Having in the former two Letters defined the doctrine which I reject,
I am now to communicate the views that I would propose to substitute
in its place.
Before, however, I attempt to lay down on the theological chart the
road-place, to which my bark has drifted, and to mark the spot and
circumscribe the space, within which I swing at anchor, let me, first,
thank you for, and then attempt to answer, the objections,--or at
least the questions,--which you have urged upon me.
"The present Bible is the Canon, to which Christ and the Apostles
referred?"
Doubtless.
"And in terms which a Christian must tremble to tamper with?"
Yea. The expressions are as direct as strong; and a true believer will
neither attempt to divert nor dilute their strength.
"The doctrine which is considered as the orthodox view seems the
obvious and most natural interpretation of the text in question?"
Yea, and Nay. To those whose minds are prepossessed by the Doctrine
itself,--who from earliest childhood have always meant this doctrine
by the very word, Bible,--the doctrine being but its exposition and
paraphrase--Yea. In such minds the words of our Lord and the
declarations of St. Paul can awaken no other sense. To those on the
other hand, who find the doctrine senseless and self-confuting, and
who take up the Bible as they do other books, and apply to it the same
rules of interpretation,--Nay.
And, lastly, he who, like myself, recognizes in neither of the two
the state of his own mind,--who cannot rest in the former, and feels,
or fears, a presumptuous spirit in the negative dogmatism of
the latter,--he has his answer to seek. But so far I dare hazard a
reply to the question,--In what other sense can the words be
interpreted?--beseeching you, however, to take what I am about to
offer but as an attempt to delineate an arc of oscillation,--that the
eulogy of St. Paul is in no wise contravened by the opinion, to which
I incline, who fully believe the Old Testament collectively, both in
the composition and in its preservation, a great and precious gift of
Providence;--who find in it all that the Apostle describes, and who
more than believe that all which the Apostle spoke of was of divine
inspiration, and a blessing intended for as many as are in communion
with the Spirit through all ages. And I freely confess that my whole
heart would turn away with an angry impatience from the cold and
captious mortal, who, the moment I had been pouring out the love and
gladness of my soul,--while book after book, Law, and Truth, and
Example, Oracle and lovely Hymn, and choral Song of ten thousand
thousands, and accepted Prayers of Saints and Prophets, sent back, as
it were, from Heaven, like doves, to be let loose again with a new
freight of spiritual joys and griefs and necessities, were passing
across my memory,--at the first pause of my voice, and whilst my
countenance was still speaking--should ask me, whether I was thinking
of the Book of Esther, or meant particularly to include the first six
chapters of Daniel, or verses 6-20 of the 109th Psalm, or the last
verse of the 137th Psalm? Would any conclusion of this sort be drawn
in any other analogous case? In the course of my Lectures on Dramatic
Poetry, I, in half a score instances, referred my auditors to the
precious volume before me--Shakspeare--and spoke enthusiastically,
both in general and with detail of particular beauties, of the plays
of Shakspeare, as in all their kinds, and in relation to the purposes
of the writer, excellent. Would it have been fair, or according to the
common usage and understanding of men, to have inferred an intention
on my part to decide the question respecting Titus Andronicus, or the
larger portion of the three parts of Henry VI.? Would not every genial
mind understand by Shakspeare that unity or total impression
comprising, and resulting from, the thousandfold several and
particular emotions of delight, admiration, gratitude excited by his
works? But if it be answered, "Aye! but we must not interpret St. Paul
as we may and should interpret any other honest and intelligent writer
or speaker,"--then, I say, this is the very _petitio principii_ of
which I complain.
Still less do the words of our Lord[175] apply against my view. Have I
not declared--do I not begin by declaring--that whatever is referred
by the sacred Penman to a direct communication from God, and wherever
it is recorded that the Subject of the history had asserted himself to
have received this or that command, this or that information or
assurance, from a superhuman Intelligence, or where the writer in his
own person, and in the character of an historian, relates that the
_Word of the Lord came_ unto priest, prophet, chieftain, or other
individual--have I not declared that I receive the same with full
belief, and admit its inappellable authority? Who more convinced than
I am--who more anxious to impress that conviction on the minds of
others--that the Law and the Prophets speak throughout of Christ? That
all the intermediate applications and realizations of the words are
but types and repetitions--translations, as it were, from the language
of letters and articulate sounds into the language of events and
symbolical persons?
And here again let me recur to the aid of analogy. Suppose a Life of
Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law, or a Life of Lord Bacon by his
chaplain; that a part of the records of the Court of Chancery
belonging to these periods were lost; that in Roper's or in Bawley's
biographical work there were preserved a series of _dicta_ and
judgments attributed to these illustrious Chancellors, many and
important specimens of their table discourses, with large extracts
from works written by them, and from some that are no longer extant.
