them to be written; but that this word, inspired eighteen hundred years ago, is now in our hands; and we can still, holding in one hand our sacred text, and in the other, all the admitted readings collected by science from seven hundred manuscripts,* exclaim with gratitude; I hold then in my happy hand, the eternal word of my God!

SECTION V.-ERRORS OF REASONING OR OF DOCTRINE. We leave the variations, other opponents will say, and we admit that the Sacred text may be regarded as the original language of the prophets and of the apostles; but this very text, pure as it is, we cannot study, without per ceiving the part of it which human feebleness has made. We find in it reasonings badly conducted and badly concluded, quotations badly applied, popular superstitions, prejudices and other infirmities, the inevitable tribute paid by the simplicity of the men of God to the ignorance of their time and of their condition. "Saint Paul," says Jerome himself, "does not know how to develope a hyperbaton, nor to conclude a sentence; and having to do with rude people, he has employed the conceptions, which, if, at the beginning, he had not taken care to announce as spoken after the manner of men, would have shocked men of good sense." Such being then the traces of infirmity which we can follow in the Scriptures, it remains impossible to recognize in such a book an inspiration that goes even to the lesser details of their language.

To these accusations against the Scriptures we have a fourfold answer.

1. We set ourselves at once, with all the energy of our conviction, against such reproaches. We maintain that a

* Scholz has cited 674 for the Evangelists alone.

* Comm. on Galatians (Bk. 11.)—Tit. (Bk. 1 on i. 1.) and Ephes.-Bk. 11. on 3. 1.)

more attentive and more serious study of the Word of God would reduce them to nothing, and we protest that they have no foundation but in the errors and precipitancy of those who advance them. We might show it in repelling, one by one, all these accusations, in every instance in which they have been rendered. It would be a task of greater length than difficulty; and this is not the place for it, because the detail is immense. There is not in fact, a reasoning, there is not a quotation, there is not a doctrine, which the adversaries of the inspiration of the Scriptures have not at some time made a subject of reproach; and every one knows well enough that the greater part of the objections which are clearly stated in three words, cannot be refuted clearly in less than three pages. In proportion then as the men of the world renew their attacks, the Church must renew her replies; and like those respectful and indefatigable servants, who in the East, watch day and night around the head of their king, she must constantly hold herself by the side of the Word of God, to repel from it those swarms of objections which are seen, just as fast as they are driven from one side, rising on the other, and incessantly returning to plant anew their sting. The experience of every age, and especially that of the latter times has sufficiently shown, that before an examination, these difficulties, which they set against the Scriptures, vanish; these obscurities are illuminated; and quickly, unexpected harmonies, beauties. that until then no human eye had perceived, are revealed in the Word of God by the objections themselves. Today, objects of doubt; to-morrow, better studied, they are incentives to faith; to-day, sources of trouble, to-morrow they are proofs.

2. In the meantime we notice all these accusations which the adversaries of the full inspiration of the Scriptures raise against this sacred book; for it is an advantage

which they give us. Yes, we shall not hesitate to say it; in the hearing of such objections, we experience at the same time, two opposite impressions of satisfaction and of sadness; of sadness in seeing men who recognize the Bible as a revelation of God, not fearing at the same time to raise against it so hastily the gravest accusations; and of satisfaction, in considering with what force such language at last confirms the doctrine we defend.

In the mouth of a deist, they would be objections to which we must reply, but in that of a Christian who advances them, it is a flagrant abandonment of his own thesis, and an avowal of all the evil involved in such abandonment.

We would be understood: it is not before the profess ed infidel that we here maintain the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures; it is before men who profess to consid er the Bible as a revelation from God. Inspiration, we have said to them, is a doctrine taught in this sacred book: by its own testimony, all Scripture is given of God, it is perfect, it is pure, it is gold seven times tried in the fire. What reply have they made? They do not reject, they say, such an inspiration, but in regard to the language, the forms of speech, and the unimportant details ; otherwise they believe that a constant providence directed the minds of the sacred writers to keep them from every grave error. But how do they prove this thesis? Is it to the language alone, is it to the forms of speech, is it to insignificant details that they confine this rejection of inspiration? alas! hear them: there are in the doctrines, superstitions; there are in the quotations, misrepresentations, there fare in the reasonings, infirmities!You see then, that in order to attack the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, they come down thus into the ranks of the unbelievers, who are casting stones at the word of God; and if they do not wish, like them, to

take God from the holy Bible, they at least wish to correct God in the holy Bible. Which of the two is most outrageous, it would be difficult to say.

We conclude then, that since the plenary inspiration can be combatted only by accusing the word of God of error, we must cling the more firmly to this declaration of the Scriptures, that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God."

3. But we have something yet more serious to add. We ask where will you stop when you have once entered on this path? And by what reasons will you in your turn stop those who wish to go still beyond you? You dare to correct one part of the word of God; by what right then will you blame those who may wish to correct the rest? Beings of yesterday, whilst they are traversing this earth as a shadow, with the eternal book of God in their hands, they dare to say: This, Lord, is worthy of thee, this is unworthy of thee! They pretend to select for themselves in the oracles of God, to ascribe one part of it to the folly of man, to separate the mistakes of Isaiah or Moses, the prejudices of Peter or of Jude, the paralogisms of Paul, the superstitions of John from the thought of God! Lamentable rashness! We repeat it; where will they stop in this fatal work; for they place themselves at the very table, on the one side of which, are seated the Socinuses, the Grimaldis, the Priestlys; and on the other, the Rousseaus, the Volneys, the Dupuis. Between them and Eichhorn, between them and William Cobbett, between them and Strauss, where is the difference? It is in the species, not in the genus. It is in the quantity of the imputations of errors and of irreverent remarks; it is not in the quality. There is some difference in their boldness, none in their profaneness. The one and the other have found errors in the word of God; they have pretended to rectify them. But, we ask, is it less absurd, on the part of a creature, to

wish to correct in the works of God, the creation of the hyssop that cometh out of the wall, than that of the cedar of Lebanon; to pretend to rectify the organization of a glowworm, than to wish to shut up the light in the sun? By what right will ministers, who say that they see nothing but the language of Jewish prejudices in the accounts given by the Evangelists, of the demoniacs and the miracles of Jesus Christ driving out the impure spirits; by what right will they pronounce it strange that another sees in the miracles of Saul's conversion, of the resurrection, of the multiplication of bread, or of the day of Pentecost, nothing but a discreet and useful compliance with the ignorance of a people fond of the marvellous? By what authority would a professor, who denies the inspiration of Paul's arguments, blame Mr. De Wette for rejecting that of the prophecies of the old Testament,* or of Mr. Wirgmann making his separation of the New Testament, or Mr. Strauss changing into fable the miracles and the very person of Jesus Christ?

Three or four years since, a young minister of Berne, put into our hands a manual of theology which, he said, had been handed him in an academy in Eastern Switzerland. We have not retained the name of the author, nor that of his residence ; but having, at the time, taken notes of his principal arguments against the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, we can reproduce here the quotations by which he sought to prove that the holy books, contain

* That was his opinion some years ago. We do not know whether this professor, whose science and candor" in his translation of the New Testament we admire, may not have retracted such assertions.

†That was the title of his book.-"He intends by it, the separation or division of the New Testament, into Word of God, or moral precepts, and Word of man, or facts of the sensible world."