his hands. All I can say is, that I have given the best report of the Doctor's speeches I could get.

Though the Doctor did not prove himself so much of a gentleman as I had been encouraged to expect, I was sorry he declined to continue the discussion four nights longer, as we had not got more than half through the question when the eighth night closed. I wished for an opportunity of laying the whole subject before the public. Perhaps some other clergyman will take the matter in hand-one disposed and able to discuss the subject thoroughly.

JOSEPH BARKER.

THE

[From the Pennsylvania Freeman.] BIBLE

DISCUSSION.

THE discussion on the authority of the Bible, at Concert Hall, between Rev. J. F. Berg, of this city, and Joseph Barker, of Ohio, closed on Thursday evening last, after a continuance of eight evenings. During the whole time, the vast hall was crowded with an eager multitude-numbering from 2000 to 2500 persons-each paying an admittance of 12 cents every evening, and on some evenings it said that hundreds went away, unable to approach the door; nor did the interest appear to flag among the hearers to the last.

Of the merits of the question or the argument, it does not come within the scope of a strictly anti-slavery paper to speak, but we cannot forbear to notice the contrast in the manner and bearing of the two debaters, and the two parties among the audience. Mr. Barker uniformly bore himself as a gentleman, courteously and respectfully toward his opponent, and with the dignity becoming his position, and the solemnity and importance of the question. We regret that we cannot say the same of Dr. Berg, who at times seemed to forget the obligations of the gentleman in his zeal as a controversialist. He is an able and skillful debater, though less logical than Mr. Barker, but he wasted his time and strength too often on personalities and irrelevant matters. His personal inuendoes and epithets, his coarse witticisms, and a bearing that seemed to us more arrogant than Christian, may have suited the vulgar and the intolerant among his party, but we believe these things won him no respect from the calm and thinking portion of the audience, while we know that they grieved and offended some intelligent and candid men who thoroughly agreed with his views. It is surely time that all Christians and clergymen had learned that men whom they regard as heretics and Infidels have not forfeited their claims to the respect and courtesies of social life, by their errors of opinion, and that insolence and arrogance, contemptuous sneers and impeachment of motives and character, toward such men, are not effective means of grace for their enlightenment and conversion.

Among the audience, there was a large number of men, who also lost their self-control in their dislike to Mr. Barker's views, and he was often interrupted, and sometimes checked in his argument, by hisses, groans, sneers, vulgar cries, and clamor, though through all these annoyances and repeated provocations, he maintained his wonted composure of manner and clearness of thought. On the other hand, Dr. Berg was heard with general quiet by his opponents, and greeted with clamorous applause by his friends, who seemed to constitute a large majority of the audience, and to feel that the triumph of their cause, like the capture of Jericho of old, depended upon the amount of noise made.

BIBLE DISCUSSION.

THE long-expected discussion between Mr. JOSEPH BARKER, of Ohio, and the Rev. Dr. BERG, of Philadelphia, was commenced at Concert Hall, in the city of Philadelphia, on the evening of the 10th of January, 1854. The audience crowded the immense room to overflowing. Wм. D. BAKER, Esq., was chosen Chairman; and Rev. JOHN CHAMBERS and Mr. THOMAS ILLMAN, Moderators. At half past 7 o'clock, the Chairman read the rules agreed on by the parties. The most important are as follows:

Mr. BARKER rejects the Bible as a Divine Revelation.

Mr. BARKER maintains that the doctrines, laws and institutions of the Bible are of no superhuman authority.

The Topics.-1. The internal evidence. 2. The external evidence. 3. The tendency of the Bible, when the book is received as of Divine authority, Mr. BARKER maintains to be injurious.

King James's Bible to be the standard, with liberty of appeal to the original Hebrew and Greek.

The discussion to continue for eight evenings, with the understanding that it may be extended, by mutual consent, for four evenings more. Mr. BARKER opens the discussion, and Dr. BERG rejoins on each evening.

I would bespeak a calm and patient hearing, and, so far as it can be granted, a due consideration of what I may advance.

Several persons in this city have endeavored to prejudice the minds of the citizens against me. They have preferred against me a multitude of charges. Those charges, so far as I have seen them, are all false, with two exceptions. I am charged with having been born in England. This

is true. My defence is, I could not help it. I am also charged with not being a naturalized citizen. My excuse is, that the laws do not permit me to be naturalized till after a longer residence than I can claim. My opponent will not complain of me on account of my birth, as he was himself born under the same government, and educated in the same borough and parish as myself. It is with the authority and tendency of the Bible that we have to do, and to these, I trust, we shall confine our attention. Personalities would not become men met for the discussion of so grave a question.

We are to consider,

First, the origin and authority of the Bible; and,

Secondly, the tendency of its contents, when the book is regarded as divine anthority.

of

My opponent ought to have taken the lead, and allowed me to follow. He should have produced his internal and external evidence of the superhuman origin and divine authority of the Bible, and left me to answer. This, however, he declined. I am, therefore, under the necessity of leading. I am required to prove the negative. I shall not complain. My task will not be a hard one. We are assured no evidence can be adduced, either internal or external, to prove the position of my opponent; while internal evidence, in abundance, is at hand to prove the contrary.

The doctrine held by my opponent, the common doctrine of the Orthodox churches, is, that the Bible is the word of God, that its teachings are all divine. We believe that the Bible is the work of man, that its teachings are purely human, and that we are at liberty to receive or reject them, just as they may appear to us to be true and good, or false and bad.

With your permission, we will state the grounds of our belief.

I. We know that books generally are the productions of men, and it is natural to conclude that all books are so, the Bible included, till proof is given to the contrary.

We know of no proof to the contrary. We can find neither internal, nor external evidence that the Bible had any higher origin than other books, or that it is entitled to any higher authority. We have examined what has been brought forward as proof of the superhuman origin and divine authority of the Bible, but have found it, as we think, wanting.

