OF THE USE OF SACRED CRITICISM, IN ITS RELATIONS TO THEOPNEUSTY.

WE would be understood. Far from us be the thought of casting the least disparagement on the labors of this useful science! We honor them, on the contrary; we call them necessary; we study them; we consider all the ministers of the gospel bound to know them, and we believe that the Christian church owes them the highest gratitude. Sacred criticism is a noble science. It is so by its object: to study the history of the sacred text, its canons, its manuscripts, its versions, its witnesses and its innumerable quoters;—it is so by its services: how many triumphs gained over infidelity, how many objections put to silence, how many miserable doubts for ever dissipated!—it is so by its history: how many eminent men have consecrated to it either the devotion of a pious life, or the powers of the finest genius! it is so, finally, by its immense labors which no one perhaps can estimate, if he has not studied it.

God preserve us then from ever opposing faith to science; faith, which lives upon the truth, to science which seeks it; faith, which goes directly to the hand of God to seize it, to science which seeks it more indirectly elsewhere, and which often finds it! Every thing that is true in one place, is in preestablished harmony with that which is true in another and higher place. Faith knows then at once, and before having seen any thing, that every truth will render it testimony. If then, every true science, whatever, is always the friend of faith, sacred criticism is more than its friend; it is almost its relative. But if it is honorable, useful, necessary, it is all that, only so long as it remains true and keeps its place. So far as it does not abandon the sphere assigned it, it is worthy of our respect; but as soon as it does wander, it must be restrained; it is then no more a science, it is a crazy divination. Now, as it has three temptations to quit this sphere, we therefore desire to recommend here three precautions to the young men who study it.

Section I.—SACRED CRITICISM IS A SCHOLAR, AND NOT A JUDGE.

In the first place, critical science is no longer in its own place, when, instead of being a scholar, it wishes to be a judge; when, in place of collecting the divine oracles, it composes them, decomposes them, canonizes them, uncanonizes them; and when it makes itself oracular! Then it tends to nothing less than to overthrow faith from its foundation.. This we are going to show.

Employ your reason, your time and all the resources of your genius to assure yourself if the book which is put in-to your hands, under the name of the Bible, contains in fact the very oracles of God, whose first deposite was confided, under the divine providence, to the Jews¹, and of which the second deposite, under the same guardianship, was remitted to the universal church from the apostolic times. Assure yourselves then, whether this book is authentic, and whether the copyists have not altered it. All this labor is legitimate, rational, honorable; it has been abundantly done by others before you; but if the investigations of others have not satisfied you, resume them, peruse them, instruct us; and all the churches of God will thank you for it. But after all this labor, but when you have well established that the Bible is an authentic book, but when science and reason have clearly showed you that the unquestionable seals of the Almighty God are attached to it, and that He has there placed his divine signature, then hear what science and reason loudly proclaim to us; then, sons of men, hear God; then, surstùm oculi, flexi poplites, sursùm corda! then, bow the knee! lift the heart on high, in reverence, and in humiliation! Then science and reason have no longer to judge, but to receive; no longer to pronounce sentence, but to comprehend. It is still a task, and it is a science, if you please; but it is no more the same; it is the science of comprehending and of submitting.

But if, on the contrary, after receiving the Bible as an authentic book, your wisdom pretends to constitute itself the judge of its contents; if, from this bonk, which calls itself inspired, and which declares that it will judge you yourself at the last day, it dares to retrench any thing; if, sitting, as the angels in the last judgment,² to draw up the book of God on the banks of science, to gather the good into its vessels, and to cast away the bad, it pretends there to distinguish the thought of God from that of man; if, for example, to cite only one case of a thousand, it dares to deny, with Michaëlis, that the two first chapters of Saint Matthew are from God, because it does not approve their Scriptural quotations; then, to deny the inspiration of Mark, and that of Luke, because it has found them, it says, contradictory to St. Matthew;³ in a word, if it thinks it can submit the book, recognized as authentic, to the outrageous control of its ignorance and of its carnal sense; then, we must reprove it; it is in revolt, it judges God. Then, it is an enormity, reproved as much by reason as by faith. It is no longer science, it is enchantment; it is no more progress, it is obscuration.

Let us compare to the wretched labors of theologians upon the word of God, the more reasonable course pursued by the naturalists in their studies upon his works. Here, at least, we claim in advance as an axiom, that all the objects of creation have ends full of wisdom and harmony. Here, science applies itself, not to contesting these ends, this wisdom, these harmonies; but to discover them. Here, what is called progress in science, is not the temerity of controlling the works of God; it-is the happiness of having investigated them, of having better recognised their wonders, of having been able to propose them under some new aspects to the admiration of the world, and of having thus found new inducements again to cry:

What grandeur infinite!
What divine harmony
Results from their accordance!

