CHAPTER V HOLY SCRIPTURE AND MODERN NEGATIONS BY PROFESSOR JAMES ORR, D. D. , UNITED FREE CHURCIT COLLEGE, GLASGOW, SCOTLAND Is there today in the midst of criticism and unsettlement a tenable doctrine of Holy Scripture for the Christian Church and for the world; and if there is, what is that doctrine? That is unquestionably a very pressing question at the present time. "Is there a book which we can regard as the repository of a true revelation of God and an infallible guide in the way of life, and as to our duties to God and man?" is a question of immense importance to us all. Fifty years ago, perhaps less than that, the question hardly needed to be asked among Christian people. It was universally conceded, taken for granted, that there is such a book, the book which we call the Bible. Here, it was believed, is a volume which is an inspired record of the whole will of God for man's salvations; accept as true and inspired the teaching of that book, follow its guidance, and you cannot stumble, you cannot err in attain ing the supreme end of existence, in finding salvation, in grasping the prize of a glorious immortality. Now, a change has come. There is no disguising the fact that we live in an age when, even within the Church, there is much uneasy and distrustful feeling about the Holy Scrip tures-a hesitancy to lean upon them as an authority and to use them as the weapons of precision they once were; with a corresponding anxiety to find some surer basis in external Church authority, or with others, in Christ Himself, or again in a Christian consciousness, as it is named,-a surer basis for Christian belief and life. We often hear in these days reference to the substitution, in Protestantism, of an "INFAL- 94
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