07 Conclusion.

Conclusion. THE question has been put, Is the Bible inspired, even in its language? We have affirmed that it is. In other words (for we have willingly consented to reduce our whole thesis to this second form, equivalent to the first), the question has been put, Have the men of God given us the Scriptures exempt from all error, great or small, positive or negative. We have affirmed that they have. The Scriptures are composed of books, phrases, and words. Without starting any hypothesis as to the manner in which God has dictated them, we maintain, with the Scriptures, that this word is divine, without any exception. And were anyone to ask of us how God proceeded in order to guarantee all their words, we should wait, before replying to him, until he has let us know in what manner God proceeded in order to guarantee all their ideas; and we should be reminded of the child who said to his father, “Father, where does God get his colours when he dies the cherries with such a beautiful red?” “My boy, I will tell you that when you have let me know how he paints all the leaves with so fine a green.”

Section 1. Retrospect.

Divine inspiration, we have said, is not a system; it is a fact: and that fact, if attested by God, becomes to us a dogma, But it is the book that is inspired; it is with the book that, above all things, we have to do, and not with the writers. We might almost dispense with believing the inspiration of the thoughts, while we could not dispense with believing that of the language. If the words of the book are God’s words, of what consequence to me, after all, are the thoughts of the writer?

Whatever his mental qualifications, what proceeded from his hands would always be the Bible: whereas, let the thoughts be given him, and not the words, and it is not a Bible that he gives me, it is only something more than a sermon.

Nevertheless, we have been at great pains to make our reservations.

Scripture is entirely the word of man, and Scripture is entirely the word of God. O man, we have said, it is here especially that you are called to wonder and admire! It has spoken for thee, and like thee; it presents itself to thee, wholly clothed in humanity; the Eternal Spirit (in this respect at least, and in a certain measure) has made himself man, in order to speak to thee, as the Eternal Son made himself man, in order to redeem thee. It was with this view that he chose, before all ages, men subject to the same affections with thyself. (Jas 5:17) He provided for this, and prepared their character, their circumstances, their style, their manner, their times, their way. And thus it is that the gospel is the tenderness of God, and the sympathy of God; as it is, to speak with St Paul, “the wisdom of God and the power of God.”

Let it not be imagined, then, that the stamp of the individual character of the sacred writers in the several books of the Bible, authorizes us to regard their inspiration as intermittent or incomplete. It matters little for the fact of their divine inspiration whether there be the absence or the concurrence of the sacred writer’s emotions. God may either employ or dispense with them.

If he uses second causes in all his other works, why should he abstain from doing so in divine inspiration? Besides, as we have remarked, this individuality, which is made the ground of objection, equally shows itself in those parts of Scripture which are most incontestibly dictated by God. This system of a gradual and intermittent inspiration presents characters at once of complication, rashness, and childishness; but what, above all, condemns it, is its being directly contrary to the testimony which the Scripture has borne to its own nature. After all, think not that, in employing our personality, it has done so at random. No: all its several writers were chosen from before the foundation of the world for the work to which they were destined, and God prepared them for it, as he did St Paul, “from their mother’s womb.” Oh, but the sacred books are admirable in this respect; how incomparable do they appear, and how soon do we abundantly recognize in them the divine power which caused them to be written!

Scripture is then from God; it is everywhere from God, and everywhere it is entirely from God. That is our thesis; and this is what we have done to establish it; this we could do only by Scripture.

If God reveals himself, it is for him to tell us, in that same revelation, in what measure he has been pleased to do so. Far from us be all idle hypotheses! In these we should only meet with our own fancies, and fascinate the eye of our faith. What then say the Scriptures? The whole question lies there.

First of all, we have said, they declare to us, that all the words of the Proverbs 6 phets are entirely given and warranted by God. In the second place, they attest to us that all the scriptures of the Old Testament, are the words of the prophets. Finally, they demonstrate to us that the New Testament Scriptures are no less so. All the words of the New Testament, then, are equally warranted by God.

