Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again Part 15

A man once asked me, 'Which is the best English Grammar?' My answer was, 'The first you come at. A poor one to-day is better than a good one to-morrow. Begin your studies at once with the grammar you have; and you will soon find out which is the best.' And so I say with regard to books on other subjects. Make the best use you can of the books you have, and you will soon come across better. And when you do come across them, you will be all the better prepared to profit by them, than if you were to waste your time in idleness till you can get hold of the best of all.

Besides; the book that is best for others, may not be the best for you.

And if a man should ask me, 'Which is the best translation of the Bible?' I would say, 'The first you come at. Read any, till you meet with others. Then read many, and, using your common sense, judge for yourself which is best. That which does most to make you a good, a strong, a useful and a happy man is the best.'

Some want books and teachers that will save them the trouble of study.

And there are none such. It would be a pity if there were. They would do no good, but harm. Nothing strengthens and develops the mind like labor.

But if you had the best books possible they would not enable you to acquire much useful knowledge, without close study, and vigorous mental effort.

I learned Greek with the worst Greek Grammar I ever saw; but when I had learned the language tolerably, I found one of the best Greek Grammars in the world, and went rapidly through it, and found that it had little to add to the information I had gained already from the poorer one.

And it is the same with regard to books on G.o.d, religion, and duty.

Books with numbers of defects,--with defects of style, defects of arrangement, and even defects in matter, may teach you many useful lessons, if you read and study them properly; and the best books on earth will not teach you much if you read them carelessly.

A great deal, almost every thing, depends on the spirit or the object with which a man reads a good book. You may read the best books to little profit, and you may get great good from very inferior ones.

The Bible is the best religious and moral book on earth; it is, in its most imperfect translations, able to make men wise, and good, and useful, and happy to the last degree, if they will read and study it properly. But there is not a better book on earth for making a man a fool, if he comes to it with a vain mind, a proud spirit, a fulness of self-conceit, or a wish to be a prophet. A desire to be a prater about the millennium, the second coming of Christ, the personal reign, the orders of angels, the ranks of devils, the secrets of G.o.d's counsels, the hidden meaning of the badgers' skins, the s.h.i.+ttim wood, the Urim and Thummim, the Cherubim and Seraphim, the Teraphim and Anakim, and all the imaginary meanings of imaginary types, and the place where Paradise was situated, and the mountain peak on which the Ark rested, and Behemoth, and Leviathan, and the spot at which the Israelites entered the Red Sea, and the compa.s.s of Adam's knowledge before he named the animals, and the fiery sword at the gate of Paradise, and the controversial parts of Paul's epistles, and the mysteries of the Book of Revelation, and the spiritual meaning of Solomon's Song, and the place where Satan had his meeting with the sons of G.o.d in the days of Job, and the exact way in which Job used the potsherd, when he sc.r.a.ped himself as he sat among the ashes, &c., &c.,--I say if this is what a man desires, the Bible will help him to his wish, and make him the laughing-stock, or the pity of all sensible men.

And if he employs the one hundred and fifty rules of Hartwell Horne for misinterpreting the plain portions of the Bible, and his one hundred and forty other rules for darkening his mind, and confounding his soul, the Bible will ruin him still quicker. A better book for trying a man, and for rewarding his honesty, and piety, and charity, if he has those virtues, and for making them ever more; or for punis.h.i.+ng a man's vanity, and pride, and selfishness, and perversity, if he be the slave of such pa.s.sions, G.o.d could hardly have given. And to try and to bless men are the two great objects of all G.o.d's revelations.

My opponent was fond of saying that the Bible was an infallible guide.

The statement was not true in any strict and rigorous sense of the words. And it was foolish for him to make it in an eager debate, for he could never prove it. And he was not long in finding this out. A few plain questions set him quite fast. The Bible is an infallible guide, you say. We ask, Which Bible? The common version? No. John Wesley's version? No. Dr. Conquest's? No. The Unitarian version? No. _Any_ version? No. Is it some particular Greek or Hebrew Bible then? No. Is it the ma.n.u.scripts? No. But these are all the Bibles we have.

The Bible is an infallible guide, you say. What to? Uniformity of opinion? No. Uniformity of wors.h.i.+p? No. Uniformity of life? No.

