this question to grant that the Bible is
inspired, just as every work of genius is inspired; nor to profess that
they believe the Bible to be from God, just as every pure and holy
thought, and every good work, proceed from him. When the assertors of
the divine authority of the Bible speak of it as inspired, they mean
that it is so as no other book is; and when they speak of it as coming
from God, they mean that it does not come simply as a gift of God's
bounty, as the soldier's land-warrant comes from the government; but
that it comes like the laws of Congress, carrying authority with it to
command our obedience.

We feel no interest whatever in the discussion of an inspiration, "like
God's omnipotence, not limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews,
Christians and Mohammedans, but as extensive as the race;"[121] or
perhaps as extensive as all creation, and leading us to regard even "the
solemn notes of the screech owl" as inspired.[122] What manner of use
could the Bible be to an ignorant soul groping its way to truth and
holiness, or to a dying sinner hastening to the judgment seat of God, if
it were true, that "the Bible's own teaching on the subject is that
everything good in any book, person or thing, is inspired? Milton and
Shakespeare, and Bacon and the Canticles, the Apocalypse and the Sermon
on the Mount, and the Eighth Chapter of the Romans are all inspired. How
much inspiration they respectively contain must be gathered from their
results."[123]

This liberal grant of inspiration, alike to Moses and Mohammed, to
Christ and to Shakespeare, is evidently a denial of divine authority to
any of them. If Hamlet, and the Sermon on the Mount, and the Koran, are
all of a like divine authority, or all alike without any, it is merely a
matter of taste whether I worship at Niblo's or the Tabernacle, or keep
a harem in my house or a prayer-meeting. Most men, however, find it hard
to believe that Christ and Mohammed taught exactly the same religion, or
that the church and the theater are precisely equal and alike in their
influences on the heart and life; and so they reject several of these
inspired men, and cleave to the one they like best. Whereas, if this
theory be true, they ought not to act in such a disrespectful way toward
any inspired man; but ought to attend the church, the theater and the
harem with equal regularity, and serve God, Mammon and Belial with
equal diligence.

"Oh," it is replied, "they are no