This, too, was the conviction of the apostles of Jesus Christ. See what use they made of the Bible. What was it in their eyes? Did they not believe in its entire divine inspiration? Is it possible not to conclude from their whole conduct that, for them, the Scriptures were inspired of God, even to their most minute expressions? But there is for us a proof still more decisive than all the rest. Let us consult the example of the Son of God himself. Let us attend to what he says of the Scriptures. Let us listen to him, especially when he quotes them. Assuredly (we must not be afraid to say it) among the most ardent defenders of their verbal inspiration, there is not one to be found who has ever expressed himself with more respect for the altogether divine authority, and the perpetuity of their most minute expressions, than has been done by the man Jesus. And when a modern writer happens to quote the Bible in the way that Jesus Christ quoted it, in order to deduce some doctrine from it, you will see him forthwith ranked among the most enthusiastic partisans of our doctrine of plenary inspiration.

Nevertheless we have had objections to consider.

Some opposed to us the necessity for translations, and their unavoidable imperfection; others, the numerous various readings presented by the ancient manuscripts which had to be employed in printing our Scriptures. We replied that those two facts could nowise affect the question. It is the primitive text that we have to do with. Were the apostles and prophets commissioned to give us a Bible entirely inspired and without the admixture of any error? — such is the question. But, at the same time, we have been called to participate in the Church’s triumph at the state in which our sacred manuscripts are found, and the astonishing insignificance of the various readings. The Lord’s providence has watched over this inestimable deposit.

What was farther adduced as an objection to the inspiration of the words, was the use made by the apostles, in the New Testament, of the Septuagint; but we, on the contrary, pointed to the fact that in the independent and sovereign manner in which they have made use of it, you have a fresh proof (of the presence) of the Spirit who caused them to speak.

Finally, some have gone so far as to object to us, that, after all, there are errors in the Scriptures; and these errors they have specifically stated to us. This fact we denied. Because they have not at once understood some narrative, or some expression, some have rashly ventured to censure the Word of God! While willing to present some examples of the recklessness and erroneousness of such reproaches, we hastened at the same time to take note of this objection, for the purpose of showing its authors that they could not attack the inspiration of the language without imputing error to the thoughts of the Holy Ghost. Reckless indeed they are! At the very time that they say of the Bible, as Pilate said of Jesus Christ, “What evil hath he done?” they put it upon its defence at the bar of their tribunal! To such objectors we would say, “What then would you do to those who smite him on the cheek, who spit upon him, and who say to him, ‘Prophesy who it is that smote thee?’ Surely it is not for you to place yourselves on such a judgment-seat.” The language of Scripture has been blamed for erroneous expressions, betraying, on the part of the sacred authors, an ignorance (otherwise, it is said, pardonable enough) of the constitution of the heavens, and of the phenomena of nature. But here, as elsewhere, “the objections, on being viewed more closely, pass into subjects of admiration. It is as if, in making us polish the diamonds of holy Scripture by a more diligent examination, they elicited unexpected splendours, and served only to dazzle us with more brilliant reflections of its divinity. At the same time that you cannot find in the Bible any of those errors which abound in the sacred books of all Pagan nations, as well as in all the philosophical systems of antiquity, it in a thousand ways discloses in its language the knowledge of “the Ancient of Days;” and you will, erelong, ascertain that — whether we look to the expressions which it employs, or to those which it avoids employing — that language maintained, throughout thirty centuries, a scientific and profound harmony with the eternal truth of facts. In that language it seems to say: What you knew only but as yesterday, I spoke not of to you, yet I knew it from eternity. The words of Paul also were objected to us, in which that apostle distinguishes that which the Lord says from that which he himself says. We believe we have shown that, on the contrary, he could not have given a more convincing proof of his inspiration than is found in the boldness of such a distinction, seeing that, with art authority altogether divine, he repeals some of the laws of the Old Testament.

Still this was not all; we had to reply to other objections, presenting themselves rather under the form of systems, and which would make bold to exclude a part of God’s book from being held to be inspired.

Some have been willing to admit the inspiration of the thoughts of the Bible, and to contest that of the language only; but we reminded such, first, that there exists so necessary a dependence between the thoughts and the words, that it is impossible to conceive a complete inspiration of the former without a full inspiration of the latter.

