maintain that there is not one of those qualities that cannot be better expressed than by the word "inspiration," which, in default of a better, must suffice to express the act of God from which all those qualities arise, but is wholly unsuitable as a description of any one of them, or of any combination of them. We do seem to lack a word which would do justice to that act of God. I do not, however, think that we can plead poverty of speech as an excuse for putting fresh burdens upon a word that is already badly overworked. I am not aware of any quality of Holy Scripture for which the resources of our vocabulary do not provide adequate expression.

But perhaps you say, "Here's a good word, 'Inspiration': pity to waste it. Can't you find us a use for it?" To that question I think you will find an answer in the second count of my indictment, which I had better repeat: "In our legitimate use of the word 'Inspiration' we restrict our application of it to Holy Scripture in the form in which it came forth from God. When challenged to apply it to Holy Scripture in the form in which it reaches mankind, we decline the challenge for the simple reason that we have not a definition of the term which would justify such an application.'

We now come to the weak spot which, in the hope of remedying the weakness, it is the design of this paper to probe.

My Bible-loyalist brother speaking to his friends, always boldly and baldly asserts that the Bible is authentic and inerrant. Under cross-examination by an enemy he is liable to crumple up, and modestly explains that he predicates authenticity and inerrancy only of original documents and of the Bible, just so far as it is verbally identical with those original documents and no further.

I believe that admission to be futile, disastrous and unnecessary. Futile because you cannot find inerrancy in original documents if you cannot find them, and because the statement that the original documents were authentic is to a friend the statement of the obvious, and to an enemy the begging of the question.

The admission is disastrous because it exposes the reliability of the Bible, our Bible, to the untender mercies of the textual critics and all the other critics.

It is unnecessary because it leaves out of account the present action, the overruling, correcting action of the living Spirit.

So far from there being any possibility of proving the Bible to be verbally identical with original documents, every ascertainable fact points not merely to the extreme unlikelihood, but to the utter impossibility of any such verbal identity.

Remember that Babel preceded the Bible: that God inflicted upon mankind a multiplicity of languages before He caused Holy Scripture to be written in one of them. Translation was a necessity from the very beginning. Is it not obvious that so long as languages differ there must be for the conveyance of any given thought as many forms of words as there are languages? Verbal identity does not survive a single translation, however perfect that translation may be.

Let me put this in another way: There are only three features that I know of in which one word can be identical with another, namely appearance, sound and meaning. Of these three, difference of language allows the possibility only of the third. Nobody claims identity of sound or appearance between an English word and its Hebrew or Greek equivalent. Meaning only remains. It is the meaning and the meaning only that

matters.

At this point the translator steps into the witness-box, and he bears his testimony that practically always the thought is conveyed not by single words in isolation, but by words in combination, clauses, sentences, groups and arrangements of words. He bears testimony further that though in the task of interpretation every jot and tittle of his text demands consideration, the tense, mood or voice of a verb, the number and case of a noun, the order of the words and sometimes even their sound, yet that does not compel him to reproduce those forms and groupings in another language in order to reproduce their meaning.

Verbal and grammatical minutiae not only may be significant as in the two classic instances always quoted (Gal. iii, 16; Matt. xxii, 32) they must be. They are not, however, on that account indispensable. The thought which they are intended to convey may be expressible, and even more exactly expressible otherwise. You are familiar with passages where the Holy Ghost has availed Himself of the speaker's indubitable right to report Himself in more ways than one. Who then are we to say that one form only is right?

We must have inerrancy for our standard, yes, verbal inerrancy. But the inerrancy of a word is not unchangeableness in form,

but fidelity to meaning. So, in order to express the exact meaning of a verb, it is quite possible that the translator will be well-advised not merely not to reproduce a passive voice by a passive voice, but not to have a verb at all, not to reproduce a plural noun but to substitute several nouns, not to follow the order of the original but to invert it, not to reproduce a figure but to give its meaning. I should like to give instances of this, but that is a lecture all to itself.

We have to face the fact not only that there are variations of the text of the Bible, but that there are variations of text in the Bible. As to the latter, it is evident that the Holy Ghost has not tied Himself down to one form of words: as to the former, I should be sorry to be dependent upon the particularity of unbelievers for my possession of an authentic Bible. No, thank God, I have something better. I have the controlling action of Him who sent off the precious freight upon its journey and sees to its safe conveyance, takes the obstacles that men have placed in the way and transforms them into vehicles.

The translator bears testimony further that He is concerned with the words of his original only until he has possessed himself of their meaning, and that as soon as he has reached the point of expressing that meaning in another language, the more completely he banishes the literary form of his original from his mind, the better for his readers. That does not look like the perpetuation of verbal identity. In point of fact it militates strongly against such perpetuation.

