What is the doctrine of the Christian Church as to the extent to which the Scriptures are inspired ?
The two opinions which individual Christian men have severally maintained on this subject are represented respectively by the two alternative phrases, “The Scriptures contain the word of God,” “The Scriptures are the Word of God.” The first is the loose formula of those who hold a low doctrine of inspiration. A river in India, “rolling down its golden sands,” may be truly said to contain gold. But in that case we are left in doubt as to the relative proportion between the sand and the gold, and to our own resources to discriminate and separate the two. If the Bible only “contains the Word of God,” it evidently can be no infallible rule of faith and practice, because we are confessedly left to the two very human and fallible instruments (1) of “higher criticism,” and (2) of the “Christian consciousness,” to determine what elements of the Scriptures are the very “word of God,” and what elements are only the word of man. A law can have no infallibility beyond that of the court which inter
