Page:Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology.djvu/8



Among the first and chief of such inquiries must certainly be investigations respecting the authority and significance of that only remaining guide which professes to have special power to lead us heavenwards-the Sacred Scriptures: and then respecting the value of those Theological Traditions which embody the results of our predecessors' interpretation of these Scriptures. And in the first portion of such inquiries, it at present appears to the writer of these Pages that before any permanently satisfactory result can be arrived at, there must be spoken some words likely to disturb the present opinions and feelings of the Christian majority among us. It appears to him that the claims which the Sacred Scriptures make for themselves and those which are commonly made for them, are in some considerable measure diverse, and in some less degree incompatible: and that this being more and more felt to be the case, injury is constantly and increasingly arising to many from this conflict of claims-injury which might be greatly mitigated, if not wholly removed, by some calm and judicial adjustment of them. The existence of this injury is admitted very generally now, but of course the degree of it will be very variously measured by various minds according to their differing experience and sympathies. The present writer has been led to estimate that injury as very great. He knows that there are some-he believes that there are many-in almost every province of thought and of society, who are sufferers from popular injustice in this matter. There are not a few indeed who are driven into a very tumult of Doubt, and are on the verge of more than Scepticism, chiefly in consequence of claims being made for Holy Scripture which they believe that facts contradict, and of these claims being dogmatically declared to be the lowest which are consistent with elementary attainments in Christian truth, or even with any honesty of Christian profession. And others there are who having come to the conviction that the popular tenets are untenable by them, and yet being prevented by more practical duties, or incapacitated by their educational deficiencies, from engaging in the investigations necessary to satisfy their minds as to the due extent of reserve which they