Uniformity of feeling, of affection, of effort? No. It does not even require uniformity in those matters. It supposes diversity. It asks only for sincerity, honesty, fidelity. But it is an infallible guide to all truth and duty, you say. Has it guided you to all truth and duty? No.

Whom _has_ it guided to those blessed results? You cannot say.

But it is an infallible guide to all that truth which is necessary to a man's salvation, you say. But there is no particular amount of truth that _is_ necessary to a man's salvation. The amount of truth necessary to a man's salvation differs according to his powers and privileges.

That which is necessary to my salvation may not be necessary to the salvation of a Pagan. It is sincerity in the search of truth, and fidelity in reducing it to practice, which is necessary to a man's salvation, and not the acquisition of some particular quant.i.ty of truth.

The Bible is an infallible guide. To whom? To the Catholics? No. To the Unitarians? No. To the Quakers? No. To the Church of England people? No.

To Methodists and Calvinists? No.

That the Bible is a trusty guide enough, I have no doubt, if we will faithfully and prayerfully follow it; but to talk as if it would guide every one infallibly to exactly the same views, or to the fulness of all truth, is not wise. It is not warranted either by the Bible itself, or by facts.

Besides, if a book is to guide a man infallibly, it must be made perfectly plain; it must be infallibly interpreted. And where are the infallible interpreters? We know of none that even profess to be such outside the Church of Rome; and none but themselves and their own Church members believe their professions. _You_ do not believe them. As a rule, the claim of infallibility is taken as a proof that the man who makes it is not only fallible, but something worse.

But if we had infallible interpreters, they would not be able to keep us from error, unless we had infallible hearts and infallible understandings. And we have no such things. If we had, we should neither need infallible books nor infallible interpreters.

That the Bible is all that it _needs_ to be, and all that it _ought_ to be, I am satisfied; but that it is all that some of its zealous advocates _say_ it is, plain and unquestionable facts make it impossible for any candid, unbia.s.sed, and well-informed man to believe.

We have all an infallible guide within us, if we be true Christians. For the Spirit of G.o.d dwells in the hearts of all true disciples of Christ.

But the infallible guide does not make us all infallible followers. The infallible teacher does not make us all infallible learners. We are blessed with divine inspiration, but we are not converted into machines.

Inspiration does not make us absolutely perfect either in knowledge or virtue, still less does it make us perfect all at once. We shall learn enough, and we shall learn fast enough, if we are faithful; but we shall never be perfect or infallible in our knowledge in this world.

As the subject of Bible inspiration is one of great importance, and as it is at present exciting the greatest interest, it may not be amiss here to give a few quotations from writers who have been led to see the doctrine in the same light as ourselves. I am unable to give the names of some of the authors from whose works I quote, but they are all connected with one or other of the great evangelical denominations of the day.

The following is from "BASES OF BELIEF," by Edward Miall, one of the best books on the truth and divinity of Christianity I have had the happiness to read. Mr. Miall is a Congregational minister, editor of the Nonconformist Newspaper, and Member of Parliament. As his remarks are lengthy, we are obliged to abridge them in some cases.

'It is not needed, in order to show satisfactorily that there is a divine revelation _in_ the record, to prove that the record is _itself_ divine. To disprove that revelation, a man must do something more than point out marks of imperfection in the Book containing it, such marks as would not be expected in a book written directly by the hand of G.o.d. If it could be demonstrated that the penmen who have given us the life of Christ, were indebted to no other aid than that supplied by the good mental and moral qualifications which any others might possess, the main strength of Christianity as a communication of G.o.d's mind and will, would remain untouched.

'The discrepancies between the statements of the four Evangelists,--the indications of individual or national peculiarities,--the modes of describing occurrences, true because well understood in the locality of the speaker, but not strictly true in other places,--all matters which serve to show that the same objects have been seen by different persons, but from different points of view, are to be allowed for as reconcilable with a truthfulness that may be implicitly relied upon. One informant may have blundered in geography, another may have been mistaken in an historical reference, a third may have misquoted or misapplied some prophetical allusion, and all may have given ample proof that they were not free from the influence of the traditions generally received in the places to which they belonged; but unless these peculiarities and infirmities show a want of competency as witnesses, or a lack of integrity, they may be dismissed, as having no bearing on the main point.

