raiment, and obstinately refuse to investigate and to judge, and you may be able to believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God. But, by this course, and by no other course, can you possibly so believe. Intelligent Christians themselves are as fully aware of this as I am; and, occasionally, they express their conviction on this point almost as emphatically as I do. Writing with an emphasis which I could not surpass, even if I tried, and powerfully recapitulating and epitomising much that I have written, the Rev. Dr. Irons, formerly a Prebendary of St. Paul's Cathedral, furnishes us with the following candid but damnatory passage as regards the reliability of the "Word of God."
"We may concede 'that the very copy of the Pentateuch, written by Moses throughout, with National Hymns, and some of the Psalms, and some pieces of history gradually appended, existed for ages in Israel;' but the Sacred Autograph escapes us at last. Or, if the 'Book of Jasher,' for instance, became the standard copy of 'the Scriptures' thus composed—did it contain a transcript of the Divine Writing once made in Horeb? And was that Divine Writing lost altogether after the Captivity? Having existed for 500 years, from Moses to Solomon—and 350 more from Solomon to Hilkiah—and then 150 years more to Ezra—very little noticed in all those ages, so far as the record states—was it really turned into one uniform shape—Chaldee letters, without the written points—with only unwritten 'Masora' to fix its meaning? To conceive of this as 'Revelation for every man's own verifying faculty to judge of'—seems to require credulity more amazing than we can describe.
"We waive, for the present, the literary examination of the contents, and the internal character of any of the Sacred Books. The mere identification of the 'documents,' as such, presents some crushing difficulties to the independent inquirer, 'freely handling Revelation for himself,' that we do not hesitate to say that any reasonable being who would accept the Scriptures at all must take them on some other ground than that which 'identifies the written word with God's Revelation.' Granting the Hebrew Bible a safe transit from the Mediæval schools of Toledo back to the best manuscripts
