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Does the fact that elements of imperfect morality and narratives capable of misuse occur in the Bible, destroy its eternal value? Let me quote on this subject the excellent remarks of an American writer. 'It is,' he says, 'no argument against its greatness that men should misuse it as they have done so often, any more than it is a fair argument against the ingrain worth of good corn or wheat that so much of it should be turned into whisky. We have drawn from it the power to save men and to slay them, to establish peace and to mass artillery, to be Christians of the noblest type and bigots of the direst. It is the textbook alike of your iron-clad Calvinism and your sunny and most generous Universalism; the volume in which the Quaker finds food for his quietness, and your Millerite of all brands for his craze. It was the corner-stone of the great Puritan foundation which underlies our nation's life; it was also the book from which the Puritan drew his infernal power to hang the Quakers, whip and banish the Baptists, and to burn the witches; while the advocates of human slavery, in the times I easily remember, found proof in it to show that slavery was a divine institution, and men like Garrison that it was accursed of God and man. Always in the Bible we may find this power for good and evil, the inspiration of life unto life and of death unto death. The fine wheat of it even has been turned into a sour mash, and so distilled through the twisted worm of bigotry and intolerance that men have become drunk thereby and insane, and that things have been done in the name of God and the Holy Book which are the disgrace of God and the Holy Book.'

That the Bible has been fatally perverted by ignorance and self-interest no more condemns it than does the misuse of a nominal Christianity condemn the perfectness of the

Gospel. 'Lies have been propagated in its name; swarms of vile creatures have made it an inexhaustible prey, and have heaped upon its head abuses scandalous and loathsome. It has had to contend with the desolation of barbarism, the selfish pretences of kings and priests, and the stupefied spirits of a downtrodden populace; but it has lived through all. It has suffered that which would have been tenfold death to aught less Divine; and it has even given life and beneficent power to institutions in themselves deadly.'1

It would be as senseless to condemn Christianity as to condemn the Bible for the gross perversions to which they have alike been subjected.

It will be observed that 'Biblical difficulties' arise all but exclusively from incidental passages in the Old Testament. From the days of St. Peter downwards men have racked and tortured Scripture-stretched and twisted it as it were with a windlass (oтpeßlovoi, 2 Pet. iii. 16) to their own destruction. Hence the misuse of its isolated texts to sanction the deadliest crimes against the sacred rights of mankind, and to block up with anathemas, and shouts of 'infidel' or 'heretic,' the path of advancing knowledge. But we may lay down the two rules: (1) that there can be no deadlier desecration and perversion of the true purpose and meaning of the Bible than when it is used to justify slavery, or religious persecution, or intolerant bigotry, or any form of false religion and false morality; (2) that it is always rightly used when its teachings are applied to make men more noble and more happy. There is surely a most luminous principle enshrined in the words of St. John: "The Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ!'

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'No doubt,' says Bishop Westcott,' 'we have often used the Scriptures for purposes for which they were not designed. We have treated them too often as the one mechanical utterance of the Spirit, and not as writings through which the Spirit Himself still speaks. There is an immeasurable difference between making the Bible a storehouse of formal premises from which doctrinal systems can be infallibly constructed, and making it, in its whole fulness, the final test of necessary truth.'

1 The Revelation of the Father, p. vii.

CHAPTER VII

'VERBAL DICTATION' AN UNTRUE AND UNSPIRITUAL

HYPOTHESIS.

'He that takes away Reason to make way for Revelation, puts out the light of both.'-JOHN Locke.

WHAT has been already said should decisively prove that the theory of a 'verbal dictation' of the Bible by God flies in the face of the most obvious phenomena which meet us when we open the sacred page. Each separate writer shows that he is human and a man of like nature' with ourselves.1 Each several writer has his own style, his own phrases, his own methods. One is fervent and impassioned, another is prosaic and cold. One writes in swift arrowy sentences, another in flowing rhetorical periods. One is annalistic, another diffuse. Take the Prophets. The language, the imagery, the form, the structure are different in each prophetic book. The character and temperament of the Prophets are stamped upon their writings, and they are seen to be men of essentially different types.2 Godet imaginatively compares Isaiah to a majestic and overshadowing oak; Jeremiah to a weeping-willow in a de1 Acts xiv. 15; Jas. v. 17.

2 Jerome criticises the 'rusticitas' of some of the Prophets (Prooem. in Es., Id. in Jer.). He also (ad Galat. iii. 1) speaks of the 'solecisms' of St. Paul.

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serted fortress; Ezekiel to an aromatic shrub; Daniel to a solitary tree in the midst of a mighty plain. Or take the Psalms, in which, as Calvin says, 'the Prophets themselves hold converse with God' and lay bare their inmost feelings and infirmities. 'In many passages,' he says, 'we may see the servants of God so tossed to and fro in their prayers that, almost crushed at times, they only win the palm after arduous efforts. On the one side the weakness of the flesh betrays itself: on the other the power of faith exerts itself.' In the face of such phenomena, does not the 'verbal dictation' theory become absurd, and almost repellent? Did the Divine voice of the Eternal simulate human individuality and human imperfections? Of the Bible we are forced to see that 'its text is not infallible; its grammar is not infallible; its science is not infallible; and there is a grave question whether its history is altogether infallible.'1

It might seem incredible that, in the nineteenth century, any could still profess a theory so crude and so unscriptural. It is in opposition to all the evidence of facts which show that it was God's will to reveal Himself in the Old Testament not immediately and completely, but mediately, indirectly, progressively, partially, as we could alone receive the manifestation of His will.2

Direct supernatural dictation was, however, the asserted doctrine of some of the later Reformers, and it continued to be held for many years.

It is distinctly stated in the 'Helvetic Confession,' drawn up in 1675. "The Hebrew text,' says this document, 'both as regards consonants and as regards vowels-whether the vowel points themselves, or, at least, the significance of the

1 Sanday, Oracles of God, 36.

2 Compare Ezek. xx. 19, xxxiii. 18-23; 1 Cor. iii. 2.