Miracles were at first believed, on low grounds, as violations of law by a God outside of the world. Now they are disbelieved on scientific grounds. They may possibly be believed again on grounds of philosophy and historic evidence, not as portents, not as violations of law, not as the basis of a logical argument, but as the natural effluence and outcome of a soul like that of Jesus, into which a supernatural influx of light and life had descended. They are not more wonderful than nature; they are not so wonderful as the change of heart by which a bad man becomes a good man. But they will find their proper place as evidence how plastic the lower laws are to the influence of a higher life.
Chapter V. Orthodox Idea Of The Inspiration And Authority Of The Bible.
§ 1. Subject of this Chapter. Three Views concerning the Bible.
The subject of this chapter is the Orthodox idea concerning the inspiration and authority of the Bible. We shall consider the conflict of opinion between those who believe in the full inspiration of every word of Scripture, and those who treat it like a common book, and endeavor to see how far we ought to believe a fact or a doctrine, because it is asserted, or seems to be asserted, by some writer in the Bible.
Such questions are certainly of great importance to us all at the present time, when opinions on these subjects are unsettled, and few people know exactly what to believe. Especially in regard to the Old Testament, not many persons have any distinct notions. They do not know what is its inspiration or its authority; they do not know whether they are to believe the account of the creation and of the deluge in the book of Genesis, in opposition to the geologists, or believe the geologists, in opposition to Genesis. Certainly it is desirable, if we can, to have some clear and distinct opinions on these points.
And, first, in regard to Inspiration: there are three main and leading views of the inspiration of the Bible. There cannot be a fourth. There may be modifications of these, but nothing essentially different. These three views are,—
(a.) Plenary Inspiration.—That is, that everything in the Bible is the word of God. All the canonical books are inspired by God, so as to make them infallible guides to faith and practice. Every word which really belongs to these books is God's truth, and to be received without question as truth, no matter how much it may seem opposed to reason, to the facts of nature, to common sense, and common morality.
This is the Orthodox theory even at the present time. Any variation from this is considered a deviation into heresy. No doubt, in practice it is deviated from, by very Orthodox people; but all Protestant sects, claiming to be Orthodox, profess to hold to the plenary inspiration of the Bible.
(b.) The Rationalist or Naturalistic View of the Bible.—The Bible is not inspired at all, or at least in no way differing from any other book. Its authors were inspired, perhaps, just as Homer, or Thucydides, or Cicero were inspired, but not differently. It has no authority, therefore, over any other book, and is just as liable to be in error as any other. If you should bind in one volume the histories of Herodotus, Tacitus, Gibbon, and Mr. Bancroft, the poems of Horace, Hafiz, and Dante, and the letters of Cicero and Horace Walpole, this collection would have to the Naturalist just as much authority as the Bible.
(c.) The mediatorial view of the Bible, or the view which mediates between the others. This view endeavors to reconcile the others, by accepting the truths in each, and eliminating their errors or defects.
To this third division of opinions belong those of a large class, who are not prepared to accept either the first or the second. They cannot believe every word in the Bible to be the word of God, for they find things in it contradicting the evidence of history and the intuitions of reason, and also contradicting other teachings of the same book. They cannot see why, as Christians, they should believe everything in the Jewish Scriptures. As Christians, they go to the New Testament as a main source of faith and practice, but do not see why they should go to the Old Testament for Christian truth. On the other hand, they cannot look upon the Bible as a common book. They remember that it has been a light to the world for thousands of years, that it has been the means of awakening the human intellect and heart, of reforming society, and purifying life. Even in the Old Testament they find the noblest truth and the tenderest piety. The Bible has been the litany, prayer-book, inspirer, comforter of nations and centuries. They cannot and would not emancipate themselves from the traditions in which they were born, nor cut off history behind them. The Christian Church is their mother; she has taught them out of this book to know God, and out of this book to pray to him, and they cannot regard it without a certain prepossession.
To this third class I myself belong. I would not be unjust to the past or to the future. I would be loyal to truth, and not shut my eyes to what God reveals which is new; and I would not be unfaithful to what has already been taught me, or ungrateful for the love which has taught the world by the mouths of past prophets and apostles.
§ 2. The Difficulty. Antiquity of the World, and Age of Mankind.
Let us then see, first, what the problem before us is; and this can perhaps be best understood by means of an example.
