Page:Rural Hours.djvu/292

---

has always been received by the Church, both Jewish and Christian, as a part of the inspired Scriptures; it must, therefore, be essentially true, and no evil word or deed finds a place in the narrative. Then, again, the impartiality of the sacred biographers, from the first to the last books of the Holy Scriptures, is so very striking, so very peculiar to themselves, so widely different from the eulogies or apologies of uninspired men under similar circumstances, that reason alone requires us to receive each narrative simply as it is given. We read with a feeling of awe of the occasional failings and sins of such men as Noah, Abraham, Aaron, and David; the whole nature of man stands humbled before us, while the mercy of our God rises, indeed, exalted above the heavens! We feel that these passages are laid open to us by the same Omniscient Spirit which searches our own hearts by the same just hand which weighs our own words, and thoughts, and deeds in the balance. And if such men as Abraham, and Aaron, and David were not spared by the inspired pen, why should it screen the Moabitish widow, and the comparatively unimportant Boaz? The writer of the narrative has not, by one word, imputed sin to either. How dare the mind of the reader do so? One may add a word for the skeptic, since this passage has been made a pointed subject of objection by men of that school. There are but three positions which the infidel can take upon the subject: he may, with the Christian, believe the Book of Ruth to be true, in which case he is bound to receive the facts as they are given; he may hold the narrative to be a compound of fiction and truth, and then plain justice requires that those points upon which the Scriptural writers have always shown such marked impartiality be charged to the side of truth, and he is at liberty to doubt any other passage of the book rather than this particular one; he