Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1885-06-10
BEECHER ON INSPIRATION.
Declaring That Many False Notions
Have Been Built Up About the scrip
lures.
ZION Me PAtAdeIpAia Times.

.
lures.
From tie PAftadelDAia Times.
NEW YORK, June Every seat IL
Plymouth Church was filled to-day anC
hundreds of people stood in the galleries
and blocked the doors TO hear Henry
Ward Beecher's third sermon of the series
on Evolution Considered in Its Relations
to Religion" Mr.. Beecher began by say
ing that the sacred Scriptures have. had
and still have relation to the highest
moral consciousness, and to the profound
est religious expression OF the best men
The divine revelation" be continued,
interpreted by evolution viii, in my
Judgment, free the sacred Scriptures
from fictitious claims made by
man and from clouds Of misconception.
The Bible has been held in captivity
by false and unwarranted theory OF
inspiration which, against thousand
obstacles, well-nigh turns commentators
into intellectual dishonesty. Men have
exerted their ingenuity and have In
dulged in all forms OF reasoning for the
sake OF maintaining what they believed
to be literally the word of God. The
Bible has value and its history has a
certain value, but much which may have
been necessary for its production ceases
to be needful for our faith in the way it
without the straw, but when the straw
has brought 1t forth both straw and
stubble perish. The wheat does not mean
that the Bible VIII be destroyed, for sooner
will you pluck the stars out Of heaven
than one star out of that divine book"
PLENARY INSPIRATION SET ASIDE.
Science, Mr.. Beecher continued, has
forced certain notifications of statements
in the Bible. Changes haG been made in
the book and changes would be made
again. But if anchrUnisms and dates
had been changed the finely developed
fruit of the spirit recorded in the book
could not be changed. God aud human
ity would be the same. The theory Of
plenary inspiration had already been set
aside. "No honest man." he continued,
sin making himself thoroughly familiar
with the Word of God and believing that
the book was spoken by God directly as
man speaks to man and that
every word in it is divinely and
directly authorized can, if he be
consistent, keep himself from going head
first into the gulf Of intidelity. If he
don't go there il is because he is too
stupid. The ingenious efforts of men to
reconcile facts with fiction would cease if
the false and vicious theory of verbal and
plenary inspiration was abandoned.
There is no definition in scripture of in
SEPARATION. The way in which the Bible
was inspired is not stated. There is a
theory of inspiration which not only saves
the book by reconciling it with the other
revelations of God in nature, but which
frees it from a thousand criticisms and
objections. That is that the Bible is the
histOry--the record in part-Of what the
effect OF Gods spirit moving in human
consciousness has brought to pass along
the line of our national history. 1t is the
record of that universal and continuous
action OF the divine mind on human con-
seriousness that has raised man from the
lower depths step by step, unfolding NOR
alities, unfolding all laws of social life,
unfolding all reason, all treasures of
moral nature and all spirituality.
THE BIBLES REAL CHARACTER.
sit is the human race that has been in
spired. The Bible and every part Of it
was lived first and the record made of it
afterward, while the race was at its lower
stages. Some proof of experience would
now and then Become so widespread that
a man of large nature feeling the impulse
of divine Inspiration was able to give it
out as a truth. 1t had never before been
put in regular form or spoken, but it was
found to be something really authorita-
tive before he declared it. And so the
Word of God Is the record along one line
OF grand experiment, namely, the de-
velOpment OF man from the lowest point
of human eXistence--a book which under
takes to register the stages through which
man has passed. 1t may be an inspired
book and book Of God.
"MOnogOmy was tried, afterwards COM
manded, but if the Bible is the Word of
God, according to the old theory of pie
nary direct inspiration, why then Nor
monism is right. This is it's stronghold
to-day. Its adherents believe in the d
Testament. They believe in it like thun-
der. MOrmOnism cannot be wrong if God
taught it in His book. Slavery, too, must
be right if God is the direct author Of the
Bible.''
In conclusion Mr.. Beecher said: 'The
doing away with the attempt to sngraft
upon Gods government things which we
know to have sprung from the weakness
of humanity, though the record of them is
modern, the Bible would take away the
very weapons of infdAity Tomorrow"