New Englander and Yale Review Author:George Park Fisher Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Article II.—OUR LITTLE EIRENICON. Let it not be thought that because the battle is over between Dr. Briggs and his antagonists in the General Assembly of the ... more »Presbyterian Church, our sprig of an olive-branch is too late for use. On the contrary, it is just in time. The battle is over, and it is a Bull Run victory and defeat; but the war has just begun. And an olive-branch that would have fallen to earth and been trampled by the contending hosts, if it had been brought into the thick of the fight, may not be unwelcome to the tired soldiers on either side, as they rest their " wearied valor " and look forward to renewed conflicts on other fields. Nothing will help more to take the acrimony out of the controversy which now vexes the Presbyterian Church, than to scrutinize exactly the main question at issue, and define it with precision. Perhaps it may be found to be a question of less awful moment than in the heat of the struggle it appeared to be. The main question, lying back of the merely personal question whether Dr. Briggs should be " Robinson professor," is the question on the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture; and as to this, the relative position of the two parties is by no means what it is generally believed to be. Carefully defined, it is this: The Princeton theologians of the present day hold that there once existed certain documents, the exact contents of which are not now discoverable, which were absolutely free from error of any kind whatever. Professor Briggs says that he is not sure of it. This we believe to be the exact statement of the main question at issue. It has its importance, no doubt, from an archaeological point of view; but it is worth while to ask, now in this moment of calm after the storm, whether it is really the question " of a standing or f...« less