'The question whether the Gospel records are free from blemishes found to attach to every other record, has nothing to do with the main issue.

Our _theories_ may require them to be free from such harmless imperfections; but our _reason_ makes no such demand.

'The memoir of a great man does not lose its use and virtue, because written by a biographer open to some censure: nor can the life of Christ fail of its transcendent purpose, because the writers were not in all things infallible.

'Appearances of harmless human imperfections in the writers do not invalidate the sacred records. For instance, if it should be found that those faithful witnesses have given their testimony in exceptionable Greek,--or that in some matters, not touching their main object, they are not enlightened above the common standard of their times and station,--or that they have habits of thought, or speech, or action, which, though perfectly innocent in themselves, show that they are not so far advanced in science as some,--if, in a word, it should appear that the historic writers of the New Testament were really men of the age in which they lived, and men of the country in which they were born and educated, subject to the then limitations of general knowledge,--men of individual tendencies, tastes, temperaments, pa.s.sions, and even prejudices,--wherein is the world worse for this, and in what respect could our reason have wished it otherwise? We protest, we do not see.

On the contrary, we feel it to be an advantage, that the divine light emanating from the life of Jesus Christ, should reach us through an artless and thoroughly human medium. It is no misfortune, in our judgment, but quite the opposite, that 'we have this treasure in earthen vessels.' Such traces on the pages of evangelic history as mark the writers for men,--honest, faithful, competent, but yet verily and indeed men,--bring their narrative much more closely home to our sympathies, and set us upon a more ardent search for the spirit in its several portions, than if the story had been written by the faultless pen of some superior being.'

Mr. Miall then refers to the errors and discrepancies in the genealogies prefixed to two of the lives of Christ, and says, 'They are accounted for, in our view, by the humanity of the writers. We are not bound to regard the genealogies as infallibly accurate, any more than we are bound to regard the dialect of the writers as pure Greek. No essential truth is affected by either, and that is enough.'

Mr. Miall further argues that intellectual infallibility was not necessary, and was not to be looked for, in Paul, the great expounder of the Gospel. And he adds, 'Taking the New Testament as a whole, we are not disposed to deny, that it bears upon the face of it, many indications that its several writers were not entirely exempt from mental imperfection,--but we contend that the mental imperfection which their works exhibit, is perfectly compatible with the communication to men of infallible knowledge respecting G.o.d, His moral relations to us, His purposes with regard to us, and the religious duties which these things enforce on all who would attain eternal life. And if this be true, the record satisfies the spiritual need of man in its fullest extent.'

We have given Mr. Miall's views at greater length, because he occupies so high a position, not only in one of the largest religious denominations in England, but in the country generally, and because we have never seen any protest against his views from any writer of influence, in any branch of the Church of Christ. Such protests may have appeared, but we have never met with any. We may add, that while Mr.

Miall gives up the idea of infallibility, he holds that the writers of the New Testament history were under divine _guidance_ in composing their several memoirs of Christ.

Mr. Miall's views on the Old Testament writings we may have occasion to notice further on.

The Rev. Dr. Parker, author of ECCE DEUS, has some remarks of a character somewhat similar to those of Mr. Miall, but we have not his works at hand.

Our next quotation is from a lecture on SCIENCE AND REVELATION, by the very reverend R. Payne Smith, D. D., Dean of Canterbury. The lecture was delivered at the request of the Christian Evidence Society, London, and is published by that society, in their volume, ent.i.tled MODERN SKEPTICISM.

'Revelation has nothing to do with our physical state. Reason is quite sufficient to teach us all those sanitary laws by which our bodies will be maintained in healthful vigor. Whatever we can attain by our mental powers, we are to attain by them. Physical and metaphysical science alike lie remote from the object matter of revelation. The Bible never gives us any scientific knowledge in a scientific way. If it did, it would be leaving its own proper domain. When it seems to give us any such knowledge, as in the first chapter of Genesis, what it says has always reference to man. The first chapter of Genesis does not tell us how the earth was formed absolutely, but how it was prepared and fitted for man. Look at the work of the fourth day. Does any man suppose that the stars were set in the expanse of heaven absolutely that men might know what time of the year it was? They _did_ render men this service, but this was not their great use. As the Bible speaks to all people, at all times, it must use popular language.'

