4: 37). "We are of God," writes John. "He that knoweth God
heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us" (1 John 4: 16).
These claims are too great to be put forth concerning fallible
writings. Admitting their premises, the Jews were right in charging
Jesus with blasphemy, in that being a man {181} he made himself God.
If Christ is not God, he is not even a good man. And if the Scriptures
are not inerrant, they are worse than errant; since, being literature,
they make themselves the word of God.

And what if it be said that there are irreconcilable contradictions in
this book which calls itself the oracles of God? Two things may be
said: First, it should be expected that under "the scientific method"
such contradictions should appear and constantly multiply. The Bible
is a sensitive plant, which shuts itself up at the touch of mere
critical investigation. In the same paragraph in which it claims that
its very words are the words of the Holy Spirit, it repudiates the
scientific method as futile for the understanding of those words: "Eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard,"--and insists on the spiritual method as
alone adequate,--"but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit" (1
Cor. 2: 9, 10). Not only does the Bible not yield roses to the critic,
it yields the thorns and briars of hopeless contradiction. "_Intellige
ut credos verbum meum_," said Augustine to the rationalists of his day,
"_sed crede ut intelligas verbum Dei_." "Understand my word, that you
may believe it; believe God's word, that you may understand it." Faith
holds not only the keys of all the creeds, but of all the
contradictions. He who starts out and proceeds under the conviction
that the Bible is the {182} infallible word of God, will find
discrepancies constantly turning into unisons under his study. And
this remark leads to the second observation: that the contradictions of
man may really be the harmonies of God. An uncultivated listener,
hearing an oratorio of one of the great masters, would detect discords
again and again in the strains; and as a matter of fact, what are
called "accidentals" in music are discords, but discords inserted to
heighten the harmony. Thus, as one after another of the alleged
discrepancies of Scripture having been noted and made to jar upon the
ear have then been reconciled, with what an emphatic and heightened
harmony have the words of the psalmist, speaking by the Holy Ghost,
fallen on our ear: "The la