MY DEAR F—,
Your letter interested me considerably, but I fear that your conclusions clash very harshly with my belief. Imprimis, the question of inspiration which has produced so many theories and doubts is to me the simplest question of all; for whereas I disagree entirely with the inferences and deductions of Bishop Usher and a host of others, I believe that "every scripture is given by the inspiration of God." Hee graphee stands as you are aware in distinction from to grammata throughout the New Testament, and is used in reference to Holy Writ alone, whereas the latter may signify any man-made documents.
The great error seems to me to lie in accepting the arguments of even learned men upon the scriptures, and when these arguments are upset, in imagining that the foundation of the scriptures themselves has been shaken or destroyed, whereas the arguments were fallacious, being of shortsighted man, while "the word of God abideth forever.”
To accept a portion of the Bible and reject the rest is to me most arbitrary and wholly illogical procedure. To state that the scriptures contain inspiration is to create an impossible condition of things. As though God did not trouble Himself over the setting of His precious gems of heavenly truth, and deliberately admitted a garbled account of the historical events chronicled in scripture to form the setting for the vast truth of eternal life! The first result of such a belief would be skepticism, however mild in form, and when doubt begins, where will it end? Mr. X— would seem to be one of those broad-minded men, who believe that when Christ said, "In my Father's house are many mansions," He signified that there were mansions for the zealous votaries of all the creeds. A mansion for Gautama and all earnest Buddhists a mansion for Confucius and his disciples! a mansion for Mahomet, and so on! Indeed the puzzle is to know where to stop, for who shall say that the latest mad Mullah is a whit behind Mahomet himself in heavenly inspiration? And if we go further back, we must admit a mansion for. Thor, for Woden, for Venus, Diana, Bacchus, and all the gods and goddesses of antiquity, who probably all had their origin in fact; or are we to draw a line at the bounds of philosophy, and refuse a mansion for the misguided followers of all sensuous religions?
No, no! If Christ be truly the Son of God, "the true God and eternal life," we must accept every word He spoke; and His references to Moses and the prophets must dismiss once for all every doubt as to the authenticity of the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi. Its histories, while recording actual fact, should be read in a spiritual light, as illustrating God's dealings with the forces of Satan and the enemies of His chosen people; and its teaching throughout must be understood as "testifying of Christ," whether in the prophecy of figure, type, or symbol, or in the direct utterance of the inspired tongue.
If I doubted the word of God, and that Genesis or the Pauline Epistles were as fully inspired by God as the Sermon on the Mount, I should be a skeptic, a know-nothing, tomorrow. If I doubted, my bible classes would resolve themselves into a. farce, and my men instead of being, as I pray and trust, led to Christ, would be drawn into infidelity.
To me there is no via media. To reject the integrity of scripture, and yet profess belief in Christ is to me a marvelous paradox. I cannot: understand it. It seems to have no meaning at all. To reject Moses is to stamp Christ as merely-human, or to accuse Him, being divine, of misrepresenting facts He must have known. Reject Moses and you rob me and thousands of others of one of the most precious of all the utterances of Christ; for He calls Moses to their minds, and tells them the glorious truth, that "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." My sheet anchor is this, to which I trust I shall hold fast and weather all the gales of time "until He come.”
Yours always affectionately,
L.L.