the contents of the Bible. We must here assume the results of various Biblical studies. Using the most cautious judgment that we can, we find in the Bible inconsistencies and improbabilities which are fatal to the notion of infallibility; and this, not in one or two instances, which might be explained away, but in a large number of particulars, forming a cumulative proof. Dr. Hodge has an ingenious way of getting over this difficulty. The objector must prove,' among other things, that the alleged discrepant statement certainly occurred in the veritable autograph copy of the inspired writing containing it.'1 This is a grand controversial weapon; for the autographs are lost. It is, however, a weapon which turns and cuts the hand that wields it; for if we do not know what was originally written, the infallible authority of the existing Bible is gone, and the belief in the infallibility of perished autographs becomes a pious, but fruitless opinion. It is surely much more reasonable to suppose, with the Westminster Divines, that, if God ever gave to the world an infallible book, it was 'by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages'; for, if God himself was the author of a book, it is inconceivable that he would hand it over to instantaneous interpolation and corruption. And in fact the labours of textual criticism. have guaranteed the genuineness of the text, at least in the New Testament, sufficiently for the purposes of this inquiry; and an impartial examination is slowly beating down the inherited belief, and inducing a large number of men in various churches to look on the fallibility of Scripture as now demonstrated.2

The change thus introduced into theological thought is

1 Outlines of Theology, p. 76.

2 To the reader to whom these questions are new it may be sufficient to suggest that he should thoughtfully consider the eschatological predictions in the Gospels, and should compare the birth-stories in Matthew and Luke, and the several accounts of the resurrection, and the science implied in the Old Testament with the results of modern investigation.

nothing less than a revolution. The Bible can no longer be regarded as the miraculous exponent of a dogmatic revelation. The contents of its several parts must be tested like the contents of other ancient books. The belief of a prophet or Apostle cannot be accepted as final, without considering the mental conditions amid which he lived and the intrinsic nature of the belief itself. It is necessary to state this plainly, because the magnitude of the change is often slurred over, and men seem afraid to face the consequences of their own investigation. The simple fact is that the Protestant basis of theology has crumbled to pieces, and men are once more thrown back on a religion of the Spirit, and forced to listen to the living voice of God within their own souls.

Nevertheless it does not follow that the Bible is not of supreme value in the formation of theological doctrine. We must now remember what has been said about the religious nature of man. Whatever awakens and exalts that nature improves the organ by which we apprehend spiritual truth, and refines our power of judging among doctrines that are offered to our acceptance. The Bible may fulfil this office, and not only bring before us a vast variety of teaching, but supply the spiritual discernment which must be exercised in the reception of that teaching.

I will lay down, then, the following proposition :-The Bible is of inestimable importance in the construction of doctrine, through its power of forming and nurturing our religious character and faith.

The value of the Bible as the Christian book of devotion belongs to another head; here I must touch only on those points which relate to our present subject.

We may remark, then, in the first place, that man needs. religious help and guidance. This appears from our own consciousness of this need. We are aware of our liability to error and sin; and often in our most religious moods we feel most our own incompetence, and receive with gratitude the needed direction and comfort from the advice and teach

ing of another. It appears also from the great errors which have prevailed in religion, combined with the fact that men seek and obtain assistance from minds higher than their own. No one will suppose that the prophets of Israel spent their strength for nought, or were of no use in quickening the life of their people, and awakening them to a persistent faith in one holy God. Nor will anyone think that the first preachers of Christianity had no influence in producing the religious change which then occurred in the Roman empire, or that the Christian faith is not intrinsically higher than the heathenism which it superseded.