II. Even our opponents, who believe in the divine origin of the Bible, do not believe in the divine origin of the books deemed sacred by other people. They smile at the credulity of the Mohammedan, who believes in the superhuman origin of the Koran; they are even disposed to scold the Latter-Day Saint, for believing in the superhuman origin of the Book of Mormon.

They are sure the Turk and the Latter-Day Saint are in error. We are as confident that our opponents themselves are in error. They have hardly patience to read the arguments of Mohammedans and Mormonites in behalf of their Bibles. We have read, to some extent, the arguments of all, and found them all equally unsatisfactory.

III. We have, as we think, proof that the Bible is not of divine origin,-proof that it is of human origin.

1. The Bible in common use is a translation, made by men as liable to err as ourselves; men who did err, grievously. The translation bears marks of their liability to err on almost every page.

The Christian world bears witness to the imperfections of the translatiou, by its demand for new and better translations. No sect is satisfied with it. Many of the sects have made new translations.

2. The Greek and Hebrew scriptures, of which the translators profess the common English Bible to be a translation, were compiled by men, weak and erring like ourselves, and they, too, are acknowledged to bear the marks of human imperfection and error.

3. The Greek and Hebrew Bibles were compiled from preëxisting manuscripts. Those manuscripts are human transcripts of still earlier manuscripts, which were also human transcripts. Those manuscripts are all imperfect. They differ from each other. The manuscripts of the New Testament, alone, differ in more than 150,000 places.

4. The originals are lost-the manuscripts cannot, therefore, be compared with them. No means remain of ascertaining which is least corrupted. A perfect Bible, therefore, a Bible thoroughly divine,`a Bible free from error and uncertainty, is a thing no more to be hoped for, even supposing such a Bible once existed. But there is no evidence that such a book ever did exist. If, therefore, we had the originals, there is no reason to believe that we should find them less imperfect, less erroneous, than our common translations. But these are points on which it is not necessary, at present, to dwell. The Bible referred to in the rules for this debate is the common version. We have, therefore, to do chiefly with the contents of the common version. These contents furnish internal evidence, evidence the most decisive, that the Bible, like other books, is the work of erring and imperfect men. To this internal evidence we call attention.

1. The form, the arrangement, the language, the style of the different portions of the Bible, are all manifestly human. The Grammar, the Logic, the Rhetoric, the Poetry, all bear marks of human weakness. We see nothing supernatural any where in the book, but human imperfection and error we see every where.

But the moral, theological, and philosophical portions of the Bible have the principal claim on our attention, and on these we should chiefly dwell. We can see no traces of any thing more than human in the morality, theology, or philosophy of the Bible; but the plainest traces of imperfect humanity.

Bishop Watson, in his letters to Thomas Paine, has these words :"Au honest man, sincere in his endeavors to search out truth, in reading the Bible, would examine, first, whether the Bible attributed to the Supreme Being any attributes repugnant to holiness, truth, justice, goodness; whether it represented him as subject to human infirmities." - Bishop Watson, p. 114.

We have followed this course, and will now state the result. We find that the Bible does represent God as subject to human infirmities, and that it does attribute to him attributes repugnant to holiness, truth, justice, and goodness.

1. It represents God as subject to human infirmities. It represents

He

He wrestles with wants to go, but

him as having a body, subject to wants and weaknesses like those of our own bodies. When he appears to Abraham, he appears, according to the Bible, as three men. These three men, whorn Abraham calls "Lord," talk to Abraham. Abraham kills for them a calf, Sarah bakes them bread, and they eat and drink. They wash their feet, soiled with their journey, and sit down to rest themselves under a tree. God is also rep. resented as appearing to Jacob in the form of a man. Jacob all night. Jacob is too strong for him. Jacob holds himn fast. Jacob demands a blessing, and refuses to let go his hold of the Deity, till he obtains it. God, unable to free himself from Jacob's grasp, is forced, at length, to yield to his demand, and give him a blessing. He accordingly changes Jacob's name to ISRAEL, which means the God-conqueror, the man who vanquished God in a wrestling match. In other parts of the book, God is represented as tired and exhausted with the six days' work of creation, and as resting on the seventh day. In Exodus 31:17, it is said that on the seventh day God rested, and was refreshed. In Judges 1:19, God is represented as unable to vanquish some of the inhabitants of Canaan, because they had chariots of iron. "And the Lord was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."

2. God is further represented in the Bible as limited in knowledge. He did not know whether Abraham feared him or not, till he had tried him by commanding him to offer his son as a burnt-offering. But when Abraham had bound his son, and lifted up the knife to take his life, God is represented as saying, "Now I know thou fearest me; since thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me." He is also represented as having to use similar means with the Israelities, to find out how they were disposed towards him. In one place, he is said to try them by false prophets and dreamers, to know whether they loved the Lord their God with all their heart. (Deut. 13:3.) In another, he is said to have led them forty years in the wilderness to prove them, to know what was in their heart, and to find out whether they would keep his commandments or not. (Deut. 8:2.) One passage represents him as putting the rainbow in the clouds, to aid his memory,- that he might look on it, and remember his engagement never again to destroy the world by a flood.

3. Other passages of scripture represent God as both limited in knowledge, and limited in his presence,- -as dwelling somewhere aloft and apart from mankind, as receiving his information respecting the doings of men through agents or messengers, in whom he could not put confidence at all times, and as being obliged at times to come down and see for himself how things were going on. In Genesis 11:5, we read, "And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded." So with regard to Sodom and Gomorrah, we read, Genesis 18:20-21-" And the Lord said, because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know." In all these passages, God is supposed to be subject to the same or similar limitations with ourselves.