This theory naturally connects itself with Pelagian and rationalistic views of man's independence of God, or with pantheistic conceptions of man as being himself the highest manifestation of an all-pervading but unconscious intelligence. Morell and F. W. Newman in England, and Theodore Parker in America, are representatives of this theory. See Morell, Philos. of Religion, 127-179—“Inspiration is only a higher potency of what every man possesses in some degree.” See also Francis W. Newman (brother of John Henry Newman), Phases of Faith (= phases of unbelief); Theodore Parker, Discourses of Religion, and Experiences as a Minister: “God is infinite; therefore he is immanent in nature, yet transcending it; immanent in spirit, yet transcending that. He must fill each point of spirit, as of space; matter must unconsciously obey; man, conscious and free, has power to a certain extent to disobey, but obeying, the immanent God acts in man as much as in nature”—quoted in Chadwick, Theodore Parker, 271. Hence Parker's view of Inspiration: If the conditions are fulfilled, inspiration comes in proportion to man's gifts and to his use of those gifts. Chadwick himself, in his Old and New Unitarianism, 68, says that “the Scriptures are inspired just so far as they are inspiring, and no more.”

W. C. Gannett, Life of Ezra Stiles Gannett, 196—“Parker's spiritualism affirmed, as the grand truth of religion, the immanence of an infinitely perfect God in matter and mind, and his activity in both spheres.” Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:178-180—“Theodore Parker treats the regular results of the human faculties as an immediate working of God, and regards the Principia of Newton as inspired.... What then becomes of the human personality? He calls God not only omnipresent, but omniactive. Is then Shakespeare only by courtesy author of Macbeth?... If this were more than rhetorical, it would be unconditional pantheism.” Both nature and man are other names for God. Martineau is willing to grant that our intuitions and ideals are expressions of the Deity in us, but our personal reasoning and striving, he thinks, cannot be attributed to God. The word ???? has no plural: intellect, in whatever subject manifested, being all one, just as a truth is one and the same, in however many [pg 203]persons' consciousness it may present itself; see Martineau, Seat of Authority, 403. Palmer, Studies in Theological Definition, 27—“We can draw no sharp distinction between the human mind discovering truth, and the divine mind imparting revelation.”Kuenen belongs to this school.

In the investigation, for example, of purely historical matters, such as Luke records, merely natural insight may at times have been sufficient. When this was the case, Luke may have been left to the exercise of his own faculties, inspiration only inciting and supervising the work. George Harris, Moral Evolution, 413—“God could not reveal himself to man, unless he first revealed himself in man. If it should be written in letters on the sky: ‘God is good,’—the words would have no meaning, unless goodness had been made known already in human volitions. Revelation is not by an occasional stroke, but by a continuous process. It is not superimposed, but inherent.... Genius is inspired; for the mind which perceives truth must be responsive to the Mind that made things the vehicles of thought.” Sanday, Bampton Lectures on Inspiration: “In claiming for the Bible inspiration, we do not exclude the possibility of other lower or more partial degrees of inspiration in other literatures. The Spirit of God has doubtless touched other hearts and other minds ... in such a way as to give insight into truth, besides those which could claim descent from Abraham.” Philo thought the LXX translators, the Greek philosophers, and at times even himself, to be inspired. Plato he regards as “most sacred” (?e??tat??), but all good men are in various degrees inspired. Yet Philo never quotes as authoritative any but the Canonical Books. He attributes to them an authority unique in its kind.

1 Cor. 2:14—“Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged”; 10—“But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” See quotation from Coleridge, in Shairp, Culture and Religion, 114—“Water cannot rise higher than its source; neither can human reasoning”; Emerson, Prose Works, 1:474; 2:468—“'Tis curious we only believe as deep as we live”; Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus, 183, 184. For this reason we hold to a communication of religious truth, at least at times, more direct and objective than is granted by George Adam Smith, Com. on Isaiah, 1:372—“To Isaiah inspiration was nothing more nor less than the possession of certain strong moral and religious convictions, which he felt he owed to the communication of the Spirit of God, and according to which he interpreted, and even dared to foretell, the history of his people and of the world. Our study completely dispels, on the evidence of the Bible itself, that view of inspiration and prediction so long held in the church.” If this is meant as a denial of any communication of truth other than the internal and subjective, we set over against it. Num. 12:6-8—“if there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, I will speak with him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so; he is faithful in all my house: with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches; and the form of Jehovah shall he behold.”