This writer, like many others when they approach this subject, speaks timidly, and in consequence somewhat vaguely and obscurely; but his meaning is, that we must expect the Bible, on scientific subjects, to speak, not according to science, but according to the prevailing ideas of their times on scientific subjects; and that we are to regard the Bible as our teacher, not on every subject to which it may allude, or on which it may speak, but only on matters of religious truth and duty.

The following is from the Rev. H. W. Beecher.

'Matthew says, that Jesus dwelt in Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene. No such line has ever been found in the prophets.

'Infinite ingenuity of learning has been brought to bear upon this difficulty, without in the slightest degree solving it.

'What would happen if it should be said that Matthew recorded the current impression of his time in attributing this declaration to the Old Testament Prophets? Would a mere error of reference invalidate the trustworthiness of the evangelist? We lean our whole weight [in other matters] upon men who are fallible. Must a record be totally infallible before it can be trusted at all? Navigators trust s.h.i.+p, cargo, and the lives of all on board, to calculations based on tables of logarithms, knowing that there never was a set [of logarithms] computed, without machinery, that had not some error in it. The supposition, that to admit that there are immaterial and incidental mistakes in Sacred Writ would break the confidence of men in it, is contradicted by the uniform experience of life, and by the whole procedure of society.

'On the contrary, the s.h.i.+fts and ingenuities to which critics are obliged to resort, either blunt the sense of truth, or disgust men with the special pleading of critics, and tend powerfully to general unbelief.

'The theory of inspiration must be founded upon the grounds on which the Scriptures themselves found it. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of G.o.d, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of G.o.d may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." (2 Tim. 3: 16, 17.)

'Under this declaration, no more can be claimed for the doctrine of inspiration than that there shall have been such an influence exerted upon the formation of the record, that it shall be the truth respecting G.o.d, and no falsity; that it shall so expound the duty of man under G.o.d's moral government, as to secure, in all who will, a true holiness; that it shall contain no errors which can affect the essential truths taught, or which shall cloud the reason or sully the moral sense.

'But it is not right or prudent to infer from the Biblical statement of inspiration, that it makes provision for the very words and sentences; that it shall raise the inspired penmen above the possibility of literary inaccuracy, or minor or immaterial mistakes. It is enough if the Bible be a sure and sufficient guide to spiritual morality and rational piety. To erect for it a claim to absolute literary infallibility, or to infallibility in things not directly pertaining to faith, is to weaken its real authority, and to turn it aside from its avowed purpose. The theory of verbal inspiration brings a strain upon the Word of G.o.d which it cannot bear. If rigorously pressed, it tends powerfully to bigotry on the one side, and to infallibility on the other.

'The inspiration of holy men is to be construed, as we construe the doctrine of an over-ruling and special Providence; of the divine supervision and guidance of the church; of the faithfulness of G.o.d in answering prayer. The truth of these doctrines is not inconsistent with the existence of a thousand evils, mischiefs, and mistakes, and with the occurrence of wanderings long and almost fatal. Yet the general supervision of a Divine Providence is rational. We might expect that there would be an a.n.a.logy between G.o.d's care and education of the race, and His care of the Bible in its formation.

'Around the central certainty of saving truth are wrapped the swaddling-clothes of human language. Neither the condition of the human understanding, nor the nature of human speech, which is the vehicle of thought, admits of more than a fragmentary and partial presentation of truth. "For we know in part, and we prophesy in part." (1 Cor. xiii. 9.) Still less are we then to expect that there will be perfection in this vehicle. And incidental errors, which do not reach the substance of truth and duty, which touch only contingent and external elements, are not to be regarded as inconsistent with the fact that the Scriptures were _inspired of G.o.d_. Nor will our reverence for the Scriptures be impaired if, in such cases, it be frankly said, '_There_ is an insoluble difficulty.' Such a course is far less dangerous to the moral sense than that pernicious ingenuity which, a.s.suming that there can be no literal errors in Scripture, resorts to subtle arts of criticism, improbabilities of statement, and violence of construction, such as, if made use of in the intercourse of men in daily life, would break up society and destroy all faith of man in man.

'We dwell at length on this topic now, that we may not be obliged to recur to it when, as will be the case, other instances arise in which there is no solution of unimportant, though real, literary difficulties.