Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again Part 14

11. I next learned that there were differences of opinion among critics and divines as to whether certain books ought to have a place in the Bible or not. In my father's Bible there were several books called the Apocrypha. Some of these were very interesting. I used to read them with a great deal of pleasure. And large portions of others, especially those called _The Wisdom of Solomon_, and _Ecclesiasticus_, seemed as good, as true, and as beautiful as anything in the Book of Proverbs. My parents however told me, that those books were not to be put on a level with the other books of the Bible,--that there was some mystery about their origin, and that there was some doubt whether they were really a part of the word of G.o.d.

12. I afterwards learnt though, that they were regarded as part of G.o.d's word by the Catholics, and I continued to read large portions of them with much satisfaction and profit.

13. I also learnt from Adam Clarke and others, that there had been doubts in the minds of some of the ancient Christians with regard to the right of some of the Epistles and of the Book of Revelation to be admitted as parts of the Bible. And I afterwards found that the Book of Revelation was excluded from the Bible by the Greek Church, and by Luther as well:--and that Luther had but little regard for the Epistle of James, one of the finest portions of the whole Bible as I thought.

14. I further learnt that some had doubts as to the right of Solomon's Song to a place in the Bible, and I found that even Adam Clarke did not believe that it had any spiritual meaning.

All these were facts; and I learned them all from Christian authors of the highest repute for learning and piety. And so long as things went on smoothly, they had not, so far as I can remember, any injurious effect on my mind. But when, after having been hara.s.sed for years by the intolerance of my brethren, I was expelled from the ministry and the church, and finally placed in a hostile position with regard to the great body of Christians and Christian ministers, I began to see, that those facts were incompatible with the views and theories of the divine inspiration and absolute perfection of the Bible held by my opponents. I came very slowly to see this, and after I saw it I was slow to speak on the subject in my publications; but the time to see and to speak arrived at length.

One of my New Connection opponents, by repeated charges of infidelity, and by statements about the Scriptures which I knew he could not maintain, got me into controversy on the subject. Then I uttered all that was in my mind. I showed that many of the things which he had said about the Bible were not true,--that they were inconsistent with plain unquestionable facts,--with facts acknowledged by all the divines on earth of any consequence, and known even to himself and his brethren.

While engaged in this controversy I made discoveries of other facts inconsistent with the views of my persecutors, and pressed them upon my opponent without mercy. And the violent and resentful feeling excited by his unfairness, dishonesty and malignity in defending the Bible, led me probably to be less concerned for its claims than I otherwise should have been. Suffice it to say, I came out of the debate with my savage opponent, not a disbeliever in the Bible or Christianity, but with views farther removed from those which he contended for, and with feelings much less hostile to heterodox extremes perhaps than those with which I entered it.

Among the views I was led to entertain and promulgate with regard to the Bible about this time, were the following.

1. We have no proof that the different portions of the Bible were absolutely perfect as they came from the hands of the writers. The probability is on the other side. For if an absolutely perfect book had been necessary for man, it would have been as necessary to _keep_ it perfect, as to _make_ it perfect. And as G.o.d has not seen fit to _keep_ it perfect, we have no reason to suppose that He made it so.

2. But in truth, to write an absolutely perfect book in an imperfect language, is impossible. And all human languages are imperfect. The Hebrew language, in which the greater part of the Bible was written, is very imperfect. And it seems to have been much more imperfect in those times when the Bible was written, than it is now. And the Greek language, in which the remainder of the Bible was written, was imperfect. And the Greek used in the New Testament is not the best Greek;--it is not the Greek of the Cla.s.sics.

3. And both Greek and Hebrew now are _dead_ languages, and have been so for many ages. This renders them more imperfect in some respects: it makes it harder in many cases to ascertain the sense in which words, and particular forms of expression, are used by the writers. With regard to the Hebrew, we have no other books in that language, written in those early ages when the different parts of the Bible were written, to a.s.sist us in ascertaining the sense in which words were used.

4. The writers of Scripture differ very much from one another both in style and matter, and their works differ greatly in worth and usefulness. Ezekiel is much more obscure than Jeremiah; and Jeremiah is less plain than Isaiah. Many of the figures, and some of the visions of Ezekiel, seem coa.r.s.e, and some of them appear unintelligible. And the matter of many parts of Ezekiel's prophecies seems inferior to that of the prophecies of Jeremiah and Isaiah. Some portions of Ezekiel are very valuable; they are good and useful to the last degree. But other portions, whatever value they might have for persons of former times and other lands, have none, that I can see, for us.

5. Some portions of Jeremiah, and even of Isaiah, appear to have little that is calculated to be of use in the present day. Indeed some portions seem unintelligible. But many portions of the writings of both those prophets abound in the most touching, startling, and useful lessons.

