confidence, trust, constituting the very root of the religious life. And finally, look at the Bible idea of supreme happiness, in other words, of heaven. Our notion of that is a test of character. It rises and falls with our moral level. And the Bible places supreme happiness neither in self nor in circumstance, but in God. To see God, and to be called the children of God, are the crowning beatitudes of the Gospel. To know the only living and true God is declared to be life eternal. A world into which nothing can enter that defileth is proposed as the goal of our hope. To be holy as God is holy, pure as Christ is pure, and to be for ever with the Lord; these sublime and unearthly prospects form the idea of happiness in this book of God.1 Conceptions like these, I believe, came only from God Himself. They came not from the Jews as a nation, for apart from God's action upon them they have always shown themselves an unspiritual race. No conceptions like them. for purity and sublimity are to be found in the sacred writings of any other people. The leading ideas of the Bible are such as the mind of man without superhuman aid could never have produced. The conclusion to which I feel myself shut up as I look at the whole facts of the case is that the writers of this book were men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Secondly. Having thus spoken of Inspiration as a fact, let me now come to speak of the manner of it.

When we say that the Scriptures are inspired we mean that there is an element in them which the human mind of itself could not give by the simple exercise of its natural powers; we mean that one intelligent mind has introduced to another new truths, new forms of thought, by a different agency from the action of the ordinary mental powers; we mean also that the person who has received these new truths and forms of thought is conscious that they have been

I Conder's Basis of Faith, pp. 304-311.

introduced into his mind by an outside influence distinct from the powers of the mind itself. The passage I have already quoted speaks of Scripture as being inspired, the original word meaning literally "God-breathed." Peter also says that holy men of old were "moved," "borne," "carried" by the Holy Ghost, and so spake. But Scripture lays down no theory of the way in which this was done, keeps to no hard and fast line. Sometimes good men, with an honourable jealousy for God's truth, which was not so wise as it was well-meaning, have asserted that the Bible was inspired in a very mechanical way. They have gone so far as to say that every sentence, every word, nay, even every syllable and letter was inspired, that the authors of the various books known or unknown were but amanuenses, writing down the books word by word as they were told, that they were "not only the penmen, but the pens" of the Holy Spirit. This verbal theory, as it is called, did not take definite shape till after the Reformation, and it took shape for the purpose of making the authority of the Bible absolute. It was a simple theory to save trouble; in my opinion it gives more trouble than it saves. It was intended to make God's word sure, but it necessitated so many special pleadings that it makes everything uncertain. Few things are more perilous than to assert that the divine assistance given to the writers of Scripture was of such a character as to guard them from the possibility of error on all subjects alike, whether religious, philosophical, scientific, or historical, and that to concede the possibility of error on any one of these points is to surrender the claims of Christianity to be accepted as a revelation from God. Our hopes surely do not rest on such an uncertain foundation as this.

If we accept this theory we not only meet with challenge from without, but also difficulties from within. For example, its central idea is the denial of the presence of any human element in the Bible, yet when we come to look at the Bible itself we find the human element everywhere

strongly marked. If the Scriptures were mechanically given word by word, how is it that every one of the writers has a style of his own into which he has put his own individuality? It is clear enough that Moses and David differ in style from each other, and both of them from Isaiah. So again, John has one mode of expressing himself, Peter another, and Paul yet more distinctly another. It is evident that the men themselves who wrote the Scriptures counted for something-counted, we may say, for a good deal. Then again, if there was a mechanical inspiration of the mere words of Scripture, how is it that when our Lord and His Apostles quote the Old Testament they do not always quote the very words of the Hebrew version which was considered sacred? Sometimes they quote from the Hebrew, sometimes from the Greek version called the Septuagint, and sometimes so widely from both that it is evident they are quoting from memory or making allusions of the most general kind. It has been calculated that out of two hundred and seventy-five passages quoted from the Old Testament in the New, there are only fifty-three in which the New Testament and the Septuagint agree accurately with the original Hebrew; there are no less than seventy-six in which the New Testament by differing from the Septuagint, differs yet more widely from the Hebrew; and ninty-nine in which the Old Testament, the Septuagint, and the New Testament vary from each other. This would certainly seem to indicate that what the New Testament writers would teach us to prize in the Old Testament is the message rather than the words, the main thought rather than the form of it. Looking at these facts and at others bearing in the same direction, we can hardly hold to the mechanical theory of verbal inspiration. It is merely one human explanation of a divine fact, and we may let that explanation go without letting go the fact.

But letting go that, where shall we look for the right explanation? Is it not most natural to look for it in the

Scriptures themselves? Long ago Bishop Butler, with his usual profound insight, showed that the path of wisdom is not to lay down beforehand what a revelation from God will be sure to be, and expect it to be that, but rather to search into the revelation itself and see what it is. These words of his deserve to be carefully weighed :- "As we are in no sort judges beforehand, by what laws or rules, in what degree or by what means, it were to have been expected that God would naturally instruct us; so upon supposition of His affording us light and instruction by revelation, additional to what He has afforded us by reason or experience, we are in no sort judges by what methods, or in what proportion it were to be expected that this supernatural light and instruction would be afforded us. We are ignorant whether the evidence of it would be certain, highly probable or doubtful; or whether all that should have any instruction from it, and any degree of evidence of its truth, would have the same, or whether the scheme would be revealed at once, or gradually unfolded. . Thus we see that the only question concerning the truth of Christianity is whether it is a real revelation, not whether it is attended with every circumstance which we should look for. And concerning the authority of Scripture, whether it is what it claims to be, not whether it be a book of such a sort, and so promulgated as weak men are apt to fancy a book containing a divine revelation should. And therefore neither obscurity nor seeming inaccuracy of style, nor various readings, nor early disputes about the authors of particular parts, nor any other things of the like kind, though they had been much more considerable in degree than they are, could overthrow the authority of Scripture, unless the Prophets, Apostles, or our Lord had promised that the book containing the divine revelation should be secure from these things."

Under the guidance of these wise words, not settling beforehand what a revelation will be, but reverently trying to find out from itself what it is, we may arrive at the

main substance and the mode of the inspiration of the book of God.

Let us look at its main substance first. Without doubt or question the central thing in the Bible is the person of Christ; and the person of Christ exhibits the highest form of inspiration. The truth that in Christ God was manifested is the very corner-stone of the Christian revelation. "God Who at sundry times and in divers manners spake unto the fathers by the Prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son," or rather "in His Son,”—for this is the meaning of the original and the evident meaning of the writer. As far as the incomprehensible truths of the Infinite are capable of being arrayed or grasped by the finite understanding, they have been manifested in the person of the God-man, who is the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of His person. Christ is the highest form of the revelation of God to man. This is asserted over and over again. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. The word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. Jesus saith, I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me. If ye had known Me ye should have known My Father also; and from henceforth ye know Him and have seen Him. Philip saith unto Him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, and how sayest thou then show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself: but the Father that dwelleth in Me He doeth the works."

It is simply impossible to exaggerate the importance of all this in reference to the question of inspiration which is before If Christ Himself be the highest, the most inspired

us.