"I was very much pleased," said Mrs. John Roscoe, "with the appearance and manners of your young protegé. The reason she gave for loving the Bible is a proof of superior intelligence, and, I should hope, of decided piety."
"Yes, she is an amiable girl, and I hope she is pious. She is a rescue from a godless family. Her parents are very profane persons, and their other children are following their example. I have no doubt of her attachment to the Bible, for she has made herself very conversant with it."
In the evening, when a few friends were assembled, Mrs. John Roscoe mentioned how much pleased she had been with the Sabbath-school girl, and repeated the remark she made on receiving the Bible from Mrs. Stevens.
"For its own sake," said the Rev. Mr. Guion; "that is a substantially good reason for loving the Bible. It is a somewhat singular fact that no book, on any subject or in any language, has so completely divided public belief and sympathy, both on the question of its origin and its practical utility."
"It certainly," Mr. Roscoe replied, "is a very singular, and a very wonderful book: wonderful, if true; more so, if false. If true, we can account for its origin; but how can its origin be accounted for if it be false? If false, it is an invention; and not the invention of one man, but of an organized conspiracy, and a conspiracy of good men, for the Bible is too good a book for bad men to write."
Rev. Mr. Guion.—"I admit that a bad man may write a good book; but to suppose that a number of bad men would conspire to write such a good book as the Bible, is to admit as great a moral impossibility as to imagine that a number of good men would form a confederacy in fraud and duplicity, and then palm off their lying inventions as positive realities. Now, let us look at the case fairly, and I think we may make some logical progress in settling the question of its origin. Here is a Bible, and it consists of two parts—the Old and the New Testament; and we must recollect that the Old Testament would be incomplete without the New, and the New Testament would be incomplete without the Old. Each of these parts consists of different books, or distinct writings, variously designated, occupying the space of nearly 2000 years in the composition of them. If the Bible had been written by any one man in any one age, or if it had been written by contemporary writers living in the same city or country, its integrity might be open to very strong suspicion. But the writers of the Bible lived in different ages and in different countries, spoke different languages, belonged to very different ranks in social life, and most of them were unknown to each other; and yet there is, on all the facts and doctrines, and institutes of these records, an exact concurrence[4] of testimony running through the whole of their writings. Amongst the writers we find legislators, kings, poets, herdsmen, fishermen; one was a publican, and another a tent-maker, who, at one period of his life, denounced as false some of the facts of its record, which, on investigation, he found to be true, and attested the integrity of his new-formed belief by yielding to a martyr's death. And it will be at once perceived by the intelligent reader, that these men were no common-place writers; they moved in no beaten pathway of general knowledge; they are no copyists—they are originals; what they tell us no other men had ever thought of, or, if they had, their thoughts died with them, as they never gave publicity to them. The writers of the Bible appear amongst us as scribes coming from another world, well instructed in the mysteries of a unique faith, admirably adapted to the peculiar exigencies of disordered and perplexed humanity. In addition to the origin of the world and of evil—the mediatorial work and government of the Son of God, the moral character and condition, and responsibilities, and final destiny of the soul of man—and a future economy of existence to last for ever—are the momentous truths which they make known to us, through the media of their multifarious and diversified compositions; of history, prophecy, parable, poetic songs, and plain didactic prose."
Rev. Mr. Roscoe.—"And what is especially deserving of our attention, is the perfect ease and harmony with which they write on these new and sublime discoveries of moral truth, while they all write independently of each other. They admit that they are subordinates, unworthy of the honour of their appointment; yet each one speaks and writes, and without any appearance of dogmatism or ostentation, in the same dignified tone of absolute authority; the voice which speaks and the hand which writes, is human, but what is said or written, comes from some other source."
Rev. Mr. Ingleby.—"Yes, Sir, I think the correctness of your remark can be demonstrated; at least, it comes as much within the range of demonstration, as any moral or historic truth, or fact, can be brought. The Old Testament is incomplete, and comparatively valueless, without the New; and yet it is written under the obvious impression and belief, that it would be completed; but on what data could its writers base their calculation, that they should have successors who would carry on and perfect what they had begun and advanced through several stages of its progress. Now, I readily believe, that a person of a very acute and comprehensive mind, who has carefully watched and studied the facts and philosophy of history, may, on some special occasions, give some general outline of what will be the state of things within a very near futurity, if he cautiously avoid going into specific and minute details. But the writers of the Old Testament have opened up the roll of a very remote futurity,[5] and have recorded extraordinary events, with their dates and localities, long before their actual occurrence, portraying the likeness of Messiah the Prince, ages before his appearance on earth, and doing it with so much exactness, that it is a perfect resemblance of the wonderful original. How could they have done this, unless they had been guided by a prescient Spirit, to whose eye all the future is as visible as all the past?"
"Foretelling at the same time," said Mrs. John Roscoe, "his tragical death; which no one would have expected as the termination of his benevolent career."