The Vedas permit thieving, and the Koran teaches salvation by works; these cannot be inspired and the Bible also. Paul cannot be inspired to write his epistles, and Swedenborg also inspired to reject them. The Bible does not admit that pagan teachings have the same divine endorsement with its own. Among the Spartans to steal was [pg 204]praiseworthy; only to be caught stealing was criminal. On the religious consciousness with regard to the personality of God, the divine goodness, the future life, the utility of prayer, in all of which Miss Cobbe, Mr. Greg and Mr. Parker disagree with each other, see Bruce, Apologetics, 143, 144. With Matheson we may grant that the leading idea of inspiration is “the growth of the divine through the capacities of the human,”while yet we deny that inspiration confines itself to this subjective enlightenment of the human faculties, and also we exclude from the divine working all those perverse and erroneous utterances which are the results of human sin.

On this system truth is what men “trow”; things are what men “think”—words representing only the subjective. “Better the Greek ????e?a = ‘the unconcealed’(objective truth)”—Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 182. If there be no absolute truth, Lessing's “search for truth” is the only thing left to us. But who will search, if there is no truth to be found? Even a wise cat will not eternally chase its own tail. The exercise within certain limits is doubtless useful, but the cat gives it up so soon as it becomes convinced that the tail cannot be caught. Sir Richard Burton became a Roman Catholic, a Brahmin, and a Mohammedan, successively, apparently holding with Hamlet that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”This same scepticism as to the existence of objective truth appears in the sayings: “Your religion is good for you, and mine for me”; “One man is born an Augustinian, and another a Pelagian.” See Dix, Pantheism, Introd., 12. Richter: “It is not the goal, but the course, that makes us happy.”

The animus of this theory is denial of the supernatural. Like the denial of miracles, it can be maintained only upon grounds of atheism or pantheism. The view in question, as Hutton in his Essays remarks, would permit us to say that the word of the Lord came to Gibbon, amid the ruins of the Coliseum, saying: “Go, write the history of the Decline and Fall!” But, replies Hutton: Such a view is pantheistic. Inspiration is the voice of a living friend, in distinction from the voice of a dead friend, i. e., the influence of his memory. The inward impulse of genius, Shakespeare's for example, is not properly denominated inspiration. See Row, Bampton Lectures for 1877:428-474; Rogers, Eclipse of Faith, 73 sq. and 283 sq.; Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 443-469, 481-490. The view of Martineau, Seat of Authority, 302, is substantially this. See criticism of Martineau, by Rainy, in Critical Rev., 1:5-20.

According to “Dalton's law,” each gas is as a vacuum to every other: “Gases are mutually passive, and pass into each other as into vacua.” Each interpenetrates the other. But this does not furnish a perfect illustration of our subject. The atom of oxygen and the atom of nitrogen, in common air, remain side by side but they do not unite. In inspiration the human and the divine elements do unite. The Lutheran maxim, “Mens humana capax divinÆ,” is one of the most important principles of a true theology. “The Lutherans think of humanity as a thing made by God for himself and to receive himself. The Reformed think of the Deity as ever preserving himself from any confusion with the creature. They fear pantheism and idolatry” (Bp. of Salisbury, quoted in Swayne, Our Lord's Knowledge, xx).

Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 66—“That initial mystery, the relation in our consciousness between the individual and the universal element, between the finite and the infinite, between God and man,—how can we comprehend their coËxistence and their union, and yet how can we doubt it? Where is the thoughtful man to-day who has not broken the thin crust of his daily life, and caught a glimpse of those profound and obscure waters on which floats our consciousness? Who has not felt within himself a veiled presence, and a force much greater than his own? What worker in a lofty cause has not perceived within his own personal activity, and saluted with a feeling of veneration, the mysterious activity of a universal and eternal Power? ‘In Deo vivimus, movemur, et sumus.’... This mystery cannot be dissipated, for without it religion itself would no longer exist.” Quackenbos, in Harper's Magazine, July, 1900:264, says that “hypnotic suggestion is but inspiration.” The analogy of human influence thus communicated may at least help us to some understanding of the divine.