Why then should not Christians treat the works of God in redemption, as naturalists do the works of God in creation? why, if, among the pagans themselves, a physician,  the great Galen, could say: “that in describing the different parts of the human body, he was composing a hymn in honor of the Creator of the body,” why should not the Christian comprehend, that to describe with truth, the different parts of the word of God, would be always “to compose a hymn in honor of ah who had made it?” Thus thought the apostolic Fathers; thus, for example, the pious Irenæus, disciple of Polycarp, the pupil of St. John: “The Scriptures,” said he, “are perfect. In the Scriptures let God ever teach; and let man ever learn! it is thus that from the bosom of the polyphony of their instructions, an admirable symphony is heard in us all, praising in hymns the God who made all things.”⁴

If some one should come to tell us that there exists a very studious nation, among whom the science of nature, taking a new direction, has commenced immense labors, for the purpose of showing that there are mistakes in creation; plants badly constructed, animals badly contrived, organs badly adapted; . . . what would you think of this people and of its great labors? Would you believe that science was advancing there? would you not rather say that they were obscuring it, degrading it, and that they were there wearying themselves, learnedly to discover the art of being ignorant. Inexplicable as the anatomists have found the use of the liver in the human body, or of the antennæ in that of the insects, they have not therefore blamed nature; they have accused only their own ignorance in regard to it; and they have waited. Why then; when you do not yet discover the use of a word in the—Scriptures, would you blame any other than yourself, and—why do you not wait?

This thought is not new; a pious man expressed it, better than we, sixteen hundred years ago, and preached it with unction to the men of his time. We have found ourselves happy, whilst we were writing it, to meet it in » Origen, (it is in the thirty-ninth of his homilies), “If ever—says he, in reading the Scriptures,⁵ thou happenest to strike against a thought which becomes to thee a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence, accuse only thyself (ἀιτίῶ σεαυτόν); do not doubt that this stumbling-stone and this rock of-offence has a great meaning (ἔχειν νοήματα), and is to accomplish this promise: ‘he that believeth in me, shall not be confounded.’ Commence then by believing, and quickly thou shalt find, in this imaginary stumbling-block, an abundant and holy utility.⁶ If we are commanded not to speak idle words, because we must give account of them at the last day, how much more should we think in regard to the prophets of God, that every word proceeding from their mouth, had its work to do and its use!⁷ I believe then that for those who know how to use the excellence of Scripture, each one of the letters written in the oracles of God, has its end and its work (εργαζεται) , even to an iota, or tittle . . . and as among plants, there is not one without its virtue; and as at the same time it pertains only to those who have acquired the science of botany, to be able to tell us how each one ought to be applied and prepared, in order to become useful; so also, whoever is a holy and spiritual botanist of the word of God (τίς βοτανικός ἔστιν ὁ ἁγίος καί πνευματικός,) he, collecting each iota and each element, shall find the virtue of this word, and shall recognise that nothing in that which was written, is superfluous (ότι οὐδέν παρέλκει). Will you have another comparison? Each member of our body has its-function, for which it has been placed in its position by the great Architect. Yet it does not pertain to every one to know their uses and their powers, but only to those physicians who have studied anatomy . . . I consider then he Scriptures as ‘the collection of the plants of the word,’ or as ‘the perfect body of the word.ʼ But if you are neither a botanist of the Scriptures, nor an anatomist of the prophetic words, do not imagine there is in them any thing: superfluous; and when you cannot find the reason for what is written, do not blame the holy letters; blame not them, but yourself alone for it.”⁸ Thus spake Origen; but we could find similar thoughts in the other Fathers, and particularly in Bishop Irenaeus, nearer yet to the apostolic times.⁹

At the same time we must again remark, this pretension to judge the word of. God, overthrows all the foundations of faith. It would indeed render faith impossible in the hearts of all those who have the least degree of consistency. This is but too easily proved.

That a soul may receive life, it must receive faith; that it may have faith, it must believe God; that it may believe God, it must begin by renouncing the prejudices of its own wisdom concerning sin, the future, judgment, grace, itself, the world, God, every thing. Has he not written; that ‘the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.”¹⁰ The gospel then will shock either his reason or his conscience, or both. And yet he must submit to it upon the testimony of God alone; and it is only after having thus received it, that he will recognize it as being “the wisdom of God and the power of God to every one that believeth.” You see that we must believe without seeing; that is to say, that the gospel, before it has been comprehended, must confound our own wisdom, abase our pride, and condemn our self-righteousness. How then could you ever make it acceptable to men who might be so unfortunate as to imitate you, and who would, as you, wait to have every thing approved, in order to receive every thing? Imbued with your principles, they will impute to man every thing in the scriptures which shocks their carnal sense. They will believe that they must reject the apostle’s prejudice, concerning the consequences of Adam’s sin, the Trinity, expiation, eternal punishment, the resurrection of the body, the doctrine of demons, election, the gratuitous justification of the sinner by faith, perhaps also those concerning miracles. How then, if he has the misfortune of doing as you do, will a man ever find life, peace and joy, by means of faith? How could he, like Abraham, hope against hope? How could he, a miserable sinner, ever believe himself saved? He must pass his days in doctrines, vague, vaporous, uncertain; and his life, his peace, his love, his obedience must remain, even unto death, such as his doctrines! We conclude then with this first counsel: make the science. of criticism a scholar; do not make it a judge.

