Inspiration considered as a trend

Prefatory Note

In his former volume entitled, ^' Prayer as a Theory and a Fact," the '' Fletcher Prize Essay," the author of this book attempted to show that prayer involves two persons, God and man. The various lines of proof for the Divine existence were briefly named. They all show direction rather than attainment. It was said, ^* These various ways of seizing upon the idea of God are by no means exclusive of each other. They are methods suited to unlike minds. But there are minds so constituted that an unmistakable trend is more convincing than the sight of the ultimate goal. Enclosed in a circular box that men call a compass, is a delicate needle which, however you disturb it, trembles back to its pole. And it does this because all over the earth run unseen magnetic currents converging toward an unseen magnetic center far away in the north. Men sail on every ocean of the world and measure their land on every continent of the globe by that trend of the magnetic currents toward the pole. But no mortal foot ever touched that pole, no mortal eye ever saw it. It is the world over only a trend. And not only the earth beneath, but the wide heavens above us, are mapped off in lines of gigantic boundary by the steady trend toward a pole no man ever saw or touched.

PREFATORY NOTE

The trend toward God in all forms of human thought is just as distinct."

This volume aims to carry out and newly apply the thought of trend as there expressed. The form of argument used there for the Divine existence is used here for the Divine inspiration. It is insisted that trend, the strongest proof in the one case, is the strongest proof in the other. What if the method God intended us to use in proving his own being and his own revelation is one.? So too, it may be that the trend in the various theories of inspiration proposed by devout students of the Bible and that shown by the Bible itself, deserve notice. No new theory is here proposed ; but the theories devoutly held and the facts declared and involved in the Scriptures and confirmed in the Christian experience, are passed in brief review — to find in them all an unmistakable trend.

So broad a subject as this of inspiration will present itself to men under various aspects. It can be studied in manifold relations. It may be considered as an inbreathing with reference to its source, or as an impulse with reference to its power. It may be considered as a process with reference to its method, or as a product with reference to its results as found in a book. Only one of the many ways of considering the subject is here undertaken — that of trend. Hence the title, " Inspiration Considered as a Trend."

It is to be remembered that '' trend," like all our mental and moral terms, was primarily used in a physical sense. It is now used to signify the

PREFATORY NOTE tendency that makes for an end and also for the potency that gains it. The *^ magnetic trend " in physics is a term employed not only to describe a tendency, but to define a force attaining constantly a definite end. Used in political, in literary, in historical, and in moral statement, it declares not only developmental direction, but achieved potency covering alike process and result.

Nor let any man think that the idea of trend reduces inspiration to its lowest terms. Trends do indeed differ in intensity. But the accumulation of facts which show the potency of this trend, raises the certainty and the character of this method of proof above that of any one theory or of all theories, and so lifts it into the highest possible position.

If the satisfaction gained by a fresh study of this view of inspiration shall equal, in the mind of any reader, that enjoyed by the writer of these pages in their preparation, he will be abundantly rewarded.

D. W. F.

Pawtucket, R. I.

Chapter II

Section I. Our Natural Intuitions, 42

Limitations of the inductive method. New Testament basis may be questioned. Old Testament also. Going back to our *' original intuitions." They all demand a Bible. I. Liable to be overlooked. 2. Corroborated by other evidence. 3. Trustworthy as far as they go. 4. Liable to misuse. 5. Are roused by the Christian facts. 6. Consistent with each other. 7. All prophetic and not final. 8. All endorsed, purified, liberated, by the Bible. 9. Which to do this

CONTENTS must be inspired of God. lo. Both they and the Bible disclose a common trend.

Section II. Our Actual Bible, 71

I. Is a growth. 2. Its method historical and biographical. 3. Its Old Testament calls for the New Testament. 4. Its New Testament is to be read into the Old. 5. Christ's use of the Old Testament. 6. The vital thought that makes the Bible one unique book. 7. Everywhere the trend.

Chapter III

Section I. The Contents of the Christian Experience, 114

I. This experience a fact. 2. It is co-ordinated with biblical facts. 3. Its worth as an argument for inspiration. 4. Its evidence as a supplementary fact.

Section II. The Worth of this Experience as an Argument, 123

I. Its weight with those not Christians. 2. May not alone satisfy investigators. 3. Subordination of spiritual to intellectual method. 4. The biblical redactors.

