There is nothing more characteristic of infidelity than superficiality. It never gets beyond the bark and shell of the divine fruit of the word. In the midst of the most admirable development of divine ways, it will stop to complain that the numberings of Israel and Judah are not the same in Samuel and Chronicles. How, they ask, do you account for this? Suppose I answer (though in this case there is not much difficulty) I cannot account for it at all, I should not be a bit the worse off. I have a positive proof of perfect divine wisdom in the book and in all its details; for these details give to the whole the character it has. Man's estimate of things, partly influenced by the Spirit of God—his thoughts, his feelings, the evil, the rebellions, the faults, the unbelief and the way God met it—all go to make up the picture of what man was before God, and the scene of God's dealings in mercy and truth with men, till, as it is expressed, mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other. Every detail lost would be a loss of the completeness. Some trait would fail of these wonderful unfoldings of what man is in relationship with God.
If my intelligence of some of the details fails me, I cannot account for some phenomenon, I lose something of course—some proof of completeness. The dealings of God, however, have not disappeared. I cannot in this case explain some particular point, nor solve an apparent discrepancy in a number. I pity the person whose perception of the perfectness of all is hindered by a difficulty he cannot explain. To my mind the greatest part of these difficulties is the fruit of the ignorance and traditional views of the objectors. I may not be able to solve, and God may try our faith by, some such things, through the human weakness of those to whom these divine oracles were entrusted; but He will always answer and bless our faith.
Take the Petrine, Pauline, and Johannean characters in which parts of the divine revelation were thrown. Of the beauty and moral harmony, of the goodness of God in this, of the enormous gain and advantage to us, which fill the believer's mind, they have not the smallest perception. They can only spell out possible historical inconsistencies, and think of the books as the fruit of some ecclesiastical intrigues to reconcile Christian factions, or give the authority of apostolic names to cover resistance to heresies come in long after. That God in perfect love to man should give in one instruction how far the Christian, redeemed from the world, should, as a pilgrim in it, be connected with its government by God as more directly displayed in the O. T., as Peter does; that man presented to God in righteousness and resurrection, with conferred privileges in heaven, should be developed in Paul; that the blessed revelation of God Himself (as it is expressed, No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him), and of eternal life in Him in all its nature and qualities, should be given in John: all this is lost on them. They are trying to prove it imposture, or reconcile dates, or discuss the possible author, provided nobody pretend it to be genuine. There is an incapacity to perceive the divine which is difficult to conceive. Yet it is useful.
Happily the most advanced of these wise men are so entirely unhistorical that they have no credit with sober minds, even with those who are not much affected by the divine. English theologians are so shut up in traditional lore, that they think rationalists have upset all inspiration, if they overthrow their own traditions; just as a poor Roman Catholic often turns infidel, if he comes to think a bit of bread is not the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the Lord Jesus.