The Rationale of Religious Enquiry (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE III. PROTESTANT INFALLIBILITY. Romans suv. 4. WHO ART THOU THAT JUDGEST ANOTHER MAN'S SERVANT ? TniT was a noble fight, which was fought by Luther and his printing press, when they rescued the Bible from the grasp of priests, and turned it from the charter of an incorporated tyranny into the patent of universal freedom. If the most solemn sera of the world's history was that in which Christ himself walked its fields in Palestine, and refreshed its weary heart with the living spectacle of heavenly virtues, and entered death that he might illustrate life, and, as he ascended, bequeathed to all generations the dignity and responsibility of an immortal hope; the next in interest is the period when the true record of those things was brought again beneath the eye of men, and to the ear of thought the voice of Christ was made to speak once more, and the image of his mind was sent round the homes of the people, and went about, like himself, doing good. If that book is to fulfil its appointed function, as the sinner's conscience, and the mourner's friend, and the oppressor's foe, it must be accessible to all men, in all stations of life and moods of mind; not dealt out only in the place of pulpits, and spoiled by the voice of preachers, andselected by the will of priests; but abandoned, whole and entire, warning and promise, history, parable, miracle and prophecy, to the reason and the heart of all whom it may concern. The inquirer must have it, whenever the anxiety of doubt, or the spirit of speculation, urges him to its page; and he can borrow from it the solution of some perplexity, or shed on it the illumination of fresh thought. The sorrowing must have it, whenever the waywardness of grief may make it welcome, and to the touched heart there may be a gentleness in ...