The common opinion among Christians is, that the world was made four thousand and four years before Christ, and that all mankind are descended from Adam and Eve. These opinions are derived from the book of Genesis, which tells us that after God had made the world and other things in five days, on the sixth day he made man in his own image; and that, when the first man, Adam, was a hundred and thirty years old, he had a son, named Seth; and from Seth, according to Genesis, are descended, by a genealogy given in the fifth chapter of Genesis, Noah and his sons; and the ages being given from Adam down to Abraham, and from Abraham to Christ, the age of the world and the age of the human race have been computed.
As long as there was no reason for supposing any different period for the antiquity of the world, these numbers were quietly accepted. But various new facts have been noticed, and new sciences have arisen, within the past fifty years, which have thrown doubt upon this chronology. In the first place the great science of geology has examined the rocky leaves which envelop the surface of the earth, and has found written upon them proofs of an immense antiquity. It is found that the earth, instead of being created four thousand years ago, must have existed for myriads of years, in order to have given time for the changes which have taken place in its structure. This evidence was long doubted and resisted by theologians, as they supposed in the interest of Scripture; but the evidence was too strong to be denied, and no intelligent theologian, however Orthodox, now believes the world to have been made in six days, or to have been created only six thousand years ago. With some, the six days stand for immense periods of time; with others, the whole story is considered a vision, or a symbolical account of geological events; but no one takes it literally. This result has come from the overwhelming amount of evidence for the antiquity of the earth, derived mainly from the fossil rocks. Of these fossiliferous rocks there are over thirty distinct strata, lying superimposed, in a regular series, each filled with the remains of distinct varieties of animals or of plants. These rocks must each have been an immense period of time in being formed, for the shells which they contain, although very delicate, are unbroken, and could only be slowly deposited in the quiet depths of a great ocean. There are also evidences that after those strata were formed, violent and sudden upheavals took place, throwing them into new positions, then slow uprisings of the bottom of the sea, or slow subsidings of the land. At one time the northern parts of Europe and America were covered with ice. Great glaciers extended over the whole of Switzerland, and icebergs floated from the mountains of Berkshire in Massachusetts upon a sea which filled the valley of the Connecticut River, dropping erratic blocks of stone, taken from those mountains, in straight lines, parallel with each other, half way across the valley, where they still lie. Similar icebergs floated from Snowdon, in Wales, and Ben Lomond, in Scotland, over the submerged islands of Great Britain. At one time the whole surface of the earth, instead of being covered with icy glaciers, was filled with a hot, damp atmosphere, laden with carbonic gas, which no creature could breathe, but in which grew great forests of a strange tropical vegetation. Then came another period, in which all these forests were submerged and buried, and at last turned into coal. Long after this hot period had passed, and long after the cold, glacial period, which followed it, had departed, came a time when the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus covered the whole of Europe, and the mammoth roamed in North America. Such facts as these, incontestably established by the amplest evidence, have made it impossible for any reasonable man to believe that the earth was made in six days, or that it was made only six thousand years ago.
But this question being thus disposed of, other questions arise in their turn. Are all mankind descended from one pair, or from many? Has the human race existed on the earth only six thousand years, or during a longer period? Was the deluge of Noah a real event? and if so, was it universal or partial? Did the sun stand still at the command of Joshua? or is that only a poetic image taken from an ancient book of poems—the book of Jasher? Is there any truth in the story of the passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites? of the passage of the Jordan? of the walls of Jericho falling when the trumpets were blown? of the story of Samson? If we once begin to doubt and disbelieve the accounts in the Bible, where shall we stop? What rule shall we have by which to distinguish the true from the false? Is it safe to begin to question and deny? Is it not safer to accept the whole book as the word of God, and to let everything in it stand unexamined?
No! “It is never safe,” said Luther, “to do anything against the truth!” Truth alone is safe; and his soul only is safe who loves and honors truth more than human approbation—more than ease, comfort, or life. It is not safe to pretend to believe what we do not. And in this instance, half of the infidelity of the age and country has come from the teaching that everything in the Bible is the word of God. Sincere men have been disgusted when told they must believe things contrary to their common sense and reason.
Another question, which is now being investigated, is the age of mankind—the antiquity of the human race. The Bible gives the list of generations from Adam to Abraham; and the length of each, and other data, given in Scripture, make six thousand years for the life of man on this earth. Greek history only goes back some twenty-three hundred years; the Egyptian monuments go back fifteen hundred or two thousand years earlier—to 2000 B.C., or 3000 B.C. The “Vedas,” in India, may have been written 1500 B.C.; the “Kings,” in China, before that. But recently we have been carried back to a yet earlier period,—to a time when man existed on the earth, before any written monument or sculptured stone which now exists. Two different sources have been discovered within a few years,—one of them by philology, the other by geology.