6. And so with Daniel and the minor prophets. The darkness and the light, and things more useful and things less useful, are mingled in them all.

7. It is the same with the New Testament. Some portions of Paul's writings are as plain as they well can be; others are very obscure, perhaps quite unintelligible. Some pa.s.sages in the controversial portions of his Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, and considerable parts of the Epistle to the Hebrews, are dark as night to many; and I fear that those who think they understand them, are under a delusion. And as portions of these Epistles were wrested by the unlearned and unconfirmed in Peter's time, so have they been mistaken for lessons in moral laxity since. And still they are used by many as props for immoral and blasphemous doctrines.

8. And what shall we say of the Book of Revelation? Adam Clarke thought he understood it as well as any one, yet acknowledged that he did not understand it at all. And though there are several pa.s.sages that are both plain and practical, and many that are most wondrously and sublimely poetical, and some few that are rich both in truth and tenderness, yet, as a whole, the Book is exceedingly, if not impenetrably, dark.

9. Some portions of the Old Testament history are given twice over, as in the Books of Kings and Chronicles, and the two accounts, in some cases, seem to be irreconcilable with each other. The numbers often differ, and some of them seem altogether too large. The accounts agree well enough, and the statements are credible enough, as a rule, on matters of great importance; but on smaller matters there are many plain discrepancies.

Some other portions of the Bible, including two or three of the Psalms, are given twice over.

10. Then who that reads the Proverbs attentively can help seeing, that some of them are much plainer, and calculated to be much more useful, than others. Many of them are rich in wisdom and goodness beyond measure; but others appear to have neither much of beauty, nor much of utility.

11. And the Psalms are not all of equal excellence. Some contain terrible outpourings of hatred and vengeance. Many contain fierce and resentful expressions. And though these things were excusable in early times, and were, in fact, not wicked, but only a lower form of virtue, we cannot but feel their great inferiority to the teachings and spirit of Jesus. But taken as a whole, the Psalms are miracles of beauty and sublimity, of tenderness and majesty, of purity and piety, of wisdom and righteousness. They are a heaven of bright constellations; a world of glory and blessedness.

12. The Book of Job too is a mixture, and to some extent a mystery, but it would be a great loss to the world if it were to perish. The twenty-ninth and thirty-first chapters are worth the whole literature of infidel philosophy a hundred times over. And many other portions of the book are 'gems of purest ray serene,' and treasures of incalculable value.

13. And even the Book of Ecclesiastes, while it contains many things of a strange, a dark, and a doubtful character, has many oracles of wisdom and piety. It contains lessons of wonderful beauty, and of great solemnity and power.

14. There is a vast amount of wisdom and goodness in the laws of Moses.

I say nothing of the laws that are merely ceremonial: but there are lessons of great importance mixed up even with them at times. Take those about the Nazarites. Most of them are beautiful, excellent; and well would it be if people even in our days would accept them as rules for their own conduct.

Then take the laws which forbid the use of wine and strong drink to the ministering priests. They are wonderfully wise.

And even the laws about the different kinds of beasts, and birds, and fishes, that were allowed or forbidden as food, are, on the whole, remarkably philosophical. Considering the time when they were given, and the people for whom they were intended, and the ends for which they were designed, the laws of Moses generally, are worthy of the highest praise.

15. But Judaism is not Christianity. That which was the best for the Jews three thousand years ago, was not the best for all mankind through all the ages of time. Compared with the religions and laws of surrounding nations, and of preceding ages, Judaism was glorious,--but compared with Christianity it is no longer glorious. Judaism compared with Paganism, was a wonder of wisdom, philosophy, and righteousness; but compared with Christianity it is a ma.s.s of rudiments, first lessons, beggarly elements.

Hence several things contained in the law of Moses are repealed or forbidden by Christ; still more are quietly dropped and left behind; while other portions are developed, expanded, and exalted.

All these things, and a mult.i.tude of other things, have to be taken into account, if we would form a correct and proper estimate of the Bible.

All these, and quite a mult.i.tude of other matters, should be borne in mind when we are considering in what terms to speak of the Book, and in what way to qualify our commendations of its contents. I do not believe it possible to praise the Bible too highly; but nothing is easier than to praise it unwisely, untruly. You cannot love or prize the Bible too much; but you may err as to what const.i.tutes its worth. You cannot over-estimate its beneficent power; but you may make mistakes as to the parts or properties of the book in which its strength lies. A child can hardly value gold or silver too highly, but he makes a great mistake when he fancies their great excellency to consist in the brightness of their colors. And so with regard to the Bible. Its best friends and its ablest eulogists can never think or speak of it beyond its real worth; but they may fancy its worth to consist in qualities of secondary importance, or in a kind or form of perfection which it does not possess.