We charged this fatal system, besides, with being no better than a purely human hypothesis, fantastically assumed, without there being anything in Scripture to authorize it. Accordingly we said that it led inevitably to suppositions that were most disparaging to the Word of God; while, at the same time, to our mind, it removed no difficulty, seeing that, after all, it but substitutes for one inexplicable operation of God another which is no less so. But further, we added, what purpose does this system serve, since it is incomplete, and since, by the confession of those even who maintain it, it applies to one portion only of the Scriptures?

Others, again, have been ready sometimes to concede to us the plenary inspiration of certain books, but with the exclusion from these of the historical writings. Besides that every distinction of this kind is gratuitous, rash, opposed to the terms of the Scriptures, we were fain to show that these books are perhaps, of the whole Bible, those whose inspiration is best attested, most necessary, most evident; those which Jesus Christ quoted with most respect; those which sound men’s hearts and tell the secrets of their consciences. They foretell the most important events of the future in their most minute details; they constantly announce Jesus Christ; they describe the character of God; they inculcate doctrines; they give forth laws; they make revelations. In a word, they exhibit the splendour of a divine wisdom, both in what they say, and in what they are silent about. In order to write them, more than men, more than angels, were called for.

We have been asked, finally, if we could discover anything divine in certain passages of the Scriptures, too vulgar, it has been said, to be inspired. We believe we have shown how much wisdom, on the contrary, shines out in these passages, as soon as, instead of passing a hasty judgment on them, we would look in them for the teaching of the Holy Ghost. In fine, we besought the reader to go directly to the Scriptures, for the purpose of devoting to the prayerful study of them that time which he might hitherto have given to judging them; and we assured him, on the testimony of the whole church, and after, a threefold experience, that the divine inspiration of the minutest; parts of the Holy Word will erelong reveal itself to him, if he will but study it with reverence. But we must draw to a close.

Section 2. Religious: Bible Above Every Thing

It follows from all we have said, that there are in the Christian world but two schools, or two religions: that which puts the Bible above every thing, and that which puts something above the Bible. The former was evidently that of Jesus Christ; the latter has been that of the rationalists of all denominations and of all times. The motto of the former is this: The whole written Word is inspired by God, even to a single jot and tittle; the Scripture cannot be destroyed. The motto of the second is this: There are human judges lawfully entitled to pass judgment on the Word of God.

Instead of putting the Bible above all, it is, on the contrary, either science, or reason, or human tradition, or some new inspiration, which it places above that book. Hence all rationalisms; hence all false religions.

They (profess to) correct the Word of God, or (to) complete it; they contradict it, or they interdict it; they make it be read without reverence by their pupils, or they prohibit the reading of it.

Those rationalists, for example, who, at the present day, profess Judaism, place above the Bible, if not their own reason, that at least of the 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries; that is to say, the human traditions of their Targums, the Mischna, and the Gemara of their two enormous Talmuds. That is their Alkoran: under its weight, they have smothered the law and the prophets.

Those rationalists who profess the Roman religion, will, in their turn, subject the Bible, not to their own reason, but, first, to the reason of the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, which they call tradition, (that is to say, the reason of Dionysius the Little, Hincmar, Radbert, Lanfranc, Damascenus, Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Burkardt, Ives of Chartres, Gratian, Isidore Mercator); and next, to that of a priest, ordinarily an Italian, whom they call Pope, and whom they declare to be infallible in the definition of matters of faith. [225] Does the Bible require the adoration of the virgin, the service of angels, payment for pardons, the worshipping of images, auricular confession to a priest, forbidding to marry, forbidding the use of meats, praying in a foreign tongue, interdicting the Scriptures to the people, [226] and that there should be a sovereign pontiff? And when it speaks of a future Rome, [227] is it otherwise (all the first fathers of the church are agreed about this [228]) than by pointing to it as the seat of the Man of Sin; as the centre of a vast apostasy; as a Babylon, drunk with the blood of the saints and the witnesses of Jesus Christ, which made all the nations to drink of the wine of the fury of her fornication; as the mother of fornications and abominations of the earth?

