cating Dr. Colenso. His theological training makes his
arguments very like those of his opponents, and he and Dr. M'Call may
settle their differences between themselves. The question is at once
wider and simpler than any which has been raised in that controversy.
Were it proved beyond possibility of error that the Pentateuch was
written by Moses, that those and all the books of the Old and New
Testaments were really the work of the writers whose names they bear;
were the Mosaic cosmogony in harmony with physical discoveries; and were
the supposed inconsistencies and contradictions shown to have no
existence except in Dr. Colenso's imagination--we should not have
advanced a single step towards making good the claim put forward for the
Bible, that it is absolutely and unexceptionably true in all its parts.
The 'genuineness and authenticity' argument is irrelevant and needless.
The clearest demonstration of the human authorship of the Pentateuch
proves nothing about its immunity from errors. If there are no mistakes
in it, it was not the workmanship of man; and if it was inspired by the
Holy Spirit, there is no occasion to show that the hand of Moses was the
instrument made use of. To the most excellent of contemporary histories,
to histories written by eye-witnesses of the facts which they describe,
we accord but a limited confidence. The highest intellectual competence,
the most admitted truthfulness, immunity from prejudice, and the absence
of temptation to misstate the truth; these things may secure great
credibility, but they are no guarantee for minute and circumstantial
exactness. Two historians, though with equal gifts and equal
opportunities, never describe events in exactly the same way. Two
witnesses in a court of law, while they agree in the main, invariably
differ in some particulars. It appears as if men could not relate facts
precisely as they saw or as they heard them. The different parts of a
story strike different imaginations unequally; and the mind, as the
circumstances pass through it, alters their proportions unconsciously,
or shifts the perspective. The credit which we give to the most
authentic work of a man has no resemblance to that universal acceptance
which is demanded for the Bible. It is not a difference of degree: it is
a difference in kind; and we desire to know on what ground this
infallibility, which we do not question, but which is not proved,
demands our belief. Very likely, the Bible is t