greater portion
of the Old Testament are wholly unknown, as well as the dates when they
were written, and the same is true of several of the books of the New
Testament, how are we to know these same books are divinely inspired,
the infallible truth, the word of God? This is a fair question and a
reasonable one.

I had set out in earnest and good faith to find the proofs of
inspiration, in which I had always believed, and only found them
wanting. Add to this the manifold discrepancies and direct
contradictions which I now began to discover running thru the whole
Bible, both Old and New Testaments, and I found them wholly
irreconcilable with any idea of divine revelation and infallible truth.

I here recalled a small book I had read some years before on
Inspiration,--the author I have forgotten,--but I remember the three
leading reasons for the inspiration of the Bible which he gave, and
which, with my limited knowledge at the time, seemed satisfactory.
These were: Tradition, Necessity and Success. The tradition of the
Jews as to the authenticity and inspiration of the books of the Old
Testament: it was argued, that whatever may at this time be the limits
of our knowledge concerning these books, the ancient Jewish Rabbis
_knew_ just what they were, and if they had not every one been the word
of God, these Rabbis would have known it, and they never would have
been in the canon. The same doctrine of tradition was applied to the
Church Fathers concerning the books of the New Testament. But I had
here learned that these Church Fathers were by no means agreed as to
these books. I began to see now that the same argument might be
applied with equal force to the Vedas, the Zend Avesta, or the Koran.

The argument from necessity was based upon the assumption that man in
his fallen and sinful state was by nature wholly unable to discover
anything about God, or the means of his redemption. Therefore a divine
revelation was necessary to meet man's needs in this case; and the
Bible meets this necessity. Therefore the Bible is a divine
revelation. But I here recalled that the only evidence we have of
man's original perfection and fall is in the Bible itself; and that
this line of argument must ultimately drive us back to the mere
_assumption_ of the facts upon which this supposed "divine necessity"
was based.

The argument based upon success was that Christ and Christianity were
not only the fulfillment of Old Testament