kness and depravity, of horror and
despair. Still, on the one definite point, 'Is the Bible divinely
inspired according to the theory of divine inspiration laid down by
certain theologians,' the Christian will be beaten out and out,--he will
not only be confuted, but confounded, dishonored, and utterly routed.
The Bible and Christianity will receive an undeserved wound, and
infidelity will have an undeserved triumph; and many a poor young man
whose leanings were towards the Bible, and who would have liked its
advocate to triumph, will be disheartened, distressed, embarrassed,
distracted, and perhaps undone.

The true doctrine of Scripture inspiration, or of Scripture authority,
is about as applicable to the common version, and to honest Christian
translations generally, and to all the manuscripts, and to all the
printed Greek and Hebrew Bibles, as it would be to the lost originals if
they could be recovered. There is divine inspiration enough in the
poorest translation of the Scriptures, and in the most imperfect Greek
and Hebrew transcript of them ever made, to place the Bible above all
the books on earth, as a means of enlightening, regenerating,
comforting, and saving mankind. But in none of its forms is the Bible so
inspired, as to make it what the unauthorized, fanciful, impossible
theories of certain dreamy, or proud, presumptuous, and overbearing
theologians require it to be.

I have seen twenty or thirty definitions of Scripture
INSPIRATION all of which betray the Bible into the hands of its
adversaries. And it is no use expecting to convert skeptics, till those
definitions are set aside, and better, truer ones put in their place. We
ourselves pay no regard to these definitions. They are merely human
fictions. They have no warrant from Scripture, and we cannot allow
ourselves to be hampered with them.

The passage in the New Testament which speaks of the Holy Scriptures of
the Old Testament as divinely inspired, gives us no definition of divine
inspiration. It says, 'All Scripture given by inspiration of God is
profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness, tending to make the man of God perfect, thoroughly
furnished unto all good works:' but it goes no further. It does not say
that all Scripture given by inspiration of God will be written in a
superhuman language, or in a superhuman style. Nor does it say that all
its allusions to natural things will be perfectly corr