It has been found that the languages spoken by Europeans, in their airy sounds, are more permanent monuments than granite or enduring brass. Stamped on these light, imponderable words are marks of a gray antiquity going back to times before Herodotus, before Moses and the book of Genesis, before the Vedas in India, before the Zendavesta in Persia. It has been proved, first, that nearly all the languages of Europe belong to one linguistic family, and therefore that those who speak them were originally of one race. These different languages—seven sister languages, daughters of a language now wholly gone—are the Sanscrit or ancient Hindoo, the Zend or ancient Persian, the Greek, the Latin, the Keltic, the German, and the Slavic languages. By a comparison of these, it has been found that originally there lived, east of the Caspian, a race of shepherds and hunters, calling themselves Aryan; that one branch descended into India at least five thousand years ago, and drove out the aboriginal inhabitants, a second branch went into Persia, a third into Italy, a fourth into Greece, a fifth vast immigration filled Northern Europe with the Kelts, a sixth with Scandinavians and Germans, and a seventh with the Slaves. But long ago as this immigration was,—before all history,—it found aboriginal inhabitants everywhere, whose descendants remain. The Lapps and Finns in Northern, Europe, the Basques in Spain, and Magyars in Hungary, are probably descended from this earlier European race. It is difficult to suppose mankind only six thousand years old, when we find such great movements taking place four or five thousand years ago.
But now come the geologists, and tell us that they find evidence of three different races existing in Europe in three distinct periods of civilization, some of which probably preceded the immigration of these Indo-European races. These three belong to what they call the Stone, the Bronze, and the Iron Age. In the gravel and drift, from ten to twenty feet below the surface, along with the bones of the elephant and the rhinoceros, and other animals long since extinct, are found hundreds of flint instruments, axes, arrow-heads, and tools, indicating that men lived in Europe in great numbers, contemporaries with these extinct animals. If this should be proved, we should then be brought to admit, with respect to the antiquity of man, what we have already admitted with regard to the antiquity of the world, that the account in Genesis is not to be understood as theologians have hitherto taught; that is, that we must not go to Genesis, but to philology and geology, for our knowledge of the most ancient history.
In this case, then, it will be evident that the old notion of a literal inspiration cannot be maintained. God certainly did not inspire men to teach anything about the creation which was adapted to mislead and deceive men for two thousand years. We shall be obliged to say, then, that Moses was not inspired to teach geology or history; that what he taught on these subjects he taught from such sources as were available to him, and that he was liable to error.
The old Orthodox theory of plenary inspiration has received very damaging blows from such scientific researches as these which we have been describing. The letter of the Bible seems, in such cases, to be at war with the facts of nature.
§ 3. Basis of the Orthodox Theory of Inspiration.
Why, then, should the Orthodox doctrine be so stoutly maintained? What are the reasons used in its defence? What its arguments? What is its basis? On what does it rest? Do the writers of the Bible say that they were inspired by God to write these books? Not at all. Do they claim infallibility? Nowhere. Do they lay down any doctrine of plenary, verbal, literal inspiration? No. We do not even know who wrote many of these books. We do not know who collected them, or why just these books were put into the collection, and no others. The Orthodox theory rests on few facts, but is mainly an assumption. It seemed necessary that there should be authority somewhere; and when Protestants rejected the authority of the Church, they took the Bible in its place. The doctrine of inspiration, therefore, was adopted as a basis for the authority of the Bible.
The principal reason given by those who believe in the plenary inspiration of the Bible, for holding to this doctrine, is the necessity of some authority. The argument is this: Unless every part of the Bible is believed to be fully inspired, some part of it may be believed to be erroneous; and if we admit error in any part, the Bible loses its authority, and we do not know what to believe. The doctrine of literal and plenary inspiration rests, therefore, in the last analysis, on no basis of fact, but on a purely a priori argument. Let us therefore examine this argument, and see what is its force.
Revelation, it is said, is a communication of truth with authority. It is truth shown to us by God, not truth reasoned out by man. Its value is, that we can rely upon it entirely, live by it, die by it, without doubt or hesitation. We do not want speculation, opinion, probability; we want certainty; otherwise religion ceases to be a power, and becomes a mere intellectual amusement.
The only religion, it is added, which is of any real value, is that which carries with it this authority. The outward world, with its influences and its temptations, is so strong, that we shall be swept away by it unless we can oppose to it some inward conviction as solid and real. Amid the temptations of the senses, the allurements of pleasure, the deceitfulness of riches, will it enable a man to hold fast to honesty, temperance, purity, generosity—to believe that in all probability these things are right, and that there is something to be said in favor of the opinion that God approves of them?
