hey find them on the one hand in the Bible. What do you find
in the Bible? You find almost anything you look for. Is it not
perfectly natural you should? The Bible was written by ever so many
different writers during a period covering nearly a thousand years.
Would you expect to find the same ideas throughout it? The book of
Ecclesiastes teaches that man dies like a dog. The Bible upholds
polygamy, slavery, cruelty of almost every kind. You might prove almost
any kind of immorality from the Bible if you wished to.

But take the highest and noblest conception of the Bible you can have.
I was talking with an eminent and widely known clergyman of the
Presbyterian Church during the present year; and we were speaking about
the Bible. I tell you this to show how modern ideas are permeating the
thoughts of men. He said: I confess that, if God had ever given the
world an infallible book, I should be utterly appalled and
disheartened; because it is perfectly clear that we have no such book
now. And, if God ever gave us such a book, then he has lost control of
his universe, and was not able to keep us in possession of it.

Here are Quakers and Methodists proving their beliefs, the Baptists
proving theirs, the Episcopalians proving theirs, the Presbyterians
theirs, all of them different in some particular, and each of them
getting their proof from the Bible.

Let us remember that the Bible is simply a great body of national
literature, and that you can prove anything out of it. Then remember
that it has been proved over and over again by the facts of the
handwriting of God himself to be mistaken and wrong in any number of
directions.

God is writing his own book in the heavens, in the earth, in the human
heart; and we are reading the story there. No creed, then, particularly
if it be infamous and unjust and horrible, can prove itself to us so
that we are bound to accept it to-day on the basis of an appeal to any
book. But the Catholic Church claims not only that the book is
infallible, but that their church tradition is infallible too. Is it?
How can a church prove that its declarations are infallible? Is there
any way of proving it? Think for a moment. It can make the claim: the
only conceivable way of proving it is by never making a mistake. Try
the Catholic Church by that test. It has committed itself over and over
and over again to things which have been demonstrated beyond question
to be mistakes. It has made grave mistak