Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/46

 tion, admonition, and comfort; but so long as we adhere to a theory of Inspiration, whether it be of better quality or of worse, we shall be open to disturbance from the inroads of textual and historical criticism, and shall be haunted by the grim suspicion that the Scriptures are confusedly constituted of heterogeneous elements—some of which are purely divine, while some are merely human: or we shall accept the comfortless hypothesis that the divine substance in Holy Scripture has become flawed or intergrained with the grit and débris of human inadvertence, accident, ignorance, or evil intention; and that thus the Bible is a conglomerate of materials, precious and worthless. Under the influence of suppositions of this kind, and in proportion to our personal candour and intelligence, we shall be asking aid from any who can yield it, to inform us, at every section, and verse, and line, what it is that we may accept as "from above," and what it is that should be rejected as "from men." A Bible-reading method less cumbrous than this, and less comfortless too, and less embarrassing, is surely attainable.

When we accept a mass of writings as a gift from God, in a sense peculiar to themselves, and which is their distinction, as compared with all other human compositions, we do so on grounds which we think to be sufficient and conclusive. Already therefore we have given in our submission to the Book, or to the collection of books, which we are willing to re-