Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/63

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VIII. THINGS WRITTEN.
49

from God, has hitherto been able to gather between birth and death. This has been, for the last half-century, the theory of the soundest scholars and thinkers of Europe.

36. There is yet indeed one farther condition of incredulity attainable, and sorrowfully attained, by many men of powerful intellect—the incredulity, namely, of inspiration in any sense, or of help given by any Divine power to the thoughts of men. But this form of infidelity merely indicates a natural incapacity for receiving certain emotions; though many honest and good men belong to this insentient class.

37. The educated men, therefore, who may be seriously appealed to, in these days, on questions of moral responsibility, as modified by Scripture, are broadly divisible into three classes, severally holding the last three theories above stated.

Now, whatever power a passage from the statedly authoritative portions of the Bible may have over the mind of a person holding the fourth theory, it will have a proportionately greater over that of persons holding the third