C. H. Spurgeon, said:
“Believe in the inspiration of
Scripture, and believe it in the most intense sense. You will not believe in a
truer and fuller inspiration than really exists. No one is likely to err in
that direction, even if error be possible. If you adopt theories which pare off
a portion here, and deny authority to a passage there, you will at last have no
inspiration left, worthy of the name.
“If this book be not
infallible, where shall we find infallibility? We have given up the Pope, for
he has blundered often and terribly; but we shall not set up instead of him a
horde of little popelings fresh from college. Are these correctors of Scripture
infallible? Is it certain that our Bibles are not right, but that the critics
must be so? The old silver is to be depreciated; but the German silver, which
is put in its place, is to be taken at the value of gold. Striplings fresh from
reading the last new novel correct the notions of their fathers, who were men
of weight and character.
“Doctrines which produced the
godliest generation that ever lived on the face of the earth are scouted as
sheer folly. Nothing is so obnoxious to these creatures as that which has the
smell of Puritanism upon it. Every little man’s nose goes up celestially at the
very sound of the word ‘Puritan;’ though if the Puritans were here again, they
would not dare to treat them thus cavalierly; for if Puritans did fight, they
were soon known as Ironsides, and their leader could hardly be called a fool,
even by those who stigmatized him as a ‘tyrant.’ Cromwell, and they that were
with him, were not all weak-minded persons—surely?
“Strange that these are lauded
to the skies by the very men who deride their true successors, believers in the
same faith. But where shall infallibility be found? ‘The depth saith, it is not
in me;’ yet those who have no depth at all would have us imagine that it is in
them; or else by perpetual change they hope to hit upon it. Are we now to
believe that infallibility is with learned men? Now, Farmer Smith, when you
have read your Bible, and have enjoyed its precious promises, you will have,
to-morrow morning, to go down the street to ask the scholarly man at the
parsonage whether this portion of the Scripture belongs to the inspired part of
the Word, or whether it is of dubious authority. It will be well for you to
know whether it was written by the Isaiah, or whether it was by the second of
the ‘two Obadiahs.’ All possibility of certainty is transferred from the
spiritual man to a class of persons whose scholarship is pretentious, but who
do not even pretend to spirituality.
“We shall gradually be so
bedoubted and becriticized, that only a few of the most profound will know what
is Bible, and what is not, and they will dictate to all the rest of us. I have
no more faith in their mercy than in their accuracy: they will rob us of all
that we hold most dear, and glory in the cruel deed. This same reign of terror
we shall not endure, for we still believe that God revealeth himself rather to
babes than to the wise and prudent, and we are fully assured that our own old
English version of the Scriptures is sufficient for plain men for all purposes
of life, salvation, and godliness. We do not despise learning, but we will
never say of culture or criticism. ‘These be thy gods, O Israel!’”
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