While recent apologetics focus on the archaeological proof confirming Scripture, this entry from 1891 points out a more obvious and faithful witness to the truth of Scripture.
It will be admitted that if God were in any proper sense the author of the Bible, it would bear these marks of its own truthfulness.
Indeed, if he inspired its authors, he must have desired that his creatures should believe its statements and observe its precepts; and he would certainly impart this very quality to it.
The fact, then, that the Bible has the identical effect on a vast multitude of its readers which its author must have designed if that author is God, is no mean proof that God is its author.
This evidence can have but little effect on those who are as yet unbelievers, and who consequently do not receive the impression we refer to; but it is solid and satisfactory evidence to all those who have for this and other reasons combined received the book as true, and studied it for the good that is in it.
--J.M. McGarvey, The Old Faith Restated, ed. J. H. Garrison (St. Louis, MO: Christian Publishing Company, 1891), pp. 11-48.
It will be admitted that if God were in any proper sense the author of the Bible, it would bear these marks of its own truthfulness.
Indeed, if he inspired its authors, he must have desired that his creatures should believe its statements and observe its precepts; and he would certainly impart this very quality to it.
The fact, then, that the Bible has the identical effect on a vast multitude of its readers which its author must have designed if that author is God, is no mean proof that God is its author.
This evidence can have but little effect on those who are as yet unbelievers, and who consequently do not receive the impression we refer to; but it is solid and satisfactory evidence to all those who have for this and other reasons combined received the book as true, and studied it for the good that is in it.
--J.M. McGarvey, The Old Faith Restated, ed. J. H. Garrison (St. Louis, MO: Christian Publishing Company, 1891), pp. 11-48.