The Holy Spirit does not dwell in man as water in a vessel. We may rather illustrate the experience of the Scripture writers by the experience of the preacher who under the influence of God's Spirit is carried beyond himself, and is conscious of a clearer apprehension of truth and of a greater ability to utter it than belong to his unaided nature, yet knows himself to be no passive vehicle of a divine communication, but to be as never before in possession and exercise of his own powers. The inspiration of the Scripture writers, however, goes far beyond the illumination granted to the preacher, in that it qualifies them to put the truth, without error, into permanent and written [pg 213]form. This inspiration, moreover, is more than providential preparation. Like miracles, inspiration may use man's natural powers, but man's natural powers do not explain it. Moses, David, Paul, and John were providentially endowed and educated for their work of writing Scripture, but this endowment and education were not inspiration itself, but only the preparation for it.

Beyschlag: “With John, remembrance and exposition had become inseparable.” E. G. Robinson; “Novelists do not create characters,—they reproduce with modifications material presented to their memories. So the apostles reproduced their impressions of Christ.” Hutton, Essays, 2:231—“The Psalmists vacillate between the first person and the third, when they deliver the purposes of God. As they warm with their spiritual inspiration, they lose themselves in the person of Him who inspires them, and then they are again recalled to themselves.” Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:380—“Revelation is not resolved into a mere human process because we are able to distinguish the natural agencies through which it was communicated”; 2:102—“You seem to me to transfer too much to these ancient prophets and writers and chiefs our modern notions of divine origin.... Our notion, or rather, the modern Puritanical notion of divine origin, is of a preternatural force or voice, putting aside secondary agencies, and separated from those agencies by an impassable gulf. The ancient, Oriental, Biblical notion was of a supreme Will acting through those agencies, or rather, being inseparable from them. Our notions of inspiration and divine communications insist on absolute perfection of fact, morals, doctrine. The Biblical notion was that inspiration was compatible with weakness, infirmity, contradiction.” Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 182—“In inspiration the thoughts, feelings, purposes are organized into another One than the self in which they were themselves born. That other One is in themselves. They enter into communication with Him. Yet this may be supernatural, even though natural psychological means are used. Inspiration which is external is not inspiration at all.” This last sentence, however, seems to us a needless exaggeration of the true principle. Though God originally inspires from within, he may also communicate truth from without.

Locke: “When God made the prophet, he did not unmake the man.” Prof. Day: “The bush in which God appeared to Moses remained a bush, while yet burning with the brightness of God and uttering forth the majesty of the mind of God.” The paragraphs of the Koran are called ayat, or “sign,” from their supposed supernatural elegance. But elegant literary productions do not touch the heart. The Bible is not merely the word of God; it is also the word made flesh. The Holy Spirit hides himself, that he may show forth Christ (John 3:8); he is known only by his effects—a pattern for preachers, who are ministers of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:6). See Conant on Genesis, 65.

The Moslem declares that every word of the Koran came by the agency of Gabriel from the seventh heaven, and that its very pronunciation is inspired. Better the doctrine of Martineau, Seat of Authority, 289—“Though the pattern be divine, the web that bears it must still be human.” Jackson, James Martineau, 255—“Paul's metaphor of the ‘treasure in earthen vessels’ (2 Cor. 4:7) you cannot allow to give you guidance; you want, not the treasure only, but the casket too, to come from above, and be of the crystal of the sky. You want the record to be divine, not only in its spirit, but also in its letter.” Charles Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:157—“When God ordains praise out of the mouths of babes, they must speak as babes, or the whole power and beauty of the tribute will be lost.”

Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 16, 25—“The p?e?a of a dead wind is never changed, as the Rabbis of old thought, into the p?e?a of a living spirit. The raven that fed Elijah was nothing more than a bird. Nor does man, when supernaturally influenced, cease to be a man. An inspired man is not God, nor a divinely manipulated [pg 214]automaton”; “In Scripture there may be as much imperfection as, in the parts of any organism, would be consistent with the perfect adaptation of that organism to its destined end. Scripture then, taken together, is a statement of moral and religious truth sufficient for men's salvation, or an infallible and sufficient rule of faith and practice.”J. S. Wrightnour: “Inspire means to breathe in, as a flute-player breathes into his instrument. As different flutes may have their own shapes, peculiarities, and what might seem like defects, so here; yet all are breathed into by one Spirit. The same Spirit who inspired them selected those instruments which were best for his purpose, as the Savior selected his apostles. In these writings therefore is given us, in the precise way that is best for us, the spiritual instruction and food that we need. Food for the body is not always given in the most concentrated form, but in the form that is best adapted for digestion. So God gives gold, not in coin ready stamped, but in the quartz of the mine whence it has to be dug and smelted.” Remains of Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown's Rab and his Friends, 274—“I see that the Bible fits in to every fold of the human heart. I am a man, and I believe it is God's book, because it is man's book.”

