at which
is untrue in what I wrote about the Scriptures is no longer an obstacle
to my faith, now that I see it to be untrue. And those remarks which are
true in my writings on the Bible give me no trouble, because my faith in
Bible inspiration is of such a form, that they do not affect it. They
might shake the faith of a man who believes in a kind of inspiration of
the Bible which is unscriptural, and in a kind of perfection of the Book
which is impossible; but they do not affect the faith of a man who keeps
his belief in Bible inspiration and Bible perfection within the bounds
of Scripture and reason.

And here I may say a few words about the objections I advanced in my
debate with Dr. Berg.

1. The great mass of those objections prove nothing against the Bible
itself, as the great and divinely appointed means of man's religious
instruction and improvement. They simply show that the theory held by
Dr. Berg about the inspiration and absolute perfection of the book was
erroneous. If Dr. Berg had modified his notions, and brought them within
Scriptural bounds, this class of objections would all have fallen to the
ground.

2. But some of my statements were untrue and unjust. For instance, in
one case I said, 'The man who forms his ideas of God from the Bible can
hardly fail to have blasphemous ideas of Him.' Now, from the account of
the Creation in Genesis, to the last chapter in Revelation, the one
grand idea presented of God is that He is good, and that His delight is
to do good,--that He is good to all, and that His tender mercies are
over all His works. Whatever may be said of a few passages of dark or
doubtful meaning, the whole drift of the Bible is in accordance with
that wonderful, that unparalleled oracle of the Apostle, 'GOD IS LOVE.'

3. Another statement that I made was, that the man who studies God in
Nature, without the Bible, is infinitely likelier to get worthier views
of God, than he who gets his ideas of God from the Bible without regard
to Nature. Now the truth is, no man _can_ get his ideas of God from the
Bible without regard to Nature; for the Bible constantly refers to
Nature as a revelation of God, and represents Nature as exhibiting the
grandest displays of God's boundless and eternal goodness. The Bible and
Nature are in harmony on the character of God. The only difference is,
that the revelations of God's love in the Bible, and especially in
Christ, are more striking, more overpowering and t