Those rationalists that profess an impure Protestantism, and who reject the doctrines of the Reformation, will put above the Bible, if not the reason of Socinus and Priestley, or of Eichhorn and Paulus, or of Strauss and Hegel, at least their own. There is a mixture, they will tell you, in the Word of God. They sift it, they correct it; and it is with the Bible in their hand that they come to tell you: There is no divinity in Christ, no resurrection of the body, no Holy Ghost, no devil, no demons, no hell, no expiation in the death of Jesus Christ, no native corruption in man, no eternity in punishments, no miracles in facts, (what do I say even?) no reality in Jesus Christ!

Those rationalists, in fine, who profess Mysticism (the Illuminati, the Shakers, the Paracelsists, the Bourignonists, the Labadists, the Bœhmists) will put above the text (of the Bible) their own hallucinations, their inward word, their revelations, and the Christ who (they say) is within them. They will speak with disdain of the letter, of the literal meaning, of the gospel facts, of the man Jesus, or of the outward Christ (as they call him), of the cross of Golgotha, of preaching, of worship, of the sacraments. They are above all these carnal helps! Hence their dislike for the doctrine of God’s judiciary righteousness, of the reality of sin, of the divine wrath against evil, of grace, of election, of satisfaction, of Christ’s imputed righteousness, of the punishments to come.

Disciples of the Saviour, hearken to what he says in his Word: there it is that he speaks to us; there is our reason, there our inspiration, there our tradition. It is the lamp for our feet. “Sanctify me by thy truth, O Lord, thy word is truth!”

Let our reason, then, put forth all its energies, under the eye of God, first, in order to recognize the Scriptures as being from him, and then to study them. Let it every day turn more closely to these divine oracles, in order to correct itself by them, not to correct them by it; there to seek for God’s meaning, not to put our own in its place; to present itself before their holy utterances as a meek and teachable handmaiden, not as a noisy and conceited sybil. Let its daily prayer, amid the night that surrounds it, be that of the infant Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth!” “The law of the Lord is perfect; the words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.” (Psa 12:6)

And, on the other hand, let us seek the Holy Spirit; “let us have the unction of the Holy One;” let us be baptized with it. It is the Spirit alone that will lead us into the whole truth of the Scriptures; which will by them shed the love of God abroad in our hearts, and will witness with our spirits that we are the children of God; by applying to us their promises, by giving us in these the earnest of our inheritance, and the pledges of his adoption. In vain should we bear in our hands, during eighteen hundred years, the holy Scriptures, as the Jews still do: without that Spirit we should never comprehend in them the things of the Spirit of God: “They would appear to us foolishness, because the natural man receives them not, and even cannot do so, seeing that they are spiritually discerned.” (1Co 2:14.) But at the same time, while we ever distinguish the Spirit from the letter, let us beware of ever separating them. Let it always be before the Word, in the Word, and by the Word, that we seek this divine Spirit. It is by it that he acts; by it that he enlightens and affects; by it that he casts down and raises up. His constant work is to make it understood by our souls, to apply it to them, and to make them love it. The Bible, then, is in all its parts from God.