In inspiration, as in regeneration and sanctification, God works “in divers manners” (Heb. 1:1). The Scriptures, like the books of secular literature, must be interpreted in the light of their purpose. Poetry must not be treated as prose, and parable must not be made to “go on all fours,” when it was meant to walk erect and to tell one simple story. Drama is not history, nor is personification to be regarded as biography. There is a rhetorical overstatement which is intended only as a vivid emphasizing of important truth. Allegory is a popular mode of illustration. Even myth and legend may convey great lessons not otherwise apprehensible to infantile or untrained minds. A literary sense is needed in our judgments of Scripture, and much hostile criticism is lacking in this literary sense.

Denney, Studies in Theology, 218—“There is a stage in which the whole contents of the mind, as yet incapable of science or history, may be called mythological. And what criticism shows us, in its treatment of the early chapters of Genesis, is that God does not disdain to speak to the mind, nor through it, even when it is at this lowly stage. Even the myth, in which the beginnings of human life, lying beyond human research, are represented to itself by the child-mind of the race, may be made the medium of revelation.... But that does not make the first chapter of Genesis science, nor the third chapter history. And what is of authority in these chapters is not the quasi-scientific or quasi-historical form, but the message, which through them comes to the heart, of God's creative wisdom and power.” Gore, in Lux Mundi, 356—“The various sorts of mental or literary activity develop in their different lines out of an earlier condition in which they lie fused and undifferentiated. This we can vaguely call the mythical stage of mental evolution. A myth is not a falsehood; it is a product of mental activity, as instructive and rich as any later product, but its characteristic is that it is not yet distinguished into history and poetry and philosophy.” So Grote calls the Greek myths the whole intellectual stock of the age to which they belonged—the common root of all the history, poetry, philosophy, theology, which afterwards diverged and proceeded from it. So the early part of Genesis may be of the nature of myth in which we cannot distinguish the historical germ, though we do not deny that it exists. Robert Browning's Clive and Andrea del Sarto are essentially correct representations of historical characters, though the details in each poem are imaginary.

There have been “divers portions,” as well as “divers manners” (Heb. 1:1). The early prophecies like that of Gen. 3:15—the seed of the woman bruising the serpent's head—were but faint glimmerings of the dawn. Men had to be raised up who were capable of receiving and transmitting the divine communications. Moses, David, Isaiah mark successive advances in recipiency and transparency to the heavenly light. Inspiration has employed men of various degrees of ability, culture and religious insight. As all the truths of the calculus lie germinally in the simplest mathematical axiom, so all the truths of salvation may be wrapped up in the statement that God is holiness and love. But not every scholar can evolve the calculus from the axiom. The teacher may dictate propositions which the pupil does not understand: he may demonstrate in such a way that the pupil participates in the process; or, best of all, he may incite the pupil to work out the demonstration for himself. God seems to have used all these methods. But while there are instances of dictation and illumination, and inspiration sometimes includes these, the general method seems to have been such a divine quickening of man's powers that he discovers and expresses the truth for himself.

A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 339—“Inspiration is that, seen from its divine side, which we call discovery when seen from the human side.... Every addition to knowledge, whether in the individual or the community, whether scientific, ethical or theological, is due to a coÖperation between the human soul which assimilates and the divine power which inspires. Neither acts, or could act, in independent isolation. For ‘unassisted reason’ is a fiction, and pure receptivity it is impossible to conceive. Even the emptiest vessel must limit the quantity and determine the configuration of any liquid with which it may be filled.... Inspiration is limited to no age, to no country, to no people.” The early Semites had it, and the great Oriental reformers. There can be no gathering of grapes from thorns, or of figs from thistles. Whatever of true or of good is found in human history has come from God. On the Progressiveness of Revelation, see Orr, Problem of the O. T., 431-478.

