But, lastly, you object that--even granting that no coercive, positive reasons for the belief--no direct and not inferred assertions--of the plenary inspiration of the Old and New Testament, in the generally received import of the term, could be adduced, yet--in behalf of a doctrine so catholic, and during so long a succession of ages affirmed and acted on by Jew and Christian, Greek, Romish, and Protestant, you need no other answer than:- "Tell me, first, why it should not be received! Why should I not believe the Scriptures throughout dictated, in word and thought, by an infallible Intelligence?" I admit the fairness of the retort; and eagerly and earnestly do I answer: For every reason that makes me prize and revere these Scriptures;--prize them, love them, revere them, beyond all other books! WHY should I not? Because the doctrine in question petrifies at once the whole body of Holy Writ with all its harmonies and symmetrical gradations--the flexile and the rigid--the supporting hard and the clothing soft--the blood WHICH IS THE LIFE--the intelligencing nerves, and the rudely woven, but soft and springy, cellular substance, in which all are imbedded and lightly bound together. This breathing organism, this glorious panharmonicon which I had seen stand on its feet as a man, and with a man's voice given to it, the doctrine in question turns at once into a colossal Memnon's head, a hollow passage for a voice, a voice that mocks the voices of many men, and speaks in their names, and yet is but one voice, and the same; and no man uttered it, and never in a human heart was it conceived. WHY should I not?--Because the doctrine evacuates of all sense and efficacy the sure and constant tradition, that all the several books bound up together in our precious family Bible were composed in different and widely-distant ages, under the greatest diversity of circumstances, and degrees of light and information, and yet that the composers, whether as uttering or as recording what was uttered and what was done, were all actuated by a pure and holy Spirit, one and the same--(for is there any spirit pure and holy, and yet not proceeding from God--and yet not proceeding in and with the Holy Spirit?)--one Spirit, working diversely, now awakening strength, and now glorifying itself in weakness, now giving power and direction to knowledge, and now taking away the sting from error! Ere the summer and the months of ripening had arrived for the heart of the race; while the whole sap of the tree was crude, and each and every fruit lived in the harsh and bitter principle; even then this Spirit withdrew its chosen ministers from the false and guilt-making centre of Self. It converted the wrath into a form and an organ of love, and on the passing storm-cloud impressed the fair rainbow of promise to all generations. Put the lust of Self in the forked lightning, and would it not be a Spirit of Moloch? But God maketh the lightnings His ministers, fire and hail, vapours and stormy winds fulfilling His word.
CURSE YE MEROZ, SAID THE ANGEL OF THE LORD; CURSE YE BITTERLY THE INHABITANTS THEREOF--sang Deborah. Was it that she called to mind any personal wrongs--rapine or insult--that she or the house of Lapidoth had received from Jabin or Sisera? No; she had dwelt under her palm tree in the depth of the mountain. But she was a MOTHER IN ISRAEL; and with a mother's heart, and with the vehemency of a mother's and a patriot's love, she had shot the light of love from her eyes, and poured the blessings of love from her lips, on the people that had JEOPARDED THEIR LIVES UNTO THE DEATH against the oppressors; and the bitterness, awakened and borne aloft by the same love, she precipitated in curses on the selfish and coward recreants who CAME NOT TO THE HELP OF THE LORD, TO THE HELP OF THE LORD, AGAINST THE MIGHTY. As long as I have the image of Deborah before my eyes, and while I throw myself back into the age, country, circumstances, of this Hebrew Bonduca in the not yet tamed chaos of the spiritual creation;--as long as I contemplate the impassioned, high-souled, heroic woman in all the prominence and individuality of will and character,--I feel as if I were among the first ferments of the great affections--the proplastic waves of the microcosmic chaos, swelling up against--and yet towards--the outspread wings of the dove that lies brooding on the troubled waters. So long all is well,--all replete with instruction and example. In the fierce and inordinate I am made to know and be grateful for the clearer and purer radiance which shines on a Christian's paths, neither blunted by the preparatory veil, nor crimsoned in its struggle through the all-enwrapping mist of the world's ignorance: whilst in the self-oblivion of these heroes of the Old Testament, their elevation above all low and individual interests,--above all, in the entire and vehement devotion of their total being to the service of their divine Master, I find a lesson of humility, a ground of humiliation, and a shaming, yet rousing, example of faith and fealty. But let me once be persuaded that all these heart-awakening utterances of human hearts--of men of like faculties and passions with myself, mourning, rejoicing, suffering, triumphing--are but as a Divina Commedia of a superhuman--O bear with me, if I say--Ventriloquist;--that the royal harper, to whom I have so often submitted myself as a MANY-STRINGED
INSTRUMENT for his fire-tipt fingers to traverse, while every several nerve of emotion, passion, thought, that thrids the flesh-and-blood of our common humanity, responded to the touch,--that this SWEET PSALMIST OF ISRAEL was himself as mere an instrument as his harp, an AUTOMATON poet, mourner, and supplicant;--all is gone,--all sympathy, at least, and all example. I listen in awe and fear, but likewise in perplexity and confusion of spirit.