Section II—LET SACRED CRITICISM BE A HISTORIAN, AND NOT A CONJURER.

There is, in regard to the inspiration of the Scriptures, another precaution, no less important for us in employing this science.

The work of sacred criticism is to gather facts concerning the Scriptures; do not permit it to lead you into vain hypotheses.. It would thus do you much harm. It ought to be a historian; do not make it a prophet. When it divines, do not listen to it, turn the back upon it, for it would make you lose your time and more than your time. Now, the safeguard of the faithful, here, is again, the doctrine of inspiration, such as we have described it; I mean, the inspiration not of the men, but of the book.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God: thus the authentic book of the Scriptures declares to us, But what was passing in the understanding and conscience of the sacred writer? On that the Bible is silent, and that we shall never be required to know. The misunderstanding of this great principle has occasioned an immense loss both of time and of words. The Scriptures are inspired, whether the author had or had not the previous knowledge of that which God was about to cause him to write. Let any one then, have studied, in each book of the Bible, the peculiarities of its style, of its language, of its reasonings, and all the circumstances of its sacred writer; we could see nothing but good in these researches; they are useful, legitimate, respectful; and that is truly science. Let him there have sought, by these very characters, to fix their date; and determine the occasion of their being written; we should yet see only that which is instructive and proper in such a study. It may be useful, for example, to know that it was under Nero that Paul wrote to the Jews;¹¹ “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.” It may be well to know that St. Peter had been married more than twenty-three years, when St. Paul reminded the Corinthians,¹² that this apostle (the. first of the popes, as some call him,) was still leading his wife about with him in all his apostolical journeys, and that the other apostles, and that even St. James (reputed the first of the pillars of the church¹³), was doing the same thing. All this is still science. ‘We value highly, for the church of God, every ‘labor which makes her understand a passage better, yes,

were it only one passage,-one single word. of the holy Scriptures. But when you pass on to crude hypotheses; when you embrace a thousand conjectures concerning the sacred writers, to make their word depend on the hazard of their presumed circumstances, instead of regarding their circumstances as prepared and chosen of God for their instruction; when you subordinate the nature, the abundance or brevity of these instructions to the more or-less fortunate concurrence of their ignorance or of their recollections; this is to degrade inspiration, and to bring down the character of. the word of God; it is to lay deep the foundations of infidelity; it is to forget that “men of God spake as they were moved (φερομενοι) by the Holy Ghost, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth.”¹⁴

It has been asked; did the Evangelists read each other’s writings? And what is that to me, if they were all “moved. by the Holy Ghost;” and if, like the Thessalonians, I receive their book, “not as the word of man, but as it is, in truth, the word of God.” Let this question be proposed in its place, it may be entirely innocent; but it is so no longer when it is discussed as it has been, and when so much importance is attached to it. Can the solution of it throw light on one single passage of the sacred books, and establish its truths more firmly? We do not believe that it can.

When we hear it asked, (as Dr. Mill¹⁵ and Professor Hug¹⁶ do, and as Dr. Lardner¹⁷ and Professor Michaëlis¹⁸ do not ask;) whether St. John had read the Gospels of the other three; if St. Mark and St. Luke had read the Gospel of St. Matthew before writing their own; when we hear it asked, whether the Evangelists did anything more than transcribe, with discernment, the most important portions of oral traditions, (as Dr. Gieseler does;¹⁹) when we see great volumes written upon these questions, to attack or defend these systems, as if faith and even science were truly interested in it, and as it the answers were very important to the Christian Church; when we hear it affirmed that the first three Evangelists had consulted some original document now lost; Greek, according to some; Hebrew, according to others; (as John Le Clerc at first dreamed, and as Kopp, Michaëlis, Lessing, Niemeger, Eichhorn, and others,²⁰ have imagined sixty years after him;) when we see men plunging still farther into this romantic field; when we see them reaching the complicated drama of the Bishop of Landaff,²¹ with his first Hebrew historical document, his second Hebrew dogmatic document, his third Greek document, (a translation of the first); then his documents of the second class, formed by the translation of Luke, and Mark, and Matthew, which finally reduces the sources to seven, without counting three others, peculiar to St. Luke and St. Mark; or even, again, when we see Mr. Veysie,²² in England, and Dr. Gieseler, in Germany, deriving either the first three Gospels, or the four Gospels, from apocryphal histories previously circulated among the Christian churches; when we see the first of these Doctors determining, that Mark has copied them with a more literal exactness than Luke, on account, they say, of his ignorance of the Greek; while Matthew’s Gospel, written at first in Hebrew, must, doubtless, have been translated afterward into Greek, by a person who modified it, to make it correspond with Mark and Luke, and, finally, gave it to us as we have it; when we see these systems exhibited, not in a few phrases, in the indulgence of a light curiosity, but so many and such great volumes written upon them, as if they involved the interests of the kingdom of God, oh! we must say it, we feel, in the view of all such science, a sentiment profoundly painful. But, after all, is that science? Is judicial astrology a science? No; and these men are no longer philosophers: they have abandoned facts; they prophesy the history of the past; they are, alas! the astrologers of theology.-It is believed, in astronomy, that a book of observations upon the feeblest satellite discovered near Uranus, or upon the discovery of a second parallax found accompanying some star, or upon a simple spot on the moon, is a precious acquisition to science; whereas, all the writings of Count Boulainvilliers, and three hundred volumes upon. the barbaric sphere, upon the influences, the aspects, or the horoscopes of the seven planetary bodies, can be for it, only folly and a vain encumbrance. Thus we shall esteem very highly, in the studies of sacred criticism, everything which can throw any additional light upon the least passage of the Scriptures; but what good can these crude hypotheses ever effect? They turn you from the luminous roads of science as well as of faith; the mind, in pursuing them, is wearied in the chase of vanity! Vain and boisterous labor of vaporous conjectures borne upon the clouds! No good can come of these wretched studies, which teach us to doubt, where God teaches us to believe! ‘* Who is he, saith the Lord, that darkeneth the counsels of the Most High, by words without knowledge?”

