CONTENTS. ANCILLARY ARGUMENTS, DRAWN FROM CERTAIN TRAITS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, AS CON- 185 LECTURE I. ON SOME TRAITS OF THE BIBLE WHICH SEEM AT VARIANCE WITH CERTAIN PRINCIPLES AND TEN DENCIES OF HUMAN NATURE A N argument, of no mean force, for the superhuman origin of the Bible, may, I conceive, be fairly founded on the difficulty of accounting for such a phenomenon by referring it to purely human forces. Human nature in general, as exhibited in the course of the world's religious history, or again, as specially conditioned in that people who composed the Bible and transmitted it to us, seems to me, in many respects, equally incapable of producing such a book, and unlikely to attempt it. There will of course be certain generic resemblances among the professed Revelations which have met with any notable acceptance among mankind, and for this it is not difficult to account. They must appeal with more or less precision to those religious principles and instincts which an experience, far too uniform to be the result of accident, proves to be ineradicably implanted in human nature. That uniformity has prevailed long and far enough to show, if there be any force in induction at all, that even if there be no God, men will |