God can use imperfect means. As the imperfection of the eye does not disprove its divine authorship, and as God reveals himself in nature and history in spite of their shortcomings, so inspiration can accomplish its purpose through both writers and writings in some respects imperfect. God is, in the Bible as he was in Hebrew history, leading his people onward to Christ, but only by a progressive unfolding of the truth. The Scripture writers were not perfect men. Paul at Antioch resisted Peter, “because he stood condemned” (Gal 2:11). But Peter differed from Paul, not in public utterances, nor in written words, but in following his own teachings (cf. Acts 15:6-11); versus Norman Fox, in Bap. Rev., 1885:469-482. Personal defects do not invalidate an ambassador, though they may hinder the reception of his message. So with the apostles' ignorance of the time of Christ's second coming. It was only gradually that they came to understand Christian doctrines; they did not teach the truth all at once; their final utterances supplemented and completed the earlier; and all together furnished only that measure of knowledge which God saw needful for the moral and religious teaching of mankind. Many things are yet unrevealed, and many things which inspired men uttered, they did not, when they uttered them, fully understand.

Before expression there must be something to be expressed. Thought is possible without language. The concept may exist without words. See experiences of deaf-mutes, in Princeton Rev., Jan. 1881:104-128. The prompter interrupts only when the speaker's memory fails. The writing-master guides the pupil's hand only when it would otherwise go wrong. The father suffers the child to walk alone, except when it is in danger of stumbling. If knowledge be rendered certain, it is as good as direct revelation. But whenever the mere communication of ideas or the direction to proper material would not suffice to secure a correct utterance, the sacred writers were guided in the very selection of their words. Minute criticism proves more and more conclusively the suitableness of the verbal dress to the thoughts expressed; all Biblical exegesis is based, indeed, upon the assumption that divine wisdom has made the outward form a trustworthy vehicle of the inward substance of revelation. See Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 102, 114; Bib. Sac, 1872:428, 640; William James, Psychology, 1:266 sq.

Watts, New Apologetic, 40, 111, holds to a verbal inspiration: “The bottles are not the wine, but if the bottles perish the wine is sure to be spilled”; the inspiring Spirit certainly gave language to Peter and others at Pentecost, for the apostles spoke with other tongues; holy men of old not only thought, but “spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21). So Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 171—“Why the minute study of the words of Scripture, carried on by all expositors, their search after the precise shade of verbal significance, their attention to the minutest details of language, and to all the delicate coloring of mood and tense and accent?” Liberal scholars, Dr. Gordon thinks, thus affirm the very doctrine which they deny. Rothe, Dogmatics, 238, speaks of “a language of the Holy Ghost.” Oetinger: “It is the style of the heavenly court.”But Broadus, an almost equally conservative scholar, in his Com. on Mat. 3:17, says that the difference between “This is my beloved Son,” and Luke 3:22—“Thou art my beloved Son,” should make us cautious in theorizing about verbal inspiration, and he intimates that in some cases that hypothesis is unwarranted. The theory of verbal inspiration is refuted by the two facts: 1. that the N. T. quotations from the O. T., in 99 cases, differ both from the Hebrew and from the LXX; 2. that Jesus' own words are reported with variations by the different evangelists; see Marcus Dods, The Bible, its Origin and Nature, chapter on Inspiration.

Helen Keller told Phillips Brooks that she had always known that there was a God, but she had not known his name. Dr. Z. F. Westervelt, of the Deaf Mute Institute, had under his charge four children of different mothers. All of these children were [pg 217]dumb, though there was no defect of hearing and the organs of speech were perfect. But their mothers had never loved them and had never talked to them in the loving way that provoked imitation. The children heard scolding and harshness, but this did not attract. So the older members of the church in private and in the meetings for prayer should teach the younger to talk. But harsh and contentious talk will not accomplish the result,—it must be the talk of Christian love. William D. Whitney, in his review of Max MÜller's Science of Language, 26-31, combats the view of MÜller that thought and language are identical. Major Bliss Taylor's reply to Santa Anna: “General Taylor never surrenders!” was a substantially correct, though a diplomatic and euphemistic, version of the General's actual profane words. Each Scripture writer uttered old truth in the new forms with which his own experience had clothed it. David reached his greatness by leaving off the mere repetition of Moses, and by speaking out of his own heart. Paul reached his greatness by giving up the mere teaching of what he had been taught, and by telling what God's plan of mercy was to all. Augustine: “Scriptura est sensus ScripturÆ”—“Scripture is what Scripture means.”Among the theological writers who admit the errancy of Scripture writers as to some matters unessential to their moral and spiritual teaching, are Luther, Calvin, Cocceius, Tholuck, Neander, Lange, Stier, Van Oosterzee, John Howe, Richard Baxter, Conybeare, Alford, Mead.

