In various attempts at compromise,—­such as conceding the Scriptural fallibility in human science, but maintaining its spiritual perfection,—­I always found the division impracticable.  At last it pressed on me, that if I admitted morals to rest on an independent basis, it was dishonest to shut my eyes to any apparent collisions of morality with the Scriptures.  A very notorious and decisive instance is that of Jael.—­Sisera, when beaten in battle, fled to the tent of his friend Heber, and was there warmly welcomed by Jael, Heber’s wife.  After she had refreshed him with food, and lulled him to sleep, she killed him by driving a nail into his temples; and for this deed, (which now-a-days would be called a perfidious murder,) the prophetess Deborah, in an inspired psalm, pronounces Jael to be “blessed above women,” and glorifies her act by an elaborate description of its atrocity.  As soon as I felt that I was bound to pass a moral judgment on this, I saw that as regards the Old Testament the battle was already lost.  Many other things, indeed, instantly rose in full power upon me, especially the command to Abraham to slay his son.  Paul and James agree in extolling Abraham as the pattern of faith; James and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews specify the sacrifice of Isaac as a firstrate fruit of faith:  yet if the voice of morality is allowed to be heard, Abraham was (in heart and intention) not less guilty than those who sacrificed their children to Molech.

Thus at length it appeared, that I must choose between two courses.  I must EITHER blind my moral sentiment, my powers of criticism, and my scientific knowledge, (such as they were,) in order to accept the Scripture entire; OR I must encounter the problem, however arduous, of adjusting the relative claims of human knowledge and divine revelation.  As to the former method, to name it was to condemn it; for it would put every system of Paganism on a par with Christianity.  If one system of religion may claim that we blind our hearts and eyes in its favour, so may another; and there is precisely the same reason for becoming a Hindoo in religion as a Christian.  We cannot be both; therefore the principle is demonstrably absurd.  It is also, of course, morally horrible, and opposed to countless passages of the Scriptures themselves.  Nor can the argument be evaded by talking of external evidences; for these also are confessedly moral evidences, to be judged of by our moral faculties.  Nay, according to all Christian advocates, they are God’s test of our moral temper.  To allege, therefore, that our moral faculties are not to judge, is to annihilate the evidences for Christianity.—­Thus, finally, I was lodged in three inevitable conclusions: 

1.  The moral and intellectual powers of man must be acknowledged as having a right and duty to criticize the contents of the Scripture: 

2.  When so exerted, they condemn portions of the Scripture as erroneous and immoral: