CHAPTER VIII.

THE ARGUMENT FOR SCRIPTURAL INFALLIBILITY DRAWN FROM THE SUPPOSED NATURE OF DIVINE INSPIRATION.

THE next argument we shall examine, in favour of Inspirational Infallibility, is one which is derived from the very nature of Inspiration, and which rests on the assumed impossibility of errors occurring in a book in whose pages the Holy Spirit of God is supposed to be present by the influence he exercised on the writers, and by the sanction he gives to their writings. This is an argument on which apparently much stress is laid by the upholders of Scriptural infallibility. And indeed there is a certain obvious plausibility attaching to this argument. Once let our minds be possessed with the notion that the book which, as containing the heavenly Father's teaching we rightly call the "Word of God," was indited by the Holy Ghost, and that its human authors were merely used by that Divine person as so many pens might be used by us-that these human authors were instruments in the hands of the Spirit, and not rational free agents-and it follows by an easy process of logic, if not by a necessary course of piety, that we should believe there can be no error in that which the All-knowing has penned. But is not this to lose sight of the palpable fact that the inspired writers so completely retained their human faculties that each wrote in his own style and according to the propensity or habit of his own disposition. Paul was earnest, Îogical, discursive. John was loving and intuitive. James was as thorough a legalist as one holding the Christian doctrine of grace could be. As diverse as were the characters of these men, so, undeniably, are their extant inspired writings diverse. The Spirit therefore did not employ them to write as machines, but as human beings and free agents, even in accordance with the saying of Paul that, when the prophets at Corinth spoke, they should remember their responsibility, inasmuch as God left "the spirits of the prophets subject to "the prophets."

Thus, then, it is clear that, whatever inspiration was or was not, the inspirer co-operated with the inspired, but did not annihilate or even suspend the will and human personality of the inspired man. Now, on this view of the matter, how far is it necessary-nay, how far is it probable on grounds of analogy that the inspired writings should possess the quality of infallibility because the co-operative influence of the All-wise was present in their human authors? There are countless analogies whence we might draw an answer to this interrogatory. Two shall suffice.

In the mysterious process of animal procreation, who will deny that God co-operates? Without his co-operation how could the embryo be created? And, when its organism is created, who but God gives that vital energy whereby the new creature becomes a living being or a living soul?

In the contemplation of every devout mind, the agency of God vastly predominates over the agency of the procreating creature and yet what is the offspring? Is it perfect and free from all blemish because God mainly co-operated in its production? Let a reply be furnished by the imperfections which, confessedly, are born with every brute and every man. The case of not unfrequent monstrosities of various kinds would give additional force to this consideration: but we are content to refer chiefly to the ordinary congenital imperfections of all creatures.

If blemishes in the creature be not incompatible with the stupendous intervention of a Divine agency in generation, why should errors in the Bible be any more incompatible with the admirable co-operation of the Divine Spirit in the writing of that Bible?

Or, again, Scripture itself teaches us that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost; and that, if any man love Jesus and keep his commandments, the Father and the Son will come and make their abode with that man; and, yet, where is the man, except our Lord, who has been either impeccable or infallible? If, then, there be no practical incompatibility which has hindered the indwelling of Divine influence in our deceitful hearts and in our peccable bodies, why should we deem it a thing impossible that God should have inspired the human authors of Holy Writ, and yet that the writings which constitute the sacred volume should not be free from all error, that is, should not be infallible?

Here again, then, we are led to the remark that even this, at first sight, specious argument for scriptural infallibility, drawn from the acknowledged co-operation of the Infallible One in producing scripture, is wholly inconclusive. Indeed we should notice, in quitting this part of our argument, that as no moral event takes place without some degree of Divine co-operation, forasmuch as it is in God that we live and move and have our being, no moral event (not even sins excepted) could be otherwise than of unmixed excellence and perfection if the supposition, required for the maintenance of this argument, were allowable.

CHAPTER IX.

THE A PRIORI ARGUMENT FOR INSPIRATIONAL INFALLIBILITY.

A VERY few words will suffice in dealing with the argument in support of inspirational infallibility which is drawn from à priori considerations of the improbability that such a Being, as we are constrained to believe God is, would make a special revelation of himself to mankind in Christ, and yet not secure to the world an infallible record of that revelation.

At the very outset we acknowledge the à priori force of this consideration, its force, that is, antecedently to our comparing our expectations with, and correcting them by, the facts which God has placed within the scope of our vision for the very purpose of our ascertaining the truth and so ridding ourselves of prejudices, that is, of judgments formed à priori or before we were acquainted with the evidence. God having given to one particular age a special and unique manifestation of himself and of his will towards man, it is, without doubt, antecedently probable that He will likewise have caused a special and (if it so seem to any mind) an infallible record of that special revelation. This we are ready to concede. But what then? Are not a thousand suppositions antecedently probable, which yet experience of facts compels us to abandon as not true in effect, however probable they may have appeared in the prospect of expectation?

What could, à priori, he more probable than that God would prevent sin? Yet a bitter and humiliating experience compels us to own that sin, however antecedently improbable, is a dread reality.

It is not too much to say that there is hardly one of our à priori expectations on any subject which the collection of experience does not oblige us to modify if not wholly to reverse.

In this very matter, for instance, of the probabilities attaching to a special revelation, it is well known that the majority of those who profess and call themselves Christians lay stress on other à priori arguments. And, indeed, is it not obvious

that, if an infallible record of revelation be antecedently probable, no less probable is it that there should have been always an infallible guardian to preserve this record and an infallible interpreter to ensure a right comprehension of it? These Roman Catholic à priori arguments for the infallibility of the church, the councils, the popes, &c., are, as we think, rightly negatived by a due observation of the errors which have been manifest in each and all these antecedently probable receptacles of infallibility. In like manner, while we acknowledge that an antecedent probability exists in favour of scriptural infallibility, we are compelled also to acknowledge that the observable facts of scriptural composition wholly reverse that probability, and convince us that errors on all sorts of subjects exist in Holy Writ, and show that, however valuable and precious its pages may be, the Bible is not infallible.