Will it help him, to think that unless the writer of the Gospel is mistaken, or his words mistranslated, Christ may have said that goodness leads to heaven, and sin to hell? No. We need authority in order to have certainty; and we need certainty in our convictions in order that they should influence us deeply and permanently.
This is the chief argument in favor of the plenary inspiration11 of the Bible. We see it amounts to this—that it is very desirable, for practical purposes, that we should believe everything in the Bible to be true.12
In reply to this, we ought first to say, that the question in all these cases is not, What is desirable? but, What is true? We should begin by investigating the facts. We should ask, Does the Bible anywhere say of itself that it is inspired in this sense? Do any of the writers of the Bible declare themselves to be thus inspired, so that all that they say is absolutely true in every particular? Does Christ say that those who are to write the Gospels or the Epistles of the New Testament shall be thus guarded against every possible error? Or is there any evidence in the books themselves that the writers were thus protected? Do they never contradict each other or themselves? Do they never contradict facts of nature or facts of history?
Now, to all these questions, we are obliged to say, No. The Bible claims no such absolute inspiration for itself. It says that “holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit,” but it does not say that the Holy Spirit made them infallible. It says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration, and is profitable for doctrine,” but it does not say what are the limits of Scripture; and to be profitable or useful for doctrine is surely not the same thing as to have infallible authority over belief. Besides, if those who wrote certain Scriptures were infallibly inspired, those who collected the present books of the Old and New Testament, and made our canon, were not so inspired. Those who transcribed their autographic manuscripts were not inspired. The manuscripts of the Gospels and Epistles, written by their authors, have long since perished. There were no autograph collectors in ancient times. There was no such reverence then paid to the letter of religion, to cause the original manuscript of an apostle to be kept in a church as a sacred relic. We have plenty of pieces of wood claiming to be parts of the true cross, but not a manuscript claiming to be the original writing of an apostle. The earliest manuscript goes only to the fourth century, and that contains the Epistle of Barnabas. If, then, the writers of the New Testament were inspired, those who collected their writings were not inspired, and may have left out the right books, and put in the wrong ones. Those who copied their manuscripts were not inspired, and may have left out the right words, and put in wrong ones. Those who translated their manuscripts were not inspired, and may have made mistakes in their translating. So that, after all, the plenary inspiration of the apostles does not bestow that infallibility upon our English Bible which this theory demands in order to give it authority.
And yet we admit the importance of having some authority. Truth which does not come with authority is not truth; it is only speculation; it cannot influence life. Revelation and philosophy differ in this, that philosophy tells us what men think about God, revelation what God thinks about men. Revelation is the drawing aside of the veil which hides God, duty, immortality. It does not give us speculations about them, but shows us the things themselves.
If, therefore, we can show that the Bible can be authority without being plenarily inspired, very possibly Orthodoxy would no longer cling to this doctrine with such remarkable tenacity. This point of authority we shall consider in another section of this chapter, and so we will say no more about it now. We shall try to show, then, that the Bible may be, and is authority, without being inspired as regards every page and word, and that inspiration is one thing and infallibility another. At present we desire to see the truth there is in the Orthodox doctrine of inspiration.
§ 4. Inspiration in general, or Natural Inspiration.
There is a foundation for inspiration in human nature, a capacity for inspiration which all possess. Were it not so, Christian inspiration would be something unnatural, and not in the order of providence. Moreover, we commonly speak of the inspiration of the poet, the painter, the inventor, the man of genius. The man of genius is he who has more of this capacity for inspiration than other men. But all men have it in a greater or a less degree. All men have their hours or moments of inspiration. By these experiences of their own, they understand the larger inspirations of genius. If we distribute the thoughts we possess according to their source, we shall find that we have obtained them all, either from other persons, or by means of mental effort, or by inspiration. The largest part of our thoughts and opinions we have taken in ready made, and reproduced them just as we received them. We suppose ourselves thinking, when we utter them, but we are only remembering. A much smaller proportion of our thoughts we have obtained reflectively, by personal efforts of the active intellect. Another part are those which have come to us in some happy moments, when the inner eye was unclouded, and when we seem to see at a glance truth and beauty. These inspired moments give us the most solid knowledge we have. They are mental experiences, which are the master lights of all our being. They give direction and unity to all our other thoughts and opinions. They constitute mental originality. The peculiarity of inspiration, in this general sense, does not lie in the subjects of the thoughts, but in the manner of their coming. Ideas and thoughts of very different kinds may all be inspired thoughts. The poet, the artist, have their inspirations. But the scholar, the thinker, has his also. The man who invents a machine often has the idea come to him by an inspiration. The man who discovers a continent has seen it in idea before he sees it in reality. If Shakespeare was an inspired man, so was Newton, so was Columbus, so was Lord Bacon, so was Faust when he discovered printing, Watt when he improved the steam engine, and Daguerre when he found out photographic pictures; for, in all great discoveries and inventions, and in small ones too, the original idea is an inspiration, though it has to be worked out mechanically by hard thinking.
