And it is the same with regard to books on God, religion, and duty. Books with numbers of defects,—with defects of style, defects of arrangement, and even defects in matter, may teach you many useful lessons, if you read and study them properly; and the best books on earth will not teach you much if you read them carelessly.
A great deal, almost every thing, depends on the spirit or the object with which a man reads a good book. You may read the best books to little profit, and you may get great good from very inferior ones.
The Bible is the best religious and moral book on earth; it is, in its most imperfect translations, able to make men wise, and good, and useful, and happy to the last degree, if they will read and study it properly. But there is not a better book on earth for making a man a fool, if he comes to it with a vain mind, a proud spirit, a fulness of self-conceit, or a wish to be a prophet. A desire to be a prater about the millennium, the second coming of Christ, the personal reign, the orders of angels, the ranks of devils, the secrets of God's counsels, the hidden meaning of the badgers' skins, the shittim wood, the Urim and Thummim, the Cherubim and Seraphim, the Teraphim and Anakim, and all the imaginary meanings of imaginary types, and the place where Paradise was situated, and the mountain peak on which the Ark rested, and Behemoth, and Leviathan, and the spot at which the Israelites entered the Red Sea, and the compass of Adam's knowledge before he named the animals, and the fiery sword at the gate of Paradise, and the controversial parts of Paul's epistles, and the mysteries of the Book of Revelation, and the spiritual meaning of Solomon's Song, and the place where Satan had his meeting with the sons of God in the days of Job, and the exact way in which Job used the potsherd, when he scraped himself as he sat among the ashes, &c., &c.,—I say if this is what a man desires, the Bible will help him to his wish, and make him the laughing-stock, or the pity of all sensible men.
And if he employs the one hundred and fifty rules of Hartwell Horne for misinterpreting the plain portions of the Bible, and his one hundred and forty other rules for darkening his mind, and confounding his soul, the Bible will ruin him still quicker. A better book for trying a man, and for rewarding his honesty, and piety, and charity, if he has those virtues, and for making them ever more; or for punishing a man's vanity, and pride, and selfishness, and perversity, if he be the slave of such passions, God could hardly have given. And to try and to bless men are the two great objects of all God's revelations.
My opponent was fond of saying that the Bible was an infallible guide. The statement was not true in any strict and rigorous sense of the words. And it was foolish for him to make it in an eager debate, for he could never prove it. And he was not long in finding this out. A few plain questions set him quite fast. The Bible is an infallible guide, you say. We ask, Which Bible? The common version? No. John Wesley's version? No. Dr. Conquest's? No. The Unitarian version? No. Any version? No. Is it some particular Greek or Hebrew Bible then? No. Is it the manuscripts? No. But these are all the Bibles we have.
The Bible is an infallible guide, you say. What to? Uniformity of opinion? No. Uniformity of worship? No. Uniformity of life? No. Uniformity of feeling, of affection, of effort? No. It does not even require uniformity in those matters. It supposes diversity. It asks only for sincerity, honesty, fidelity. But it is an infallible guide to all truth and duty, you say. Has it guided you to all truth and duty? No. Whom has it guided to those blessed results? You cannot say.
But it is an infallible guide to all that truth which is necessary to a man's salvation, you say. But there is no particular amount of truth that is necessary to a man's salvation. The amount of truth necessary to a man's salvation differs according to his powers and privileges. That which is necessary to my salvation may not be necessary to the salvation of a Pagan. It is sincerity in the search of truth, and fidelity in reducing it to practice, which is necessary to a man's salvation, and not the acquisition of some particular quantity of truth.
The Bible is an infallible guide. To whom? To the Catholics? No. To the Unitarians? No. To the Quakers? No. To the Church of England people? No. To Methodists and Calvinists? No.
That the Bible is a trusty guide enough, I have no doubt, if we will faithfully and prayerfully follow it; but to talk as if it would guide every one infallibly to exactly the same views, or to the fulness of all truth, is not wise. It is not warranted either by the Bible itself, or by facts.
Besides, if a book is to guide a man infallibly, it must be made perfectly plain; it must be infallibly interpreted. And where are the infallible interpreters? We know of none that even profess to be such outside the Church of Rome; and none but themselves and their own Church members believe their professions. You do not believe them. As a rule, the claim of infallibility is taken as a proof that the man who makes it is not only fallible, but something worse.