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'■ This is the condomnation, that lishl i,-^ coim' into the world, aud meti loved darkne.«s rather Ihfln li;jht.'' LiriiKj -Words oJ'Jeniis. Sj Ponltcat: bOVELL i'lUNThVG AND PUiiLISIllX(T f^OMPANV, ST. XICIIOLAS ST. 1877. •*»«■«#• ^ ->■•?'• A i 1 THE DIVINE AUTHOfilTY OF THE BIBLE. J: A BI^IEF REVIEW OF REV. J. ROY's TEACHING ON CATHOLICITY AND ON INSPIRATION. BY REV. L. HOOKER, A Minister of the M^Ahodist Church of Canada. !■ " This is tLe condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light." Living Words of Jesus, LOYELL PRIJfTLVQ AND PUBLISHING COMPANY, ST. NICHOLAS ST. 1877. ik^nt 'tt&M«^»;Jbije>-*'' PREFACE. These pages mpresent the effect upon their writer, of the read- ing of Eev, J. Eoy's recent publication. Its statements were found so startling, and its demands so revolutionary, that, in this one case at least the reader felt more strongly than ever the claims of the system of Theology assailed ; and these thoughts were the instinctive protest which grew up in his mind. As, in reading Mr. Eoy's work, the impression was made that ability, and more especially learning, must be regarded as an unknown quantity, there is here no pretence of learned contro- versy. As the thought of publication was not originally entertained, no effort was made to controvert everything which was not assented to, but simply to get to the foundations of all Theo- logy. When completed the sheets were sent to a friend, who deemed it the proper thing to put them in their present shape. L. HOOKEE. THE DIVINE AUTHOKITY OF THE BIBLE. Thk work recently piiMislied by the Kev. Mr. Roy opens, in a very artful manner, the whole ([nestion betM'een revealed and so- called natural religion. The real suliject is far from being all stated in tlie title. The (question it discusses is too broad to be handled in a single paper. The present humble effort will, therefore, be satisfied with dealing with the one vital point raised, the avthorifij of the Scriptures, only touching upon the other points as, following Mr. Roy's path, they lead into this urand citadel of the argument. Those who have read this book will scarcely avoid the conclu- sion that, while Mr. Roy has read a great deal, he has thought, in an independent way, too little. His writing is fragrant with liushnell, Parker, Robertson, and very many others ; but he casts not over his reader the strong thrall of his own individu- ality, struggling in thoughts that lead and command. They will seek in vain who strive to find a single new thought in the whole book ! Nevertheless the stains with which these pages dishonor the goodly fabric of Methodism will remain the longer, because cast up by the hand of one of her own children ; and for this reason they merit a calm consideration, though no more be done than to meet often answered objections against revelation and against Methodism, by considerations many of which also bear the honor of age. I. Catholicity— Mr. Roy's Idea and the True Idea. Mr. Roy finds his idea of catholicity in the original structure of Methodism, and traces very clearly the time and the cause of its ceasing to be catholic, after that manner. But it is very hard to account for his conception of what that early condition of Methodism was. Is he serious in taking the ground that Mr. Wesley consented tl.at ITnitariani^, C«W, ,„d Materinll>„, should be propagated in Methodist pulpit, ? If M,u . .7 moaning then he n,ust refer to th'e all™ of .'i: , ^ this is a suhject lying enti^C r 't SS; ^Z;^ ministers of the Methodist societie, then Li -^ ' ignorant or more designing, than^fi: ' • ^st; 'Z .ought h„„ to be. To justify this position from Mr W,W PH„.^satvari j:i::l= Millings. In no other wav pan Mv t?, .,• i . sermon on "r«ifh" f . , ^' ^°'^«l»sions from the sermon on Faith, for. instance, be accounted for. Any uunre h.s representation of the matter is correct th;! ' three years Methodism was catho^r ^ , "' , J"" "i"" ...; tin. it eeLT;;:ti::,rtr::; r r it :-" i Because there must be a better kim/ f Vi r ^ '^'' " -Kle form of it which, a^^ t M C t^ ^ '^^' structed in his younoer divs f.Z} V ' ^' ^'^^^ '°''" captivated Mr 1 oylistad .