Section III. Christian Experience as a Safeguard, 131

I. The *' inward blessing" and the written word. 2. A saving restraint.

Section IV. What is Involved in the Christian Experience, 135

I. In it a demand for inspiration as a fit thing. 2. As an expected thing. 3. As an authoritative thing. 4. As a satisfactory thing. 5. The testimony is unique and universal in each of these respects.

CONTENTS

Chapter IV

Section I. What we are Warranted to Expect, . . 150 I. As to an inspiring Spirit. His testimony to inspiration.

Section II. The Character of Men, 153

I. The testimony of the men he inspires as to their own inspiration. Their testimony to the inspiration of other inspired men. 2. Our Lord's testimony. His promise and the claimed fulfillment.

Section III. The General Course of Development, . 166 I. Development of the inspired facts and their record.

Section I. The Human Element, 175

I. The personality of the writers. 2. The signs showing the time when they wrote. 3. This element not disquieting, but assuring. 4. Human element necessary in order to the divine. 5. Human element a strength and not a weakness. 6. Everywhere the trend.

Section II. The Divine Element, 190

I. Divine record of ordinary things. 2. Of extraordinary things. 3. Divine selection of fit men to inspire. 4. Peculiar prophetic inspiration needed. 5. Parallel divine and human trend.

CHAPTER VI difficulties and confirmations

Section I. Anthropomorphism, 206

ij

CONTENTS

Section II. Chronology, 208

Chapter I

Here is a book called ''The Bible/' For it a very peculiar claim is entered. It is held by some that its statements, not only of ordinary but of extraordinary mi, n +• facts, have a degree, more or ^^^ auestions 1 ' 1 ^ f J- • Involved

less complete, oi divme sanction and inspiration. If, indeed, God has had to do with this book as with no other, that fact is of the utmost importance. To make such a claim if unwarranted is a terrible mistake — a mistake only equalled by the rejection of the claim if the book is really inspired of God. On this claim, since it comes to every man living in a Christian land, some decision is to be made. Every man has a very serious responsibility, not only for doing something about this claim, but for doing it wisely and rightly. If, indeed, this book had received as yet but little attention, it were another thing. If it were an obscure publication, by writers little known in any age of the world, one might with some show of reason wait for a time. If it had made no mark on any generation, one in a busy world might perhaps hold himself in some suspense about examining it. But here is a book so remarkable that foremost minds have devoted long years to its critical study, and have come to see that it so far exceeds as to supersede other books on its peculiar theme. It has swayed the best men. It has met deep perplexities. It has awakened sublime aspirations. It has inspired useful lives. It has assuaged human sorrows. It has kindled strongest hopes. It has made men brave and women pure.

Nor has it done these things alone for any one class of mankind. True, it is the peculiar heritage of a great number of thoughtful, devout, and scholarly men, who have brought to it disciplined minds, accurate habits of investigation, and the best culture of the schools. But it has had an immense hold, as well, upon the millions of those strong, stalwart middle-class men ; those men who with clear heads are not likely to be, on any large scale, for any considerable time, very wrong in their better judgments ; those men who are the best class when arrayed as a jury for deciding upon evidence submitted to them ; the class which has been foremost in prosecuting moral reforms and producing the great moral leaders of mankind. These men never would have taken up this book had they not believed that in some sense or other God has had to do with it as with no other book. These men have held it to be in some way a divinely inspired volume. Such a profound conviction, while not a decisive evidence, warrants us in demanding for this claim at least a fair degree of attention.

Under these circumstances, the burden of proof for the rejection of this claim clearly lies with its opponents. For here is the book. It exists. Somebody wrote it. Its existence is a fact in literature to be explained on some reasonable theory before it can reasonably be rejected. Its influence as well as its existence is a thing for which one is bound to give some account if the book is to be discarded. One must work logically in any process of denial and rejection. The book has had such a prodigious influence on the world that no man may regard it as a foolish volume. In it is a potency of some kind. It is the most widely printed and largely read book upon the planet to-day. What is it that makes it the most living book in human thought, gathering millions every seventh day to study its contents, to hear its exposition, and to learn by one day's teachings how to live on all the other days of the week ? Has any other book such vital force ? What is it that gives it such hold on the best portions of the human race ?

