PREFACE. Ar the very first sight of this book and its title, two equally unfounded prejudices may arise in certain minds. I desire to remove them. The Greek word Theopneusty, although employed by St. Paul, and for a long time used by the Germans, is yet unknown in our tongue. Many a reader may therefore say, that the subject here treated, is too scientific to be popular, and too little popular to be useful. And yet I unhesitatingly declare, that if any thing has inspired me with both the desire and the courage to undertake this work, it is the two-fold conviction of its vital importance and its simplicity. I do not think, that after the admission of the divinity of Christianity, a question can be stated, which is more essential to the life of our faith, than this; Is the Bible from God? is it entirely from God? or is it true, (as some assert,) that it contains sentences which are purely human, inaccurate narratives, vulgar errors, illogical reasonings; in a word, that it contains books, or portions of books, in which our faith has no interest, being marred by error and the natural indiscretions of the writers? A question decisive, fundamental; yea vital! It is the first that meets you on opening the Scriptures, and with it your religion ought to commence. If it be true, as you say, that some things in the Bible are unimportant, have nothing to do with your faith, and no relation to Jesus Christ; and if it be true, again, that nothing in this book is inspired, but that which you may happen to think possessed of importance, related to faith and to Jesus Christ, then your Bible is a totally different book from that of the Fathers, of the Reformers, and of the saints in every age. Your Bible is fallible: theirs was infallible. Yours has chapters, or portions of chapters, sentences or phrases, which must be totally distinguished from those that are of God; theirs was "all given by inspiration of God, and all of it profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect." The very same passage may then be, in your estimation, as far from that which it was in theirs, as earth is from heaven. You have opened, for instance, at the forty-fifth Psalm, or at the Song of Solomon. Whilst you see nothing there, but that which is the most thoroughly human, a long marriage-song, or the amorous conversations between a young maid of Sharon and her young husband; they were there accustomed to see the glories of the Church, the bonds of Jehovah's love, the depths of grace in Christ; in a word, that which is most divine in heavenly things; and if they could not read them there, they knew that they are there, and there they searched for them. Or, we take an epistle of St. Paul. Whilst one of us attributes a sentence which he does not understand, or which shocks his carnal sense, to the Jewish prejudices of the writer, to intentions entirely vulgar, to circumstances altogether human; the other there searches with profoundest respect, the meaning of the Spirit; he believes it to be perfect, before discovering what it is; and he attributes its apparent insignificance or obscurity only to his own unskilfulness and ignorance. |