THE SCRIPTURES.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3644, 31 August 1880, Page 3

THE SCRIPTURES.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.)

Sib,—l am rather pleased with the controversy going on here and at Auckland about the Scriptures being the Word of God. It shows that it is a subject thai has been smouldering in the minds of many; but now it has burst forth into a flame. Once the pulpit had it all its own way, but now we may thank the Press for altering that state of things. If any one expressed a doubt about any part of the Scriptures being the Word of God, the ministers used to howl and screech and rave and tare and foam at the mouth —anything but reason. All was right so long as it was from the pulpit. Outsiders thought the ministers got into a towering rage, but they said it was zeal for the Lord of Hosts. Mr Wood is rather on that tack when he says that anyone doubting the Scriptures being the word of God cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. He is a very poor reasoner; be makes many statements but proTes very little. I see tonight in the Stab he is doing the same thing— making statements "in reference to Mr Laishley's lecture in trying to prove that the Scriptures are the word of God." He simply says it is unanswerable. Let us now look at this subject not from what is well said by the "Sceptic" and the " Enquirer," but from what Mr Laishley says himself: he admits that the original ..writings of the four Gospels are not in existence, and what we have is a translation, and some of it wrongly translated, and he admits of interpretations ; then how in the name of reason can this wrong translation and interpretation be the word of God; and this is what Mr Wood calls unanswerable. I fail to see that Mr L. proved his point, but nevertheless I respect him for reasoning so calmly, and not resorting to abuse and telling us if we doubt him we shall never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He perhaps said the best things that can be said on that side, and tried to meet the growing demand; but there is a great deal of work to be done with regard to this Bible question. If they settle .the point that Matthew* JVTark, I<uke and John did writs tne""Gospel3, the vest "pi/mi to settle would be had those men a special power that other good men had not? Did God really speak his last words to man eighteen hundred years, and no one has had a word from him since ? Is not all truth God's troth, whether found in nature or in the Bible ? Can a falsehood be made a truth by placing it in the Bible P Can anyone make a truth by writing it. We may discover a truth, but cannot make one. When Sir Isaac Newton discovered that all bodies had an attraction according, to their size and density he did not make that truth; it was just the same truth thousands of years before. If the Bible Slid that the sea should no more ebb and flow, would that make it do soP The falsehoods in the Bible cannot be the infallible word of God, and the wrong translations and interpretations in the Scriptures is not the word of God, and until we have got a Bible without errors we have not got the infallible word of God.—l am, &c. J. Hobn. August 27th, 1880.