The Bible says: “There is no God” (Ps. 14:1); but then, this is to be taken with the context: “The fool hath said in his heart.” Satan's “it is written,” (Mat. 4:6) is supplemented by Christ's “It is written again” (Mat. 4:7). Trivialities are like the hair and nails of the body—they have their place as parts of a complete and organic whole; see Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:40. The verse which mentions Paul's cloak at Troas (2 Tim. 4:13) is (1) a sign of genuineness—a forger would not invent it; (2) an evidence of temporal need endured for the gospel; (3) an indication of the limits of inspiration,—even Paul must have books and parchments. Col. 2:21—“Handle not, nor taste, nor touch”—is to be interpreted by the context in verse 20—“why ... do ye subject yourselves to ordinances?” and by verse 22—“after the precepts and doctrines of men.” Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:164—“The difference between John's gospel and the book of Chronicles is like that between man's brain and the hair of his head; nevertheless the life of the body is as truly in the hair as in the brain.” Like railway coupons, Scripture texts are “Not good if detached.”

Crooker, The New Bible and its New Uses, 137-144, utterly denies the unity of the Bible. Prof. A. B. Davidson of Edinburgh says that “A theology of the O. T. is really an impossibility, because the O. T. is not a homogeneous whole.” These denials proceed from an insufficient recognition of the principle of evolution in O. T. history and doctrine. Doctrines in early Scripture are like rivers at their source; they are not yet fully expanded; many affluents are yet to come. See Bp. Bull's Sermon, in Works, xv:183; and Bruce, Apologetics, 323—“The literature of the early stages of revelation must share the defects of the revelation which it records and interprets.... The final revelation enables us to see the defects of the earlier.... We should find Christ in the O. T. as we find the butterfly in the caterpillar, and man the crown of the universe in the fiery cloud.” Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 224—Every part is to be modified [pg 218]by every other part. No verse is true out of the Book, but the whole Book taken together is true. Gore, in Lux Mundi, 350—“To recognize the inspiration of the Scriptures is to put ourselves to school in every part of them.” Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 175 (Pope, 228)—“Truth nowhere lies, yet everywhere, in these; Not absolutely in a portion, yet Evolvable from the whole; evolved at last Painfully, held tenaciously by me.” On the Organic Unity of the O. T., see Orr, Problem of the O. T., 27-51.

The Bible answers two questions: What has God done to save me? and What must I do to be saved? The propositions of Euclid are not invalidated by the fact that he believed the earth to be flat. The ethics of Plato would not be disproved by his mistakes with regard to the solar system. So religious authority is independent of merely secular knowledge.—Sir Joshua Reynolds was a great painter, and a great teacher of his art. His lectures on painting laid down principles which have been accepted as authority for generations. But Joshua Reynolds illustrates his subject from history and science. It was a day when both history and science were young. In some unimportant matters of this sort, which do not in the least affect his conclusions, Sir Joshua Reynolds makes an occasional slip; his statements are inaccurate. Does he, therefore, cease to be an authority in matters of his art?—The Duke of Wellington said once that no human being knew at what time of day the battle of Waterloo began. One historian gets his story from one combatant, and he puts the hour at eleven in the morning. Another historian gets his information from another combatant, and he puts it at noon. Shall we say that this discrepancy argues error in the whole account, and that we have no longer any certainty that the battle of Waterloo was ever fought at all?

Such slight imperfections are to be freely admitted, while at the same time we insist that the Bible, taken as a whole, is incomparably superior to all other books, and is “able to make thee wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15). Hooker, Eccl. Polity: “Whatsoever is spoken of God or things pertaining to God otherwise than truth is, though it seem an honor, it is an injury. And as incredible praises given unto men do often abate and impair the credit of their deserved commendation, so we must likewise take great heed lest, in attributing to Scripture more than it can have, the incredibility of that do cause even those things which it hath more abundantly to be less reverently esteemed.”Baxter, Works, 21:349—“Those men who think that these human imperfections of the writers do extend further, and may appear in some passages of chronologies or history which are no part of the rule of faith and life, do not hereby destroy the Christian cause. For God might enable his apostles to an infallible recording and preaching of the gospel, even all things necessary to salvation, though he had not made them infallible in every by-passage and circumstance, any more than they were indefectible in life.”

