are the product of man's handiwork, or the construction of his voice or pen. That man must be lacking in intelligence or in observation who imagines that the sacred books of the Christian religion or the institutions of the Church can escape the criticism of this age. It will not do to oppose science with religion, or criticism with faith. Criticism makes it evident that a faith which shrinks from criticism is a faith so weak and uncertain that it excites suspicion as to its life and reality. Science goes on in its exact and thorough work, confident that every form of religion which resists it will erelong crumble into dust.

Searchers after truth have found in all ages that they have been resisted by the same kind of Pharisees as those who resisted the teaching of Jesus and of Saint Paul. These are always found guarding ancient traditions in venerable tombs, while the neglected truth of God is springing up in beautiful flowers and plants of grace all around them.1

All departments of human investigation sooner or later come in contact with the Christian Scriptures. All find something that either accords with or conflicts with their investigations. If the statements of Holy Scripture are altogether true, infallible, and inerrant, they ought to exert a controlling influence on all these studies. If there is irreconcilable difference between the Bible and the results of these studies, the student is compelled to choose between them. All the world knows the history of the conflict between scientific men and defenders of the thesis that the Bible is infallible in all its statements about matters of science. So long as this thesis was enforced by ecclesiastical authority against scientific men, science was throttled; scientific men took their lives in their hands in every investigation. The first stage of the conflict resulted in the delivery of science from the thraldom of the ecclesiastics. The next stage of the conflict was the advance of science in spite of all the opposition of the dogmaticians, until the situation emerged in which science pursued its own independent way without giving any heed to the statements of the theologians. No real student is checked for a moment

1 See pp. 8 seq.

by any apparent conflict between the results of his science and a statement of the Old Testament. He has learned that the Bible was not given to teach science but religion, and that the statements of the Bible which come in conflict with science are, from the point of view of their authors, as a part of the human setting of the truth of God, and are not to be regarded as part of the true, infallible, divine instruction committed to them by the Spirit of God. This is the real situation at the present time, however uncomfortable it may be for those who still think it necessary to defend the inerrancy of the Bible in every particular statement. The question thus forces itself upon us, Can we maintain the truthfulness of the Holy Scriptures in the face of all these modern sciences?

We are obliged to admit that there are scientific errors in the Bible, errors of astronomy, of geology, of zoölogy, of botany, and of anthropology. In all these respects there is no evidence that the author of these sacred writings had any other knowledge than that possessed by their cotemporaries. They were not in fact taught by the Holy Spirit any higher knowledge of these subjects than others of their age. Their statements are just such as indicate a correct observation of the phenomena as they would appear to an accurate observer at the time when they wrote. It is evident in a cursory examination that they had not that insight, that foresight, and that grasp of conception and power of expression in these matters which they exhibit when they wrote concerning matters of religion. If, as all must concede, it was not the intent of God to give to the ancient world the scientific knowledge of our nineteenth century, why should any one suppose that the Divine Spirit influenced them in relation to any such matters of science? Why should they be kept from misconception, from misstatement, and from error? The divine purpose was to use them as religious teachers. So long as they made no mistakes in religious instruction, they were trustworthy and reliable, even if they erred in some of those matters in which they come in contact with modern science. The fact that the errors are few show us, not that they were restrained from error by an irresistible impulse of the Divine Spirit, but rather that they were

in that exalted spiritual frame of mind which made them so anxious to be truthful that they abstained from those extravagant speculations and crude conceptions which mark the writers of ancient times who were less spiritually minded.

III. THE CANON AND INERRANCY

It is maintained by some modern theologians, of the Princeton School of Theology, that the doctrine of the inerrancy of the original autographs of Holy Scripture is an essential doctrine of the Christian religion. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America condemned me for heresy because I declined to say that the original autographs were inerrant. The statement upon which I was tried

and condemned was:

