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"...The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."
I Timothy 3:15
Battle over the Bible
C. H. Spurgeon, 1891
It is sadly common among ministers to add a word and subtract a word from the passage, or in some way debase the language of sacred writ. Our reverence for the Great Author of scripture should forbid all mauling of His Words.
NO ALTERATION OF SCRIPTURE CAN BY ANY POSSIBILITY BE AN IMPROVEMENT. Today it is still the self-same mighty Word of God that was in the hands of our Lord Jesus. If this book be not infallible where shall we find infallibility?
We have given up the Pope, for he has blundered often and terrible, but we shall set up instead of him a horde of little popelings, fresh from college. Are these correctors of scripture infallible?
All possibility of certainty is transferred from the spiritual man to a class of persons is pretentious, but who do not even pretend to spirituality.
We shall be gradually so bedoubted and becriticized that only a few of the most profound will know what is Bible and what is not, and they will dictate to the rest of us. I have no more faith in their mercy than I do in there accuracy.
They will rob us of all that we hold most dear, and glory in the cruel deed. This same "reign of terror" we will not endure, for we still believe that God reveals Himself to babes rather to the wise and prudent...
Do you see why men would lower the degree in inspiration of Holy Writ, and would fain reduce it to an infinitesimal Quantity?
It is because the truth of God is to be supplanted. Whenever a man begins to lower your view of inspiration, it is because he has a trick to play, which is not easily performed in the light. To those who belittle inspiration and inerrancy we will give place by subjection, no, not for an hour!
Editor’s Note: This was written just one year before Spurgeon died, and ten years after the first modern version, The Revised Standard Version, was produced. I wonder what he would say about fundamentalists who say that no translation or version can be inspired?