LECTURE VIII.

AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION.

THE aspect of the evidences we are now to present is of extreme importance, yet requiring delicate treatment. The Christian advocate has to be on his guard against awakening antagonism among Christians, knowing that the army which cannot appease internal strife in the presence of the foe, by that very impotence yields the battle to the enemy. It seems a mere truism, however, to say that no army can fight without some commanding authority, since no body of human beings can act together, for any purpose, without yielding to this supremacy. But the very mention of "authority" among Christians is the reminder of almost inappeasable strifes.

It seems necessary, therefore, here to remind ourselves of some elemental truths and principles. Revelation, a real, supernatural disclosure of truths and facts from Almighty God to human beings here on earth, we cannot but think must be intended to redeem them in some way from their miseries, and to lead them to true happiness here and hereafter. The real purport and meaning of the revelation, then, however made known, by vision or audible voice, and recorded whether in writings or by institutions, must be considered as the very revelation itself. That cannot be a revelation which has no definite sense, and no one can defend a revelation who attaches to it no ascertainable meaning. This statement does not exclude the reception of mysterious truths, or the acknowledg

ment of supernatural persons, in the revelation; for the plainest truths of science have a mysterious side, and our own personal identity, the fact nearest to us, cannot be fully explained. But a divine truth must be one that we can firmly grasp; a Divine Being, one to whom there must be a definite relation of duty and service; and a religious rule of life, such as is practicable and suited to our state of probation. These are almost axioms, and cannot well be denied without self-stultification.

But many persons who claim the name of Christian will not follow us, but will suspect us of taking up a party position, if we proceed to say, what I confess appears to me inevitable in logic, that no one can defend a revelation who has not made up his mind whether Christ the Redeemer, announced by it, is divine or human, God or man, or I may add really yet mysteriously both, and not a mere man like Socrates or Confucius. I say this because the latter alternative seems to me nothing less than the definite denial of a revelation.

Equally certain does it appear to me that no one can successfully maintain that the books of Holy Scripture, whose authenticity, credibility, and integrity we have been proving, are a Divine Revelation, if he deny the authority of the Church or Kingdom of God, the Catholic Church, to pronounce upon the meaning of those books. As we have said before, the right meaning of the words of the revelation is the real revelation. It is an aspersion upon the Divine Wisdom to suppose that it could make a revelation whose meaning could not be ascertained. And still we are left to this supposition, if we admit that the right meaning of Scripture is only that which seems such to each individual soul reading it in independence. The result of such a method of interpretation is not a question of theory, but has been demonstrated a thousand times by facts. Recall some of the most notorious. There have been in the earliest and latest ages of the Church persons of intelligence, sometimes of great personal attractiveness, who, rejecting the

authority of the Church's councils, have maintained that Scripture describes Christ as less than God,' as a creature, whether above the angels, or the most perfect of men. Again, these same and other persons, not at all agreeing with them in their view of the Redeemer, have refused to find in the Scriptures any testimony to a visible, organized Church, indefectible, preserved in the world by divine power, having authority to witness to and teach revealed truth; and have likewise declined to find in the sacred text any proof of a special grace in Holy Sacraments of a power to bind or to loose, to unite with or separate from the body of Christ. To some minds Scripture appears to reveal a peculiar logical scheme of doctrine, bordering on fatalism, whose reception in all its coherence is of more consequence than the articles of the Apostles' Creed, the existence of the Church, or the grace of the Sacraments. Scripture, they are persuaded, recognizes no other Catholic Church than the collection of individual believers, who believe in original sin, grace, election, sensible conversion, perfection, and, while holding some or all of these tenets, are scattered over the world, amid all sects, and are known to God alone.

The leading historical branches of the Catholic Church, the Oriental and Western, whether Roman or Anglican, condemn these independent views of Scripture, plainly hold up our Redeemer before us as the Christians' God, insist upon reverence to His Church as no less than the continuance of His Incarnation, the vital necessity of the Sacraments to begin and to continue our union with His Body, the reception of her dogmatic decisions upon articles of the faith and the canon of Scripture, and the subordination of all private views upon either Scripture or its meaning to her authoritative determinations.

"The more I endeavor to realize the manner of thinking and speaking current in the New Testament, the more I feel called upon to give it as my decided opinion, that the histori

cal Son of God, as such, cannot be called God, without completely destroying the monotheistic system of the apostles."-Lücke, Studien und Kritiken, 1840. I., p. 91.

My purpose now is, of course, not to engage in any polemic of the Church against her rebellious children, or against those who claim the name of Christian but resist her claims. I do not hesitate to say, with the utmost explicitness, that I believe it impossible successfully to defend Revelation at all except upon the ground of the Church; still I would not lightly speak evil of any who exhibit the miracle of true faith amid whatever logical inconsistencies. I believe that God has spoken to individual prophets, that His Revelation has been committed to Sacred Writings, that these writings have been certified to us, first by the Jewish, then by the Catholic Church; but it does not seem to me possible that a book alone-that is, apart from its author, or from the community that possess and interpret it-can be a real religious authority to any man or to any number of men. Plato has shown the weakness of this imagination in one of his exquisite dialogues. Some strong bias, some peculiarity of temper or experience, will cause even one who may wish to act honestly with himself to read into the sacred text the thought of his heart and the desire of his eyes. A book apart from its author cannot repel or correct this injury put upon its sense. And Christians who put from them the thought of the Church as their spiritual mother, the spouse of Christ, enlightened and supported by her Heavenly Lord to teach His truth with authority to her children, have no defence against this perversion which the soul in its proud independence inevitably puts upon the Divine Word. The result is not a matter of theory, but is made known to us by a multitude of facts. There are as many divergent and contradictory interpretations of Scripture-and these, too, made in apparent good faith-as there are new and clashing sects or venturous innovators seeking to strike out a new path.

No serious man should permit himself to think that the Almighty would seek to direct His creature to the truth it most concerns him to know, by a method so utterly

1 The Phædrus.

precarious. Moreover, the separation of God's Word from His Church leads inevitably to a fatal misconception of the holy volume. If its true meaning be that which each independent, sincere inquirer finds in it, then has it many not only contrary, but contradictory meanings. But to admit this is simply to discredit and to reject the Bible. Contradictories cannot be true. The voice of reason, therefore, is merely reëchoed by the great teachers of the Church in every age, S. Justin Martyr, Dionysius, S. Augustine, when they say with one voice: "I dare not either imagine or assert that the Scriptures contradict each other; but were any passage to be adduced which has even the semblance of being opposed to another, being altogether persuaded that no such opposition really exists, I will rather confess that I myself do not understand what is said." "Let us not suppose that the evangelists differ, or that they are at variance with each other." "I have learnt," says S. Augustine, who had made trial of the independent treatment of Scripture, "to pay such deference to the books of Scripture, and to them alone, that I most firmly believe that none of their writers has ever fallen into any error in writing. And if I meet with anything in them which seems to me contrary to truth, I doubt not that either the manuscript is in fault, or that the translator has missed the sense, or that I myself have not rightly apprehended it." 3 No one can preserve this sound and rational reverence for Scripture in its entirety who separates from the Catholic Church or rejects her authority.

No champion of Christianity can safely assume the position: "I will neglect all the differences of those who acknowledge the Christian name, and content myself with simply proving that there has been a revelation, that the religion which Christians profess is divine." This is inadmissible, because we cannot believe that there has

1 S. Justin M., Dial. cum Trypho., ap. Routh, Rel. Sacræ, T. III., p. Ch. LXV., p. 162. 225.

'S. Dionys. of Alex., Epist. Canon.,

Aug., Epist. ad Hieron., LXXXII.