I have been anxious to show you that the position of the Bible rests not on any miracle, or any external authority of the Church or Council, but on its appeal to the minds and consciences of men. You may doubt a miracle, you may doubt your individual instincts, you may doubt the competency of any one body of men; you cannot doubt so easily the conviction of a hundred generations. They found in it a power to make them good and they were convinced that it had come from God.[[1]]
Now consider that this Bible has held its authoritative position in the face of the most violent attacks all through the centuries; that infidels have dreamed that they had overthrown it and exploded it times without number, with the result only that its power has steadily increased, so that to-day it would be almost as easy to root the sun out of the heavens as to root this Bible out of human life.
Take this single fact as an illustration. A hundred years ago Voltaire refuted it quite satisfactorily, as it seemed to himself. "In a century," he said, "the Bible and Christianity will be things of the past." Well, how has his prophecy been fulfilled? Before his day the whole world from the beginning of it had not produced six millions of Bibles. In a single century since, and that too, the enlightened, critical nineteenth century, two hundred millions of Bibles and portions of Scripture have issued from the press, in five hundred and forty-three languages. And I have read somewhere that the house in which Voltaire lived is now one of the depots of the Bible Society.
II.—THE WITNESS IN OURSELVES.
1.—I have pointed out that the authority of the Scriptures has been equivalent to the authority with which they themselves convinced men that they came from God. Now let us try to bring this conviction home to ourselves—to test on ourselves the power of these Scripture utterances which persuaded men of old that they came from above. For it is as they compel in us the same convictions that we can readily understand the making of the Bible.
Get outside all thoughts of an authoritative Bible. Forget the fuller light of Christ in which you stand, which reveals comparative imperfection in those ancient writers. Put yourself in their place. Picture the nations of the earth in their ignorance and depravity, with their blind gropings after God, reaching no higher than fetishes and idols, and the tales of classical mythology. Then listen wonderingly to those prophetic voices in Israel amid the surroundings of that dark old world before Romulus and Remus were suckled by the wolf:
"Jehovah, Jehovah. A God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.
"Rend your hearts and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil.
"Thus saith the high and holy One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite one.
"What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?"