Hold Fast # 2

Hold Fast # 2

C. The third fact is the effect which Christianity has produced on the world. If Christianity is a mere invention of man, and not a supernatural, Divine revelation, how is it that it has wrought such a complete alternation in the state of mankind? Any well-read man knows that the moral difference between the condition of the world before Christianity was planted, and since Christianity took root - is the difference between night and day; the difference between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of the devil. At this very moment I defy anyone to look at the map of the world, and compare the countries where men are Christians - with those where men are not Christians, and to deny that these countries are as different as light and darkness, black and white. How can any infidel explain this on his principles? He cannot do it. We only can who believe that Christianity came down from God and is the only Divine religion in the world.

Whenever you are tempted to be alarmed at the progress of infidelity, look at the three facts which I have just mentioned, and cast your fears away! Take up your position boldly behind the ramparts of these three facts, and you may safely defy the utmost efforts of modern skeptics. They may often ask you a hundred questions you cannot answer, and start clever problems about geology, or the origin of man, or the age of the world, which you cannot solve. They may vex and irritate you with wild speculations and theories, of which at the time you cannot prove the fallacy, though you feel it. But be calm and fear not. Remember the three great facts I have named, and boldly challenge them to explain them away. The difficulties of Christianity no doubt are great; but, depend on it, they are nothing compared to the DIFFICULTIES OF INFIDELITY.

3. In the next place, let me charge you to hold fast the authority, supremacy, and Divine inspiration of the whole Bible.

About the authority of that blessed book I need not say much. I am addressing men who have answered the solemn questions of the Ordination Services, and subscribed to the Thirty-nine Articles. By so doing you have declared your belief that the Scriptures are our Church's rule of faith and practice. The clergyman who preaches and teaches anything which flatly contradicts the Bible, appears to me to forget his own pledges, and deals unfairly with the Church of which he is a minister.

About the inspiration of the Bible I feel it necessary to speak more fully. It is,l unhappily, one of the chief subjects of controversy in the present day, and one about which you have a right to know what I think.

The subject of inspiration is always important. It is the very keel and foundation of Christianity. If Christians have no Divine book to turn to as the warrant of their doctrine and practice, they have solid ground for present peace or hope, and no right to claim the attention of mankind. They are building on a quicksand, and their faith is vain. If the Bible  is not given by inspiration throughout, and contains defects and errors - it cannot be a safe guide to heaven. We ought to be able to say boldly, "We are what we are, and we do what we do, and teach what we teach - because we have here a book which we believe to be, altogether and entirely, the Word of God."

The subject without doubt is a very difficult one. It cannot be followed up without entering on ground which is dark and mysterious to mortal man. It involves the discussion of things which are miraculous, supernatural, above reason, and cannot be fully explained. But difficulties must not turn us away from any subject in religion. There is not a science in the world about which questions may not be asked which no one can answer. It is poor philosophy to say we will believe nothing - unless we can understand everything! We must not give up the subject of inspiration in despair, because it contains things hard to be understood."

One cause of difficulty lies in the fact that the Church has never defined exactly what inspiration means, and consequently many of the best Christians are not entirely of one mind. I am one of those who believe that the writers of the Bible were supernaturally and divinely enabled by God, as no other men ever have been, for the work which they did, and that, consequently, the book they produced is unlike any other book in existence, and stands entirely alone. Inspiration, in short, is a miracle. We must not confound it with intellectual power, such as great poets and authors possess. To talk to Shakespeare and Milton and Byron being inspired, like Moses and Paul, is to my mind, almost profane!

Nor must we confound it with the gifts and graces bestowed on the early Christians in the primitive Church. All the apostles were enabled to preach and work miracles - but not all were inspired to write. We must rather regard it as a special supernatural gift, bestowed on about thirty people out of mankind, in order to qualify them for the special business of writing the Scriptures; and we must be content to allow that, like everything miraculous, we cannot entirely explain it, though we can believe it. A miracle would not be a miracle - if it could be explained! That miracles are possible, I do not stop to prove here. I never trouble myself on that subject, until those who deny miracles have fairly grappled with the great fact, that Christ rose again from the dead. I firmly believe that miracles are possible, and have been wrought, and among great miracles I place the fact that men were inspired by God to write the Bible. Inspiration, therefore, being a miracle, I frankly allow that there are difficulties about it which at present, I cannot fully solve.

The exact manner, for instance, in which the minds of the inspired writers of Scripture worked when they wrote - I do not pretend to explain. I have no doubt they could not have explained it themselves. I do not admit for a moment that they were mere machines holding pens, and, like type-setters in a printing office, did not understand what they were doing. I abhor the mechanical theory of inspiration. I dislike the idea that men like Moses and Paul were no better than organ pipes, employed by the Holy Spirit, or ignorant secretaries - who wrote by dictation what they did not understand. I admit nothing of the kind. But I do believe that in some marvelous manner the Holy Spirit made use of the reason, the memory, the intellect, the style of thought, and the peculiar mental temperament of each writer of the Scriptures.

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 3)