Excerpt from The Bible and Modern Criticism: Reprinted From the Trinity Parish RecordIts spiritual value as a whole is similar ly explained. Even the parts which, by themselves, seem inferior, are found to afford illuminating contexts to the supe rior parts. And they help us to under stand how patient God was with the lowideals of His sin-blinded chosen people, not displacing them suddenly, but even using them until He could educate His people out of them. The Bible contains memorials of a long process of very grad ual divine teaching. But it also exhibits Israel's own mind at each stage, his pagan traditions, the kind of history that he pre served, and the notions of God, and of His Will, at which he had arrived. Just because the Bible does so faithfully do this, it enables us more intelligently to interpret the comparatively defective ele ments of divine teaching which the Old Testament preserves, and to see in them the best teaching that the then existing conditions permitted to be given. We see how patiently God accommodated His revelations to the slow growth of Israel's Spiritual understanding.If the Holy Spirit had inspired Old Tes tament writers in such wise as to climi nate from what they wrote every trace of historical, moral and religious error that is, all defective elements of their mental traditions, -the Old Testament would fail to serve the purpose for which the Spirit has guided the Church to edit, collect, preserve and canonize its contents. This purpose is not to furnish us with a series of oracles, all equally spiritual and inerrant. Rather it is to edify us in the faith which is in Christ Jesus, by show ing us how God's people were prepared. For the proclamation of that faith.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.