The Bible even as literature—and both in its origin and history—is a human as well as a divine book. It is human in that it is to man and for man, and not to and for supernatural intelligences or the conceived populations of other planets; it is divine in that it is of God and from God. There is a real sense in which the definition of the Bible as given by Frederick W. Robertson is correct, "The Bible is the thoughts of God in the words of men." And we would hold that the Bible must be studied, if in a scientific, intelligent, and reverent spirit, under the two-fold conception that it is both a human and a divine book. And we believe also that nothing can ever be gained for the Bible, considering it a supernatural book, by setting up any erroneous or untenable hypotheses concerning its origin, character, or history on its behalf. And, moreover, the Bible nowhere and never makes any such an appeal on its own behalf, or pleads for exemption from the accepted principles of historical criticism. "The written word of God, like the Word which became flesh," says Professor G.F. Wright, "must be human in its manward aspect; for the written word is divine thought manifest in human language as Christ was God manifest in human flesh. As the compound personality of Christ was conditioned by the flesh, so the compound character of a written revelation is conditioned by the nature of language. As God in becoming incarnate did not take upon Himself the form of angels but the seed of Abraham, so a written revelation is not sent in a form adapted to heavenly beings but in a form suited to men."16 And if the Bible, while it is from God, is for man then it must be adapted to man's receptive condition. If the Bible is truly a "revelation" then it must "reveal"; which is only to say that it must be given in terms or modes of expression adapted or accessible to the human capacity;—it must meet man's condition at the time when the revelation is given as well as his condition a thousand or ten thousand years later; or, in other words, "revelation" must "reveal." Revelation has thus been progressive up to the period of its fulness or up to the cycle of its completion, with an expansive capacity for all future time. Progressive capacity is essential to the conception of a revelation that is universal and final. Borrowing the fine expression of Professor A.B. Bruce, revelation "must take the recipients of benefits along with it, and move at a pace with which they can keep up." Thus, revelation in its methods accords with nature in that it took the form of an historical movement and was subject to the laws of periodic development. "The redemptive purpose of God," declares Professor Bruce, "was not ushered into the world a full-grown fact; it evolved itself by a regular process of growth, and the process was marked by three salient features: slow movement, partial action, and advance from the more or less imperfect, not only in knowledge, but also in morality." And he says, further, "God had to teach Israel to walk in the paths of righteousness like a nurse taking a child by the arms, and had to exercise a nurse-like condescension and patience in connection with the self-imposed task of Israel's moral education, and to become as a child Himself, speaking in broken language and giving laws of a very rude and primitive character adapted to the condition of the pupil."17

The Bible is, truly, a supernatural book. One once confessed to an abounding confidence in the plenary inspiration of the scriptures in that he "accepted the Bible from 'lid' to 'lid'—and including the 'lid.'" But the supernaturalism which we believe belongs to or inheres in the Bible does not attach to the "lids"—to the materials by means of which the scriptures, as literature, have been communicated and preserved from age to age. (The fact which is here suggested is all apart from the question of inspiration.) God wastes no energies in a miraculous preservation of the materials of books,—not even of the materials of the "good Book." God does not violate, we think, the great law of "parsimony" by exerting either superfluous or supernatural energies for the accomplishment of His purposes. It was only when King Jehoiakim in his blind rage and folly cut the "roll" in pieces and burnt its mutilated fragments, that the supernatural energies were called into requisition to restore the "words of the book, which Jehoiakim, king of Judah, had burned with fire." (Jeremiah 36:32.) God has, however, guarded, preserved, and treasured—and in a marvelous, not to say supernatural manner—the "revelation" contained in the "good Book" so that no age has been left without its ample and unimpeachable witness. And this is all that we may reasonably demand for a revelation that is intended and destined to be authoritative, universal, and final. The destruction of the materials of books does not weigh if the contents are preserved. The impious King of Judah did not destroy the holy law of God when he utterly destroyed the parchment upon which it was inscribed. What mattered it if the "roll" was consumed since God had His faithful prophet and his scribe to produce another and ampler roll? And what matters it if a given copy, or any number of copies of a book, or of the Bible, be lost or destroyed so long as other unnumbered copies of the same are preserved beyond the reach of bad men or the destructive forces of corroding and destroying time? It does not matter, supremely, since it is the contents and not the materials of a book that claims the supreme consideration.

The materials which embody the divine revelation have ever been subject to precisely the same exposures and vicissitudes of alternating fortune and misfortune as those to which all other literary productions have been subjected. And, furthermore, it is the well-known fact that the "autograph" copies or the first writings of the New Testament are all lost, and, probably, without the remotest hope of recovery. They are not even mentioned by the authors and writers who succeeded the Apostles as having ever been seen by them. The conclusion is forced upon us that these first copies of the New Testament writings probably all perished before the close of the first century. [The "paper" then in common use was that made from the Egyptian papyrus plant, and this all perished except that which had been fortuitously (but not miraculously) preserved in Egyptian tombs and mummy-cases or under lava-beds at Pompeii and Herculaneum. The oldest of the existing copies of the scriptures are the Sinaitic and the Vatican Manuscripts which were written in the Greek language on vellum parchment at about the middle of the fourth century, and are thus above fifteen and a half centuries old.] In view of this destruction and loss of the originals of the New Testament writings, we may "restore" the "autographs" of our scriptures only by the methods which apply equally to all literature, and which are adequate to the approximate "restoration" of the scripture text, viz., by the translation or counter-translation of later copies and the versions, back to the earlier sources; and thus come, substantially, to the original writings.