Part 8

He would send his children the very best rules of life he knew. He would take great pains to avoid error in matters of fact.

If, after the message was sent, his children quarrelled and fought about its meaning, their earthly father would not sit silent and allow them to hate and slay each other because of a misconception, but would send at once and make his meaning plain to all.

And if an earthly father would act thus wisely and thus kindly, "how much more your Father which is in Heaven?"

But the Bible revelation was not given to all the people of the earth. It was given to a handful of Jews. It was not so explicit as to make disagreement impossible. It is thousands of years since the revelation of God began, and yet to-day it is not known to hundreds of millions of human beings, and amongst those whom it has reached there is endless bitter disagreement as to its meaning.

Now, what is the use of a revelation which does not reveal more than is known, which does not reveal truth only, which does not reach half those who need it, which cannot be understood by those it does reach?

But you will regard me as a prejudiced witness. I shall therefore, in my effort to prove the Bible fallible, quote almost wholly from Christian critics.

And I take the opportunity to here recommend very strongly Shall We Understand the Bible? by the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams. Adam and Charles Black; 1s net.

There are two chief theories as to the inspiration of the Bible. One is the old theory that the Bible is the actual word of God, and nothing but the word of God, directly revealed by God to Moses and the prophets. The other is the new theory: that the Bible is the work of many men whom God had inspired to speak or write the truth.

The old theory is well described by Dr. Washington Gladden in the following passage:

They imagine that the Bible must have originated in a manner purely miraculous; and, though they know very little about its origin, they conceive of it as a book that was written in heaven in the English tongue, divided there into chapters and verses, with headlines and reference marks, printed in small pica, bound in calf, and sent down by angels in its present form.

The newer idea of the inspiration of the Bible is also well expressed by Dr. Gladden; thus:

Revelation, we shall be able to understand, is not the dictation by God of words to men that they may be written down in books: it is rather the disclosure of the truth and love of God to men in the processes of history, in the development of the moral order of the world. It is the light that lighteth every man, shining in the paths that lead to righteousness and life. There is a moral leadership of God in history; revelation is the record of that leadership. It is by no means confined to words; its most impressive disclosures are in the field of action. "Thus did the Lord," as Dr. Bruce has said, is a more perfect formula of revelation than "Thus saith the Lord." It is in that great historical movement of which the Bible is the record that we find the revelation of God to men.

The old theory of Bible inspiration was, as I have said, the theory that the Bible was the actual and pure word of God, and was true in every circumstance and detail.

Now, if an almighty and all-wise God had spoken or written every word of the Bible, then that book would, of course, be wholly and unshakably true in its every statement.

But if the Bible was written by men, some of them more or less inspired, then it would not, in all probability be wholly perfect.

The more inspiration its writers had from God, the more perfect it would be. The less inspiration its writers had from God, the less perfect it would be.

Wholly perfect, it might be attributed to a perfect being. Partly perfect, it might be the work of less perfect beings. Less perfect, it would have to be put down to less perfect beings.

Containing any fault or error, it could not be the actual word of God, and the more errors and faults it contained, the less inspiration of God would be granted to its authors.

I will quote again from Dr. Gladden:

What I desire to show is, that the work of putting the Bible into its present form was not done in heaven, but on earth; that it was not done by angels, but by men; that it was not done all at once, but a little at a time, the work of preparing and perfecting it extending over several centuries, and employing the labours of many men in different lands and long-divided generations.

I now turn to Dr. Aked. On page 25 of his book, Changing Creeds, he says:

Ignorance has claimed the Bible for its own. Bigotry has made the Bible its battleground. Its phrases have become the shibboleth of pietistic sectarians. Its authority has been evoked in support of the foulest crimes committed by the vilest men; and its very existence has been made a pretext for theories which shut out God from His own world. In our day Bible worship has become, with many very good but very unthoughtful people, a disease.

So much for the attitude of the various schools of religious thought towards the Bible.

Now, in the opinion of these Christian teachers, is the Bible perfect or imperfect? Dr. Aked gives his opinion with characteristic candour and energy:

For observe the position: men are told that the Bible is the infallible revelation of God to man, and that its statements concerning God and man are to be unhesitatingly accepted as statements made upon the authority of God. They turn to its pages, and they find historical errors, arithmetical mistakes, scientific blunders (or, rather, blunders most unscientific), inconsistencies, and manifold contradictions; and, what is far worse, they find that the most horrible crimes are committed by men who calmly plead in justification of their terrible misdeeds the imperturbable "God said." The heart and conscience of man indignantly rebel against the representations of the Most High given in some parts of the Bible. What happens? Why, such men declare--are now declaring, and will in constantly increasing numbers, and with constantly increasing force and boldness declare--that they can have nothing to do with a book whose errors a child can discover, and whose revelation of God partakes at times of blasphemy against man.

I need hardly say that I agree with every word of the above. If anyone asked me what evidence exists in support of the claims that the Bible is the word of God, or that it was in any real sense of the words "divinely inspired," I should answer, without the least hesitation, that there does not exist a scrap of evidence of any kind in support of such a claim.

Let us give a little consideration to the origin of the Bible. The first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, were said to be written by Moses. Moses was not, and could not have been, the author of those books. There is, indeed, no reliable evidence to prove that Moses ever existed. Whether he was a fictitious hero, or a solar myth, or what he was, no man knows.

Neither does there appear to be any certainty that the biblical books attributed to David, to Solomon, to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest were really written by those kings or prophets, or even in their age.