(2.) But it is more than time to turn to the second aspect, in which Coleridge appears as a religious leader of the thought of the nineteenth century. The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit was not published till six years after his death, in 1840; and it is curious to notice their accidental connection with the Confessions of a Beautiful Soul, which had been translated by Carlyle some years before.9 These Confessions, in the shape of seven letters to a friend, gather together all that is valuable in the Biblical criticism of the author scattered through his various writings; and although it may be doubtful whether the volume has ever attained the circulation of the Aids to Reflection, it is eminently deserving small as it is, nay, because of its very brevity of a place beside the larger work. It is eminently readable, terse and nervous, as well as eloquent in style. In none of his writings does Coleridge appear to greater advantage, or touch a more elevating strain, rising at times into solemn music.
The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit were of course merely one indication of the rise of a true spirit of criticism in English theology. Arnold, Whately, Thirlwall, and others, it will be seen, were all astir in the same direction, even before the Confessions were published. The notion of verbal inspiration, or the infallible dictation of Holy Scripture, could not possibly continue after the modern spirit of historical inquiry had begun. As soon as men plainly recognised the organic growth of all great facts, literary as well as others, it was inevitable that they should see the Scriptures in a new light, as a product of many phases of thought in course of more or less perfect development. A larger and more intelligent sense of the conditions attending the origin and progress of all civilisation, and of the immaturities through which religious as well as moral and social ideas advance, necessarily carried with it a changed perception of the characteristics of Scriptural revelation. The old Rabbinical notion of an infallible text was sure to disappear. The new critical method besides is, in Coleridge's hands, rather an idea a happy and germinant thought than a well-evolved system. Still to him belongs the honor of having first plainly and boldly announced that the Scriptures were to be read and studied, like any other literature, in the light of their continuous growth, and the adaptation of their parts to one another.
The divinity of Scripture appears all the more brightly, when thus freely handled. I take up the work, he says, with the purpose to read it as I should read any other work so far as I can or dare. For I neither can nor dare throw off a strong and awful prepossession in its favor, certain as I am that a large part of the light and life in and by which I see, love, and embrace the truths and the strengths organised into a living body of faith and knowledge have been directly or indirectly derived to me from the sacred volume. All the more reason why we should not make a fetish of the Bible, as the Turk does of the Koran. Poor as reason may be in comparison with the power and splendor of the Scriptures, yet it is and must be for him a true light. While there is a Light higher than all, even the Word that was in the beginning; the Light of which light itself is but the Schechinah and cloudy tabernacle; there is also a 'Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world;' and the spirit of man is declared to be 'the candle of the Lord,' If between this Word, he says, and the written letter I shall anywhere seem to myself to find a discrepance, I will not conclude that such there actually is. Nor, on the other hand, will I fall under the condemnation of those that would lie for God, but, seek as I may, be thankful for what I have and wait.
Such is the keynote of the volume. The supremacy of the Bible as a divinely inspired literature is plainly recognised from the first. Obviously it is a book above all other books in which deep answers to deep, and our inmost thoughts and most hidden griefs find not merely response, but guidance and assuagement. And whatever there finds us bears witness for itself that it has proceeded from the Holy Spirit. In the Bible, he says again, there is more that finds me than I have experienced in all other books put together; the words of the Bible find me at greater depths of my being, and whatever finds me brings with it an irresistible evidence of its having proceeded from the Holy Spirit.
But there is much in the Bible that not only does not find us in the Coleridgian sense, but that seems full of contradictions, both moral and historical; the psalms in which David curses his enemies; the obviously exaggerated ages attributed to the patriarchs; and the incredible number of the armies said to be collected by Abijah and Jeroboam (2 Chron. xiii. 3), and other incidents familiar to all students of Scripture. What is to be made of such features of the Bible? According to the old notion of its infallibility such parts of Scripture, no less than its most elevating utterances of lovely hymn and choral song and accepted prayer of saint and prophet, were to be received as dictated by the Holy Spirit. They were stamped with the same Divine authority. Coleridge rightly enough emphasises this view as that of the fathers and reformers alike; but he no less rightly points out that not one of them is consistent in holding to their general doctrine. Their treatment of the Scriptures in detail constantly implies the fallacy of the Rabbinical tradition to which they yet clung. He no less forcibly points out that the Scriptures themselves make no such pretension to infallibility, explicitly or by implication. On the contrary, they refer to older documents, and on all points express themselves as sober-minded and veracious writers under ordinary circumstances are known to do. The usual texts quoted, such as 2 Tim. iii. 16, have no real bearing on the subject. The little we know as to the origin and history of many of the books of the Bible, of the time of the formation and closing of the canon, of its selectors and compilers, is all opposed to such a theory. Moreover, the very nature of the claim stultifies itself when examined. For how can infallible truth be infallibly conveyed in defective and fallible expression?
But if the tenet of verbal inspiration has been so long received and acted on by Jew and Christian, Greek, Roman, and Protestant, why can it not now be received? For every reason, answered Coleridge, that makes me prize and revere these Scriptures; prize them, love them, revere them beyond all other books. Because such a tenet falsifies at once the whole body of holy writ, with all its harmonious and symmetrical gradations. It turns the breathing organism into a colossal Memnon's head, a hollow passage for a voice, which no man hath uttered, and no human heart hath conceived. It evacuates of all sense and efficacy the fact that the Bible is a Divine literature of many books, composed in different and widely distant ages under the greatest diversity of circumstances and degrees of light and information. So he argues in language I have partly quoted and partly summarised. And then he breaks forth into a magnificent passage about the song of Deborah, a passage of rare eloquence with all its desultoriness, but which will hardly bear separation from the context. The wail of the Jewish heroine's maternal and patriotic love is heard under all her cursing and individualism mercy rejoicing against judgment. In the very intensity of her primary affections is found the rare strength of her womanhood; and sweetness lies near to fierceness. Such passages probably give us a far better idea of the occasional glory of the old man's talk as he sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, than any poor fragments of it that have been preserved. Direct and to the point it may never have been, but at times it rose into an organ swell with snatches of unutterable melody and power.