What is Inspiration ? 119 



who truly loves and reveres the Bible. To make 

 a fetish of the best of books does not, after all, 

 seem to be the most reverent way of treating it. 

 Take away the discredited hypothesis of infalli- 

 bility, and the errors of statement and crudities 

 of doctrine at once become of no consequence, and 

 cease to occupy our attention. It no longer seems 

 worth while to write puerile essays to show that 

 the Elohist was versed in all the conclusions of 

 modern geology, or that the books of Kings and 

 Chronicles tell the same story. The spiritual 

 import of this wonderful collection of writings 

 becomes its most prominent aspect ; and, freed 

 from the exigencies of a crude philosophy and an 

 inane criticism, the Bible becomes once more the 

 Book of mankind. 



August, 1878. 



