[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR. "] S IR, — Apropos to your
excellent article in the Spectator of June 23rd, on " The Declaration on the Inspiration of the Scriptures," is there not a question which precedes those you have dealt with, and which must be settled before they can profitably be debated,—namely, how far we possess our Lord's sayings and doings in so accurate a form that they -can be made the basis of such subtle argument ? This is no question of "text." Even if we possessed the auto- graphs of the Gospels, how far could they be taken as verbatim reports ? If it had been possible for the Gospels to be submitted to Him for verification, and they had been so submitted, the state of the case would be dif- ferent ; but being, as they are, the reports, probably set down years after the events, of simple men who knew nothing of the virtue of absolute accuracy (quite a modern invention), surely the value of those reports, as the basis of theological argument, is very much altered. Surely, too, the fact that the Evangelists were ordinary Orientals, who knew no more than the present dwellers in Palestine do of the diffi- culties attendant on miraculous acts of healing, of raising the dead, of multiplying food, of sudden vanishing, of the appear- ance of angels or the devil, and many other supernatural things,—surely this fact must be taken into account in esti- mating the value of their testimony. That appears to me to be a most serious part of the question, and, while I most earnestly wish for more light, I am possessed with a fear that light can hardly be expected.—I am, Sir, &c., Lower Sydenham, S.E., June 24th. G. GROVE.
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