It will be seen, then, what we understand by inspiration, in this general sense. It is a mental sight, corresponding as nearly as anything can to physical sight. It seems, in the inspired moment, as if we looked into another world, and saw new truths and facts there. We do not bring them up out of our memory; we see them in all their own fresh life and reality. We do not think them out by an effort of the will; we stand still and see them. All that our will has to do with it is negative rather than positive. It is to keep off disturbing influences of memory and sense, to hold the mind still, attentive, receptive, and ready. If we believe in these inspirations, we can thus prepare the way for them, but nothing more. We can wait and look, till the vision is presented, and then we shall see it; but this is all. The man of genius is he who believes in these inspirations, and so looks for them. What he shall see will depend on what he looks for. The man whose taste is in the world of imagination looks for forms of poetic or artistic beauty, and so sees these. Every man looks for that which he is most interested in, whether he be metaphysician or mechanic. The world of ideal beauty and truth, which overhangs ours, has a thousand portals, and we can pass in through one or another, and see that which suits our various tastes and desires. Memory, reflection, and sight,—these are the three sources of our thoughts. The inspired man is a seer—he has insight and foresight; and these objects of mental sight are to him more real and certain than any others. But he is unable to prove their reality or justify them to the sceptic. And hence his fate is often that of Cassandra,—to be a true prophet, but not to be believed, until by and by the strength of his own conviction wins its way, and produces faith in others.
There are, therefore, two principal intellectual states of the mind—the one receptive, the other plastic; the one by which it takes in truth, the other by which it works it up into shape. By the one it obtains the substance of thought, by the other the form of thought. The one may be called the perceptive state, the other the reflective state. Thus, too, we see that the perceptive faculty may be exercised in two directions, outwardly and inwardly. It is the same intellectual faculty which, through the senses, looks at and perceives the outward material universe, and through the mind itself, the inward world of thought. It is this power of looking inward which gives us all that we call inspiration. We have, thus, outsight and insight.
There is, then, a universal inspiration, on which the special inspiration of the Old and New Testament rests. There are inspired men and uninspired men. There are inspired writings and uninspired writings. There is a general inspiration, out of which the particular inspiration of Bible writers grew. Universal inspiration is a genus, of which this is a species. We cannot understand the inspiration of the writers of the Bible till we understand this universal inspiration on which it rests. We can best explain the special inspiration of Scripture by first knowing the general inspirations of mankind.
Mr. Emerson, in one of his poems, called the “Problem,” describes this universal inspiration. He describes Phidias as being inspired to make his Jupiter, as well as the prophets to write their burdens. He says the architect that made St. Peter's was guided by some divine instinct in his heart—he wrought in a sad sincerity. He says we cannot tell how such buildings as the Parthenon and St. Peter's were built, any more than how the bird builds its nest; they were formed by a natural architecture; they grew as the grass grows; they came out of thought's interior sphere, just as the pine tree adds a myriad of new leaves to its old arms every year.
§ 5. Christian or Supernatural Inspiration.
Having thus spoken of inspiration in general, we proceed to speak of Christian inspiration in particular.
Christian inspiration is the work of the Holy Spirit on the heart. It is that influence which came to the apostles, and to all Christians after Jesus had left the earth, to unite them inwardly with Christ, and to show them the true Christ. It is that of which Paul speaks, when he says, It pleased God to reveal his Son in me. All Christians were baptized with the Holy Ghost; had the spirit of Christ dwelling in them; were led by the spirit of God; received the spirit of adoption, which bore witness that they were the sons of God; which helped their infirmities; helped them to pray; enabled them to mortify the deeds of the body, and produced many gifts and graces. It is quite certain that all Christians were expected to partake of this Christian inspiration. This enabled them inwardly to see and know Christ—the true Christ. And only thus could they become truly his.