The Bible, says Beet, “contains possible errors in small details or allusions, but it gives us with absolute certainty the great facts of Christianity, and upon these great facts, and upon these only, our faith is based.” Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 15, 18, 65—“Teach that the shell is part of the kernel and men who find that they cannot keep the shell will throw away shell and kernel together.... This overstatement of inspiration made Renan, Bradlaugh and Ingersoll sceptics.... If in creation God can work out a perfect result through imperfection why cannot he do the like in inspiration? If in Christ God can appear in human weakness and ignorance, why not in the written word?”

We therefore take exception to the view of Watts, New Apologetic, 71—“Let the theory of historical errors and scientific errors be adopted, and Christianity must share the fate of Hinduism. If its inspired writers err when they tell us of earthly things, none will believe when they tell of heavenly things.” Watts adduces instances of [pg 219]Spinoza's giving up the form while claiming to hold the substance, and in this way reducing revelation to a phenomenon of naturalistic pantheism. We reply that no a priori theory of perfection in divine inspiration must blind us to the evidence of actual imperfection in Scripture. As in creation and in Christ, so in Scripture, God humbles himself to adopt human and imperfect methods of self-revelation. See Jonathan Edwards, Diary: “I observe that old men seldom have any advantage of new discoveries, because they are beside the way to which they have been so long used. Resolved, if ever I live to years, that I will be impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and receive them if rational, however long soever I have been used to another way of thinking.”

Bowne, The Immanence of God, 109, 110—“Those who would find the source of certainty and the seat of authority in the Scriptures alone, or in the church alone, or reason and conscience alone, rather than in the complex and indivisible coworking of all these factors, should be reminded of the history of religious thought. The stiffest doctrine of Scripture inerrancy has not prevented warring interpretations; and those who would place the seat of authority in reason and conscience are forced to admit that outside illumination may do much for both. In some sense the religion of the spirit is a very important fact, but when it sets up in opposition to the religion of a book, the light that is in it is apt to turn to darkness.”

James speaks of the law as a mirror (James 1:23-25—“like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror ... looketh into the perfect law”); the law convicts of sin because it reflects Christ. Paul speaks of the gospel as a mirror (2 Cor. 3:18—“we all, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord”); the gospel transforms us because it reflects Christ. Yet both law and gospel are imperfect; they are like mirrors of polished metal, whose surface is often dim, and whose images are obscure; (1 Cor. 13:12—“For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face”); even inspired men know only in part, and prophesy only in part. Scripture itself is the conception and utterance of a child, to be done away when that which is perfect is come, and we see Christ as he is.

Authority is the right to impose beliefs or to command obedience. The only ultimate authority is God, for he is truth, justice and love. But he can impose beliefs and command obedience only as he is known. Authority belongs therefore only to God revealed, and because Christ is God revealed he can say: “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth” (Mat. 28:18). The final authority in religion is Jesus Christ. Every one of his revelations of God is authoritative. Both nature and human nature are such revelations. He exercises his authority through delegated and subordinate authorities, such as parents and civil government. These rightfully claim obedience so long as they hold to their own respective spheres and recognize their relation of dependence upon him. “The powers that be are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:1), even though they are imperfect manifestations of his wisdom and righteousness. The decisions of the Supreme Court are authoritative even though the judges are fallible and come short of establishing absolute justice. Authority is not infallibility, in the government either of the family or of the state.

The church of the middle ages was regarded as possessed of absolute authority. But the Protestant Reformation showed how vain were these pretensions. The church is an authority only as it recognizes and expresses the supreme authority of Christ. The Reformers felt the need of some external authority in place of the church. They substituted [pg 220]the Scripture. The phrase “the word of God,” which designates the truth orally uttered or affecting the minds of men, came to signify only a book. Supreme authority was ascribed to it. It often usurped the place of Christ. While we vindicate the proper authority of Scripture, we would show that its authority is not immediate and absolute, but mediate and relative, through human and imperfect records, and needing a supplementary and divine teaching to interpret them. The authority of Scripture is not apart from Christ or above Christ, but only in subordination to him and to his Spirit. He who inspired Scripture must enable us to interpret Scripture. This is not a doctrine of rationalism, for it holds to man's absolute dependence upon the enlightening Spirit of Christ. It is not a doctrine of mysticism, for it holds that Christ teaches us only by opening to us the meaning of his past revelations. We do not expect any new worlds in our astronomy, nor do we expect any new Scriptures in our theology. But we do expect that the same Christ who gave the Scriptures will give us new insight into their meaning and will enable us to make new applications of their teachings.

