Yet what conceivable connexion is there between the date of Cyrenius’s government, or the question whether our Lord healed a blind man as he was going into Jericho or as he was leaving it; or whether Judas bought himself the field of blood, or it was bought by the high priests:  what connexion can there be between such questions, and the truth of God’s love to man in the redemption, and of the resurrection of our Lord?  Do we give to any narrative in the world, to any statement, verbal or written, no other alternative than that it must be either infallible or unworthy of belief?  Is not such an alternative so extravagant as to be a complete reductio ad absurdum?  And yet such is the alternative which men seem generally to have admitted in considering the Scripture narratives:  if a single error can be discovered, it is supposed to be fatal to the credibility of the whole.

This has arisen from an unwarranted interpretation of the word “inspiration,” and by a still more unwarranted inference.  An inspired work is supposed to mean a work to which God has communicated his own perfections; so that the slightest error or defect of any kind in it is inconceivable, and that which is other than perfect in all points cannot be inspired.  This is the unwarranted interpretation of the word “inspiration.”  But then follows the still more unwarranted inference,—­“If all the Scripture is not inspired, Christianity cannot be true,” an inference which is absolutely entitled to no other consideration than what it may seem to derive from the number of those who have either openly or tacitly maintained it.

Most truly do I believe the Scriptures to be inspired; the proofs of their inspiration rise continually with the study of them.  The scriptural narratives are not only about divine things, but are themselves divinely framed and superintended.  I cannot conceive my conviction of this truth being otherwise than sure.  Yet I must acknowledge that the scriptural narratives do not claim this inspiration for themselves; so that if I should be obliged to resign my belief in it, which seems to me impossible, I yet should have no right to tax the Scriptures with having advanced a pretension proved to be unfounded; their whole credibility as a most authentic history of the most important facts would remain untouched; the gospel of St. John would still be a narrative as unimpeachable as that of Thucydides, which no sane man has ever disbelieved.

So much for the unwarranted inference, that if the Scripture histories are not inspired, the great facts of the Christian revelation cannot be maintained.  But it is no less an unwarranted interpretation of the term “inspiration,” to suppose that it is equivalent to a communication of the Divine perfections.  Surely, many of our words and many of our actions are spoken and done by the inspiration of God’s Spirit, without whom we can do nothing acceptable to God.  Yet does the Holy Spirit so inspire us as to communicate to us His own perfections?  Are our best words or works utterly free from error or from sin?  All inspiration does not then destroy the human and fallible part in the nature which it inspires; it does not change man into God.