Now, the Christian inspiration, so necessary at first, is equally necessary now, for its object is, as it was then, to turn nominal Christians into living Christians; to turn historical Christianity into vital Christianity; to enable those who already know Christ after the flesh, also to know him after the spirit. What is it which we need for comfort, improvement, usefulness? We need a living, practical faith in God's truth and love. We need to see it as we now see the outward world. We believe in the inevitable retribution of God's laws. We need to see this; to see that selfishness is death, and generosity life; to see that humility is exaltation, and that pride is abasement. Having seen law, we need also to see grace, the reality of forgiveness, the reality of a Father's love. We need to see immortality and eternity, while we are yet surrounded with the world of sense and time; to see that the two worlds are not two, but one, all temporal things having their roots in spiritual things. This is what we need for comfort, for no hardship would seem hard while we were thus looking at the things which are eternal, and knowing that every light affliction works out an eternal weight of glory. This is what we need for improvement. For no efforts at improvement can accomplish that which this inward inspiration can do. It is a tide which bears us on. It takes from us the weight of years. It is the sap which rises into every branch, penetrates every twig, swells the buds, expands the leaves, opens the blossoms, ripens the fruit, and causes universal growth. And it is what we need for usefulness. For how mechanical and lifeless are efforts at usefulness which proceed merely from the sense of duty! How blessed are those which proceed from a heart filled with love and peace!
Christian inspiration, then, reveals inwardly the spirit of Christ, and so gives us a new heart, and makes of us new creatures. It is the most essential and vital part of Christianity, yet it is that part of Christianity which is the least known and prized. How many dogmatists there are fighting for doctrines; how many ceremonialists earnest about forms; how many conscientious Christians trying hard to do their duties;—to one spiritual Christian, whose Christianity consists in living in the spirit, that he may walk in the spirit!
One reason for this seems to be the prevalence of false views concerning the nature of Christian inspiration. It has been regarded as wholly different in its laws from other inspiration, as an arbitrary influence without laws or conditions. Now, in fact, the inspiration of the Christian, while it differs in its subject from that of the poet, rests on the same mental faculty, and has analogous conditions. The condition of the poet's inspiration is, that loving the outward beauty of the natural world, and faithfully studying its truth, he should then hold himself ready, in strong desire, to see, inwardly, ideal truth and ideal beauty. And so the Christian, believing in the outward Christ, and loving him, holds himself expectant of an inward revelation of that same Jesus in his glorified and higher influence. All inspiration has its conditions and laws. The poet's eye, in its fine frenzy, must look from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven. His inward inspiration is in strict accordance with his outward occupation and his outward fidelity. Every man is inwardly inspired, according to the nature of his outward work. Shakespeare cannot discover America, nor Columbus write Hamlet. And it is only he who believes in Christ, and so endeavors to obey and serve him, who receives an inward sight of his essential spirit. Christian inspiration is not arbitrary, is not unnatural, is not limited. It is the life of Christ, flowing steadily and constantly into all hearts which are prepared for it, which long for it, and which hold themselves ready to receive it.
We are thus prepared to state more distinctly the difference between inspiration in general and Christian inspiration in particular.
(a.) These two inspirations resemble each other in resulting from the exercise of the same mental faculties, since the state of mind in both cases is not that of reflection, but perception; and the perception is inward perception. Newton fixes his mind steadily upon the confused mathematical thought within till it becomes clear. Milton fixes his mind upon the inward image of ideal truth and beauty till it grows so distinct that he can put it into corresponding words. Columbus meditates upon the thought of a Western Continent till it seems so plain to him that he is ready to set sail for it. And so Paul and John look steadily at the Christ formed within them till they see clearly what is Christ's thought concerning every question, every subject.
(b.) The two inspirations also are alike in this, that the truth seen is in both cases, as to its substance, given to us by God. For the truths seen by Newton, Milton, Descartes, and Columbus were not inventions of theirs, but divine realities shown to them by God.
(c.) In both cases the form of the truth seen comes from the exercise of the human faculties of each individual upon the substance thus given. For Paul and John, no less than Newton and Milton, worked up in their own minds the truth seen. This is evident from the fact, that, while their writings agree in contents and substance with each other, they differ from each other in form and style. Each writer of the New Testament has his own distinctly marked style, not only of expression, but also of thought.
(d.) They are alike also in combining truth of substance with fallibility of statement. The substance of every inspired man's thought is truth, because it is the reality shown to him by God. The form in which he expresses it varies more or less from this truth, because that comes from the exercise of his own finite faculties. Newton and Milton looked at God's truths, and uttered them as well as they were able. So did Paul and John. That these last were liable to err in matters of statement appears from the fact that they did err in some matters, as, for example, in regard to the speedy coming of Christ.
These being the resemblances between natural and supernatural inspiration, what are differences?