In fact, would to God that there were nothing more in these studies than vain phantasies and an enormous loss of time! But it is worse than the dissipation of time: faith js engulfed in them; the mental eye is fascinated by them, and they turn away our studious youth from hearing the first and great author of the Scriptures. It is evident that these idle researches can proceed only from a want of faith in the inspiration of the Scriptures. Admit inspiration for a moment; admit that Jesus Christ has given his apostles the πῶς καί τι, the what and the how of that which they were to write; admit that God has made his apostles recount the life of Jesus Christ, ‘as he has made them describe his session at’ the right hand of God; and immediately you will perceive that all these hypotheses are reduced to nothing. Not only do they teach you nothing, and can teach you nothing; but they change the very excrcise of your faith; they sap by degrees the doctrine of inspiration; they indirectly enfeeble the testimony of God, its certainty, its perfection; they turn your pious thoughts from their true direction, they mislead our youth who were seeking the living waters at the well of the Scriptures, and leave them thirsting in the sandy deserts, far from the fountains that spring up to life eternal. What do they find there after all? Broken cisterns, clouds without water; or at least perhaps, those fantastic streams which the sun of vain glory will paint for a few days, like a deceitful mirage in the deserts of this world.

What should we think of a theologian who should pre, tend that he was going to seek in the instructions of Joseph the carpenter, or in the lessons of the schools of Nazareth, the origin of the discourses of Jesus Christ, of his doctrines and of his parables? Idle and pernicious, you would exclaim.—But, the same must be said of all those conjuring systems which wish to account to us for the construction of the Scriptures, without supernatural aid. Idle and pernicious; say we,—admit inspiration, and all this labor vanishes as a foolish fantasy. The Scriptures are the word of God; they are dictated by him; and we know that “prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”²³ The history of the nephew of St. Paul warning his uncle in the prison of Antonias, is inspired of God, although Luke may have heard it twenty times from the mouth of the apostle, before having received it from that of the Holy Spirit; this history is as fully inspired as that of the invisible angel, who was sent from God to smite the king of the Jews upon his throne, in the city of Caesarea. The history of the striped and spotted sheep of Jacob is as much dictated by God, as the history of the creation of the heavens and of the earth. The history of the fall of Ananias and of Sapphira is as inspired as that of Satan and his angels.

Yes; without doubt, the apostles consulted one common document; but this document, as bishop Gleig has well expressed it,²⁴ “is no other than the very preaching and life of our divine Savior.” Behold their prototype.

When therefore you hear it asked, from what documents Matthew could have drawn his history of the birth of Jesus Christ, Luke that of his first years, Paul that of the apparition of the Savior to James, or the words of the Savior upon the blessedness of giving, Hosea the tears of Jacob, and Jude the prophecy of Enoch, or the contention of Michael for the body of Moses, answer: they have drawn them from the same source whence Moses learned the creation of the heavens and the earth. “The Holy Spirit,” says the illustrious Claude, “has employed the pen of the evangelist and apostles, of Moses and the prophets; he has furnished the occasions of writing; he has given these both the will and the power to do so; the matter, the order, the arrangement, the expressions are by his immediate inspiration, and by his direction.”

We have just said that a sound doctrine of inspiration would shelter our studious. youth from the excessive aberrations of modern criticism, at the same time that they would draw from this noble science, all the benefits that it can impart. The first of these errors, we have already said, is to pretend to judge the Scriptures, after having received the collection as authentic. The second is, to surrender ourselves to dangerous speculations concerning the sacred books. But a third reflection still remains to be made on the relation of science to the great question which occupies us.

Section III.—SACRED CRITICISM IS NOT THE GOD, BUT THE DOOR-KEEPER OF THE TEMPLE.

This reflection presents itself at once under the form of advice and of argument; we shall indulge in the advice, only as it leads to the argument; for we do not forget that our task, in this book, is to establish Divine inspiration, and not to preach it.

First; the counsel.

