MR VOYSEY ON THE BIBLE.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 88, 20 January 1872, Page 3

MR VOYSEY ON THE BIBLE.

At St. George’s Ilall last Sunday night, the Rev. Charles Voyscy delivered a lecture before a large audience on “The Bible.” This address was given in fulfilment, of a promise made in the discourse on Rationalism the previous Sunday evening, in which Mr Voyscy undertook to verify from Hie Bible itself all he had said against the doctrine of its infallibility.

Mi- Voyscy confessed in the outset that it was a thankless task to show up tho faults of a venerable hook which had been the fruitful source of blessing and happiness to countless millions of our race. Some of them were merely human blemishes which any men of the lGth century might fall into, and none exceptionally had, considering the time when they occurred. lam not sure (the speaker continued) that in every period throughout the 2,000 or 3,000 years supposed to he covered by the biblical writings, the Bible writers were not always in advance of their own times, and that their views of God and of duty were not, at each successive point superior to those views which prevailed in other nations around them. Thus what now appear to us as faults were by comparison originally great merits, whereby alone the hooks of tho Bible obtained their supremacy over the literature of the world. To illustrate this, let me remind you of the story of Abraham offering up Isaac. The narrative at least assures us that the Patriarch resisted the temptation to offer up his son as a burntoffering ; and in overcoming it, Abraham most surely made a protest against the horrible human sacrifices which prevailed around him, and which he so narrowly escaped imitating. Bad as things seem to lie, and really are, in some of the Bible records, it is more than probable that they were not nearly so had as much that went on among the Gentile races which were coeval with the personages in the Bible histories. Moreover, the Bible contains so much that is true and beautiful, so much that will never perish so long' as men aspire to virtue and communion with God, that the whole world would he a loser if its pages were to he closed for ever, and its precious words forgotten. I u proper hands, and read in a reasonable, common sense manner, by persons whose minds arc absolutely free from superstitious reverence for it, the Bible may still be, and I hope will ever he, a source of delight and instruction —a text-hook of praise and worship, and a treasury, of examples of all that good men admire. This present work is forced upon us by those who have placed the Bible before us in a false light, who have made claims of Divine origin and authority for tho hook which Hie hook does not make for itself, and who have foolishly and suicidally affirmed that if the Bible he not infallibly true from beginning to end it is of no value at all. Some revclationislH affirm that the Bible is true from beginning to end, that “ every letter, every word,” and so on, lias been written under the direct inspiration of God, and, is therefore, of one uniform authority throughout. This class I shall endeavour to answer by showing absolute and irreconcilable contradictions between one part of Hie Bible and another part; and that in the Bible there are downright falsehoods. One such instance, of course, is sufficient to overthrow the position taken by this class. Another class of Bibliolaters affirm that though there may he errors in science, history, chronology, and geography in the Bible, yet on one point it is absolutely and invariably true, viz., in its religious and moral teaching. This class will he answered by showing that the religious and moral teachings in the Bible is not uniform or coherent, but in some places contradictory of itself, and that some of the religious teaching is degrading to God, and some of the so-eallcd moral teachings degrading to man. Another class, driven from both of these positions, has finally taken refuge in that partef the Bible which relates to the history of .Jesus Clirrst. and they affirm that although the Bible is full of errors,, scientific, historical, &c., and even religious and moral, yet the teaching and life of Jesus were absolutely perfect, without the slightest blemish or defect. This class will he answered by my illustrating from Hie Gospel certain moral blemishes in Hie character and life of Jesus, and even in parts of his teaching, as reported in the Gospels themselves. But I beg you to observe that the whole and sole aim of this lecture is to refute the idea that the Bible is infallible, and that Jesus was no less than the Almighty God, I do not come here to make men love the truths of the Bible less than they did before, or to regard with diminished homage the noble life and beautiful teaching of Jesus himself. 1 attack only the extravagant notions that the Bible is all true, that its moral and religious teachings are infallible and that Jesus was more than man and free from every human blemish. Among the passages which Mr Voyscy quoted as contradictor}' were the dillcrcnt reasons given in Deuteronomy ami Exodus forlbo Fourth Commandment: the ascription of Hie same act to God am) Satan in 2ml Samuelxxtv. Land Ist ChroniclesXXl. 1-7; the assertion in Genesis that God Icnqncd Abraham, and in Jamcjs that Cod tempts, rTo be continued."]