(a.) The first difference is in the kind of truths seen. The truths seen by Newton and Milton belong to the natural world, those seen by Paul and John to the supernatural world. The substance of the inspiration in the one case is nature, in the other case it is Christ. Intercourse with nature had fed the minds of Newton and Milton with the truth, forming the material upon which their inspiration could work. Intercourse with Christ, in the flesh and in the spirit, had filled the minds of Paul and John with the material on which their inspiration could be exercised. Christ had come to them outwardly and inwardly, and this was the substance of their inspiration.
(b.) The inspiration of Newton and Milton implies genius; that is, a special faculty in each individual. This possession of genius, or special faculty, is a condition sine qua non, of natural inspiration. It is solitary, it is individual. But the inspiration of the writers of the New Testament does not imply genius. Of the eight writers of the New Testament, only one, viz., Paul, appears to have been a man of natural genius. He was great by endowment, the others were made great by their inspiration. In the one case the uncommon man finds wonderful things in the common world; in the other case the uncommon world shows wonderful things to the common man.
(c.) Natural and supernatural inspiration differ also in their occasion. A miraculous event, namely, the coming of Christ inwardly to their souls on the day of Pentecost, was the occasion of the apostolic inspiration. This coming of the Holy Ghost was the second of the two supernatural events of Christianity, of which the other was the birth of Christ. The miraculous events in the life of Jesus may have been the natural results of the coming of such a being into the world. The miracles of Christ's life, including his resurrection, may have been natural to a supernatural being. They are the evidence of a break in the series of causation in the outward world. In like manner the inward coming of Christ to the hearts of his disciples in what is called the influence of the Holy Spirit, is another supernatural event, the natural result of which is the founding of the Church, the writing of the New Testament, and the newly created life in individual souls.
These two inspirations, therefore, differ in their substance, source, and method. The substance of one consists of truths of the natural order, the other of the supernatural order. The source of one is the world of nature, the source of the other is the inward Christ. And the method of the one is that of individual genius, which is solitary, while the method of the other is that of love or communion.
§ 6. Inspiration of the Scriptures, especially of the New Testament Scriptures.
We now pass on to ask, What is the inspiration of the New Testament, or of its writers?
The writers of the New Testament had no different inspiration from that of all other Christians. We nowhere hear of any one receiving an inspiration to enable him to write a Gospel or an Epistle. They distinctly repel the idea of any such special or distinct inspiration. “By one spirit we have all been baptized into one body, and have been all made to drink into one spirit.” Gifts are different, but the spirit is one and the same in all. But even among these diversities of gifts, nothing is said of any gift for writing Gospels or Epistles. Probably, therefore, the inspiration by which these were written was precisely the same as that by which they preached to the Gentiles or taught in the Church. It was an inward sight of Christ, an inward sight of his truth and love, which enabled them to speak and write with authority—the authority of those who saw what they said, and knew it to be true. “We speak what we know, and testify what we have seen.” Hence it is that we find in their writings so much substance, so much comprehensiveness, so much insight. They are in constant communion with an invisible world of truth. They describe what is before their eyes.
A book given by inspiration is not a book made perfect by miracle, but a book, the writer of which was in a state open to influences from a higher sphere. All books which the human race has accepted as inspired—Vedas, Koran, Zendavesta—are sacred scriptures; all that lasts is inspired. Perpetuity, not infallibility, is the sign of inspiration.
The famous proof-text on this subject is that in the Second Epistle of Paul to Timothy: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.” To what Scripture did Paul refer? Some say to the Jewish Scripture. Some say to the Jewish and Christian writings. But the Christian writings were not then all written, and were not collected into what we call the New Testament. The apostle does not limit himself to these. He says, “All Scripture is inspired”—not merely Jewish or Christian Scripture, but all sacred writing. All the writings of every age which are looked upon as Scripture, which men from age to age reverence and honor as such, were not of man's invention, not of man's device, but came from some irrepressible influence acting on the soul from within. The poet before quoted says truly,—
There is a truth in this—a profound truth. The Bible is not an exceptional book in this, that it has no parallels in nature to its method of production. It is true that Phidias was inspired to make his statue and to build the Parthenon.
When Mr. Emerson and Theodore Parker compare in this way the Bible with the Vedas or the Parthenon, we often feel that it degrades the Bible, and takes away its special sanctity. But this is not necessarily the case. There may be a wide gulf between the inspiration of the Bible and that of the Vedas, or of Homer or Plato; and yet they may all belong to the same class of works. There is a wide gulf between man and the highest of the inferior animals; and yet we put man into the class Mammalia, along with oxen, whales, and cats, and into the same Order with apes and bats. We do not think that man is degraded by being thus classified. He occupies a distinct species in this order and class. So the New Testament and Old Testament constitute two distinct species, of which they are the sole representatives of one genus of inspired books; but that genus belongs to the same order as the Vedas, Edda, Zendavesta, and Koran, and that order belongs to the same class as the poems of Homer and Dante, the architecture of the Parthenon and the Strasburg Minster, the discovery of America by Columbus, and of the law of gravitation by Newton.