^ ^t ' ''""^'^^^ "^^^'8^^' ^^^« Hfe-longstul,j;ie'C^ than child's I lay there mu^ b. /^ ^'^^^g^on is anything better lia}, tiieie must have been visible to the mind of ;he books rejected tellect is -han food ge to get or. But be mate- 13 rial and ordain the processes by which food is obtained " simply because there is more than light in the sun, and more than food in the elements ? Should we be justified in saying so because, if such a thing could be, there were spurious suns in the heavens, and because there are hurtful forms of matter in the eaith? Certainly not. The eye and the stomach would soon decide between the true and the false ; and the true, when found, should move us all the more to recoginze and adore the hand of God in its formation. So also, of the relation of man's inteUect to revelation. It has done weU to judge between the false and the true. It may reject something more of what is now caUed the Bible. It may separate between the matter that will then remain, and say, this was revealed by the Holy Ghost, and that, because it laid already within the compass of human know- ledge, was not so revealed. That the individual reason has the right to judge of the evidence and contents of all books professmg to be inspired is freely conceded ; but the question at issue is this,— have we, in the whole mass, any inspired matter at all ? "—and to this our Author has replied in unmistakable terms " inspiration is not^ in the form, nor in the thought, nor in the matter, of the Bible." And there is another grave question which he has raised, but has left in a very unsatisfactory state, it is this :— have a mass of individual reasons— say a thousand, who are agreed that certain ^'matter" is inspired, and that it contains doctrines and pre- cepts and promises which are essential to the salvation of men from their sins, the right to walk together in fellowship, to teach what they believe, and to exclude from their pulpits teachers who, it may be honestly, feel bound to teach doctrines which conflict witli and destroy those which the mass, as honestly, believe to be true ? Mr. Roy has tried to reduce certain things which most good men venerate to absurdity. Let iis see if there are not more absurdities than he has dreamed on After having reasoned in- spired matter out of existence, and rejected the dictatorship of the Bible, he goes on to talk of " Christianity " as a thing to be 14 preached, believed, and practiced ! Is not this absurd or some- thing worse ? He borrows from the Bible his teachings degrade the Idea and the name of Jehovah, of Christ, of religion and then clothes these ideas and names, as though they were no- thing more than wooden lay figures, with purple, or fine linen or sackcloth, according to his own fancy ; and then he calls upon the world to come and bow down to the god he has constructed to receive the Christ of his imagination, to practice the religion he has invented, the religion in the invention of which he has been trammeled by no dictator! The Christianity he preaches wiU find few converts among men of thought. For the object of their worship, the rule of their practice, and the basis of their hope of a life after death, they will require a little higher authority than the mere say so of any man, or of any number of men And, again, IS it not palpably absurd to deny to a mass of men a right which IS claimed with so much vehemence for each individual m the mass ? Mr. Eoy has done this. Reasserts the right of the individual reason to criticize the evidences and contents of the Scriptures, and retain such "facts " as it finds and reject the rest; and I greatly mistake the Methodist Church If there is to be found in it a single person who will deny that right. -^ But, if a thousand men are agreed that the Bible contains inspired matter, matter that is essential to the salvation of men from their sins, and venture to respect their own intelligence so far as to bebeve that they have ascertained the facts and the meaning contained in that inspired matter, and that they are bound to teach that, and nothing contrary to it-then, according, to this astute reasoning, if it shall so happen that one in the thousand chooses to deny and attack what the rest hold to be inspired matter, and matter essential to salvation, nine hundred and mnetynine intelligences ivill lose their right to judgment and conscence. One may impeach the intelligence of nine hundred and ninety-nine, and insist on preaching in their churches and in their name doctrines which they conscientiously believe to be the opposite of truth, and inimical to the salvation 15 rd or some- igs degrade, ligion, and r were no- fine linen, calls upon onstructed, he religion lich he has 2 preaches e object of is of their ' authority T of men. ss of men for each fe asserts 3nces and s it finds, it Church leny that contains