Science is a door-keeper, who conducts you to the temple of the Scriptures; never forget then, that she is not their God, and that her dwelling-house is not the temple. In other terms, beware, in studying sacred criticism, of resting there ever in reference to science; it will leave you in the street, whereas you must enter.

Now the argument. If you really enter into the temple of the Scriptures, then will you not only find written there with the hand of God, upon all the walls, that God fills it, and that he is universally there; but you will also find the proof of it in your own experience; you will then see it in every part; you will then feel it throughout. In other words; when we read the oracles of God with care, we find there, not only frequent declarations of their entire theopneusty, but we also receive in our understanding and in our heart, by unexpected flashes, often from a single verse, or by the power of a single word, a profound conviction of the divinity pre is imprinted on every part of them.

As to the counsel, it must not be imagined that we have given it for the purpose of discrediting the investigations of science; we offer it, on the contrary, for their advancement and perfection. In fact, it too often happens, that the prolonged study of the externals of the sacred book, of its history, of its manuscripts, of its versions, of its language, so absorbs the attention of those who yield themselves to it, that they become inattentive to its most intimate characteristics, to its sense, to-its design, to the moral power which it developes, to. the beauties revealed in it, to the life diffused through it. And as there existed at the time, necessary relations between these characteristics and the exterior forms, two great evils result from these studies, to him who pursues them.

As man, he stifles his spiritual life, and compromises his eternal life by them. But it is not of this evil that we speak in these pages. Asa scholar, he compromises his science, and renders himself incapable of a sound appreciation of the very objects of that science, by these studies. It remains incoherent, lame, and consequently straitened and groveling. Can he know the temple? He has seen but its stones; he knows nothing of the Shecinah! Can he then comprehend the types? He does not conceive of their antetype; he has seen nothing but altars, sheep, knives, utensils, blood, fire, incense, costumes and ceremonies; he has not seen the redemption of the world; the future, the heaven, the glory of Jesus Christ! And in this condition, he has not been able to seize even the relations which these external objects bear to one another; because he has not understood their harmony with the whole.

A learned man without faith, in the days of Noah, who might have studied the structure of the ark, would not only have perished in the deluge, but he would also have remained in ignorance of a great portion of the very objects which he pretended to understand.

Imagine a Roman traveler in the days of Pompey the Great, attempting to describe Jerusalem and the temple. Having arrived in the city on the Sabbath, he goes directly to the holy place with his guide; he walks around it; he admires its enormous stones; he measures its porticoes; makes inquiries about its antiquity, its architects; he passes its gigantic gates, opened every day at sunrise, and shut at mid-day by two. hundred men; he sees the Levites and the singers in thousands, proceeding to the temple in order, arrayed in their linen garments. In the interior, the sons of Aaron clothed in their sacred robes, are performing their rites; while the psalms of the royal prophet resound under the vaulted ceiling, and thousands of singers, accompanied by instruments, respond to each other in their sublime antiphonies; whilst the law is read, the word is preached, and the souls who wait for the consolation of Israel, soar with delight to the invisible grandeurs, and thrill at the thought of that God, with whom is abundant redemption; whilst the aged Simeons lift their thoughts to that glorious salvation constantly longed for; whilst more than one publican is smiting his breast, and returning to his house justified; whilst more than one young heart is consecrating itself to God, like Nathanael; and whilst more than one poor widow, under the impulse of holy zeal, is casting her two mites into the treasury of God; whilst so many prayers, invisible but ardent, are mounting towards heaven, . . . . what is this traveler doing?—he is counting the columns, admiring the pavements, measuring the courts, examining the assembly, drawing the altar of incense, the candlestick, the table of shew-bread, the golden censer; he then goes out, mounts to the battlements of the fortress, descends to—the Xystus or to the Cedron, traverses the walls, all the while, counting his steps, returns to his hotel, to digest his observations and prepare his book. He may boast, indeed, of having seen the people, the worship and the temple of the Hebrews; he will publish his volume; and his numerous readers will open it for information; and yet even in relation to the very information he wished to impart, how many false judgments will he have made; how many errors will those who are worshipping in the temple, be able to detect in it!

Listen then to our counsel, in regard to the interests of your own science merely. On account of the indispensable relations which exist between the eternal ends of the word of God and its external forms, you cannot form a solid judgment of the latter, without taking cognizance of the former.

If you desired to learn the character of a physician, you would do well to inform yourself of his country, of his studies, of the universities which he has attended, and of his certificates. of recommendation; but, if on the first visit, he should at once tell you all your complaints; if he should awaken impressions and a sense of miseries, until then vaguely felt, but whose secret reality you should recognise, the moment he defined them; and if, above all, he should finally make you take the only remedy which ever could have relieved you; oh! then would not such an experience tell you much more about him, than his diploma?

This then, is the counsel which we venture to give, to all those of our readers who have paid any attention to sacred criticism. Read the Bible, study the Bible in itself and for itself; ask it, if you please, where it took its degrees, and in what school its writers studied; but come to its consultations, like a patient longing to be healed; bestow as much care upon acquiring the experience of its words as you have given to the study of its diplomas, of its language and of its history; then you shall be not only healed (which does not concern our present investigation), but you shall be enlightened. ‘He that healed me, the same said unto me, take up thy bed and walk. Whether he be a sinner, I know not; only one thing I know; that whereas I was blind, I now see.”

