of manners," but not to be applied "to establish any doctrine."

Now there are some to whom such statements as these, although founded on the Bible itself, on the history of the Church, and on those doctrinal statements which possess most authority among us, will seem to be subversive in some way of the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, and to place that book on a par with other books. These men seek to safeguard the sanctity of the Bible by such statements as this: The books of Scripture "are one and all, in thought and verbal expression, in substance and form, wholly the Word of God, conveying with absolute accuracy and divine authority, all that God meant them to convey, without human additions or admixtures." Or, again, "All written under it [the Divine influence called inspiration] is the very Word of God, of infallible truth and of divine authority; and this infallibility and authority attach as well to the verbal expression in which the revelation is conveyed as to the matter of the revelation itself." Again, we are told that "the Scriptures contain no errors," and that if it could be proved that there are any errors in matters of physical science, or any erroneous statements and contradictory accounts in the Holy Scriptures, their plenary inspiration must be renounced." I have been quoting from the Presbyterian talmud, written by the learned scribes of the law who sit among the Presbyterians in Moses' seat. And they have done just what the scribes of our Lord's day did; they have so overlaid the law with their interpretation of it that the law itself is lost. Now the conception of Divinity has been a conception of something remote from the human, surrounded with clouds and thick darkness, revealed in thunderings, lightnings, and portents. It is this conception of Divinity which is represented in every heathen religion, and even in official Judaism, although there were those among the prophets who had a vision of something truer and better. The same false conception of God, followed out in another direction, has led men to seek to make their sacred books sacred by wrapping them about with awe and wonder, with

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theories of their divinity, and with talmuds, or teachings, through which only men should be allowed to approach them. They must not be handled like other books; the same canons of criticism must not be applied to them which are applied to other books. If you would learn to know the Veda, you must go to the Brahmins, and ask them to interpret it according to their traditions and doctrines. It is profanation to study it as you study other books. The very language in which it is written is holy. It is itself, not merely the Word of God, but the very brain of God. The Moslems say almost the same thing of the Koran; the scribes of our Lord's day said the same thing of the Law of Moses; and, unfortunately, some Christians have undertaken to teach the same thing about our Scriptures of both Old and New Testaments. Now if the Bible is no better than the Veda or the Koran, well and good; let us treat it in the same way in which Brahmins and Moslems treat their sacred books, and shield it and guard it, and hedge about its divinity, for fear men should examine it too closely and find that there is none there. On the other hand, if we believe that the Bible is really different from these other books of the nations; that it stands on a far higher plane; unique, needing no concealment and no bolstering up with traditions and doctrines, as those other books do, let us lay it down open before the world, and challenge men to read, study, and examine it with all the critical apparatus which they use in the study of other books.

As a practical fact we cannot do anything else unless we would stultify ourselves, for we have said to the adherents of every other religion-to Brahmins and Buddhists, and Moslems and Confucianists and whatever else besides—give us your proofs, and let us test them in the light of reason, according to the reasonable methods by which we examine other books, whether professing to be records of historical fact, statements of scientific truth, philosophical speculations, or ethical teaching. You say these books are divine; prove it. Give your books open to the jury of the world. Let the critics scrutinise them, analyse them, criticise them

according to the canons of modern criticism, by which they criticise all books. And so we must lay the Bible open before the jury of the world, and bid it scrutinise, analyse, criticise the Bible according to the same canons of criticism which it applies to the Veda, the Koran, and other so-called holy books. The man who really believes in the inspiration of the Bible ought not to be afraid of such a test.

But, furthermore, this method of treating the Bible is in fact the Divine method, as over against the heathen method pursued by the Brahmins, Moslems, and the like, and unfortunately also by some Christians, who would hide their Scriptures in the thick clouds of foreign tongues and traditional interpretations, and protect their sanctity by the fulmination of doctrinal anathemas. As over against the false ideas of God presented by other religions, Christianity presents the idea of a present and loving God, Who reveals Himself to man in man. This is the very foundation-stone of the Christian religion-that God revealed Himself to man in a Man made like men, cast down to struggle side by side with men. This God-Man did not strike little children dead when they offended Him in their play; nor did the water in which His swaddling clothes were washed work miracles. That is the nonsense of apocryphal gospels, in which men not inspired by the Spirit of God vainly sought to magnify the Divinity of Jesus Christ, but, as the Church recognised, did really profane and debase that Divinity in the attempt, so that all such tales were soon relegated to the lumber-room of silly and godless fables. He did not come turning the stones to bread to feed Himself; He did not come a king to whom all the kingdoms of the earth were given and the riches thereof; He did not come descending in clouds, upborne by angels. Those were the suggestions of the devil with regard to the nature of God, the ideas of the lower, bestial, devilish nature concerning Divinity and the manifestation of Divinity. The real Divinity was manifested in quite a contrary manner, in the helpless Babe of Bethlehem; in the lowly Carpenter of Nazareth; in the poor, wandering, loving, suffering Teacher that had not

where to lay His head; in the blameless Convict, despised, outcast, executed on Calvary. His Divinity was not manifested by a nimbus about His head, by external phenomena, by place and power, but by something inherent in Himself, by perfect love and truth. And there is the keynote of the whole system-Divinity in humanity. Dehumanise Jesus of Nazareth, and you profane His Divinity. Dehumanise the Bible, which tells about Him, and you profane its divinity.

But I do not mean to put the Bible on a par with Jesus of Nazareth. It is the written witness which the Church lays before the world to substantiate its claim that He is the Saviour of the world. But there are certain definitions of the Bible which have been current at one time or another, or are even now current among some groups of Christians, which in their anxiety to emphasise the sacred character of the Holy Scriptures have put those Scriptures in the place of Christ. In a loose, general way we may say that the Bible is the Word of God, as we do say, for instance, in several places in our Prayer Book; but to say in theological definition, as the second Helvetic Confession does, that "the Holy Scriptures are the very Word of God," or that "all written under it [the Divine influence called inspiration] is the very Word of God, of infallible truth and of divine authority," as do those Presbyterian divines whom I have quoted, is rank heresy, for it degrades Jesus Christ, placing a written book in His place. The doctrine of the New Testament, and the doctrine of the Catholic Church is that Jesus Christ, and He only, is the very Word of God, the only full, perfect, and complete utterance of Himself to man by God. The Bible is the written evidence of the fact that Jesus Christ is the very Word of God, true, perfect, and infallible. But the Bible is not itself that Word. If the infallible Word of God could have been revealed through imperfect and fallible men, like Moses and the prophets, it would have been so revealed. As the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it (viii. 7), "For if that first covenant had been faultless, then would

no place have been sought for a second." The infallible Word of God could be revealed only through the perfect Man, Jesus the Christ, who is the very Word of God. The Bible is the written evidence which the Church presents to the world to prove that He is in fact that Word, and it is sufficient for that purpose, and is inspired for that purpose. The Church, inspired by the Spirit of the living God, is itself the living witness to the truth of that Word.