Quotable

I have sought to follow the Laws of Evidence as applied to documents in our courts of law…. I hold…that the evidence of manuscripts and versions and of the Egyptian, Babylonian and other documents outside the Bible confirms the prima facie evidence of the Biblical documents…both as to text and meaning; and that this text and meaning cannot be…changed simply [by] the opinions of men of our generation…. I contend that our text of the Old Testament…is what it purports to be and what Christ and the apostles thought it to be…the Word of God and the infallible rule of faith and practice.

   Robert Dick Wilson, A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament (1926), Professor of Semitic Philology, Princeton Theological Seminary, fluent in over 40 Semitic languages, one of the greatest scholars of all time, pp. 6-7

I could not look at any good thing between the earth and skies, which man might not trample on….If the Creator does not depart from his usual method, he will not compel me to receive any favor [but] leave it possible for me to turn away from…the offer of heaven…from everlasting joys….[In] whatever direction I looked, common-sense, reason, and reflection pronounced a solemn amen to every doctrine taught in that fearful and precious book [the Bible]....

There is no unkindness in the call, if I am invited to think of a habitation …exceedingly beautiful, where death can never enter, and where the tear-drop was never seen,…a world where want was never known,…the song is always singing…. I am not unwise if I ask, “How am I to get there?”

If I am told that those who desire this prize are directed to express their wishes for it to One who can hear the lowest whisper, I cannot say there is any great difficulty in such an undertaking.

If I am told that this Hearer of requests once became man, and that all…I have done wrong…he bore in his own body on the tree, that I may escape suffering, I can never say the offer is not a kind one. If all are invited to apply, I am included in the number.

   David Nelson, M.D., The Cause and Cure of Infidelity (1841), pp. 392-94