Still, no doubt, we shall have to meet with many passages of which we shall fail to perceive either the use or the beauty; but the light of the last day will erelong bring out their now hidden radiance. And as in the case of those deep crystalline caves, into which torches have been brought, after having been long consigned to darkness, the dawning of the day of Jesus Christ, bathing all things in a flood of light, will pierce into every part of the Scriptures, revealing everywhere gems unseen till then, and causing them to dazzle us with innumerable splendours. Then will the beauty, the wisdom, the proportions, the harmony of all their revelations be manifested; and the prospect will fill the elect with ravishing admiration, with ever fresh raptures, with unutterable joy. In this respect, the history of the past ought to lead us to anticipate that of the future; and we may judge, from what has already taken place, of the flood of light which we may look to see poured upon the Scriptures at the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Behold what beams of living light were at once diffused over all parts of the Old Testament, at the first advent of the Son of God; and from this sole fact try to form an idea of what will be the splendour of both Testaments, at his second appearance. Then will God’s plan be consummated, then will our Lord and our King, “fairer than any of the sons of men,” be revealed from heaven, upborne on the word of truth, meekness, and righteousness; then shall his brightness fill the hearts of the redeemed; and the awful grandeur of the work of redemption burst in all its glory on the contemplation of the children of God. Mark how many chapters of Scripture, even as early as the age of Jeremiah, or later, during the long reign of the Maccabees, and during the whole time that the second temple lasted, from Malachi to John the Baptist; mark, we say, how many chapters of the Scripture, now radiant for us with the divinest lustre, must have then appeared vapid and meaningless to rationalistic men in the ancient synagogue. How childish, commonplace, senseless, and useless must have seemed to them so many verses and so many chapters that now nourish our faith, that fill us with wonder at the majestic unity of the Scriptures, that compel us to weep, and that have ere now led so many weary and heavy-laden souls to the feet of Jesus Christ! What would people say then of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah? — Doubtless, with the Ethiopian of Queen Candace: — “How can I understand except some man should guide me? Of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or some other man?” What purpose seems likely to be served by this mysterious history of Melchizedec? Why these long details about the tabernacle, Aaron’s garments, things clean and unclean, worship, and sacrifices? What meaning could there be in the words — “Neither shall ye break a bone thereof?” What meaning could be attached to the twenty-second, sixty- ninth, and so many other psalms: — “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” “They have pierced my hands and my feet.” Why (they must have thought) does David occupy himself at such length, in his psalms, with the common incidents of his adventurous life? When was it, besides, that they parted his garments among them, and cast lots on his vesture? What mean those words — “All they that see me shake the head, saying, He trusted in the Lord that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him?” What, then, is that vinegar, and what is the meaning of the gall — “They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink?” And those exaggerated and inexplicable words — “I hid not nay face from shame and spitting; they smote me on the cheek, and the ploughers ploughed my back?” And what would the prophet mean — “Behold, a virgin shall be with child?” Who, again, is that king, lowly, and mounted on an ass: — “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; behold, thy King cometh unto thee. He is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass?” What, then, is that sepulture — “And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death?”

How must all these expressions, and many others of a like kind, have appeared strange, and little worthy of the Lord, to the presumptuous scribes of those remote times! What humanity, would they have said, what individuality, what occasionality (to put into the mouths of those men of ancient times the language of the present day)! They were taught, no doubt, in their academies, at that time, learned systems and long conjectural speculations on the conjunctures in which the prophets were placed when writing such details, and no more would be seen in their words than the ordinary impress of the entirely personal circumstances which had given rise to their emotions. But what, then, was done by the true disciples of the Word of life? How did ye act, Hezekiah, Daniel, Josiah, Nehemiah, Ezra — our brethren in the same hope and in the same faith? and ye, too, holy women, who hoped in God, and waited for the consolation of Israel? Ah! ye bowed with respect over all those depths, as the angels of light still do; and desiring to see them to the bottom, ye waited! Yes, they waited! They knew that in what was the most insignificant passage in their eyes, there might be, as was said by one of the church fathers, “mountains of doctrine.” Thus it was that in “searching (as Peter has said) what the Spirit of Christ, which was in the prophets, did signify, when it testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow,” they never doubted that afterwards, when time and events should have passed their hand over this sympathetic ink, there would come forth from it wondrous pages, all bearing the stamp of divinity, and all full of the gospel. The day was to come, after the first appearance of the Messiah, when the least in the kingdom of God would be greater than the greatest of the prophets; and that day has arrived. But we ourselves know, also, that the day is yet to come, after his second appearance, when the least among the redeemed shall be greater in knowledge than ever were the Augustines, the Calvins, the Jonathan Edwardses, the Pascals, and the Leightons; for then the ears of children will hear, and their eyes will see, “things which the apostles themselves desired to see and did not see, and to hear and did not hear.”

Well, then, what doctors, prophets, and saints used to do with passages that were still obscure to them, and now luminous to us, we will do with passages that are still obscure to us, but which will erelong be luminous to the heirs of life, when all the prophecies will be accomplished, and when Jesus Christ will appear in the clouds, in the last epiphany of his glorious advent.