Now the Bible supplies this want by appealing to the religious element in our nature, by giving form and expression to our vague and imperfect religious feelings and thoughts, and by impressing us with the authority of men who had the largest share of the Divine Spirit. The appeal is made in ways too various to be classified, as so much depends on the temperament and wants of individuals. Sometimes a single text, falling in with a certain state of feeling, has been sufficient to change a life. The picture which is given in the New Testament of the love of Christ has probably had the largest effect in awakening the better spirit in man. But the Bible, being a literature extending over many centuries, addresses itself to wants of every kind, and, while here it bends to the simplicity of childhood, there it soars to the highest thought of manhood. And not only does it make this appeal; it gives form and expression to our religious thought. Though it is not a work of systematic theology, the great lines of morality are laid down in it with unmistakable clearness, and various religious doctrines are set forth with the utmost lucidity and beauty, and, like ' good money-changers,' we select those which are of eternal value, and let others drop out of sight. And lastly, we own the authority of men who drank more deeply at the fountains of Divine life than ourselves. Without any dogma of infallibility we can believe devoutly that Paul

and John, and, above all, Christ, were spiritually nearer God than we; and this belief gives peculiar impressiveness to their words. We revere them no less as teachers because we listen to them with open and discriminating minds, and allow some things, as being local and temporary, to pass away.

It may be said that other religious books have a similar effect, and that therefore our doctrine ought to embrace religious literature generally. This is to a certain extent true, and I can even suppose that individuals are occasionally much more moved by other writings than they have ever been by the Bible. But the Bible has a unique historical position, and a catholicity of influence to which no other works in Christendom can pretend. And thus it has another quickening authority, for which men often long, the natural and just authority of many generations of devout souls who have found in its pages the secret of eternal life; and, as we read the prayer of a Psalmist, or a Prophet's call to righteousness, or an Apostle's outpouring of sublime thought, or beatitudes and parables of the Master, we not only perceive the inmost soul of one inspired man, but we hear the voice of an innumerable multitude testifying that these things are true. And independently of this universal influence, since it contains the archives of the Christian faith, the first-fruits of that new life which came into the world in Christ, the Christian theologian, without referring to the intensity and purity of inspiration which mark its finest pages, is obliged to assign it a place apart.

The Bible's highest value to us consists in this, that it makes known to us the mind of Christ, and helps us to receive his spirit, which is the indispensable basis of Christian theology. It is, of course, only from the pages of the New Testament, interpreted through spiritual sympathy, that we can come to understand this spirit. Its characteristics must be learned primarily from the Gospels, which contain the record of his life and teaching. But much can be learned, secondarily, from the rest of the New Testament, which

discloses the earliest impressions produced by his doctrine and personality. When the mind has been steeped in that spirit, so as to find in it an abiding power of life and thought, there arises what has been termed the Christian consciousness, by which, as we have already seen, is meant the kind of spiritual character which is formed under Christian influences, and becomes in us a standard of spiritual judgment. He that is spiritual judges all things, because his manhood is complete, and spontaneously rejects that which is low, and accepts that which is high and worthy of the children of God. Thus, it seems to me, the test of Christian doctrine must be found in Christ's spirit as a whole, rather than in the exact words in which his teaching is recorded, and which are liable to the errors of transmission and translation, and may sometimes require a mind natively Oriental to extract from the figurative expression the precise meaning which was intended. It cannot be proved by arguments appealing simply to the intellect that this spirit is the loftiest for our humanity, and the uniting bond of God and man. The witness is within, and cannot be communicated except through that mysterious process by which the spirit of one man appeals to and passes into another. One can only hope that through the whole course of our exposition, and especially through the section on Christology, this will become apparent; and meanwhile we must frequently appeal to passages of Scripture as containing the highest teaching on spiritual themes.

According to this view, then, the spirit of Christ is the criterion whereby we distinguish the spurious and the genuine, and which we carry back into the reading of the Bible itself, judging even the fiery zeal of Elijah by that crucial test. It is in him, rather than on the written page, that we see the word of God. We are his disciples, not disciples of the Bible; and we refuse to be separated from him because we cannot help believing that even his thought, as reported to us, is not always free from the limitations