I have dwelt at such length on the Deluge because it affords a crucial test of the dogma of Divine inspiration for the whole of the Bible. The account of the Creation may be obscured by forced interpretations and misty eloquence; but there can be no mistake as to the specific and precise statements respecting the second creation of man and of animal life. Either they are true or untrue; and the issue is one upon which any unprejudiced mind of ordinary intelligence and information can arrive at a conclusive verdict. If there never was an universal Deluge within historical times; if the highest mountains were never covered; if all life was never destroyed, except the contents of the Ark; if the whole animal creation, including beasts, birds, and creeping things, never lived together for twelve months cooped up in it; and if the earth was not repeopled with all the varieties of the human race, and all the orders, genera, and species of animal life, from a single centre at Ararat, then the Bible is not inspired as regards its scientific and historical statements. This, however, in no way affects the question of the inspiration of the religious and moral portions of the Bible.
I have sometimes thought how, if I were an advocate stating the case for the inspiration of the Bible, I should be inclined to put it. I should start with Bishop Temple's definition of the First Cause, a personal God, with faculties like ours, but so transcendentally greater that he had no occasion to be perpetually patching and mending his work, but did everything by an original impress, which included all subsequent evolution, as the nucleolus in the primitive ovum includes the whole evolution and subsequent life of the chicken, mammal, or man. I should go on to say that the Bible has clearly been an important factor in this evolution of the human race; that it consists of two portions—one of moral and religious import, the other of scientific statements and theories, relating to such matters of purely human reason as astronomy, geology, literary criticism, and ancient history; and that these two parts are essentially different. It is quite conceivable that, on the hypothesis of a Divine Creator, one step in the majestic evolution from the original impress should have been that men of genius and devout nature should write books containing juster notions of man's relations to his Maker than prevailed in the polytheisms of early civilizations, and thus gradually educating a peculiar people who accepted these writings as sacred, and preparing the ground for a still higher and purer religion. But it is not conceivable that this, which may be called inspiration, of the religious and moral teaching, should have been extended to closing the record of all human discovery and progress, by teaching, as it were by rote, all that subsequent generations have, after long and painful effort, found out for themselves.
In point of fact, the Bible does not teach such truths, for in the domain of science it is full of the most obvious errors, and teaches nothing but what were the primitive myths, legends, and traditions of the early races. It is to be observed also that, on the theory of "original impress," those errors are just as much a part of the evolution of the Divine idea as the moral and religious truths. Those who insist that all of the Bible must be inspired or none, remind me of the king who said that, if God had only consulted him in his scheme of creation, he could have saved him from a good many mistakes. It is not difficult to understand how, even if we assume the theory of inspiration, or of original impress, for the religious portion of the Bible, the other or scientific portion should have been purposely left open to all the errors and contradictions of the human intellect in its early strivings to arrive at some sort of conception of the origin of things, and of the laws of the universe. And also that a collection of narratives of different dates and doubtful authorship should bear on the face of them evidence of the writers sharing in the errors and prejudices, and generally adopting points of view of successive generations of contemporaries.
Assuming this theory, I can only say for myself that the removal of the wet blanket of literal inspiration makes me turn to the Bible with increased interest. It is a most valuable record of the ways of thinking, and of the early conceptions of religion and science in the ancient world, and a most instructive chapter in the history of the evolution of the human mind from lower to higher things. Above all, it is a record of the preparation of the soil, in a peculiar race, for Christianity, which has been and is such an important factor in the history of the foremost races and highest civilizations. With all the errors and absurdities, all the crimes and cruelties which have attached themselves to it, but which in the light of science and free thought are rapidly being sloughed off, it cannot be denied that the European, and especially our English-speaking races, stand on a higher platform than if Gibbon's suggestion had been realized, the Arabs had been victorious at Tours, and Moslem Ulemas had been expounding the Koran at the University of Oxford.
[CHAPTER VII.
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT.]
Moral and Religious distinct from Historical Inspiration—Myth and Allegory—The Higher Criticism—All Ancient History unconfirmed by Monuments untrustworthy—Cyrus—Old Testament and Monuments—Jerusalem—Tablet of Tell-el-Amarna—Flinders Petrie's Exploration of Pre-Hebrew Cities—Ramses and Pi-thom—First certain Synchronism Rehoboam—Composite Structure of Old Testament—Elohist and Jehovist—Priests' Code—Canon Driver—Results—Book of Chronicles—Methods of Jewish Historians—Post-Exilic References—Tradition of Esdras—Nehemiah and Ezra—Foundation of Modern Judaism—Different from Pre-Exilic—Discovery of Book of the Law under Josiah—Deuteronomy—Earliest Sacred Writings—Conclusions—Aristocratic and Prophetic Schools—Triumph of Pietism with Exile—Both compiled partly from Old Materials—Crudeness and Barbarism of Parts—Pre-Abrahamic Period clearly mythical—Derived from Chaldæa—Abraham—Unhistoric Character—His Age—Lot's Wife—His double Adventure with Sarah—Abraham to Moses—Sojourn in Egypt—Discordant Chronology—Josephus' Quotation from Manetho—Small Traces of Egyptian Influence—Future Life—Legend of Joseph—Moses—Osarsiph—Life of Moses full of Fabulous Legends—His Birth—Plagues of Egypt—The Exodus—Colenso—Contradictions and Impossibilities—Immoralities—Massacres—Joshua and the Judges—Barbarisms and Absurdities—Only safe Conclusion no History before the Monarchy—David and Solomon—Comparatively Modern Date.
In dealing with the historical portion of the Old Testament, it is important to keep clearly in view the distinction between the historical and the religious and moral elements which are contained in the collection of works comprised in it. It is quite open to any one to hold that a certain moral and religious idea runs through the whole of these writings, which is gradually developed from rude beginnings into pure and lofty views of an Almighty God who created all things, and who loves justice and mercy better than the blood of bulls and rams. It is open to him to call this inspiration, and to see it also in the series of influences and events by which the Jews were moulded into a peculiar people, through whose instrumentality the three great Monotheistic religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity, and Mahometanism, superseded the older forms of polytheism.
With inspiration in this sense I have no quarrel, any more than I have with Bishop Temple's definition of "original impress," though possibly I might think "Evolution" a more modest term to apply, with our limited faculties and knowledge, to that "unceasing purpose" which the poet tells us
"Through the ages runs,