But I always get greatly interested in a discussion about the Bible,— people seem to me often so hopelessly superstitious and illogical about it, and so to miss its truest, most blessed meaning.
It always seems to me that the question divides itself into two perfectly distinct parts,—regarding, so to speak, the spiritual and temporal part of the Bible. The first is entirely without the province of the intellect or the reason,—‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, ... but God hath revealed them unto us by His spirit.’ As Colani says (I think, indeed, it was him I quoted before) it is not a question of logic or of evidence whether we believe ‘the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God Thou wilt not despise!’,—the _certainty_ of its truth is self-evident to us; we are absolutely sure the moment we hear the words that the All-Good rejoices in repentance and not in blood. It is the word of God from without speaking to the Spirit of God within us ‘whose temples we are.’ In Coleridge’s forcible words, ‘it _finds_ us’,—it pierces through ear and brain irresistibly to the spirit of every man. Yes, _every_ man; there is not one in the world however debased who _could_ doubt whether God preferred a broken heart or a costly gift. He may not think about it, he may let the words pass by him, but, receiving them at all into his mind, he _cannot_ doubt....
Feel,—suffer, and words like those bring their own proof; let them once _enter_ and you need not ask whether their truth is received or not. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.’ We _know_ it is so; no one in the world could really doubt for one second whether holiness or impurity brings the man to God,—to _see_ Him....
In all this the whole mass of ‘Evidence’ goes for absolutely nothing. If the Bible had never been heard of to this moment, and I picked it off a dunghill, _those_ words and truths would just as irresistibly transfix and ‘find’ me as a two-edged sword.
But since, as Pulsford says, ‘Most people get their faith through their heart, not through their head,’—there are thousands of God’s children who, seeing and feeling the infinite beauty and pricelessness of these words and truths,—but _not_ seeing fully their infinite omnipotence, their absolute impregnability,—fancy that to preserve from the slightest danger what is to them so infinitely precious, it is necessary to claim for the whole casket the same authority and value that the jewel claims for itself: and then, because this claim does not and cannot maintain _itself_, they rush to arms for it and brand as ‘rejectors of the Bible’ some who, like your child, find in its words the very deepest blessings of existence....