"It has been taught in recent years, and is still taught by some theologians, that one proved error destroys the authority of Scripture. I shall venture to affirm that, so far as I can see, there are errors in the Scriptures that no one has been able to explain away; and the theory that they were not in the original text is sheer assumption, upon which no mind can rest with certainty. If such errors destroy the authority of the Bible, it is already destroyed for historians. Men cannot shut their eyes to truth and fact. But on what authority do these theologians drive men from the Bible by this theory of inerrancy? The Bible itself nowhere makes this claim. The creeds of the Church nowhere sanction it. It is a ghost of modern evangelicalism to frighten children. The Bible has maintained its authority with the best scholars of our time, who with open minds have been willing to recognize any error that might be pointed out by Historical Criticism; for these errors are all in the circumstantials and not in the essentials; they are in the human setting, not in the precious jewel itself; they are found in that section of the Bible that theologians commonly account for from the providential superintendence of the mind of the author, as distinguished from divine revelation itself." 1 The decision of the General Assembly was the following:

"We find that the doctrine of the errancy of Scripture, as it came from them to whom and through whom God originally communicated His revelation, is in conflict with the statements of the

1 Briggs, Authority of Holy Scripture, p. 35.

Holy Scripture itself, which asserts that all Scripture or every Scripture is given by the inspiration of God (2 Tim. 316), that the prophecy came not of old by the will of man, but that holy men of God spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost (2 Peter 1a1); and also with the statements of the standards of the Church which assert that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God (Larger Catechism, question 3), of infallible truth and divine authority (Confession, Chapter I., section 5)."1

This remarkable statement of doctrine is apparently due to the chairman of the committee of the General Assembly. Of course no scholar could vote for such a proposition; it shows such profound ignorance of Scripture and of the Westminster symbols, and it presents such an unjust caricature of my opinion. In point of fact, all the scholarly members of the Assembly protested against it to the number of sixty-three. But they were overcome by a majority who, blinded by partisanship, and in a panic about the Bible, had not taken the trouble to inform themselves as to the real issue and as to the serious consequences of their votes before they cast them.

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The question in dispute was not whether there are errors in the present accessible texts of Holy Scripture, but whether or not these errors were in the original autographs. This Assembly attempted to define what were the original autographs: Scripture as it came from them to whom and through whom God originally communicated His revelation." The Scripture in their opinion consisted of the writings as first written down by those to whom God communicated His revelation. We must go back of all the texts till we get to the original autographs of the authors before we have the inerrant Scripture. What has the criticism of the Canon to say to this astonishing dogma?

1. We have studied the history of the formation of the Canon and then the criticism of the Canon.2 We have seen that the Canon was a gradual formation; first the Law, then the Prophets, then the Writings of the Old Testament, then the Gospels, then the Epistles of St. Paul, and finally the Catholic Epistles and Apocalypse of the New Testament. The Canoni

1 The Case against Professor Briggs, Part III. p. 309.
2 See Chaps. V., VI.

cal Scripture was ever historically the Scripture in the text at the time recognized by the Synagogue and the Church. No one ever thought of searching for the original autographs. And from the point of view of canonical criticism it is ever the text of Scripture in one's hands that is recognized as canonical or not. From this point of view, it is evident that what is canonical in Holy Scripture is entirely independent of any special form of the text or of the original autographs.

It is true that the Protestant Reformers and the Puritans in their symbolical books made the Greek and Hebrew texts the final appeal in matters of religion over against the Roman Catholic Church, which made the Latin Vulgate the final authority; but even the Protestants did not think of making the original autographs their authority. They knew as well as we do that they had them not and could never have them. The Protestants appealed to the Greek and Hebrew texts that they knew, and devoted themselves chiefly to translating them into modern languages to give the Word of God to the people; and they used these translations as the Word of God of infallible, divine authority. No one in the time of the Reformation was so foolhardy as to affirm that "the Canon of Scripture is not in the Latin Bible, is not in the Greek Testament of Erasmus, is not in the Hebrew Bible of Bomberg, but is solely and alone in the original autographs of the inspired authors," which have not one of them been in the possession of the Church since the second century A.D. It was a rational position for the Council of Trent to make the Latin Vulgate the authoritative Bible and to provide for a correct official text. It would be a reasonable procedure for a Protestant assembly to decide that the Massoretic Hebrew text of Ben Asher and the Greek Bible of the Vatican codex should be the final arbiter, as the most correct texts at present attainable. But it is altogether irrational to take the position that the inerrant Bible is solely and alone in the original autographs which no one has seen since the Church had a Canon, and which no one can ever see.

When one clearly recognizes the essential principles of canonical criticism, he sees clearly that that which is canonical in Holy Scripture must be in every recognized text and in