What lustre, as soon as it has been perceived, have we not seen shed on many a passage, many a psalm,, many a prophecy, many a type, many a description, the profound beauty of which had until then passed unobserved! What a wondrous gospel has there not emanated from them! what appeals to the conscience! what a display of the love shown in redemption! Let us wait, then, for analogous revelations, but much more glorious still, on the day when our Master shall descend again from the heavens; “for in the Scriptures,” says Irenæus, “there are some difficulties which even at present we can resolve by the grace of God; but there are others which we leave to him, not only for this age but for the age which is to come, in order that God. may perpetually teach, and man also perpetually learn from God the things that are God’s.” [229] If the lights of grace have eclipsed those of nature, how shall the lights of glory, in their turn, eclipse those of grace? How many stars of the first magnitude, as yet unseen by us, shall, at the approach of that great day, be kindled in the firmament of the Scriptures? and when, at last, it shall have arisen without a cloud over the ransomed world, what harmonies, what celestial tints, what new glories, what unlooked-for splendours, shall burst upon the heirs of eternal life!

Then will be seen the meaning of many a prophecy, many a fact, and many a lesson, the divinity of which, as yet, reveals itself only in detached traits; but the evangelical beauties of which will shine forth from every part of them. Then will be known the entire bearing of those parables, even now so solemnizing, — of the fig tree, of the master returning from a far country, of the bridegroom and the bride, of the net drawn to the shore of eternity, of Lazarus, of the invited to the feast, of the talents, of the vine dressers, of the virgins, of the marriage feast. Then will there be known all the glory involved in such expressions as the following: — “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” “Thy people, O Lord, shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.” “He shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.” “He shall drink of the brook in the way; therefore shall he lift up the head.”

Then, also, shall our eyes behold, in all his glory, Jesus Christ, the Saviour, the Comforter, and the Friend of the wretched, our Lord and our God! He that liveth and was dead, and is alive for evermore! Then all the science of the heavens will be summed up in him. This was ever all the science of the Holy Ghost, who cometh down from heaven; it was all the science of the Scriptures, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10). It is even now all the life of the saints; “their life eternal is to know him!” The celebrated traveller, who first brought to us from Constantinople the only horse- chestnut that the West had ever seen, and who planted it, they say, in the court of his mansion-house, could he have told all that he held in his hand, and all that was to come forth from it? — The infinite in the finite! forests innumerable in a humble nut, and within its insignificant shell trees in thousands, adorning with their majestic foliage and bunches of flowers our gardens and shrubberies, darkening with their shade our public squares, and the terraces and avenues of our cities; people celebrating their national festivals under their ample bowers; our children playing at their feet, and the house sparrow twittering to its mate in their branches; whilst each of those trees will itself produce, year after year, thousands of nuts similar to that from which it sprung, and all likewise bearing in them the imbedded germs of countless forests in countless generations! Thus the Christian traveller, on passing from the church militant into his heavenly country, into the city of his God, to his Father’s house, with one of the thousand passages of the Holy Bible in his hands, knows that in that he brings the infinite in the finite — a germ from God, of the developments and the glory of which he may doubtless even now have a glimpse, but all the grandeurs of which he cannot yet tell. Possibly it may be the smallest of seeds; but he knows that there is to come forth from it a mighty tree, an eternal tree, under the branches of which the inhabitants of heaven will take shelter. As to many of these passages he can as yet, perhaps, see no more than their germ lying within a rough shell; but he knows, at the same time, that once admitted to the Jerusalem that is from above, under the bright effulgence of the Sun of Righteousness, he will see beaming in those words of wisdom, on their being brought to the light of which the Lamb is the everlasting source, splendours now latent, and still enclosed in their first envelopment. Then it is that in art ineffable melting of the heart with gratitude and felicity, he will discover agreements, harmonies, and glories, which here below he but dimly saw or waited to see with lowly reverence. Prepared in God’s eternal counsels before the foundation of the world, and enclosed as germs in his Word of life, they will burst forth under that new heaven, and for that new earth wherein will dwell righteousness. The whole written Word, therefore, is inspired by God.

“Open thou mine eyes, O Lord, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law!”