The author would here relate, what a thirst he had for apologetic writings, during the early stages of his studies; how Abbadie, Leslie, Huet, Turretin, Grotius, Littleton, Jennings, Reinhardt and Chalmers, were his habitual reading; and how, harassed by a thousand doubts, he found no relief, no conviction nor satisfaction in any thing but the Bible itself. It bears witness to itself, not only by its assertions, but by its effects; as the light, as the heat, as life, as health; for it carries in its beams, health, life, heat, light. You might prove to me, by sound calculations, that at this moment the sun should be upon the horizon; but what need have I of your proofs, when my eye beholds it, and its rays are bathing and quickening me?

Read the Bible then; complete your science, arrange it. It shall convince you; it shall tell you whether the Bible comes from God. And when you shall have heard it in a voice which casts down with power, or which lifts up with tenderness, a voice sometimes more powerful than the sound of mighty waters, sometimes sweet and gentle, as that which Elijah heard whispering; ‘the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, slow to anger, the God of consolation the God forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin.” Oh then, we venture to predict, you will feel that the single perusal of a psalm, of a narrative, of a precept, of a verse, of a word in a verse, will instantly prove to you more powerfully the divine inspiration of all the Scriptures, than all the most eloquent and most solid reasonings of learned men or of books have before done. Then you shall see, you shall hear, you shall feel that God is there in every part; then you will not ask it any more, whether it is all inspired; for you will feel it to be the powerful and efficacious discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, and the joints and the marrow; bringing up your tears from a deep and unknown fountain, casting you down with a resistless power, and raising you with a tenderness and with sympathies which are found only in God.

Thus far we have only given you advice; but we mean to show you in what respect these considerations can at the same time be presented, if not as a proof, at least as a powerful presumption in favor of a verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. We shall show our readers a three-fold experience in them, which, at all times, has carried profound conviction to other Christians, whose testimony ought at least to appear to them worthy of the most sincere consideration.

Certainly one of the strongest proofs of the divinity of the Scriptures, is this majesty which fills us with astonishment and respect; it is the imposing unity of this book, composed during fifteen hundred years by so many authors, some of whom wrote two centuries before the time of Hercules, of Jason and the Argonauts; others in the heroic times of Priam, of Achilles and Agamemnon; others in the days of Thales and Pythagoras; others in the age of Seneca, of Tacitus, of Plutarch, of Tiberius and Domitian; and who yet pursued one and the same plan, and advanced constantly, as if they themselves understood it, towards that one great end, the history of the world’s redemption by the Son of God. It is this vast harmony of all the Scriptures through so many ages; this Old Testament alike with the New, filled with Jesus Christ; this universal history which nothing can stop, which relates the revolutions of Empires even to the end of time, and which, when the pictures of the past are finished, continues them by those of the future, up to the moment when the empires of the world will have become the possession of Christ and his saints. On the first page, the earth created to receive the man who sins not; on the following pages, the earth accursed-to receive man who sins always; on the last page, the new heavens and the new earth to receive man who will sin no more: on the first page, the tree of life forbidden, paradise lost, sin entering the world by the first Adam, and death by sin; in the last page, paradise regained, life restored to the world by the second Adam, death vanquished, all mourning ended, the image of God reestablished in man, and the tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God. Surely there is in this majestic whole, which begins before the days of man, and which continues even to the end of time, a powerful and heavenly unity, an undeviating, universal and immense convergence, whose grandeur seizes the attention, surpasses all our human conceptions, and proclaims the. divinity of its author as irresistibly as can in a summer’s night, the aspect of the heaven’s brilliant stars, and the thought of all these worlds of light, which revolve night and day in the immensity of space. Μυρῑα φίλα καί σύμφωνα, says one of the Fathers of the Church.²⁵ But beside the beauties of this whole, which the Scriptures present, we have still something to contemplate no less glorious, which reveals to us also the action of God in their minutest points, and which attests to us their verbal inspiration.

Three orders of persons, or rather three orders of experiences, furnish us this testimony.

First, if you consult ministers who have devoted their whole lives to the meditation of the Scriptures, for the daily nourishment of the flock of Christ, they will tell you, that the more they have given themselves to this blessed study, and have applied themselves to look closely into the oracles of God; the more has their admiration for the letter of the Scriptures increased. Often surprised by unexpected beauties, they there recognise, even in the slightest expressions, divine foresight, profound relations, spiritual grandeur, which became manifest merely by a more exact translation or a more profound attention to the details of a single verse. They will tell you that the minister of God, who for a long time holds before the eyes of his mind, some text of Scripture, feels himself soon compelled to use the language of the naturalist studying with the microscope, a leaf of the forest, its texture, its nerves, its thousand pores and innumerable vessels. ‘‘He who made the forest, made also the leaf!” he exclaims. Yes, replies the other, and “he who made the Bible, made also the verses that compose it.” A second order of experiences, the testimony of which we here invoke, is that of the interpreters of the prophecies. They will unitedly tell you, with what evidence, when they have given time to this study, they recognize, that in these miraculous pages, it must needs be, that each verse, each word, without exception, even the particle apparently the most unimportant, has been given by God. ‘The slightest change in a verb, in an adverb, or in the simplest conjunction, might lead the interpreter into the most serious error. And it has often been remarked, that if the prophecies that are now fulfilled, were misapprehended before their fulfilment, it has proceeded in a great degree, from the fact that they have failed in attention to some of the details of their text. We might here cite many examples, by way of illustration.