The enemies of the Bible often speak evil of it ignorantly, from the mere force of bad example, as parrots curse: and the friends of the Bible often speak well of it ignorantly, as parrots pray. They know, they feel, they are sure, that the Bible is good,--that it does them good,--that it purifies their souls,--that it improves their characters,--that it makes them cheerful, joyful, useful, happy. Yet all the time they fancy, because they have been erroneously taught, that the blessed volume owes its comforting, transforming, and glorious power to some metaphysical nicety, or to some unreal or impossible kind of perfection.

When Christians attribute the sanctifying, elevating, comforting power of the Bible to the fact that it is divinely inspired, they are right.

But many do not stop there. They suppose that divine inspiration has given the Book certain grammatical, rhetorical, logical, historical, scientific and metaphysical qualities which it has _not_ given it, and they even attribute its superior worth and saving power to those imaginary qualities.

It was against the mistakes and mis-statements of my opponents that I first wrote, and it was their ignorance, or their want of honesty and candor, that gave me at times the advantage over them in our debates on the subject. It was for want of seeing things in their proper light, and putting them in their proper shape before their hearers and readers, that made their efforts to keep people from doubt and unbelief unavailing. They, in truth, made unbelief or infidelity to consist in something in which it did not consist, and made people think they were infidels when they were no such thing. If they had given up all that was erroneous with regard to the Bible, and undertaken the defence of nothing but what was true, they might both have convinced the honest skeptic, and strengthened the faith of Christians. But they undertook to defend the false, and to a.s.sail the true, and the consequence was, they were beaten, and the cause which they sought to serve was injured.

John Wesley says, that the way to drive the doctrine of Christian perfection, or 'true holiness,' out of the world, is to place it too high,--to make it consist in something that is beyond man's power. And the way to drive the doctrine of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures out of the world, is to give the doctrine a form which the Scriptures themselves do not give it,--to change it from a truth into an error,--to teach that divine inspiration produces effects which it does not produce,--that it imparts qualities which it does not impart, and which the Scriptures themselves do not exhibit.

And this is what many defenders of the Bible do. And this is one great cause both of the increase of infidelity, and of the confidence of its disciples.

It is impossible to prove the doctrine of the divine inspiration of the Bible, as that doctrine is defined by many religious writers. It is not true. And those who attempt to prove that the Bible is such a book, as these false theological theories of divine inspiration would require it to be, must always be beaten, in a fair fight, with an able and well-informed infidel opponent. The man who contends that the Bible is all that certain old theories of inspiration require it to be, fights against plain facts, and even his friends will often see and feel that he has not succeeded. He may say a many fine things, a many good things, a many great things, a many glorious things about the Bible, and they may all be true: and he may say a many bad things, a many horrible things against infidelity, and they too may be true. And his friends may see and feel that, on the whole, he is substantially right, and that the infidel is essentially wrong. They may see and feel that on the Christian side is all that is good, and true, and holy; and that on the infidel side is a world of darkness and depravity, of horror and despair. Still, on the one definite point, 'Is the Bible divinely inspired according to the theory of divine inspiration laid down by certain theologians,' the Christian will be beaten out and out,--he will not only be confuted, but confounded, dishonored, and utterly routed.

The Bible and Christianity will receive an undeserved wound, and infidelity will have an undeserved triumph; and many a poor young man whose leanings were towards the Bible, and who would have liked its advocate to triumph, will be disheartened, distressed, embarra.s.sed, distracted, and perhaps undone.

The true doctrine of Scripture inspiration, or of Scripture authority, is about as applicable to the common version, and to honest Christian translations generally, and to all the ma.n.u.scripts, and to all the printed Greek and Hebrew Bibles, as it would be to the lost originals if they could be recovered. There is divine inspiration enough in the poorest translation of the Scriptures, and in the most imperfect Greek and Hebrew transcript of them ever made, to place the Bible above all the books on earth, as a means of enlightening, regenerating, comforting, and saving mankind. But in none of its forms is the Bible so inspired, as to make it what the unauthorized, fanciful, impossible theories of certain dreamy, or proud, presumptuous, and overbearing theologians require it to be.

I have seen twenty or thirty definitions of Scripture INSPIRATION all of which betray the Bible into the hands of its adversaries. And it is no use expecting to convert skeptics, till those definitions are set aside, and better, truer ones put in their place. We ourselves pay no regard to these definitions. They are merely human fictions. They have no warrant from Scripture, and we cannot allow ourselves to be hampered with them.

