to each one of us; from one instant to another, three ‘breaths separate us from it. When a man dies, he is immediately transported into the day of Jesus Christ. As to the distance of that day relatively to this world, judge from 1 Thess. ii. 2, if the Apostle Paul was mistaken.

25) Allusion is here made to the call of Strauss to the professorship of theology in the university by the magistrates; which was resisted by forty thousand of the people, and resisted success: fully.

26) 1 Cor, xi. 14.

27) A dog enraged against Christ.

28) Τόν καθ’ἡμων συσκευήν ὑπερβολῃ μισούς προβεβλῆμενὸν, says Eusebius, in. speaking of him. Euseb, Prepar, Evangel. lib. x. chap. ix., and Euseb. Hist. Eecl. vi. 19.

29) De autorit. Scrip.

30) In Dialogis.

31) Theol. elencht; tom. 1. p. 74.

32) On 1.Kings viii. 17.

33) Defence of Dr. Haffner’s Preface to Bible.

34) xii Lect, on Evid. of Christianity.

35) Vorlesungen über die Dogmatik. 1. 1. p. 421-429. Hamburg, 1829.

36) This difficulty is scarcely insisted on, any more. We can here only indicate its solution. Its exposition requires a development too extended for this volume. It may easily be found elsewhere.

37) Jud. Ant. xvii. 15, xviii. 3.

38) Others, in taking πρῶτη in the sense of προτέρα, as the πρῶτος μοῦ ἣν of John Baptist, (John i. 15, 30.), translate it thus: “this enrolment was made.” This translation would still be legitimate, although perhaps less natural, because the Greek would, in this sense, resemble less the ordinary style of St. Luke.

39) This objection lies rather against the French, than against our English version.—Trans.

40) 2 Sam. xxii. 12. “Ps. xvi. 12.

41) Rosenmuller here renders it by: nubes, quæ, etsi solutæ et laxæ, &c. (Schol. in v. t. in Job).

42) Jer. li. 9.

43) We adopt here the interpretation of the Chaldee paraphrase which attributes the sense of Mirror in this phrase, only to the fast word סןצק, and which translates דאי by appearance; “whose appearance is that of a molten mirror.”

44) See Whitby on Matt. v. 5.

45) For example, Matt. v. 13-39, All the chapter vi: and vii: 6-15.

46) In his Commentary on 2 Kings xiii. 17, and 1 Kings xv. 1.

47) See for greater detail, the authors we have cited, and especially the useful collection of Horne. (Introduction to the Study of the Scriptures.)

48) Eusebius Hist. Eclec. lib. 1. c. vii.

49) Upon the use of reason in matters of faith.—Theol. Essays of M. Chenevière, Pastor and Professor. tome 1, p. 456.

50) Of false wisdom, liv. iii. chap. 24.

51) Encycl. on Dict. rais. des Sciences, etc. tome 1, p. 663, (Lueques 1758).

52) Encye. on Dict. rais. des Sciences, &c. tome 1, p. 664.

53) Essais, liv. ii. ch. 12.

54) Isa. xl. 22. Job xxvi. 10. Prov. viii. 17,

55) Job xxvi. 7, κρεμαζῶν γῆν ἐπὶ οὐδένος, say the LXX,

56) Gen. i. 6. Ps. xix. 7.

57) They have used it once, to designate totally different from the heavens.

58) Gen. i. 4, 14.

59) Gen. i. 12.

60) Memoires de Marcel de Serres.

61) Biblioth. Universelle, Iviii. 1835.

62) The oscillations of the Ecliptic on both sides of its mean position, cannot be more than 1½°.

63) Job xxviii. 25.

64) Gen. i, 7.

65) See the calculations of Leslie.

66) Annuaire du bur. des longit, 1835, p. 196. Arago, in this. calculation, supposes that 800,000,000. form the population of the globe, and that only the half of this number are able to work.

67) Ps. xc. 2; xcvii, 5; civ. 6, 8, 9; cxliv. 5.—Prov. viii. 25.—Gen. ii: 14; vi. 4;—Zech. xiv. 4, 8;—Ezek. xlvii.

68) See Sumner: The Records of the Creation, vol. 1, p. 286; also Prof. Zimmerman; Geographical history of man. Wiseman’s 3d Discourse on the natural history of the human race, vol. 1, p. 419.

69) Job, xxviii. 5; literally: “beneath, it is overturned, and as on fire.”

70) 2 Peter, iii. 7-10.

71) 2 Peter, iii. 5.

72) Gen. vii. 2:

73) The water is dilated 1-23, in passing from the temperature of ice-melting to that of water-boiling. An elevation of from 16 to 17 degrees Rèaumur will then increase its volume 1-111. Now we find by an easy calculation, that the quantity of water necessary to submerge the earth to the height of 1-1000 of the radius of our globe is. equal to 1-333 of its entire volume, or 1-111 of its third. If then we suppose that the third of the terrestrial globe is metallic (at the mean specific gravity of 12 1-2); that the second third is solid (at the weight of 2 1-2); and that the remaining 1-3 is water; then, 1st, the mean specific gravity of the entire globe will be equal to 5 1-2 (agreeably to the conclusions of Maskeline and of Cavendish); and 2dly, it will have been sufficient for the submersion of the earth to the height of 6,368 metres, or 1546 metres above Mount Blanc; that the temperature of the-mass of the water in the days of the deluge should have risen to 16 degrees of Rèaumur. This was very nearly the hypothesis of Sir Henry Englefield.

74) Gen. i. 2.

75) Memoirs of Dr. J. L. Provost at Geneva.

76) Elements of Geology by Chaubard, vol. i. 8vo. Paris. The author there establishes by numerous arguments, the chronological coincidence of the miracle of Joshua with the deluges of Ogyges and of Deucalion. He remarks that these two inundations refer to the same epoch, last the same period of time, are accompanied by the same catastrophes, and produce currents in the sea from west to east.

77) Josh. x. 12.

78) Luke, xvii. 31, 34, Mat. xx. 3.

79) Deut. viii. 7. “A land of brooks of water, of fountains and deeps that spring out of valleys and hills; (תהמת) See also Isa. xxxvi. 6. Ez. xxxi. 4. Ps. lxxviii. 16.

80) Isaiah xl. 26, 27.

81) Isaiah xl. 18. Ps. viii. 1-10; cxiii. 6; cxxxix. 7.

82) Ps. cxlvii.

83) Ps. Ivi. 9. Matt. x. 29-30.

84) Deut. xxxiii. 26, 27.

85) Ps. xxxviii. 2; cxix. 18.

86) Job xxviii.

87) 2 Cor. xii. 4,