But there is a human element in the book as well as a divine. ‘Holy men spake as they were moved.’ We shall take, therefore, a very partial view of the whole subject if we neglect to consider the action of the holy men as well as the moving of the Holy Ghost. What then are the plain, obvious facts of the case? Are they not that the books contain as much evidence of human mind, and human character as if they were uninspired books? The human authorship is as prominent and conspicuous as the divine, and any theory of inspiration which excludes it is, I cannot but think, opposed to the facts of Scripture.1. There is distinctive character in the different writers. Compare St. Paul and St. John, St. Peter and St. James, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and you see the most transparent variety, a variety which renders it impossible to suppose that they were merely pens, machines, or copyists.

2. There is the use of natural powers or gifts. St. Paul was a well-educated, intellectual man, with great reasoning powers, so he supported truth by argument. David was a poet, so he breathed out as the sweet psalmist of Israel the hallowed outpourings of a sanctified heart.

3. There is the use of feeling. All the emotions of the human heart may be found in Scripture. There is no deep feeling of which man is capable which is not expressed there. There is love, sorrow in some of its most tender and touching forms, depression of spirits, joy, hope, longing desire, deep contrition, calm faith, and perfect peace. All these you find, not merely described by the inspired authors, but forming part and parcel of the inspired word. They are the very word itself, and are expressed as naturally as if there were no such thing as inspiration.

4. There is the use of memory. Our Lord’s promise to His Apostles in John, xiv. 26, applies clearly to this point, and shows that the gift of the Holy Ghost, so far from superseding memory, would quicken it, and give it the power of recalling with accuracy the words intrusted to it. ‘He shall bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.’

5. There was also the use of personal experience, as, e.g., when St. John said, ‘The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory’ (John, i. 14); and again, ‘That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.’ (1 John, i. 1, 3)

And lastly, and it is a very deeply interesting point, there was the diligent use of collected information. See Luke, i. 1–3, where Luke does not claim to write original matter, but to have received it from those who from the beginning were eye-witnesses, and ministers of the word. It was because he had a perfect understanding from them that he undertook to write out in order the events of the narrative.

It is clear, therefore, that in the composition of Scripture there was the free use of the human mind. The Pentateuch is the word of Moses as well as the word of God, for when our Lord quotes the fifth commandment in Mark, vii. 10, He introduces it by the words ‘Moses said;’ although when He condemns His hearers for the breach of it, he says, they were ‘making the Word of God of none effect by their tradition.’ (Mark, v. 13.) The human element is therefore as plain as the divine. We have not in our Bible a voice speaking from heaven in accents so strange to human ears that it could only serve to amaze and terrify; but we have God’s will presented to us through the medium of human language, human feeling, human thought, and human inquiry; human in all respects but one, and that is, as we have already found, that it is free from human error.