The pa.s.sage in the New Testament which speaks of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament as divinely inspired, gives us no definition of divine inspiration. It says, 'All Scripture given by inspiration of G.o.d is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, tending to make the man of G.o.d perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works:' but it goes no further. It does not say that all Scripture given by inspiration of G.o.d will be written in a superhuman language, or in a superhuman style. Nor does it say that all its allusions to natural things will be perfectly correct; that all the stories which it tells will be told in a superhuman way. Nor does it say that all the precepts, and all the inst.i.tutions, and all the revelations, and all the examples of the Book will be up to the level of absolute perfection. What the pa.s.sage _does_ say of such Scriptures as are given by inspiration of G.o.d, is true of the Old Testament writings as a whole, and still truer of the New Testament writings: they _are_ profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness; and they are adapted to make men perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. All this you can prove. But you cannot prove that they answer to the definitions of divine inspiration so often given in books of theology.

There is another pa.s.sage in the New Testament which says that 'Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.' This too is true of the Old Testament writings as a whole; but it gives no countenance to the definitions of Scripture inspiration given by dreamy theologians.

Peter says that 'holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit;' but he does not say that everything spoken or written by holy men, when moved by the Holy Spirit, would answer to some human dream of absolute perfection. He does not say that the holy men, when moved to speak by the Holy Spirit, would cease to be men, or even be free from all the imperfections or misconceptions of their age and nation, and speak as if they had become at once perfect in the knowledge of natural philosophy, or of common history, or even on every point pertaining to religion. They might speak as moved by the Holy Spirit, and yet utter divine oracles in an imperfect human language, and in a defective human style, and even use ill.u.s.trations based on erroneous conceptions of natural facts and historical events.

A man moved to speak by the Holy Spirit would not exhort people to be idle or heedless; he would urge them to be industrious and prudent: but in enforcing his exhortation to those virtues by a reference to the ANT, he might give proof that his knowledge of the ANT was not perfect,--that his ideas of its ways were not in every little point correct.

A man full of the Holy Spirit, and especially a man who had received of its influences without measure, would be sure to exhort men to be very wise and very harmless; but he might use a form of words in his exhortation which had originated in the misconception that serpents were wiser than any other animals, and that doves were more harmless than any other birds. Yet the exhortation would be good in substance; and even the form, being in accordance with the views prevailing in his times, would be un.o.bjectionable; and both would be consistent with the fullest inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

A great, good man, speaking under divine impulse, urging his son in the Gospel to resist false and immoral teachers, might say, 'Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth; but their folly shall be made manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.'

Whether the men who withstood Moses were really called Jannes and Jambres or not, I do not know. The Old Testament does not say they were.

The probability is, that Paul rested his ill.u.s.tration on a Jewish tradition. But as the tradition was received as true by his people, his lesson was just as good as if it had rested on some unquestionable fact stated in authentic history.

And so with regard to ill.u.s.trations and incidental statements and allusions generally. Though they may rest on misconceptions, the moral lessons and spiritual revelations into the service of which they are pressed, may be G.o.d's own oracles, and the book in which they appear may, as a whole, be given by divine inspiration, and be profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, and conducive to all the great and desirable ends so dear to G.o.d.

There is no such thing as absolute perfection with regard to books.

There is no authorized standard, no test, no measure of absolute perfection for books; and if there were, no man could apply it. Of a thousand different books each may be perfect in its way, yet none of them be absolutely perfect. Each may have some great good end in view, and be adapted to answer that end; and that is the only perfection of which a book admits. And it is perfection enough.

And this perfection the Bible has. It has the best, the highest, the most glorious objects in view, and it is adapted to accomplish those objects; and that is sufficient. They that undertake to prove that it has any other perfection, will fail, and both bring discredit on themselves, and suspicion on the Bible. The Bible may be more grievously wronged by unwise praise, than by unjust censure.

Absolutely perfect books and teachers are not necessary to our instruction and welfare. We can learn all we need to know, and all we need to do, from books and teachers that are _not_ perfect. We have no absolutely perfect books on Grammar, Rhetoric, or Logic. Yet men learn those sciences readily enough when they study them heartily and diligently. We have no perfect systems of Arithmetic, Geometry, or Algebra; of Geography, Astronomy, or Geology; of Anatomy, Physiology, or Chemistry; of Botany, Natural History, or Physical Geography. Yet on all those subjects men gather an immense amount of knowledge, make a mult.i.tude of new discoveries, and arrive at a wonderful degree of certainty.

And so with arts and trades. We have no absolutely perfect teachers or books in music, or painting, or sculpture; in farming, or manufactures, or trade. Yet what wonderful proficients men become in those arts! We have no perfect teachers of languages: yet any man with a taste for the study of them, may learn twenty or thirty of them in a life-time. Even indifferent books and teachers will enable a man who is bent on learning, to master the most difficult language on earth.