Who Wrote the Bible? : a Book for the People by Gladden, Washington, 1836-1918

It was indeed a great privation that they suffered, but we must not suppose that they were left without witness. For there is another and even a clearer revelation than the written word, and that is a godly life. Godly lives there were in all these dark times; and it was at their fires that the torch of gospel truth was kindled and kept burning. There may be reason for a question whether we have not come to trust in these times too much in a word that is written, and to undervalue that other revelation which God is making of his truth and love in the characters of his children. For it is only in the light that Christ is constantly manifesting to the world in the lives of men that we can see any meaning in the words of the book. "The Christian," says Dr. Christlieb, "is the world's Bible." This is the word that is known and read of men. Let it be our care to make it, not an infallible, but a clear, an adequate, and a safe revelation of the truth and love of God to men.

CHAPTER XIII.

HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH?

Of the Bible as a book among books, of the human elements which enter into its composition, some account has been given in the preceding chapters. But in these studies the whole story of the Bible has not been told. There is need, therefore, that we should enlarge our view somewhat, and take more directly into account certain elements with which we have not hitherto been chiefly concerned.

Our study has, indeed, made a few things plain. Among them is the certainty that the Bible is not an infallible Book, in the sense in which it is popularly supposed to be infallible. When we study the history of the several books, the history of the canon, the history of the distribution and reproduction of the manuscript copies, and the history of the versions,--when we discover that the "various readings" of the differing manuscripts amount to one hundred and fifty thousand, the impossibility of maintaining the verbal inerrancy of the Bible becomes evident. We see how human ignorance and error have been suffered to mingle with this stream of living water throughout all its course; if our assurance of salvation were made to depend upon our knowledge that every word of the Bible was of divine origin, our hopes of eternal life would be altogether insecure.

The book is not infallible historically. It is a veracious record; we may depend upon the truthfulness of the outline which it gives us of the history of the Jewish people; but the discrepancies and contradictions which appear here and there upon its pages show that its writers were not miraculously protected from mistakes in dates and numbers and the order of events.

It is not infallible scientifically. It is idle to try to force the narrative of Genesis into an exact correspondence with geological science. It is a hymn of creation, wonderfully beautiful and pure; the central truths of monotheistic religion and of modern science are involved in it; but it is not intended to give us the scientific history of creation, and the attempt to make it bear this construction is highly injudicious.