These men all believe that, in some sense, in some way, divine authority attaches to the Bible. This does not prove its unique claim. But it shows that, if a man is to decline to accept the book, he must do so for some good logical reason given only after examination of the book itself, and after carefully weighing these claims made for it by this great body of men. These men who receive it, many of them, are prayerful men. They believe in God. They have moral as well as intellectual standards of measurement. They are wont to decide questions involving morals, in part at least, by a spiritual instinct. They have a sharpened spiritual appetite and they know bread from stone. They do not gather grapes from thorns.

With these men one should differ with great hesitation on a question of such importance. The strong probabilities are in favor of a true spiritual trend in the course they take on this matter. Their conviction should be given due weight. In examining this question of an inspired volume, we should act not only with reference to good men, but also as in the presence of God. If it be not true that these claims can be substantiated, there is still left us a belief that God is, and that most likely he is the answerer of prayer. And the wisdom that is necessary he can impart. There can be no matter over which one should spend himself in more urgent and agonizing supplication than over doubts which may come in about a divine revelation to man. Only after earnest prayer for the Enlightening Spirit can a man reasonably reject such a book as the Bible. For the deepest moral instincts and the most fundamental convictions of the human heart as they are stirred within us are to have a voice in deciding upon these claims. Our whole complex selfhood is to be consulted. Our very fears are to come into play. It would be the saddest of all sad things if it should turn out that the book we have received as from God is, after all, only a fortuitous assemblage of myths ; a series of mistakes gathered about a mistake. And we should be even worse off if the book should turn out to be a composite of part fable and part fact. In that case it would be worse

i6 for US than if it were a cheat ; for a cheat detected can be dismissed. But a book that should mix miracle with myth and fiction with fact would furnish the worst of perplexities to honest souls. Better no guide than one who does not know the way. Our own doubts are enough without his. If reduced to guessing, we can do our own. But it would, indeed, be a thing to say in tearful tones, that this book after all may mislead. All that is best in humanity would be forced into mourning, and all that is worst would inevitably receive impetus from such a decision. A vast deal is at stake. We shall have lost not only faith in the book as from God, but faith in humanity. Its fairest and best portion, its men whose moral instincts are the highest, who are most tender and reverent in their inquiries are, in that case, wrong. They are not simply wrong on one point, but vitally wrong in their most earnest religious convictions. The wrong pulsates in every heart-beat and passes through every artery and vein of the moral nature. These men have believed that the book differs in kind and in authority from all other books. They take its texts as the proof of doctrine and as the law of the Christian life ; and without always expressly defining what they mean by inspiration, they consciously or unconsciously give the book substantially the homage due to the claim. If they are wrong, not only is it a rejection of a book to which they must no longer give their respect and reverence, but the damage to all their best ideals of human nature is something immense. The best men in the line of the best B 17 things are deceived. Humanity at its highest is the sport of accident, the victim of mistake ; possibly, also, of imposture. It may be said that the scientific method is careless of results if it can only discover the truth. But can any man afford, in deciding what is the truth, to refuse care about the results ? By the fruit, in part at least, we know the tree.

Nor is this all. If there has been given to us a revelation from God we owe him a duty therefor. We are, if this book is really a Divine revelation, not only striking a blow at humanity by its rejection, but we are doing a great wrong to God. A mistake here is a sin. The wrong to him, on the one hand, of receiving what he has not given, can be matched only by the other wrong of rejecting what he has actually inspired. Anyway, there is vast responsibility for doing either the one or the other.

It may be urged that many plain Christians have never been over the whole ground of the evidence for believing the Bible to be inspired of God. But do they need to do so ? They have a kind of growing proof which comes from acting upon the belief. They will not be obliged to give up what they have discovered of its value and potency in order to be fair in their dealing with it. They must not be required to begin de novo, as if the book were not true, and then start to prove it to be from God. In mathematics, is a man to be asked to empty himself of all his knowledge gained by forty years' use of the multiplication table ? He began in childhood by learning it as an

