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The way of looking at the inspiration of the Scriptures I have been trying to lay down may possibly seem to some fraught with peril and uncertainty. I do not think this will be the case where men are honestly in search of truth, and where they are not no mere mechanical rule will keep them right. There is a deep-rooted tendency in all of us to look for guidance in such a way as will leave little or nothing to the action of our own minds. To walk by sight and not by faith is every man's craving. It has been well said, "Most men are ever looking out of themselves, but not above, for strength, leaning and loving to lean on any arm (not Invisible) on what they feel to be the most rugged of all ways-the way of thought. There is no harder task, no more intolerable burden, for many, than the responsibility of choice, the necessity of thought in matters of religion. You remember the case of the Levite in the Old Testament who got himself a priest and folded his hands and sat down at his ease, leaving that priest to do his thinking and his praying for him. This is the way many people like to go and do go, but it is not the way appointed of God. He has put us into a world where we shall be untrue to ourselves and to Him, if we let any man or book do away for us with the responsibility of our own thinking, praying, and acting. The bread of life like the bread for the body is to be eaten with the sweat of the brow. Our lot in life is one of great dignity because it is one of great difficulty. It is part of our moral discipline that we have to toil and strive for everything worth having in this world. It is a condition of our own greatness that we work out our own moral determinations, that we work out our own character. Truth made thus our own is infinitely more precious to us and more sustaining than truth traditionally and blindly received. In all our striving after perfection we must ever struggle with imperfection, and we must get spiritual guidance by perpetual dependence on the wisdom that is higher than our own. For we must ever gratefully remember that the

living Spirit of God is with us for real guidance and help. The Book, and the Spirit who gave the Book, must go ever together. For our own personal guidance that Spirit ever dwells in the world. "When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth." His divine illumination is a blessed fact, as many can testify. We are not left orphans amidst the mysteries of time. "If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit unto them that ask Him ?”

IV.

SOME SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE BIBLE.

THE first and most important thing to be noted about the Bible is that it is a book from God coming with divine authority over man's life. Such a book might, of course, have come to us in a form as bald and unpicturesque as that in which a nation's laws are printed. A few plain paragraphs would have sufficed to set forth God's character and claims, and the different duties expected of us. There was no absolute need for picturesque narrative and majestic poem, for proverb, and story, and psalm. But He who is Himself the supremely Fair and Good has graciously willed that we should enter into the temple of sacred truth as into the temple of nature, by the gate which is called Beautiful. He who has dipped even the desert flowers in hues so exquisitely various, who mirrors such charming pictures in the running streams, and who covers even rocks and ruins with lichen and ivy has not sought to depose imagination from its place among the mental faculties when he sent us the revelation of His will. As a book among other books, on mere literary grounds, it makes its appeal to the human mind in all sorts of attractive ways, and it is worth while to look at some of those special features which make it worthy of our attention even apart from the divine authority with which it is charged. Looking at it as we should look at any other book we can hardly fail to notice the wonderful freshness, the perpetual variety, the marvellous grace, the

unfailing pith and power there is in the Bible style. The subject is a very wide one, and we can only select a few illustrations out of many.

First. Among some of the more special features of the Bible are its picturesqueness, its pathos, and its sublimity. There is in the language of the Bible great artlessness, an utter absence of mere fine writing or straining after effect on the one hand, and on the other abundance of those touches of nature which make us all kin, a perfect prodigality of that kind of word-painting which makes its appeal to the hearts of gentle and simple alike. How vividly it reproduces for us the times of the Patriarchs, the men and manners of a long-bygone age; Abraham sitting in his tent door, Isaac going forth to meditate in the fields at eventide, Jacob weeping on the neck of the long-lost son he had never hoped to see again; and how true to the life is all this. These things rest and please the eye as word-pictures, and though it may seem a small thing to notice, yet it is worth notice, that sometimes a mere list of names pleases the ear almost like a strain of music by the very cadence and resonance in the sound. "Any one (says Dr. Brown) who has a tolerable ear and any sensibility, must remember the sensation of delight in the mere sound-like the colour of a butterfly's wings, or the shapeless glories of evening clouds to the eye-in reading aloud such passages as these: 'Heshbon shall cry, and Elealeh; their voice shall be heard to Jahaz; for by the way of Luhith shall they go up; for in the way of Horonaim they shall raise a cry. God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus? He is gone to Aiath; he is passed to Migron? at Michmash he hath laid up his chariots; Ramath is afraid; Gibeah of Saul is fled; lift up thy voice O daughter of Gallim; cause it to be heard unto Laish; O poor Anathoth. Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee. The fields of Heshbon

languish; the vine of Sibmah; I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh.' Anyone may prove to himself that much of the effect and beauty of these passages depends on these names; put others in their room and try them."

It may be said, of course, that this merely appeals in an unintelligent kind of way to the ear; there are, however, illustrations which appeal to heart as well as eye and ear. Over and over again one feels that a certain thought is put in such a way that the sentence could not be altered without spoiling it. The picture is completed at a stroke. Was there ever, for example, such a picture of weariness seeking relief in change, and seeking it in vain, as is expressed in the words "In the evening thou shalt say Would God it were morning, and in the morning Would God it were evening." The panic of soul which makes a man start at everything is admirably expressed in the image-" The sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them." How true to nature is the description of the lame man after he had been healed at the temple gate:-" He, leaping up, stood and walked; he entered with them into the temple, walking and leaping, and praising God: . . . the lame man who was healed held Peter and John." Again, no description. however lengthy could give us a better idea of national degradation than when it is said to the Israelites that they should be offered for sale as slaves in the open mart, and yet they should be regarded with such contempt "that no man should buy them;" they would not even be worth buying as slaves. How expressive again of a soul hardened in sin and lost to all sensitiveness is that saying about a conscience being "seared as with a hot iron." When it is said of an army of soldiers or an army of locusts that "before them the land was as the garden of Eden, and behind them as a wilderness," many pages could hardly tell you more as to the mischief which they wrought. Benevolent kindheartedness is just as graphically painted in the words—

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