DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF. 



179 



fact is an advantage or the reverse depends upon what the Bible 

 really is. It is much more important to know the actual nature of 

 the Bible than to successfully retain any particular hypothesis with 

 regard to what it is. One of the speakers in the discussion which 

 followed the paper said that theologians are largely responsible for 

 creating doubts : that the specialists, instead of removing 

 "Difficulties of Belief," increase them. Does he mean belief in 

 opinions about the Bible which the careful study of Holy Scripture 

 itself renders it exceedingly difficult to retain, opinions which there- 

 fore are rapidly becoming extinct 1 Are such opinions superior to 

 belief in what the great authorities consider to be the facts 1 

 Archbishop Temple once remarked : "To bid a man study and yet 

 compel him under heavy penalties to arrive at the same conclusions 

 as those who have not studied, is to mock him. If the conclusions 

 are prescribed, the study is precluded." 



Another speaker quoted the words of Our Master, the Son of 

 God : — " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not 

 pass away," interpreting " My word," apparently, as referring to the 

 words and phrases, i.e., the text of the New Testament. But we 

 have to go to the critics who compare the countless different texts 

 together in order to discover what the correct text really is. And 

 if Jesus Christ intended by the expression " My word " to refer to 

 verbal phrases, He would presumably have written our New 

 Testament Himself. Instead of doing so, He carefully avoided 

 writing anything, except on one occasion with his finger in the dust 

 where there was much traffic. And He told us that " the letter 

 killeth but the Spirit giveth life." He also said : — " Lo, I am with 

 you always even unto the end of the ages"; and, "I have many 

 things to say unto you but ye cannot bear them now, but when He, 

 the Spirit of Truth is come. He will guide you into all truth." One 

 great effect of modern scientific study of the Bible has been to 

 divert excessive reverence from the mere letter, and to concentrate 

 attention rather upon the spirit of the Bible ; also to attract the 

 attention of the modern Christian ever more and more to the 

 Word " of God, in the sense in which St. John uses the term, 

 namely, the Logos, the eternal Son of God, rather than to the mere 

 words of what His followers wrote about Him. In proportion as 

 the belief in verbal inspiration and infallibility has become more 

 and more difficult of credence, the faith of Christendom has been 



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