dism and what not for light upon Christian doctrine. Both tendencies are utterly without promise of help,-the one, odious because of a subtile claim of infallibility permeating. all its reasonings, and corrupting all its scholarship; the other, pitiable because of its ignorance of the vital and imperishable elements of Christian truth. The call of the day is for something which shall pursue the middle path, and shall perform the true work of the systematic theologian, who is ever receptive, critical, comprehensive, and constructive, who can discriminate and hold the essential elements of truth as it has proved itself such in the past, and acknowledge and incorporate into his thinking the new elements of truth which commend themselves at present.

With this problem the writer has been compelled by his official duty to wrestle and to arrive at some sort of a conclusion. The private scholar may defer judgment, and may continue indefinitely to ponder upon his themes, and to test his conclusions. The public teacher must, however, have an answer to give to those who entrust themselves to him for guidance. This necessity of his situation has both advantages and disadvantages. It certainly should make him modest in his claims for his work, and should render him peculiarly desirous of that correction which the comparison of his results with those of other thinkers is calculated to afford him.

The following pages will present the argument for the authority and inspiration of the Scriptures as it has finally shaped itself in the thinking and teaching of the writer. It is, possibly, in some respects new. It might never have been wrought out except that official duty has demanded it. If it shall seem to any to meet the necessities of the day, and to perform in any sense those services which have just been set forth as the peculiar duty of this branch of theology, it will have answered its purpose.

I.

FUNDAMENTAL PROOF.

The Christian, in consequence of the experience of the new birth, comes to have a considerable body of knowledge springing directly out of that event. Not all parts of this are obtained in the same way. Some are matters of immediate consciousness; others are the result of inferences by longer or shorter trains of reasoning; and, while some possess all the certainty of which human knowledge is capable, others have a less degree of certainty, though they all possess enough to entitle them to the highest value as elements of original and fundamental Christian knowledge. The most important of such doctrines are, that man is a sinner, that there is a holy and personal God, that under divine influence a man may turn from sin and put forth a fundamental choice of the right as such, that thereupon he experiences peace in the forgiveness of his sins, and that he thus begins a new life, under the guidance of a new principle and with the exercise of new powers. All these truths possess to him the character of knowledge, and that, independent, experiential, knowledge. They do not depend to him upon the authority of other men, nor upon the authority of any book. If there are men who have helped him see them, or if he has derived any of his knowledge of the facts or any light upon their proper interpretation from any book, they lie now before him, when his experience has become settled and clear, as matters which he surveys in all their amplitude and in all their significance, and which he thus knows permanently and for himself.

When, now, such a man comes to the Bible, whether it be for the first or for the hundredth time, with the definite question now first definitely asked, What is the source and what the character of this book? he finds that it contains, as its central and dominating portion, the same truths as to sin, God, repentance, forgiveness, and salvation which have al

ready become a constituent part of his religious knowledge. He reasons thus: My knowledge of these transcendent truths. was wrought within my soul by the operation of God upon it. No other agency adequately accounts for them. They are to me the utterance of God. They must have been wrought in the men who wrote this book in the same way. Therefore this book is the utterance, the Word, of God.1

An analogy may make this argument clearer. A student in the University learns geology. He has presented to him the fundamental facts of the science by his teacher. He also goes out into the fields and over the mountains and examines for himself the facts, and under the guidance of those more advanced in the science comes by the exercise of his own powers of observation and reasoning to an independent knowledge of the great formations, their characteristic fossils, their transformations, and the forces of water, ice, fire, etc., which have operated upon them. He becomes a geologist. He knows for himself. Now there is an unknown (or a known, it is a matter of indifference) book presented to him, and he is asked what, and how valuable, it is. He opens it; and he finds that it describes, just as he has himself seen them in nature, the formations, fossils, ice-marks, volcanic forces, etc., of the earth. His reply is, This is a Geology, and it proceeded from a competent geologist. He argues from his original and independent knowledge of the theme to the character of the book which treats the same theme.

So the Christian argues from his knowledge about God to the character of this book which contains the same knowledge.

It will be noted that this argument is not that which is sometimes summarized under the form, The Bible finds me, or, The Bible is inspired because it is inspiring. That is an

1 This argument, though condensed, is, it is hoped, clear. If not, it may be found drawn out at greater length in previous papers of the author in this Quarterly, viz., 1883, p. 97 ff., 1891, p. 96ff., particularly 1893,

P. 344 ff.

argument from effect to cause. I employ the Bible, yield myself to its teachings, and I find that it works a good work in my soul. I therefore conclude that it is divine. But this argument is a case of identification, or of the deductive application of a principle previously gained by induction to an observed case. It may be logically put thus: A certain group of truths is God-wrought. The Bible is such a group. Therefore, it is God-wrought. It rests for its conclusiveness upon the truth of the major premise, and upon the correctness of the observation which is summarized in the minor premise. These two things being ascertained to be correct, it follows as a matter of course.

The elucidation of the argument may be promoted by the consideration of an objection which will ordinarily be raised at this point. The Christian gets his knowledge from the Bible: and when he comes to the Bible, and finds the same things which he believes there, this fact, it is objected, can give no evidence to the Bible. His ideas rest upon the Bible; but what does the Bible rest upon? That question remains still unanswered. It does not prove some new representation of Palmer Cox's brownies to be true to fact because my little boy finds them true to his ideas of brownies, themselves created and nourished by other productions of Mr. Cox.

The objection is invalid because it overlooks a certain fact, which has already been stated, though not fully expanded. The knowledge with which the common Christian comes to the Bible is not derived from the Bible in the sense meant. It may be historically derived from the Bible, that is, the first knowledge of truth which the man had may have been communicated by the Bible, but after the experience of the new birth it is logically independent of the Bible. The man now knows it in a new way. In fact, he can be said truly to know it only after he has gained this new and independent knowledge. Is the student forever dependent logically upon his

teacher for his knowledge of geology, though he did get all his initial ideas from him? Can he not rise to a point where he knows more than his teacher? possibly, where he can correct errors into which that teacher has fallen, if there are any such? So, if there were errors in the Bible, the Christian might come to where he could correct it, for he does gain—and this is the crucial point-he does gain a knowledge for which he is no longer dependent upon the book from which he at first derived it.

It might be said in further rebuttal of this objection, that the Christian is sometimes converted without any direct connection with the Bible. Martin Luther was brought to peace by the old monk who pointed him to the creed, not the Bible, which said: I believe in the forgiveness of sin. Still, of course, this creed, and other ordinary methods of presenting Christian truth are ultimately derived from the Bible. But this answer to the objection need not be insisted on, for the answer is complete, when it is presented as above, and also best, since it deals with the objection in its fundamental and strongest.

form.

The answer of another objection is still requisite. This argument does not prove the divine origin of the Bible, it will be said, for it would also prove the same of many another book which is quite human, as for example, Luther on the Galatians. I come to this book, and many others, and I find the same great truths taught which I have already come to accept, and I might say also, This book is wrought of God; but I should err. The argument, because it proves too much, does not prove anything.

The objection reveals an important fact, that such a book as Luther on the Galatians is, in a sense, wrought of God. Luther could only know these truths, of which the Christian has gained independent knowledge by experience, as he was in one way or another taught of God. Such knowledge can only come from God into the sinful world. But the slight