Fully admitting the value of reasoning to convict gainsayers and expose the futility of their captious arguments, I lay it down as an axiom that in revealed truth it is and must be simply a question of a divine testimony which is given to be believed, and which binds the conscience even of him who rejects it through unbelief. If physics require patient induction and comprehensive grouping under general principles or laws, if mathematics demand a strict and necessary demonstration, if the mixed sciences admit of both, the written Word of God claims faith in His testimony which tests the moral state of him who hears....
Again, God does give sufficient evidence to render the unbelief of the objector inexcusable; but the faith which rests on such human motives is merely of nature, not of the Holy Spirit as its source. One may be arrested or attracted by such evidence; but God's testimony must be received because and as He gives it, with no other motive whatever, else we set up to judge Him and His Word instead of submitting, as divinely formed faith always does, to be judged by Him. If the testimony be of God, it is the truth; and if so, he who cavils and opposes it is by that fact proved to be in such a state morally that he has no congeniality with the truth of God....
Revelation is the word of a God who cannot lie; and if man can with comparative ease convey his mind correctly, how much more can God His, infinite though it be? The human element is fully admitted; but the essence of inspiration is that the power of the Holy Spirit excludes error in the writer. It is too much forgotten that there is ignorance in every reader, and that this ignorance as to divine truth is really and always, spite of appearances, in the ratio of our self-sufficiency.
Further, that there are difficulties, not only great but possibly insoluble by you, me, or any other man, is not only allowed but affirmed.... There is no divinely formed province even in nature, and this in its lowest or least forms, where there are not enigmas beyond the wit of man; and these the wisest are the most ready to confess. If writings which professed to be a revelation of God.