The class of works which we call inspired comprehends, as we have before said, all which come to man by a certain influx into his soul—not by looking out of himself, but by looking into himself. Sometimes we go and search and find thoughts; sometimes thoughts come and find us. “They flash upon our inner eye;” they haunt us, and pursue us, and take possession of us. So Columbus was haunted by the idea of a continent in the west; so Newton was haunted by his discovery long before he made it; so the “Paradise Lost” pursued Milton long before it was written. Every really great work must have in it more or less of this element which we call inspiration.
But while the great works of genius belong to the class of inspired works, we make a distinct order out of the great religious works which have been the sacred Scriptures of races of men. They evidently came from a higher inspiration than the works of science and the works of art. They have ruled men's souls for thousands of years. These, then, we place in an Order by themselves, and it is no discredit to the Bible to be ranked with the works of Confucius, which have kept the Chinese orderly, peaceful, industrious, and happy for almost twenty-six centuries.
But still, among these sacred books the Bible may be said to constitute a distinct genus, because it differs from all the rest in two ways—in teaching the holiness of God and the unity of God. The writer has been a careful reader of all these sacred books for twenty years; he has read them with respect; in no captious spirit; wishing to find in them all the truth he could. He has found in them much truth—much in accordance with Christianity. But he sees a wide difference between them all and the Bible. They are all profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for instruction; but they are not Holy Scriptures in the sense in which we ascribe that word to the Bible. The Old Testament, though having in it many harsh and hard features, belonging to the Jewish mind, has strains which rise into a higher region than anything in the Vedas or the Zendavesta. The Proverbs of Solomon are about on a level with the books of Confucius. But nowhere in all these Ethnic Scriptures are strains like some of the Psalms—like passages in Isaiah and Jeremiah. The laws of Menu are low compared with the Pentateuch.
But if the Old and New Testament make a genus by themselves, they divide again into two species. There is a specific difference between the New Testament and the Old. The New Testament inspiration is of a far deeper, higher, and broader character than the other. In fact, we ought, perhaps, to make a special order by itself from the New Testament writings. They are so full of life, light, and love—they are so strong yet so tender—so pure yet so free! They have no cant of piety, no formalism, but breathe throughout a heavenly atmosphere. Their inspiration is of the highest kind of all.
But what is this Holy Spirit? What does it teach? Scientific truth? No. Scientific truth has been taught the world by other channels. Bacon and Newton, La Place and Cuvier, Linnæus and De Candolle, have been inspired to teach science. Their knowledge came, not only by observation, not only by study, but by patiently opening their minds to receive impressions from above. Were the writers of the Bible inspired to teach history? We think not. There are histories of the Jews in the Bible, and they are likely to be as authentic, as histories, as are those of Herodotus and Livy, and other painstaking and sincere historians. But the special inspiration of the Bible does not appear in the historic books.
But are not all parts of the Bible equally inspired by this Holy Spirit? By no means. We can easily see that they are not. It is evident that there is nothing spiritually edifying in a large part of the history of the Old Testament—the account of Samson, the story of Gideon, large parts of the books of Judges and Chronicles, the Song of Solomon, the book of Esther. The book of Ecclesiastes is full, throughout, of a dark and terrible scepticism. Now, all these books are valuable, exceedingly so, as history, but not as proceeding from the Holy Spirit.
But it may be said, “If the history of the Bible is not inspired, it may be erroneous.” Certainly it may. We have seen that the account of creation in the book of Genesis is probably erroneous. It contains one great faith, luminous throughout—namely, that there is one God, Creator of all worlds and of mankind. But as to the order of creation,—the six days, the garden of Eden,—all we can say is, that there may be some way by which Moses could, in vision, have seen these things, represented in picture, as they happened long before. There may be such a kind of unveiling of the past before the inner eye of the soul. We do not deny it, for it is not wise to deny where we know nothing. But we can assert that Christianity does not require us to believe those chapters of Genesis to contain historic truth. It may be allegorical truth. It may be a parable, representing how every little child comes into an Eden of innocence, and is tempted by that wily serpent, the sophistical understanding, and is betrayed by desire, his Eve, and goes out of his garden of childhood, where all life proceeds spontaneously and by impulse, into a world of work and labor. If it be such an allegory as that, it teaches us quite as much as if it were history.