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despise." We can see what God has been training men up to all through the ages of ceremonialism when one of the later prophets speaks like this:-"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

Thus there is the gradual development from twilight into sunshine. We come by a natural growth into the more spiritual truths of the new dispensation; to that higher platform where we are sons and not merely servants: where we find that love is the fulfilling of the law, that a life of self-denying love is a life of liberty. For myself I have for years found great rest of heart in this ever unfolding development of truth. It seems to me just as natural and just as real as the growth of a child from infancy and childhood through boyhood and youth to manhood: not a mechanical growth by addition from without but vital growth by development from within, and I should just as soon expect to find a man who never had been a youth or a boy or a child as I should expect to find fully developed truths in the New Testament without the gradual preparation of the Old. This slow unfolding of every living thing is God's way of working, and it is much deeper and more lasting than any hasty ways of ours. And because there is this unity, this development in Scripture, we have the certainty of one inward life and one revealing Spirit working in all and through all.

Thirdly, the other remaining line along which we proposed to look for unity was the spiritual purpose revealed in Scripture. That purpose was the restoration of fallen man

through the mercy of God the Father, through God the Son, and the renewal of man's heart, his restoration to soundness, to sonship in Christ by God the Holy Spirit. The great end of all God's dealings with the world was that sinful man might once more live the highest life in loyalty to the throne and in the enjoyment of the favour of the God of his life. All the dispensations point to this-the begetting of right thought and feeling towards God, the fostering religious emotion and exciting to holy resolve. The central fact of Scripture is that it is the history not of man's curing himself, but of God curing him. O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in Me is thy help found. Salvation is of God, and our hope is not so much our hold of Him as His hold of us. There was a practical problem to be solved, and right through the Scripture from the beginning to the end. we see the process of solution. It may be read between the lines, even when it is not boldly written upon the page of the Book of God. The offering of the sacrifices year by year, the uplifting of the serpent, the sprinkling of the blood, all pointed to the world's great sacrifice on Calvary. The promise of a new heart and of a right spirit had its fulfilment in the descent of the Holy Ghost, in that new creation in Christ Jesus, by which we not only get the Son's place in the family of God, but the Son's feeling towards Him.

Thus all the lines blend into one. The history reaches up to and is fulfilled in Christ-the moral truth grows till we see its development in Him who is the Truth—and the spiritual purpose travels on till the world is redeemed back to God. All the conditions of unity are met. The Bible like every work of true genius is at one with itself. It has form in the highest sense of the word. The end returns upon the

beginning. There is not only one idea but it is a great idea-worthy of God and worthy of the elaborate preparations of ages. In the closing pages the goal is reached. The true city of God rises before us. In the first book we began

with Paradise, in the last we end with it. Between Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained comes the long wandering of the sad human family. But long as it is, it comes to an end and we get back to Eden at last; we get back to the tree of life in the midst of the Paradise of God, to the river of the water of life and to the land of gold. "And I heard a voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people and God Himself shall be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall their be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."

III.

INSPIRATION.

PAUL, writing to Timothy, tells him that he may expect to meet with deceived and deceiving men, "but," said he, "continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Every Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable also for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works."

The divine character of the Book is thus submitted to a practical test. The Bible will show its inspiration by what it can do. Like all books that live it will make its own place in the world. It will prove its inspiration by inspiring its readers. It will show its heavenliness by the amount of heaven it sets up on the earth. He was warning Timothy against the shallow talkers of that time as he might warn the young men of our time. It is as if he had said-People are saying that the Bible was good enough for old times but it does not answer for our day. We have come to new times and new ways, and a new dispensation of light. But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them,knowing the godly people and their consistent lives who

taught thee these things. It will be time enough to throw away the old book when those who speak against it have brought out something really better. When the new lights have done something more than criticise, when they have told us things deeper, things higher, things broader, things more cogent and more satisfying than those we have in the Book, it will then be time enough to consider what shall be done with the old Bible of our fathers. That Book is able to make wise unto salvation, and when a man by its help is brought into a right state it is profitable for all the higher purposes of life, "that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works."

The Apostle thus puts the Book to the test which common sense would apply to any other book. If a medical work found in some unexpected place claimed divine authority, the way to find out whether it was what it professed to be would not be to argue about it in the abstract, but to try it in actual cases of disease. And if it turned out that when all old methods had failed the methods laid down in this book invariably succeeded, there would be some presumption in favour of the book. So with the Bible. Let a man try it and he will find it profitable. If he really wants to be a good man, if he wants to be thoroughly furnished unto every good work, let him go to the Bible and honestly try the plans there laid down and he will soon find out that it is in a very real sense a heaven-sent book. It has power to cleanse the heart, to change the life, to lead a man from step to step through purity to immortality and glory.

At the same time it may be worth while to try to show that the Bible is, and in what sense it is, a voice from heaven, that it is, and in what sense it is, inspired of God.

It is an adventurous path we have to tread for the subject is important and proverbially difficult. It is difficult to define inspiration just as it is difficult to define life. Yet the one may be a fact just as much as the other. Unfortunately the natural and inherent difficulties of the question have been

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