lic has at present taken with respect to its worshiped Book. The
positions, honestly tenable, before I use any more of its texts, I
must try to define for you.

35. All the theories possible to theological disputants respecting the
Bible are resolvable into four, and four only.

(1.) The first is that of the illiterate modern religious world, that
every word of the book known to them as "The Bible" was dictated by
the Supreme Being, and is in every syllable of it His "Word."

This theory is of course tenable by no ordinarily well-educated
person.

(2.) The second theory is, that, although admitting verbal error, the
substance of the whole collection of books called the Bible is
absolutely true, and furnished to man by Divine inspiration of the
speakers and writers of it; and that every one who honestly and
prayerfully seeks for such truth in it as is necessary for his
salvation, will infallibly find it there.

This theory is that held by most of our good and upright clergymen,
and the better class of the professedly religious laity.

(3.) The third theory is that the group of books which we call the
Bible were neither written nor collected under any Divine guidance,
securing them from substantial error; and that they contain, like all
other human writings, false statements mixed with true, and erring
thoughts mixed with just thoughts; but that they nevertheless relate,
on the whole, faithfully, the dealings of the one God with the first
races of man, and His dealings with them in aftertime through Christ:
that they record true miracles, and bear true witness to the
resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

This is a theory held by many of the active leaders of modern thought.

(4.) The fourth, and last possible, theory is that the mass of
religious Scripture contains merely the best efforts which we hitherto
know to have been made by any of the races of men towards the
discovery of some relations with the spiritual world; that they are
only trustworthy as expressions of the enthusiastic visions or beliefs
of earnest men oppressed by the world's darkness, and have no more
authoritative claim on our faith than the religious speculations and
histories of the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, and Indians; but are, in
common with all these, to be reverently studied, as containing a
portion, divinely appointed, of the best wisdom which human
intellect, earnestly seeking for help from God, has hitherto