a of men igence so and the bhey are iccordins: e in the M to be hundred idgment of nine in their ntiously alvation of men ; but the nine hundred and ninety-nine must not impeach the intelligence of one, nor refuse him countenance, fellowship and God-speed in a work which, in their judgment, is a work of destruction. That would be inexcusable narrowness, bigotry,. tyranny ! Let us not be understood to maintain that majorities are always right ; but, to purge himself from absurdity in this matter, Mr. Koy must prove that they are always wrong, and should always renounce their views at the bidding of the dissent- ing minority ; or, that, simply because they are majorities, they are divested of that right of judgment and conscience which, he. stoutly maintains, belongs to each individual in the whole mass. Let it be granted, farther, that there are some incorrect state- ments and spurious glosses and interpolations in the books which uninspired men have approved as inspired books ; does it follow that there is no inspired matter in them ? That postulate requires no more than this, that the work of criticism is not yet. complete. Certainly the Holy Ghost never inspired an incorrect statement ; and spurious glosses and interpolations are blemishes on the sacred text. Errors which have crept into the text in the past, and others which may creep in in the future require the closest watclifulness from all who are interested in preserv- ing the Scriptures in their purity. Whoever can clearly point out the passages wherein these blemishes lurk should make haste to do so; let us have nothing but the pure gold; but let the work be done with the utmost care and reverence. The judgment of the more sober and competent critics of that text seems to be that: 1. The passages which have suffered by means of glosses and interpolations should not be held to be authoritative if it is found difficult or impossible to restore them to their original form. 2. It should be held that the Holy Ghost, in inspiring men with both impulse and matter, did not undertake the ordinary work of the historian, but, only to deliver, in the department of history, such facts as required a miracle of knowledge, as, for instance, the creation of the heavens and the earth ; and that, therefore, while the historical state- 16 ments of the Bible are, in the main, correct, any error as to matter of fact which has crept into them should not be held to invalidate the doctrine of divine inspiration in the other depart- ments of Scripture. Let all this be done, and there still remain in the Sacred Scriptures five great departments of matter which were given by inspiration of God. 1. The accounts they contain of such events as took place before the creation of man, or beyond the reach of his ordinary means of knowledge. 2. Those declarations, commonly called doctrines, relating to God, his being, attributes, relationships, and works of creation, providence and grace ; to Jesus the Christ, his attributes and relationships, both divine and human, and his work of salvation ; to the Holy Ghost, his attributes and ministry ; to man, his ori- gin, attributes, relationships, the osigin of the moral and physical evils which afflict him, and his destiny in the life after death, 3. The moral precepts of the Bible, particularly the Ten Com- mandments. 4. The promises, wherein, upon specified conditions, God has bound himself to do specified things for man. 5. The prophecies. The reasons for believing that these five departments of Scrip- ture were given by inspiration of God, and which have been challenged by the positions taken by Mr. Eoy, may be grouped under the following heads : (1) They are true to fact ; (2) // true to fact, they must have been given by inspiration of God; (3) // given hy inspiration of God, they were intended and must he alloived to dictate upon the subjects of which they treat. 1. They are true to fact. Whether any given statement is true to fact or not may be ascertained by competent testimony, by experience, or by both. In the present case, both sources of assurance are available. Jesus Christ is a competent witness. Mr. Eoy admits this much. Christ is to him (p. 72) " the Great Head of the Church, and the perfect incarnation of God ; " (p. 60) " the living embodiment or incarnation of his (God's) I rror as to be held to ler depart- he Sacred .^ere given -ook place ordinary slating to creation, >iites and alvation ; 1, his ori- . physical death, 'en Com- God has of Scrijo- ave been grouped ■ : (2) If of God ; ied and ey treat. 