But there is still a third order of persons who testify “more strongly, if possible, the full inspiration of the Scriptures, even of their smallest points. These are the Christians who have felt their power, first in the conversion of their souls, then in the various conflicts, afflictions and trials that have followed it. Go, seek in the biographies of these men who were great in the kingdom of God, the moment when they passed from death to life, by the knowlege of Jesus Christ; ask also in turn, the Christians around you who have themselves experienced this virtue of the word of God; they will give a unanimous testimony. They will tell you that when the sacred Scriptures, taking hold of their conscience, cast them down at the foot of the cross, there to reveal to them the love of God, to bathe them in the tears of gratitude and joy; what affected them thus, was not the whole of the Bible, nor was it a chapter; it was a verse; almost invariably, it was a word in this verse; yea, it was a word which penetrated like the sharp pointed sword wielded by the hand of God. They felt it to be living and efficacious, a discerner of the thoughts and affections of the heart, entering the very soul, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow. It was a virtue of God which concentrated itself in one single word, which made it become to them as “a fire and as a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces.” They will tell you that the more studious they have become of the holy word, the more also have they felt growing, by intimate and deep experience, their respect for its least important parts; because they have found it, as St. Paul says, “mighty through God, to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, bringing into captivity every thought, to the obedience of Christ.” They had read in the moment: of their need, a psalm or some words of the prophets, or some sentence of the epistles, or some narrative of the sacred history; and whilst they were reading, behold a word came to seize their conscience with a force unknown, drawing, irresistible. It was but a word; yet this word remained upon their soul, spoke to it, preached to it, sounded there as if all the bells of the city of God were ringing to call them to fasting, to bend the knee, to pray, to meet Jesus Christ, to hope, to rejoice. It was but a word, but this word was of God. It was in appearance, but one of the most delicate chords of this heaven-descended harp; but this chord was tuned in unison with the human heart; harmonies sounded forth, unexpected, delicious, omnipotent, which moved all their being, and was as the voice of many waters. They felt then, that that chord was attached to the very heart of God, and that its harmonies came from heaven. They had there recognised the appeal of Jesus Christ; and his word had been to them powerful as that single word, “Mary!” which astonished Mary Magdalene near the sepulchre.—Like her, they exclaimed, “Rabboni, my Master! It is then thy voice, oh my Savior; thou callest me; I recognise thee! Ah! behold me, Lord; I give myself to thee; speak, thy servant heareth thee.”

Such is then the voice of the Church; such & been in all ages the unanimous testimony of the saints; this inspiration which the Bible attributes to itself, we, they say, have recognised. We believe it, not only because it attests it, but also because we have seen it, and because we can ourselves render testimony of it-by a happy experience, and an irresistible sentiment.

We might adduce such examples by thousands. Let us content ourselves with naming here two of the noblest spirits that have influenced the destinies of the Church, and » served as guides to humanity. Let us remember how the two greatest luminaries of ancient and modern times were kindled; and how it was one single passage of the Scriptures which came, prepared of God, to shed upon their souls the light of the Holy Spirit. Luther, an Augustinian monk, was going to Rome; he was still sick upon his bed, at Bologna, in a strange country, bowed down under the weight of his sins, believing himself about to appear before God. It was then that the 17th verse of the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans “The, just shall live by faith,” came to enlighten all his being, as a ray from heaven. This single sentence had seized him twice with resistless power; first at Bologna, to fill him with strength and an inexpressible peace; then afterwards at Rome itself, to cast him down, and to lift him up, whilst with an idolatrous crowd, he was dragging his body on his knees, up the fabulous staircase of Pilate. This word commenced. the western reformation. “Transforming word for the Reformer and the Reformation;” exclaims my precious friend, Merle D’Aubigné. It was by it that God then said: “Let there be light, and there was light.” “Tn truth,” says the Reformer himself, “I felt myself as it were, entirely renewed; and this word was for me the very gate of paradise.” “Hic me prorsus renalum esse sensi, et apertis portis in ipsum Paradisum intrasse.”²⁶

Are we not here reminded again of the greatest of the doctors of Christian antiquity, that admirable Augustine, when in his garden near Milan, unhappy, without peace, feeling too, like Martin Luther, a storm in his soul, lying under a fig tree; “jactans voces miserabiles, et dimittens habenas lacrymis,” groaning and pouring out abundant tears, he heard from a young voice, singing and repeating in rapid succession: “Tolle, lege, Tolle, lege!” take and read, take and read. He went to Alypius to procure the roll of Paul’s Epistles which he had left: there; adripui, aperui, et legi in silentro; he seized it, he opened it, and he there read in silence the chapter on which his eyes first alighted. And when he came to the 13th verse of the 13th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, every thing was decided by a word. Jesus had conquered; and that grand career of the holiest of the Fathers there commenced. A word, a single word of God had kindled that glorious luminary which was to enlighten the church for ten centuries; and whose beams gladden her even to this present day. After thirty-one years of revolt, of combats, of falls, of misery; faith, life, eternal peace came to this erring soul; a new day, an eternal day arose upon it.

