'The watchword of the Reformation was, 'The sufficiency of the Scriptures for salvation.'
'Definite theories of inspiration were seldom propounded till of late years.
'The Bible is a revelation of spiritual truth communicated chiefly in illustrations and figurative language, and making use of the history, chronology, and other sciences of the age, as vehicles or helps. This principle will explain those seeming contradictions [to science] which result from the use of popular language, as when the sun and moon are said to stand still, or when the sun is said to go from one end of the heaven to the other, etc. It will also account for many actual errors in science, chronology, and history, should such be found to exist. The Scriptures were not intended to teach men these things, but to reveal what relates to our connection with moral law, and the spiritual world, and our salvation. In teaching these things, the writers availed themselves of the popular language, and the current science and literature of the age in which they lived. As in the present day a man may be well instructed in Christian doctrine, and have the unction from the Holy One, while ignorant of the teachings of modern science, so likewise it was possible to those who first received religious truth and were commissioned to declare it. The presence of the Holy Spirit no more preserved men from errors in science in the one case than in the other. One may as well seek to study surveying in a biography of Washington, as the details of geology or chronology in Genesis.
'The proper test to apply to the Gospels is, whether each gives us a picture of the life and ministry of Jesus that is self-consistent and consistent with the others; such as would be suitable to the use of believers.
'Many of the apparent contradictions of the Bible may be explained by the mistakes of transcribers, or in some other way equally natural; but, as the Bishop of London has well remarked, 'When laborious ingenuity has exerted itself to collect a whole store of such difficulties, supposing them to be real, what on earth does it signify? They may be left quietly to float away without our being able to solve them, if we bear in mind the acknowledged fact, that there is a human element in the Bible.'
'What if many of the numbers given in Exodus should, as Bishop Colenso asserts, be inaccurate? What is to be gained by assertions or denials relative to matters which have for ever passed out of the reach of our verification? And what if, here and there, a law should seem to us strange and unaccountable; an event difficult to comprehend; a statement to involve an apparent contradiction? What has all this to do with the essential value of the Book. Absolutely nothing, unless thereby its [honesty] truthfulness can be set aside.
'If error were cunningly interspersed with truth in the Bible, the case would be different. But it is not so. The Book, as a whole, and as it stands, is wholesome and useful; each portion of it has its proper place, and is adequate to fulfil its appointed end. But everything in the Book does not take hold alike on the heart and conscience. It may be very interesting, as indeed it is, to trace on the map the various journeyings of St. Paul, or the wanderings of the children of Israel in the wilderness; to note a hundred designed coincidences, etc. Yet all this may be done without the slightest moral or spiritual benefit to the man who does it. And, of course, all this may be left undone by others without the slightest spiritual loss or disadvantage.'
The following may be our own.
The great thing is to use the Scriptures as a means of instruction in religious truth and Christian duty, and as a means of improvement in all moral excellence and Christian usefulness.
Set the doctrine of Scripture inspiration too high, and people, finding that the Scriptures do not come up to it, will conclude that the doctrine is false,—that the Scriptures are not inspired,—that they do not differ from other books,—that divine revelation is a fiction,—that religion is a delusion,—and that the true philosophy of life and of the universe is infidelity. And the Scriptures do not come up to the doctrine of inspiration held by many. It is impossible they should. No book written in human language can come up to it. What they say an inspired book must be, no book on earth ever was, and no book ever will be. And infidels see it, and are confirmed in their infidelity. And others see it and become infidels. And Christians argue with them and are overcome. And others are perplexed and bewildered, and obliged to close their eyes to facts, and though they cling to their belief, they are troubled with fears and misgivings as long as they live.