The translator's one rule is: fidelity to the matter of his criginal, and accommodation to the style of his reader. Where this rule is disregarded translation simply does not take place; contact between writer and reader is not established.

It is the meaning that matters. But what is the meaning of a word? The meaning of a word is not something inherent in the word. The meaning of a word is not something that that word possesses. The meaning of a word is the thought that it produces in the mind of the reader or readers. Even where it produces that thought in the minds of millions of readers, its effect is not due to any inherent significance, but to an understanding or agreement among those readers to use that word in that particular way. The meaning of a word is a mental, not a material phenomenon; it is not objective, but subjective. No word has any such thing as a meaning apart from the mind of the reader. In other words, the operation by

which God causes men to use certain words in a certain way is an operation performed not upon the apparatus of language, but upon the minds of men.

Whatever, then, "verbal inspiration" may mean, it cannot mean or involve verbal identity, except in the sense of identity of meaning.

A definition being an agreement with our contemporaries, it is necessary to take account of the modern uses of the word "inspired.' The writer of an inspired newspaper article writes what he has been told to write, the writer of an inspired poem what he has been enabled to write, by a power outside of and greater than himself. In the former case the idea of control predominates; in the latter that of a stimulant. Solomon was an intellectual, Amos was a farm-hand; but each spoke as he was moved by the Holy Ghost. It was the word of God. Solomon under that control could say no more; Amos, under that stimulant, could say no less.

Pressed for a definition of "inspiration " (I trust that henceforth pressure will be neither resented nor needed), the Bibleloyalist takes refuge in 2 Peter i, 21: "Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

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Now let me ask you: if I asked you for a definition of war, would it be an answer to my question to say, A war took place in 1914." Of course it would not. No more is 2 Peter i, 21, a definition of "inspiration." inspiration." But I admit that that verse provides material for a definition. It tells me that the inspiration of Isaiah was quite different from the inspiration of Shakespeare; that whereas Shakespeare was a free agent, Isaiah was not.

But what I want you to notice is this: that if you regard 2 Peter i, 21, as providing sufficient material for a definition of 'inspiration," you are thinking of inspiration not as a characteristic of Holy Scripture, but simply and solely as its origin.

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2 Peter i, 21, provides material for one definition of “inspiration"-an act of the Holy Spirit whereby He conveyed the thought of God to a man's mind, and caused him to express it in certain words. Are you satisfied with that definition?

It is unexceptionable as far as it goes. But I would point out that if that is all that the word "inspiration" means, I do not need it at all. I can state the fact expressed in that definition without using the word "inspiration"; for all that

it means is that Holy Scripture is the authentic word of God the Holy Ghost.

I would point out further that not only in this case is the word superfluous; the thing is insufficient. If I am not sure that the word of God has reached me, I am not consoled or compensated by the reflection that it reached Isaiah. As an assurance of this latter, I could do without the word “inspiration"; but I cling to the word "inspiration,” because it is suggestive to me of a completed transaction-the conveyance of the thought of God right from its starting-point to its destination, the reader. This word, indicating an act of God upon the mind of man, seems to me to be an eminently suitable and convenient word for this purpose. It includes the reference to origin; but why should it be restricted to that? The cause is surely a worthy one, for the reader is the end, the writer is but the means, and the end is greater than the means.

I have said that it is the meaning that matters: I must be careful; for that statement is susceptible of the interpretation that the words do not matter, that inspiration is not verbal; and I am promptly confronted with the sound argument that God must have chosen the words, because He could not have conveyed the thoughts without them. Well, He could not have conveyed His thoughts to the mind of Isaiah in words without choosing words which Isaiah understood, and He could not convey His thoughts to my mind without the choice of English words. In this latter case the choice is rendered valid and effective by the correcting action of the Holy Spirit. Are you sure that in the former case that correcting action was unnecessary ? I submit that the difference between the demand for that correcting action in my case and in Isaiah's was a difference in degree, not in kind. Naturally the longer the Word of God is in the hands of human messengers the more there is to overrule and correct in its transmission.

No, the suggestion that the word "inspiration" may be used of the act of God upon the mind of reader as well as writer is perfectly consistent with the conviction that the choice of words. for the purpose is under His control.

There is no need, by the way, to support the fact of verbal inspiration by means of an imaginary distinction between the inspiration of the writers and the inspiration of the writings. When I say the writings were inspired (2 Tim. iii, 16) I mean that God caused certain men to express in writing certain

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