After these words, he desired no more; he closed the book; his doubts had fled. “Nec ultrá volui legere, nec cpus erat; for, with the end of this sentence, a stream of light and security was poured into his soul; and all the night of his doubts had vanished., Statim quippe cum fine hujusce sententiœ, quasi luce securttatis infusâ cordt meo, omnes dubitationis tenebrœ diffugerunt.”²⁷

Such is then the threefold testimony which we desired to produce, and by which the Church attests to us that there is a wisdom and a power of God diffused through the minutest parts of the Holy Word; and that all the scriptures are divinely inspired. At the same time, let it be understood, that we have not pretended, in this appeal, to impose the experience of one upon another. Proofs from feeling, we are aware, are proofs only to those who experience it. They have unquestionably, an irresistible force for those who, by experiencing its power, have had a living evidence of the divinity of the word of God; but nothing would be less logical than to give them as demonstrations to those who are strangers to them. If you had had these experiences, you would have been already more than convinced, and our argument might be spared. We have then presented them to you only as strong historical presumptions, hoping to dispose you by this means, to receive with more favor and with more prompt submission, the scriptural proofs which we are about to submit to you. An entire generation of educated and pious men, we tell you, attest to you for ages, and by a three-fold experience, that by a closer study of the word of God, they have been led to recognise on evidence, the inispiration of the Scriptures, even in their minutest parts. Let this be to you, at least a powerful recommendation to hear respectively and without prejudice, the testimonies of the Bible to its own nature. We are about to furnish these testimonies; but, in the mean time, we ask that this voice of the Church may be to you as that cry from a neighboring house: take and read, take and read. Go take your Bible, my brother; adripe, apert, lege in silentio; take, open, read in silence; and you yourself shall feel how far its inspiration extends, and you also shall say to yourself with Augustine, after so many combats and so many tears: no more doubt, for the morning star has arisen upon my heart!—and you will have no need to read any farther, in order to banish every doubt.

1) Romans iii. 1, 2.

2) Matthew xiii. 48.

3) Introduction to N. T. by Michaëlis, t. 2, p. 17; t. 1, p. 206., to 214.

4) "Sic, per dictionum multas voces, una consonans melodia in nobis sentietur, laudans hymnis Deum qui fecit omnia.” According to the Greek preserved by John Damascenus; διά τῆς των λέξεῶν πολυφωνίας, ἔν σῦμφωνον μέλος ἓν ήμιν ἁίσθησεται. (Adv. Hæreses, lib. ii. 2. 47.).

5) Origenes adamantius, Hom xxxix, in Jeremiah xliv. 22:

6) Πολλῆν ὤφελει αν ἄγιαν.

7) Ἑργατικυν ἓν·

8) And he adds: Τοῦτο μοι τὸ προοίμιον ἑῖρηται καθάλικῖως, χρὴσίμοι·ἑῖναι δυναμένου εἷς ὅλὴν τήν γρᾶφην, ἶνά προτράπωσιν οἱ θελοντες προσέχειν τὴ ἁναγνωσεεη, μηδὲν παραπέμπεσ θαι ἄναξετᾶστον καί ἀνεξερεύνητον γράμμα.

9) Irenaeus, Adv. Hæres, book ii, c. 47.

10) 1 Cor, ii. 14, i. 23.

11) Rom. xiii. 1.

12).1 Cor. ix. 5.

13) Gal. ii. 9.

14) 1, Corx. ii.. 13. 1 Pet. i. 21.

15) Millii Proleg. § 108. ’

16) Einleitung in die Schriften des N. Testam. Stutgart, 1821.

17) Vol. vi. pages 220, 250.

18) Introd. &c., tom. 1. p. 112, 129.

19) Historisch-Kritischer Versuch, &c. Minden, 1818.

20) Horne’s Introduction, vol. ii. p. 443. edit. 1818.

21) Bishop Marsh’s Michaëlis, vol. iii. part ii. p. 361.

22) Veysie’s Examination, p. 56.

23) 1 Peter i. 21.

24) Remarks on Michaëlis, Introd: to N. T. p. 32, and following:—Horne’s introd. ii. p. 458, ed. 1818,

25) “Myriads of objects in accord and perfect harmony.” Theophilus ad Autolyc. lib. i. c. 36. See also Justin Martyr, ad Græcos cohort. c. 8.

26) L. Opp. lat. in Præf.

27) Confessions, Book viii. ch. 12.