Inspiration of the Bible

“ Part of the service of these men has been that they have shown theology that the Bible is not a set of texts on a dead level of authority and equal value, but the revealing, slow and sure, of an inspiration obeyed by a certain people in the realm of morals like that inspiration obeyed by another people in the realm of art, and its test is: Does the Bible's ultimate message, its crowning commandment of Christ's life and love, produce goodness in morals? just as the test of the long revelation of beauty in his ancestors and the Greek is, does its ultimate commandment produce goodness in art. ”

“ When the holy men of the Old Testament so often beseech God to hear and answer their prayers for his name's sake, they renounce all claim to be heard on the ground of their own merit. Faith that works by love and purifies the heart from sin—this is the substance of the religion taught in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. This wonderful unity of doctrine and spirit that pervades the books of the Bible from first to last, finds its natural explanation in the fact that they were all written "by inspiration of God." ”

“ Our own religion? Assuredly, if by that is meant the one great, universal religion of humanity. But the sundering difference between the Bible and any other book that speaks to mankind about God and Life and Death, sets the Hebrew race apart as supreme in its religious genius, as the Greeks were in philosophical acumen and artistic power, and the Romans in executive skill. Leaving all theories of inspiration out of account, facts are facts, and the Bible has no peer in the literature of mankind. ”

“ In the sermon named first, there is this able and instructive statement:—
“The Word of God is not a mere string of moral precepts — an abstract creed — the dry rubric of a ritual service. The Bible is history — the only history of the greater half of time; it is poetry — the chosen source of the inspiration of almost all the great poets of modern days; it is deep argument; it is philosophy. Thus it connects itself with every branch of human knowledge; it awakens and interests every taste; it finds illustration in every art; it is associated with all that is striking in nature. ”

“ On the one hand, viewing the Bible as the word of God, and not merely so in the sense of its containing most salutary counsels, but, in the highest sense, of its containing a revelation of the most awful secrets, they cannot for a moment listen to the pretence that the Bible has benefited by God's inspiration only as other good books may be said to have done. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The third theory, which is a modification of the second, is that of essential inspiration, which distinguishes matters of doctrine and conduct as closely related to God’s purpose in the Scriptures from the remaining contents of the Scripture, and claims for the Bible only such inspiration as was necessary to secure accuracy in regard to these. The theology and the morality of the Bible are inspired, but not its history, science, philosophy. ”

“ It is the source and inspiration of every other religious book. The Bible is a "letter from God to man, handed down from heaven and written by inspired men." Its message is free salvation for all men through Jesus Christ; its spirit is divine love. No wise person is without this letter, and every thoughtful and devout person reads it daily. One may never find time to follow a course of study, nor to pursue a plan of daily reading; he may never know the wealth of Dante, the grandeur of Milton, nor the genius of Shakespeare, but every one may make the Bible his daily companion and guide. ”

“ We do not mean to say that every church has a separate Bible, though virtually it almost amounts to this, as each denies to all others that use of the Bible and construction of its doctrine and teachings which alone can insure salvation. But, in a broader sense, there are two hundred answers to the question, Where are we to find "the only scriptures given by inspiration of God"? The two hundred translators and four hundred commentators make out more than two hundred distinct systems of faith, and virtually more than two hundred Bibles. ”

“ The inspiration of the bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it. ”

“ Modernism has fought and won the battle of verbal inspiration. No man whose opinion counts in the least degree now holds that the Bible was verbally inspired by God. It is respected, honoured, loved; but it is no longer a fetish. In ceasing to be a superstition, and in coming to be a number of genuine books full of light for the student of history, the Bible is exercising at the present time an extraordinary influence in the world, a greater influence perhaps on thoughtful minds than it ever before exercised. ”

“ There are many reasons why we need not feel bound to accept the theory of literal or verbal inspiration of the Bible, although such opinion has been defended by eminent theologians, who wished thereby to defend the integrity of the sacred volume against the wanton interference with the received text on the part of innovators and so-called religious reformers. ”

“ For if we take the Bible, according to the tenets of agnosticism, to be a human work, made by men for men, but allowing the theologian to proclaim that it is divine by immanence, what room is there left in it for inspiration? General inspiration in the Modernist sense it is easy to find, but of inspiration in the Catholic sense there is not a trace. ”

“ It is only when we are entitled to reject the theory of miraculous Divine Revelation that the Bible attains its full beauty, losing the blots and anomalies which it presented in its former character, and acquiring wondrous significance as the expression of the hopes and aspirations of humanity, from which every man may learn wisdom and derive inspiration. ”

“ If the Bible, as interpreted by the bigoted missionaries, is really a book of history, or even of morality, then, it cannot be a book of divine inspiration; hence but little fit to form the foundation of State-religions. Unless a full view be taken of the Bible from different standpoints, it cannot be decided whether it be true or not. We will try to put its credibility to a test by a few points quoted from the New Testament, and see:—
1.—Whether the Bible speaks symbolically or literally, i.e., whether the Bible is Theosophy or History? ”