i8 exercise of memory. He assumed it to be correct. And for all these forty years, in daily use of it, he never found it to fail ot being true. Here comes a man and expresses a doubt about its accuracy. There have been men who made this challenge. They have bidden this accountant give up forty years of experience and prove that two and two make four! He will do nothing of the sort. The one to produce evidence is the objector, not the believer in the multiplication table. He has employed it in his work every day, and in the most practical of all ways, that of experimental use, he has found it trustworthy. He now stands by his proved work. He has amassed proofs. He is sure about that multiplication table. It would be strangely unfair to himself, to his science, to' all the interests involved, for him to start by surrendering his well-founded conviction. Let the objector start with doubt. Let him enter on his proofs de novOy if he has any to offer. The burden is clearly on his shoulders. The man who has studied the book and practised its precepts and yielded himself to its spirit is certain that it is like no other book. He may have little analytical power. Into discussions about the degree, kind, method, of divine influence exerted on the writers, he may or may not enter. But exactly in proportion to his spiritual experience of the unique power of the book will be his regard for it, and his belief that God has had to do with it as with no other book. In such cases we may admit a predisposition like that of a mathematician for his science. The mathematician would claim that thereby he was not the worse but the better judge of a mathematical problem. There are many side questions appealing to the reason. But the main appeal of the Bible is to the spiritual and moral nature. And therefore the moral and spiritual man is the better fitted for a just decision. When experience in mathematical science is a bar to fair judgment in case of a volume on mathematics, then a long and strong religious experience may be considered a hindrance to the examination of a volume on morals and religion like the Bible. A sympathetic interest in its object and its methods, as well as a knowledge of its whole scope, is needed. There is to be exercised, not so much on single texts as upon the great comprehensive idea of the book, the most careful moral as well as intellectual judgment before a man can honestly reject the claim of its inspiration.

Perhaps it will be found that there are vastly more difficulties in discarding its true and proper inspiration than in accepting the simplest solution that is possible, viz., that it is God's book through man and for man. Perhaps the knowledge of the great controlling thought of the book may make it easier to believe that God had to do with it than that it is merely a product even of the most exalted human genius. We may find that all our ways of accounting for it are needed in their grand sum. This is what many think. If they are right, it is a great truth on which they have fallen. If they are wrong, it is a great mistake they have made. Either way, the decision is of immense importance.

This importance attaching to a decision in either direction is at once obvious from the inevitable results. Let it be true that the book is not inspired by God, but only by human genius however exalted, and certain inferences cannot but be drawn from the fact. Let it be true that the Hebrew race, foremost and purest in all ethical and spiritual ideas, have in this book presented the world with a literature chiefly religious, but standing on a basis, so far as authority is concerned, that is only human — not otherwise inspired than are all human productions save in degree — and there are direct inferences of a sort wholly different from those warranted by a belief that it has both human and divine inspiration. Let the Old Testament come to be regarded as only a collection of annals, songs, prophecies, and proverbs, having indeed far greater value than those of surrounding nations, but with no special and peculiar endorsement of God, then it has no other and higher authority than that always accorded to human productions of great worth. It is of man only, precisely as all other books are of man only. Every man feels the debasement of authority, the lowering of tone, the prodigious difference of the conception. The view narrows rather than broadens. For no view can be so broad, so strong, so lofty, so sustained as that which finds in this book a sanction, a superintendence, an inbreathing not accorded to any other. Let the Old Testament be regarded as merely an outgrowth of human development, and it still has religious value ; but we must take this currency at a fearful discount. Its characters, "real or imaginary," will still serve the intellectual world "to point a moral and adorn a tale." The words of Scripture can still be gracefully quoted to round out a period. They can be a happy classical allusion. The old-time Hebrews can serve us in literary work as do the old-time heroes of the Grecian story. They can be used to illustrate any exalted idea we have ourselves originated. We can quote from the Old Testament exactly as from the Koran — when it is an endorsement of our own belief. It will be among the sheaves that do obeisance to the one of our own binding. But authority is gone from any declaration it may contain. Indeed, we judge it by the standard of our own ideas, approving or condemning as it favors or does not favor our own conclusions. It would be claimed by some who would dispense with any special divine authority, to be a matter of comparatively little importance whether Abraham or Moses, whether Elijah or David ever really existed. It would be claimed that the moral impression is just the same on the world whether they did or did not live.

And yet it is only fair to say that some men holding very lightly by the inspiration of Scripture, do not go to this length, but claim that at least the historical accuracy of the Old Testament must be preserved. For they see that these lives and these acts of the old Hebrew worthies are a long series of preparatory events, and that any denial of them spoils the cumulative moral impression of the series, and that thus the most important part of the moral influence would be lost. For it is not alone in the individuality of the lives in which these grand heroes set forth some virtue that they are worth most to the world, but because they are as links of a chain, stones of an arch, lines of a figure, parts of a whole.

