Bishops Pearson and Butler, and Mr. Mansel are
seriously at fault in their notions of prophecy, and even Jerome is
guilty of gross puerilities. There is no reason why Bunsen may not be
right when he holds that the world must be twenty thousand years old;
there is no chronological element in revelation; the avenger who slew
the first-born, may have been the Bedouin host; in the passage of the
Red Sea, the description may be interpreted with the latitude of poetry;
it is right to reject the perversions which make the cursing Psalms
evangelically inspired; perhaps one passage in Zechariah and one in
Isaiah may be direct prophecies of the Messiah, and possibly a chapter
in Deuteronomy may foreshadow the final fall of Jerusalem; the Messianic
prophecies are mere contemporaneous history; and the fifty-third chapter
of Isaiah is only a description of the sufferings of Jeremiah.
Inspiration is too loftily conceived by "the well-meaning crowd," for
whom we should manifest "grave compassion."
What is the Bible, continues the essayist, but the written voice of the
congregation, and not the written voice of God? Why all this reverence
for the sacred writers, since they acknowledge themselves men of like
passions with us? Justification by faith is merely peace of mind from
trust in a righteous God, and not a fiction of merit by transfer.
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