Let it be supposed, too, that there are no grounds, internal or
external, to doubt either the moral, intellectual, or circumstantial
competence of the biographers. Suppose, moreover, that wherever the
opportunity existed of collating their documents and quotations with
the records and works still preserved, the former were found
substantially correct and faithful, the few differences in no wise
altering or disturbing the spirit and purpose of the paragraphs in
which they were found, and that of what was not collatable, and to
which no test _ab extra_ could be applied, the far larger part bore
witness in itself of the same spirit and origin; and that not only by
its characteristic features, but by its surpassing excellence, it
rendered the chances of its having had any other author than the
giant-mind, to whom the biographer ascribes it, small indeed! Now,
from the nature and objects of my pursuits, I have, we will suppose,
frequent occasion to refer to one or other of these works; for
example, to Bawley's _Dicta et Facta Francisci de Verulam_. At one
time I might refer to the work in some such words as,--"Remember what
Francis of Verulam said or judged;" or,--"If you believe not me, yet
believe Lord Bacon." At another time I might take the running title of
the volume, and at another, the name of the biographer;--"Turn to your
Rawley! _He_ will set you right;" or,--"_There_ you will find a depth,
which no research will ever exhaust;" or whatever other strong
expression my sense of Bacon's greatness and of the intrinsic worth
and the value of the proofs and specimens of that greatness, contained
and preserved in that volume, would excite and justify. But let my
expressions be as vivid and unqualified as the most sanguine
temperament ever inspired, would any man of sense conclude from them
that I meant--and meant to make others believe--that not only each and
all of these anecdotes, adages, decisions, extracts, incidents had
been dictated, word by word, by Lord Bacon; and that all Rawley's own
observations and inferences, all the connectives and disjunctives, all
the recollections of time, place, and circumstance, together with the
order and succession of the narrative, were in like manner dictated
and revised by the spirit of the deceased Chancellor? The answer will
be--must be;--No man in his senses! "No man in his senses--in _this_
instance; but in that of the Bible it is quite otherwise;--for (I take
it as an admitted point that) it _is_ quite otherwise!"
And here I renounce any advantage I might obtain for my argument by
restricting the application of our Lord's and the Apostle's words to
the Hebrew Canon. I admit the justice--I have long felt the full
force--of the remark''"We have all that the occasion allowed." And if
the same awful authority does not apply so directly to the Evangelical
and Apostolical writings as to the Hebrew Canon, yet the analogy of
faith justifies the transfer. If the doctrine be less decisively
Scriptural in its application to the New Testament or the Christian
Canon, the temptation to doubt it is likewise less. So at least we are
led to infer; since in point of fact it is the apparent or imagined
contrast, the diversity of spirit which sundry individuals have
believed themselves to find in the Old Testament and in the Gospel,
that has given occasion to the doubt;--and, in the heart of thousands
who yield a faith of acquiescence to the contrary, and find rest in
their humility,--supplies fuel to a fearful wish that it were
permitted to make a distinction.
But, lastly, you object, that--even granting that no coercive,
positive, reasons for the belief--no direct and not inferred
assertions,--of the plenary inspiration of the Old and New Testament,
in the generally received import of the term, could be adduced,
yet,--in behalf of a doctrine so catholic, and during so long a
succession of ages affirmed and acted on by Jew and Christian, Greek,
Romish, and Protestant, you need no other answer than;--"Tell me,
first, why it should not be received! Why should I not believe the
Scriptures throughout dictated, in word and thought, by an infallible
Intelligence?"--I admit the fairness of the retort; and eagerly and
earnestly do I answer: For every reason that makes me prize and revere
these Scriptures;--prize them, love them, revere them, beyond all
other books! _Why_ should I not? Because the Doctrine in question
petrifies at once the whole body of Holy Writ with, all its harmonies
and symmetrical gradations,--the flexile and the rigid,--the
supporting hard and the clothing soft,--the blood _which is the
life_,--the intelligencing nerves, and the rudely woven, but soft and
springy, cellular substance, in which all are imbedded and lightly
bound together. This breathing organism, this glorious _panharmonicon_,
which I had seen stand on its feet as a man, and with a man's voice
given to it, the Doctrine in question turns at once into a colossal
Memnon's head, a hollow passage for a voice, a voice that mocks the
voices of many men, and speaks in their names, and yet is but one
voice, and the same;--and no man uttered it, and never in a human
heart was it conceived. _Why_ should I not?--Because the Doctrine
evacuates of all sense and efficacy the sure and constant tradition,
that all the several books bound up together in our precious family
Bible were composed in different and widely distant ages, under the
greatest diversity of circumstances, and degrees of light and
information, and yet that the composers, whether as uttering or as
recording what was uttered and what was done, were all actuated by a
pure and holy Spirit, one and the same--(for is there any spirit pure
and holy, and yet not proceeding from God--and yet not proceeding in
and with the Holy Spirit?)--one Spirit, working diversly,[176] now
awakening strength, and now glorifying itself in weakness, now giving
power and direction to knowledge, and now taking away the sting from
error! Ere the summer and the months of ripening had arrived for the
heart of the race; while the whole sap of the tree was crude, and each
and every fruit lived in the harsh and bitter principle; even then
this Spirit withdrew its chosen ministers from the false and
guilt-making centre of Self. It converted the wrath into a form and an
organ of love, and on the passing storm-cloud impressed the fair
rainbow of promise to all generations. Put the lust of Self in the
forked lightning, and would it not be a Spirit of Moloch? But God
maketh the lightnings his ministers, fire and hail, vapours and stormy
winds fulfilling his word.
_Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord; curse ye bitterly the
inhabitants thereof_--sang Deborah. Was it that she called to mind any
personal wrongs--rapine or insult--that she or the house of Lapidoth
had received from Jabin or Sisera? No; she had dwelt under her palm
tree in the depth of the mountain. But she was a _mother in Israel_;
and with a mother's heart, and with the vehemency of a mother's and a
patriot's love, she had shot the light of love from her eyes, and
poured the blessings of love from her lips, on the people that had
_jeoparded their lives unto the death_ against the oppressors; and the
bitterness, awakened and borne aloft by the same love, she
precipitated in curses on the selfish and coward recreants who _came
not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord, against the
mighty_. As long as I have the image of Deborah before my eyes, and
while I throw myself back into the age, country, circumstances, of
this Hebrew Bonduca in the not yet tamed chaos of the spiritual
creation;--as long as I contemplate the impassioned, high-souled,
heroic woman in all the prominence and individuality of will and
character,--I feel as if I were among the first ferments of the great
affections--the proplastic waves of the microcosmic chaos, swelling up
against--and yet towards--the outspread wings of the Dove that lies
brooding on the troubled waters. So long all is well,--all replete
with instruction and example. In the fierce and inordinate I am made
to know and be grateful for the clearer and purer radiance which
shines on a Christian's paths, neither blunted by the preparatory
veil, nor crimsoned in its struggle through the all-enwrapping mist of
the world's ignorance: whilst in the self-oblivion of these heroes of
the Old Testament, their elevation above all low and individual
interests,--above all, in the entire and vehement devotion of their
total being to the service of their divine Master, I find a lesson of
humility, a ground of humiliation, and a shaming, yet rousing, example
of faith and fealty. But let me once be persuaded that all these
heart-awakening utterances of human hearts--of men of like faculties
and passions with myself, mourning, rejoicing, suffering,
triumphing--are but as a _Divina Commedia_ of a superhuman--O bear
with me, if I say--Ventriloquist;--that the royal Harper, to whom I
have so often submitted myself as a _many-stringed instrument_ for his
fire-tipt fingers to traverse, while every several nerve of emotion,
passion, thought, that thrids the flesh-and-blood of our common
humanity, responded to the touch,--that this _sweet Psalmist of
Israel_ was himself as mere an instrument as his harp, an _automaton_
poet, mourner, and supplicant;--all is gone,--all sympathy, at least,
and all example. I listen in awe and fear, but likewise in perplexity
and confusion of spirit.
Yet one other instance, and let this be the crucial test of the
Doctrine. Say that the Book of Job throughout was dictated by an
infallible Intelligence. Then re-peruse the book, and still, as you
proceed, try to apply the tenet: try if you can even attach any sense
or semblance of meaning to the speeches which you are reading. What!
were the hollow truisms, the unsufficing half-truths, the false
assumptions and malignant insinuations of the supercilious bigots, who
corruptly defended the truth:--were the impressive facts, the piercing
outcries, the pathetic appeals, and the close and powerful reasoning
with which the poor sufferer--smarting at once from his wounds, and
from the oil of vitriol which the orthodox _liars for God_ were
dropping into them--impatiently, but uprightly and holily,
controverted this truth, while in will and in spirit he clung to
it;--were both dictated by an infallible Intelligence?--Alas! if I may
judge from the manner in which both indiscriminately, are recited,
quoted, appealed to, preached upon, by the _routiniers_ of desk and
pulpit, I cannot doubt that they think so,--or rather, without
thinking, take for granted that so they are to think;--the more
readily, perhaps, because the so thinking supersedes the necessity of
all after-thought.
Farewell.
[175] John v. 39.
[176] I use the adverb _diversly_ from the adjective _divers_ in order
to distinguish the Scriptural and Pauline sense of the word--the sense
in which I here use it--from the logical usage of the term
_diversely_, from _diverse_, that is, different in kind,
heterogeneous. The same Spirit may act and impel diversly, but, being
a good Spirit, it cannot act diversely.