3ment is jtimony, lurces of witness. I) " the ' God ; " (God's) 17 ilumght." Now Jmis Christ hcUeve.d that the Siu-ipture.'^ tvere true to fad. I'art of thtuu he endorsed by «iii(.tingthi3ni over and over again us the word of God, by claiming that they testified, heforehand.of himself, and by exi)ounding the things concerning himself which were contained in " Moses and all the inophets " __" in all the Scriptures." See Luke xxiv. 27. Tart of them he delivered from his own lips. To say nothing of the " Epistles" and the " Book of Kovelation," Christ certainly believed that the matter he endorsed and delivered was true to fact. The testimony of Jesus, who is the " Faithful and True Wituess^ is corro- borated by the powerful attestation of human experience. We know that human experience does not test every thing contained in the Scriptures ; but whatever of their contents it has tested it has found true to fact ; and it has proved nothing false. Wherever the teachings of the Bible concerning God, law, and grace have been received as true, and have been conscientiously followed, individuals have been purified in life, and comforted in death, and nations have been exalted to permanent honor and greatness. As individuals, men find more than purity and comfijrt ; they find God himself " the living God ; " they experience contact and fellowship with him. As the chart is proved true to fact when the mariner guides his vessel through the trackless waters to the desired haven by its direction, so the Scriptures are proved true to fact when, guided by them, the human soul is delivered from the dominion of sin and exalted into fellowship with God. A million livhig and credible witnesses may be summoned, among them some of the most gifted and cultivated minds in the whole world whose testimony, from personal experience, would be that the Scriptures are true to fact as far as human experience can test them If, then, Jesus is a competent witness-whicli will he granted by most men in this day-and if the teachmgs he delivered and endorsed have been verified by the experience ot mankind wherever the test conditions have been fairly met, it follows that those teachings are true to fact. And let it be remembered that, although experience does not, cannot, in, this life reach to and verify everything that is taught in the Scriptures, B the tilings it ,l„os n„t .■ea,* «rc, nuvcrthclesH, vo.,ch«l f„r in tl,e testnnony or i„ the nttonmcoH of Jeen,. It i, not ncce.wrv fov the purposes of this wi-itinp, to answer the objections of those who deny the c„n,,,etency of ,Jes„s to .leclare what is true in rel,K,„n an, who discredit the experience of n,en a. honest an,l as ntelhgent as then,selves-ex|,erionce whicli ,loe., not contra- d.ct the experience of tlie objectors, for they have never placed themselves m a condition to test the matter by experience To deny the facts of electricity in the face of the tenchinRs of sncli .nen as armhiy, Field, Morse and Galvani, ami against the expe- nence ol a man having hold of the poles of a galvanic battery because we never experienced a shock from electricity, wonld be less absurd than to reject the testimony of .Tesus and the experience of Ins disciples, as to the facts of religion. // a,dhe las shown hn^setf to he mm; competent in the ,«««;' of^l,,^ than tl. W oftl^r. are in the .matter „/ ^eW 2. If the scriptures are Irnc to fact they must have been moen l„j „„,„,««„„ „f Oo,l. A single proposition will shl the strength of this position. The scriptures, in the five depart! mentsfor which i„.,piration is claimed, contain matter whidf h..r™errcr "™" -^ "^™ '-- "~^ "> - di,^'T'/.1"'', "■■ ™" "'"' *'""" "f ««<' »•''"■> once we have discarded the .dea of inspiration ? Absol.,*Iy nothing. We my mu.^;™ and conjecture ; but to this day it remains ^-ueTha Z searching It is impossible to " find ont God." Prof. Tyndall after reaclnng the remotest outpo.sts which had been ma'rked on «" c art, struck out bravely for the poles of science, and he ca back to us with the brawn and scar of unprecedented toil iZ um. came back enriched by many new discoveries-hut wilh he old and oft-repeate.1 confession of the ages upon hisZ Icunno Ml God." In the Scriptures, some of them tC o dest books i„ the world, we find a different langua. To whatever intelligence we attribute that language he certain! v entertained no doubt of the being, and saw°no iiystC; : ' i 1'.) imt,uro of C5(k1. Tiifiiiitely iiioro at homo with his sii1.jo(!t thiiii the