I am asked, What is your view of the Holy Letters? I answer, What thought my Master of them? how did He appeal to them? what use did He make of them? what were their smallest details in His eyes? (Matt. 5:18; 24:35).

Ah! speak to these inquirers Thyself, Eternal Wisdom, Uncreated Word, Judge of judges! or as we repeat to them the declarations of Thy mouth, show them the majesty in which the Scriptures appeared to Thee, the perfection Thou didst recognize in them, that everlasting stability which Thou didst assign to their smallest iota, and that imperishable destiny which will outlast the universe, after the very heavens and the earth have passed away!

We are not ashamed to say that, when we hear the Son of God quote the Scriptures, we become docile believers in their divine inspiration – we need no further testimony. All the declarations of the Bible are, no doubt, equally divine; but this example of the Saviour of the world has settled the question for us at once. This proof requires neither long nor learned researches; it is grasped by the mind of a child as powerfully as by that of a doctor. Should any doubt assail your soul, the tone of His voice, as Jesus Himself talks of the Scriptures, will quell your scruples.

Follow our Lord in the days of His flesh. With what serious and tender respect does He constantly hold in His hands " the volume of the Book," to quote every part of it, and note its shortest verses! See how one word, one single word, whether of a psalm or of an historical book, has for Him the authority of a law. Mark with what confident submission He receives the whole Scripture, without ever contesting its sacred canon:for He knows that "salvation is of the Jews," and that under the infallible providence of God "to them were committed the oracles of God." Did I say, He receives them? From His childhood to the grave, and from His rising again from the grave to His disappearance in the clouds, what does He bear always about with Him:in the desert, in the temple, in the synagogue? What does He continue to quote with His resuscitated voice, just as the heavens are about to exclaim, "Lift up your heads, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come
in?" It is the Bible, ever the Bible; it is Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets:He quotes them, He explains them, but how? Why, verse by verse, and word by word.

In what alarming and melancholy contrast do we gaze at and groan over those misguided men in our days, who dare to arraign, challenge, contradict, and mutilate the Scriptures! Who does not tremble, after following with his eyes the Son of man as He commands the elements, stills the storms, and opens the graves, filled with so profound a reverence for the sacred volume, while He declares that He is one day to judge by that Book the quick and the dead? Who does not shudder, whose heart does not bleed when, after observing this, he ventures to step into a Rationalist academy, and sees the professor's chair occupied by a poor mortal, learned by reputation, but a miserable sinner in reality, responsible for handling God's Word irreverently? Follow him as he goes through this deplorable task before a body of youths, destined to be the guides of a parish or a populous district-youths capable of doing so much good if guided to the heights of the faith, and so much mischief if tutored in disrespect for those Scriptures which they are one day to preach? With what peremptory decision do such men display the phantasmagoria of their hypotheses-they retrench, they add, they praise, they blame! and they pity the simplicity of those who read the Bible as it was read by Jesus Christ, like Him cling to every syllable, and never dream of finding error in the Word of God. They pronounce on the intercalations and retrenchments that Holy Scripture must have undergone- intercalations and retrenchments that He never suspected:they lop off the chapters they do not understand, and point out blunders, ill-sustained or ill-concluded reasonings, prejudices, imprudences, and instances of vulgar ignorance! May God forgive my being compelled to put this frightful dilemma into words, but the alternative is inevitable! Either Jesus Christ exaggerated and spoke incoherently when He quoted the Scriptures thus, or these rash, wretched men unwittingly blaspheme their divine authority. It pains us to write these lines. God is our witness that we could have wished to recall, and then to efface them; but we venture to say, with profound feeling, that it is in obedience, it is in charity, they have been penned. Alas! in a few short years both the doctors and the disciples will be laid in the tomb, they shall wither like grass; but not one jot or title of that divine book will then have passed away; and as certainly as the Bible is the truth, and that it has changed the face of the world, so certainly shall we see the Son of man come in the clouds of heaven, to judge by His eternal Word the secret thoughts of all men! (Rom. 2:16; John 12:48; Matt. 25:31.) "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth:but the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you " (i Pet. 1:24, 25); this is the word which will judge us.

(From ''Theopneustia:" the Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.)