Nor is this all. Take any one individual with his characteristic work out of the series for a moment, that you may hold up that man as an object-lesson and his work as an example, and it does make a vast difference to the impression whether the person described as doing the work is fictitious or real, and whether his alleged deeds are fancies or are facts. The Hegelian method of treating history was the '^ impressionist fashion." The fact was held to be of little worth. The important thing was the impression on the minds of succeeding generations. It was asked why we might not ignore the biblical facts, but retain the principle involved in them. Maurice himself, touched by the Hegelian phase of thinking, when writing to his son who had asked him *' whether a legend which appealed to conscience might not produce the same good results as an actual fact," was obliged to answer in the negative. '' For," said he, ^^if God reveals his ideas to us, the revelation must be through facts." " I believe," he continues, *^that all is good just so far as it tests facts ; and all is bad and immoral which introduces the notion that it signifies little whether they turn out to be facts or no." If it shall turn out that there are conceptions of facts and classes of events which need inspiration for any fair record of them, then the doctrine of a divine inspiration could not be dismissed from the Old Testament without loss both of the facts and of their moral impression.

If we come to the New Testament with our doubts about inspiration, the results are even more obvious. Let it once be held that the Gospels are accidental narratives, taking their shape and presenting their contents as casual fragments ; that the Epistles are old letters which by chance have escaped oblivion, and so are valuable only as showing an individual phase of passing religious thought, and the book ceases to have any considerable authority. And doctrine, held on the strength of its statements, must be held loosely and tentatively. Merely human thought never cuts the same circle twice in a century. Its circumference has no more a fixed point than has its changing center. There cannot consistently be any faith save faith in change. There is no steadiness save that of a steady flux in belief. The natural religious instincts are all that remain for guidance ; and God himself could make no supernatural revelation that we should be warranted in believing. We have estopped certainty by questioning the best certified Christian facts and doctrines which we can imagine to be given. The lack of inspiration in the New Testament makes what little of it remains to us more perplexing than if it had never been written. For it raises more questions than it solves, and the sifting of probabilities becomes a new and a confusing labor. And yet, if the book is not supernaturally inspired, we must undertake to thread this labyrinth, pitied by others, and most of all pitying ourselves in our doubtful work. It will not be wise to assert very strongly any truth of religion ; since the only basis is our own fallibility, and there is no ascertainable standard that is not liable to be altered by our own personality.

But if the opposite of all this is true, there is a new bright world flooded for us by perpetual sunshine. If the book is sanctioned and directed and inbreathed of God, if the human authors of the book in their highest human inspiration were touched and illuminated by a peculiar divine inspiration, then there dawns upon us the happy possibility of having some good degree of definiteness in our religious beliefs. That fact fixed, our search for truth in religion is immensely simplified. We still use our best native powers, but they are working in a new atmosphere, to new advantage, and toward moral certainty as the assured result.

Our inquiry then, is narrowed to these two questions, viz, .-Is the text of Scripture fairly preserved, and what does the text mean 1 Reason still has a place, but it is a buttress to the structure built upon the foundation of a divinely authenticated revelation. The moral instincts are still of value. For they are roused into highest activity by the truth and the Spirit of God. But the sovereign judge from whose decision there is no appeal will be this Bible. A multitude of things can now be held very firmly. Not that they are altogether understood. A man's lack of understanding as to how a thing can be so is now seen to be no bar to believing, on the authority of the Bible, that it is

SO. And thus a man's creed that had been very short and hazy and vacillating while he doubted an inspired Bible, becomes very long and broad, very deep and high, very sure and satisfying, since it has for its authority the inspiration of Holy Scripture. Apart from such authority it is almost presumptuous to hold many a thing which is traditionally received even by those who doubt or deny this supernatural guidance. But the book accepted, to hold less than the large, full, confident truth would be a wrong to God and to one's own self. Fullness of belief, strength of conviction, and the irrevocable yielding of one's intellectual and moral nature to the sway of great Christian facts and doctrines will be secured only in the presence of divine inspiration. In the actual conflict with error the Christian who will do most efficient work is he who wields, with strong heart and steady head and practised hand, ^^ the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God." There will be a decisiveness about the blows he strikes and an assurance that one fights in a winning cause.