student of nature is witli a tly or a bladis of ^rasH, ke dotj- mafkes thromjhoul—in^. asserts, ilefines, aciscribes— hut never (luubts, never argues, within tlie limits of a sul)ject which haa halUed the keenest research of all the <^rcat scientists of the world. What do we know of the human soul, if we discard the idea of iuspiration ? Nothing. Here, again, we may imagine and conjecture, but by these means we can gain notiiing worthy of the name of knowledge. What anatomist has ever been able to discover the soul, or its " local habitation," in any of the (,vgans of the body ? At the solemn moment of ileath, who ever saw anything that would favor iXi^i \A^^ that some lyart of the man did not die ? True, we attribute intellect, sensilnlity and will to some part of man ; but who has separated, in thought, beteween that part and the rest, and named it the soul, and de- scribed it as spiritual and immortal— in fact, has assumed to have a thorough knowledge of that which, though in and of man, has never been seen or demonstrated by man ? That Intelligence, and no other, which dictated tlie Bible. It is there, in the olde&t books in the world, that we find the only authoritative treatment of the human soul— and such a treatment as assumes that, to the author, the subject presented neither mystery nor ditHculty. And what do we know, independent of inspiration, of a life after death ? Who has returned from that mysterious bourae to tell us that it -is a fact, and to describe its experiences ? The whole subject is one of impenetrable mystery to all except that Intelligence which dictated the Bible. To him it presents no difficulty whatever. More confident than the philosopher who sees the butterfly of the future in the grub of the present, (but cannot assume that no calamity will prevent the consummation,) the author of the Bible, with no trace of doubt or hesitation, affirms the life after death, its employments and experiences. And how shall we account, if we discard inspiration, for that Law and that Covenant of grace, which have been promulgated as the Law and Covenant of Jehovah ? Shall we say that they are the fictions of men ? That cannot be. The testimony of 20 .TcHiis and tlu; oxporionco of luaiikiiid hiivo provcul tluit they aro true to fact. Shall wo say, tluiii, that they arc diHcoverioH niado by th(! writers of the Wihh ? This W(iuld ro([uir(! sonui thinj^'H to ho triu! tliat would choke the most credulous man in the world. It woiiUl require it to he true that the writers of the oldest hooks in the world, in those remote aj^es of mental darkness and disability, wore so much hotter scientists than Faraday and Tyndal, and Huxley and Draper ; that they solved all the ]>roblems of Uni- versal riiilosophy — includinf^ in the term the profoundest mys- teries of man and of God ! that, with nothing,' but su<,'<,'estions of nature, they conceived the idea of a personal Deity ! that tlu^y fixed their lofty ani])ition upon the discovery and analysis of the infinite God, and said, " this inscrutable Being, who hath .shunned to declare himself, who hath hidden himself in obscurity and silence, shall yield the secrets of his nature, his pur})Oses, his law and his administration to our investigations : " that they ]iushed their adventurous way to the very person of God : that they penetrated within the circle of his nature, and conquered the knowlege of hia attributes — arid of his very thoughts — so eifectually that they wore ahle to come hack to the world and say — these precepts express the will and constitute the Law of God, and these j^romises express his purpose of grace toward those who meet the annexed conditions. No man in his senses will venture to say that the writers of the Bible did or could do these tilings. But, if the testimony of Jesus and the experience of mankind forl)id us to believe that the Law and the Covenant of grace are the mere /dio7Ks of men, and their subject matter forl)ids us to l)elieve that they are the discoveries of men, then, the conclusion becomes unavoidable, that they were given by inspiration of God. Beside, it is clear that, in order to be operative as Law and Covenant, they must needs come by inspiration and not by discovery. The theory of discovery neither binds man to fulfil the Law, nor God to fulfil the Covenant. And what]explanation o^' ^uo [jropbecies can be given if we deny inspiration ? Facts are ffrtuid Tliiugs. It is a fact that the books of the Old and the New i\ stament date far back in the history i 21 of mankind. The tliitesdf thii various books of llui Hiblo an- apiiroxiniatuly coiTCot. It is also a fact tluit cvtints avo foretold in tin? lUble wliioh able of jn-oof that no man of sense will long defend it. Who can seriously enterttiin the thought that, 'for the sake of fultilling recorded prophecies some of them hundreds, even thousands of years old, and while interlaced commercially and otherwise with sur- rounding nations who cared nothing for the fullillmeiit, the statesman, generals and monarchs of the .Jewish nation con- spired to be and to do the thing foretold, aurt>phets " con- cerning himself and expounded them to his disciples. 