The scientific bases of faith / by Joseph John Murphy.

  • Joseph John Murphy
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The scientific bases of faith / by Joseph John Murphy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    but authoritative, while denying the authenticity of any part of the history previous to Abraham, and questioning the doctrine of a personal tempter. My reply is that I have no general theory to maintain on the subject of the authority of the Scriptures, and that concerning their credibility on particular questions I have come to the conclusions which I hold, by applying the ordinary prin- ciples of evidence. It is first to be observed that the expression authority of a Boole, and still more inspiration of a Book, though I do not call them inaccurate, are elliptical expressions. Authority, which in this sense is the right to be believed, and the Divine inspiration which gives authority, are not attributes of books, but of men: and there is no ground whatever for supposing that the writings of a Prophet or an Apostle are more inspired or of higher authority than his spoken words. Inspiration and authority admit of degrees: and there is no reason for thinking that all the many writers whose works the Church regards as Holy Scripture are of equal inspiration and of equal authority. The facts are alto- gether opposed to such a theory. What man, unless he had a theory to support, could compare the inspiration of the Proverbs of Solomon with that of the Psalms of David ? There is no proof that the Holy Scriptures are inspired throughout, and there is no proof that they are the only inspired documents in the world. It is a priori utterly improbable that any purely historical book, such as the Chronicles or the Book of Ezra, should be inspired, because the writing of history is a strictly human work, and it cannot be supposed that God would inspire men to do what they could do without special inspiration. God
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