It is under the persuasion that we see, and can help in showing others, most blessed and profitable Christian truth respecting the Inspiration of Holy Writ, that we have undertaken, and will unhesitatingly carry through our present inquiry-Does the Bible permit us to regard its teaching as infallible—that is, as being free from all error?

SECTION 6. The precise meaning of the term Infallible.

LET us be distinct as to the employment of this word "infallible." We do not use the term captiously or overstrainedly. We shall not call the Bible fallible because it contains a correct statement of the errors of men whom it represents as fallible; or a true record of the evil designs which were in the minds of wicked spirits, human or superhuman; though we cannot refrain from remarking here, that the observation of this truth should make those readers very careful, who are accustomed to quote Bible words as settling any question, lest they should use the words of Satan, or some evil spirit or wicked man, and think that they are using the words of the Most High. It is, however, in no narrow sense like this that we shall ask whether Inspiration has made the Bible infallible. But, on the other hand, we use this term "infallible" in no lax and trifling sense. We use it—indeed, we have already used it—and we have shown that lexicographers and the people use it—definitely and precisely as equivalent to "free from all error," having no admixture of error. This is the popular acceptation of the word; and this is, necessarily, the only meaning that the word can admit of: for if you say of man that he is fallible, you mean that he is liable to one or more errors; but if you say of man that he is infallible, you mean that he is not fallible, or not liable to any single error. This universality of meaning is inseparable from every negative term like that which we are now considering. Thus, it would be incorrect and untrue to say of a man who had once, and only once, been worsted in battle, that he was invincible; or to say of a man who had committed one, and only one, sin, that he was impeccable; or to say of a man who had even once acted unjustly for a bribe, that he was incorruptible. Similarly, if a book consisting of a million pages had in it only one single error, you might say of that book

that it was wonderfully free from errors, or amazingly correct; but it would be an improper and inadmissible use of language, to say that it was infallible, or wholly free from error. Such is, unquestionably, the true meaning of this term.

In dealing with Scripture, however, we shall rest our allegation on no solitary passage, but on a tolerably broad collection of passages: only it is well that we should understand, at the outset, that there may be such a comparison as more or less fallible; but there can rightly be no such comparison as more or less infallible. A thing must be either wholly free from error, and then it is infallible; or it must be marked by one or more errors, and then it is fallible. Our present question then, is, Does the Bible permit us to believe that its teaching is infallible? that is, that in all which it states without disapprobation there is no error whatever?

CHAPTER II.

SCIENTIFIC AND HISTORICAL ERRORS OBSERVABLE IN HOLY WRIT.

AND now to our task. As did the noble Bereans of old, so let us search the Scriptures, to see if these things, which are told us about the infallibility that is in the Bible, because of its Inspiration, be really so.

SECTION 1.-Our Investigation will not turn on the Bearing of Modern Science on the Theories of the Scripture-writers.

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We are not about to lay the chief stress of our argument on the fact, that geology contradicts the account of creation's history as given in Genesis. The establishing of our conclusions will not depend on the fact, that astronomy forbids our believing the earth to be surrounded by a transparent but solid case, (called "rakia"* in the Hebrew, "stereoma" in the Septuagint, "firm-ament" in the English,) in which the Sun and Moon and Stars are set," by which the waters above the firmament are separated from the waters under the firmament, and in which there are windows by whose opening the world was once deluged. We shall not rest our argument on the truth, that geography is sorely puzzled to comprehend how a deluge, which is supposed to have transformed the whole face of our planet, so that its old ocean beds became its mountain tops, can have left the well-known river Euphrates to flow on in its accustomed course, as it had done in the days of Adam and of Paradise. Nor is it because there is no mechanical or physical ingenuity which can make the apparently non-miraculous history of the Ark, containing its alleged inhabi

* Vid. Gesenius' Heb. Lexicon.

† We apply the epithet "non-miraculous," of course, not to the whole history of the Noachic deluge, but simply to the one portion of it in which the narrator shows no sign of surprise while he informs us that duplicate specimens of all the terrestrial animals, and their provisions, were, during many months, accommodated in a roofed vessel 300 cubits (450 feet) long, 50 cubits (75 feet) broad, and 30 cubits (45 feet) high, The ventilation was provided for by one window, and that, apparently, a cubit, or eighteen inches square!

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tants, possible, that we shall be prepared to avow our belief that the Bible does not permit us to regard its teaching as infallible. We shall not attempt to obtain an answer to our question out of these and numerous similar discrepancies between science and Scripture; because it might be said that science is as yet only in its infancy, and we therefore know not what its ultimate decisions may be. Besides, we ourselves, and the majority of our readers, would not be competent judges of the scientific principles involved in such a comparison of the Bible with the ascertained facts and laws of nature. The course of our investigation will be far simpler, and will be such that any attentive reader of the most ordinary intelligence can understand it, and can hardly fail in forming a right judgment of the case. Our references will be chiefly to the New Testament, where the history is tolerably familiar to every reader, and where the original language (the Greek) is known by multitudes. In comparatively few cases, and those sufficiently strong and intelligible, shall we have occasion to refer to the less familiar pages of the Old Testament, in which the original language is known to very few scholars, and well-known to hardly any on account of the paucity of extant Hebrew books* wherein to observe the usages of many important Old Testament words.

SECTION 2.-The Genealogies of our Lord.

A.-MATTHEW's Account of the Genealogy of Jesus.

ON opening the New Testament, we are met on the first page by the assertion that "all the generations from Abraham "to David are fourteen generations, and from David until the "carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations, and "from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen "generations."

*

Now, let us not be told, by those who wish to uphold the

By "Hebrew books" we do not refer to Rabbinical literature, of which there is an abundance; but we refer to the small number of books written in the idiom and dialect of the Old Testament writers, How little we should know of Greek if the only extant works in that language were Eschylus, Sophocles, Xenophon, and Thucydides, with a vast mass of the corrupt Romaic or modern Greek! Yet such is a not unfair measure of all we know of the Old Testament language.

doctrine of the Bible's freedom from all error, that a Scripture genealogy is but a small and insignificant matter with which to occupy the reader's time and attention: for thus to speak of a genealogy would surely be not only to abandon the infallibility, but even to question the wisdom of those sacred penmen who often fill up whole pages of their compositions with Hebrew pedigrees; and who, in some instances, have repeated more than once pedigrees which, as they profess to be of one and the same person, and traced through the same line, should be, what indeed they sometimes are not, identical. If, then, we compare Matthew's assertion, quoted above, with the genealogy of Jesus as given by Matthew himself, the case stands thus::

Obviously, in this last column, where Matthew says there should be fourteen generations, there are only thirteen. Every man will say there is some mistake. Is the mistake in our recounting of the names? Let the reader compare these pages with his Bible. If we alter our mode of counting, and place Jechonias at the head of the third column as well as at the bottom of the second, then we must similarly place David at the head of the second column as well as at the bottom of the first; and thus we shall vary the incorrectness, by producing fourteen generations in the third column, and fifteen instead of fourteen, as Matthew says, in the second.

1. What if Errors in Transcription be acknowledged? Here, however, we may be met by the supposition that, in the course of frequent transcriptions, the manuscripts may have been marred, and so one name may have been lost from