“ Many good people believe that the Bible was given by inspiration of God. The wording of my subject suggests that it is the work of men, and not always of honest men, either. Am I trying to offend people by intimating that the Bible was invented? On the contrary, I am exposing myself to criticism by telling these good people the truth about the Bible, which their own preachers, for some reason or other, have withheld from them. ”

“ The professor may now safely pass on to the use of Scripture in matters of theology. On this head it must be observed that, in addition to the usual reasons which make ancient writings more or less difficult to understand, there are some which are peculiar to the Bible. For the language of the Bible is employed to express, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, many things which are beyond the power and scope of the reason of man—that is to say, divine mysteries and all that is related to them. ”

“ If the people of Europe had known as much of astronomy and geology when the Bible was introduced among them, as they do now, there never could have been one believer in the doctrine of inspiration. If the writers of the various parts of the Bible had known as much about the sciences as is now known by every intelligent man, the book never could have been written. It was produced by ignorance, and has been believed and defended by its author. It has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge. ”

“ He means, that while inspiration makes the Bible all that is desirable as a teacher on religious matters, it does not, on other subjects, raise it above the views of the ages and places in which it was written. ”

“ It is true that we do well to emphasize the strictly religious and practical purpose of the Bible; that the Bible is interested in both nature and history so far and only so far as either reveals God and inspires to godly living. It is true that in all Christian thinking Christ is our ultimate appeal. ”

“ The amount of our religious knowledge does not depend on our proximity to the days of primitive Christianity. The Bible is the sun of the spiritual firmament; and this divine illuminator, like the glorious orb of day, pours forth its light with equal brilliancy from generation to generation. ”

“ The inward Christ, which alone abideth for ever, has much to say which the Bible never told, much which the historical Jesus never knew. The Bible is made for Man, not Man for the Bible. Its truths are old as the creation, repeated more or less purely in every tongue. Let its errors and absurdities no longer be forced on the pious mind, but perish for ever; let the Word of God come through Conscience, Reason, and holy Feeling, as light through the windows of morning. Worship with no master but God, no creed but Truth, no service but Love, and we have nothing to fear. ”

“ We believe the New Testament, and consequently, to be consistent, we must believe in new revelation, visions, angels, in all the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and all the promises contained in these books, and believe it about as it reads. We give great credit to the Apostles, translators, and the fathers that have preserved and handed down the Bible to us, their children, and defended it through blood and fire. ”

“ The moment one awakes to the grandeur of his own being,—an immortal created in the image of God,—and begins to breathe the prayer, “O God! help me to resist every sin, and aid me to cherish every virtue,” he finds at once, that, infinitely above all other books, the Bible is the book to help him in this new and noble life. He finds that every duty which his conscience suggests that he ought to perform, the religion of Jesus urges upon him by motives of infinite weight. ”

“ Ah, you want to prove what the Bible is by its own light, to show that it has a right to be spoken of as a revelation and as inspired! Do not go to all the trivial Mediæval theories and doctrines about it; go to the book itself, and go to the world. It can hold its own, without claiming anything outside to buttress it up. Set the heart-life in it against the heart-life of any other religion, and you will see that it has the blue of God's heaven in it—unsullied, splendid, perfect. ”

“ Who can stand amid scenes like these, with the Bible in his hand, and not feel that if there is a moral sublimity to be found on earth, it is in the Book of God, it is in the thought of God? For what are all these outward, visible forms of grandeur but the expression and the utterance of that conception of Deity which the Bible has created in our minds, and which has now become the leading and largest thought of all civilized nations? ”

“ All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention—of barbarian invention—is to read it Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition—then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity. ”

“ The history of Christ is as surely poetry as it is history. And, in general, only that history is history which might also be fable.
The Bible begins gloriously with Paradise, the symbol of youth, and ends with the everlasting kingdom, with the holy city. The history of every man should be a Bible.
Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. To pray is to make religion. ”

“ In all ages of which any record has been preserved, there have been those who gave their ideas of justice, charity, liberty, love, and law. Now, if the Bible is really the work of God, it should contain the grandest and sublimest truths. It should, in all respects, excel the works of man. ”

“ Is it not a blessed and irrefragable proof of the fact that God intended all to have the Bible—that the Bible in its great and vital truths (I do not say its every mystery) is open, under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, not merely to the Priest or to the scholar, but to the most ignorant of men? And I will venture to assert that, so far from the Bible being above the comprehension of an uneducated man, whenever you find such an one become a humble, prayerful, reader of the Bible, it expands and strengthens the powers of his mind. ”

“ Whatever the Bible contains of truth, goodness and beauty, we prize as well as its blindest devotees. But this valuable deposit of antiquity would be more useful if cleared of the rubbish of superstition. It is not the good, but the evil parts of the Bible, that are supported by its supernaturalism. Why should civilised Englishmen go walking about in Hebrew Old-Clothes? ”