Richard Clay AND Sons, Limited,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.G., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
First Edition, 1893. Reprinted, 1895, 1898, 1901, 1904.
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PREFACE
FOR more than a thousand years, the great majority of the most highly civilised and instructed
nations in the world have confidently believed and passionately maintained that certain writings, which
they entitle sacred, occupy a unique position in literature, in that they possess an authority, different in
kind, and immeasurably superior in weight, to that of all other books. Age after age, they have held it to
be an indisputable truth that, whoever may be the ostensible writers of the Jewish, Christian, and
Mahometan scriptures, God Himself is their real author; and, since their conception of the attributes of
the Deity excludes the possibility of error and — at least in relation to this particular matter — of wilful
deception, they have drawn the logical conclusion that the denier of the accuracy of any statement, the
questioner of the binding force of any command, to be found in these documents is not merely a fool,
but a blasphemer. From the point of view of mere reason be grossly blunders; from that of religion he
grievously sins.
But, if this dogma of Rabbinical invention is well founded; if, for example, every word in our
Bible has been dictated by the Deity;1 or even, if it be held to be the Divine purpose that every
proposition should be understood by the hearer or reader in the plain sense of the words employed (and
it seems impossible to reconcile the Divine attribute of truthfulness with any other intention), a serious
strain upon faith must arise. Moreover, experience has proved that the severity of this strain tends to
increase, and in an even more rapid ratio, with the growth in intelligence of mankind and with the
enlargement of the sphere of assured knowledge among them.
It
is becoming,
if
it has not become, impossible for men of clear intellect and adequate
instruction to believe, and it has ceased, or is ceasing, to be possible for such men honestly to say they
believe, that the universe came into being in the fashion described in the first chapter of Genesis; or to
accept, as a literal truth, the story of the making of woman, with the account of the catastrophe which
followed hard upon it, in the second chapter; or to admit that the earth was repeopled with terrestrial
inhabitants by migration from Armenia or Kurdistan, little more than 4,000 years ago, which is implied
in the eighth chapter; or finally, to shape their conduct in accordance with the conviction that the world
is haunted by innumerable demons, who take possession of men and may be driven out of them by
exorcistic adjurations, which pervades the Gospels.
Nevertheless, if there is any justification for the dogma of plenary inspiration, the damnatory
prodigality of even the Athanasian Creed is still too sparing. “Whosoever will be saved” must believe,
not only all these things, but a great many others of equal repugnancy to common sense and everyday
knowledge.
The doctrine of biblical infallibility, which involves these remarkable consequences, was
widely held by my countrymen within my recollection: I have reason to think that many persons of
unimpeachable piety, a few of learning, and even some of intelligence, yet uphold it. But I venture to
entertain a doubt whether it can produce any champion whose competency and authority would be
recognised beyond the limits of the sect, or theological coterie, to which he belongs. On the contrary,
apologetic effort, at present, appears to devote itself to the end of keeping the name of “Inspiration” to
suggest the divine source, and consequent infallibility, of more or less of the biblical literature, while
carefully emptying the term of any definite sense. For “plenary inspiration” we are asked to substitute a
1 “Whoso says that Moses wrote even a single verse [of the Pentatench] from his own knowledge, denies and
contemns the Word of God,” bab Sanhedrin 99a, cited by Schürer, Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes, Bd. II. p. 249. The
account of the death of Moses in the last eight verses of Deuteronomy was, of course, dictated to and written by himself,
like all the rest. Admit prophetic inspiration and what becomes of the difficulty? Surely a quite unanswerable argument.
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