3. If the scriptures were given by inspiration of God they were intended, and must he alloived, to dictate upon the sub- jects of tvhich they treat. This is self evident, and therefore need not be proved, it may be necessary, however, to deal with certain objections concerning the intricacies and muta- bility of language which Mr. Eoy has raised, and which,in his judg- ment, entirely destroy the dictatorship of the Bible, even if its original inspiration is'granted. Surely Mr. Itoy was jesting, though it v/as a very jjoor jest on a very grave subject, when he claimed that because a certain Greek word means one of two distinctly opposite things according as it has an acute accent or a grave — be- cause the true reading of a certain passage depends upon the exis- tence or non-existence of a little line in the centre of a Greek let- ter, making it an Omicron oraTheta, the dictatorship of the Bible is not to be held. The accent has its W(dl defined value in the 23 Greek ortliogvaphy, and each letter in the Greek Alphahct its pe- culiar form — and yet insj.iratiou can liave no ex])res,sion in the Greek language, hecause the accent modHies the meaning of words, and a httle line in the centre distinguishes the Theta from the Omicron ! This is e([ual to claiming that inspiration cannot be ex- ])ressed in any language for the reason that the writers may use a wrong letter in spelling a word, or may form a letter imperfectly, or may commit some, other error in orthography. It is hard to read the pages Avhich deal with this part of the subject without thinking of pedantry. There are many ministers who read their Bibles in the original, and who never advertise the fact in their congregations; but who, with much faithfulness, bring out the true meaning, without damaging statements concerning the au- Oiorized version. Here, with soiuething of pomp, and no small array of learned names, three passages are cited to illustrate the fallibility of the J3ible m respect to its form. They shew how an involved gram- matical structure in the original may render the discovery of the meaning impossible ; or an accent, or a line in the middle of a letter, may give a ditferent meaning to a passage. But all the cases of this kind ire known, and like the three before us, they have a very simple history. As an example take the most im- portant one referred to, 1. Tim. 3 and 16. " Great is the mystery of godliness : God was manifest in the flesh." The habit of anciently copying words in abbreviated forms made it possible in the original that a stroke, or the absence of it, in the middle of a letter, would determine whether in this passage a word was to be translated as, " God, " or as the relative pronoun, " which." Now in the original copy there may not have been any stroke ; or there may have been, but some copyist omitted it in a subse- quent copy ; or much use, and careless handling of the MSS. may have obliterated it. Therefore the value of any particular MSS., as evidence upon the subject, is destroyed. Granting' all, the worst result is that we know not whether to read this passage " Great is the mystery of godliness : God was manifest in the flesh ; " or " Great is the mystery of Godliness : which was I W ' .'^ ,j" 'I 24 iniuiifcst ill tlio flesh." We cannot discover whether Paul meant tliiit " the mystery of n;,KlliiicHs," or " God " was "manifest in the ile.sh." A(hnittiii«,f tliis, does the <,a"eat body of truth contained in the l)ihle suifer loss? Not at all, for elsewhere, in passages never disputed or doubted, the truth, which this passage teaches as it stands in our version, is clearly taught. In John 1 & 14 we have "The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. * * * And in the first verse of the same chapter we iire taught "The word was God." Here then, in un- uiistakeable terms we have " God manifest in the flesh," and that is quite e