The right and duty of private judgment with regard to Scripture belong to no ecclesiastical caste, but are inalienable liberties of the whole church of Christ and of each individual member of that church. And yet this judgment is, from another point of view, no private judgment. It is not the judgment of arbitrariness or caprice. It does not make the Christian consciousness supreme, if we mean by this term the consciousness of Christians apart from the indwelling Christ. When once we come to Christ, he joins us to himself, he seats us with him upon his throne, he imparts to us his Spirit, he bids us use our reason in his service. In judging Scripture, we make not ourselves but Christ supreme, and recognize him as the only ultimate and infallible authority in matters of religion. We can believe that the total revelation of Christ in Scripture is an authority superior to individual reason or to any single affirmation of the church, while yet we believe that this very authority of Scripture has its limitation, and that Christ himself must teach us what this total revelation is. So the judgment which Scripture encourages us to pass upon its own limitations only induces a final and more implicit reliance upon the living and personal Son of God. He has never intended that Scripture should be a substitute for his own presence, and it is only his Spirit that is promised to lead us into all the truth.

On the authority of Scripture, see A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 113-136—“The source of all authority is not Scripture, but Christ.... Nowhere are we told that the Scripture of itself is able to convince the sinner or to bring him to God. It is a glittering sword, but it is ‘the sword of the Spirit’ (Eph. 6:17); and unless the Spirit use it, it will never pierce the heart. It is a heavy hammer, but only the Spirit can wield it so that it breaks in pieces the flinty rock. It is the type locked in the form, but the paper will never receive an impression until the Spirit shall apply the power. No mere instrument shall have the glory that belongs to God. Every soul shall feel its entire dependence upon him. Only the Holy Spirit can turn the outer word into an inner word. And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. Christ comes into direct contact with the soul. He himself gives his witness to the truth. He bears testimony to Scripture, even more than Scripture bears testimony to him.”

Notice the value of the Old Testament, revealing as it does the natural attributes of God, as a basis and background for the revelation of mercy in the New Testament. Revelation was in many parts (p???e???—Heb. 1:1) as well as in many ways. “Each individual oracle, taken by itself, was partial and incomplete” (Robertson Smith, O. T. in Jewish Ch., 21). But the person and the words of Christ sum up and complete the revelation, so that, taken together and in their connection with him, the various parts of Scripture constitute an infallible and sufficient rule of faith and practice. See Browne, Inspiration of the N. T.; Bernard, Progress of Doctrine in the N. T.; Stanley Leathes, Structure of the O. T.; Rainy, Delivery and Development of Doctrine. See A. H. Strong, on Method of Inspiration, in Philosophy and Religion, 148-155.

The divine influence upon the minds of post-biblical writers, leading to the composition of such allegories as Pilgrim's Progress, and such dramas as Macbeth, is to be denominated illumination rather than inspiration, for the reasons that these writings contain error as well as truth in matters of religion and morals; that they add nothing essential to what the Scriptures give us; and that, even in their expression of truth previously made known, they are not worthy of a place in the sacred canon. W. H. P. Faunce: “How far is Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress true to present Christian experience? It is untrue: 1. In its despair of this world. The Pilgrim has to leave this world in order to be saved. Modern experience longs to do God's will here, and to save others instead of forsaking them. 2. In its agony over sin and frightful conflict. Bunyan illustrates modern experience better by Christiana and her children who go through the Valley and the Shadow of Death in the daytime, and without conflict with Apollyon. 3. In the constant uncertainty of the issue of the Pilgrim's fight. Christian enters Doubting Castle and meets Giant Despair, even after he has won most of his victories. In modern experience, ‘at evening time there shall be light’—(Zech. 14:7). 4. In the constant conviction of an absent Christ. Bunyan's Christ is never met this side of the Celestial City. The Cross at which the burden dropped is the symbol of a sacrificial act, but it is not the Savior himself. Modern experience has Christ living in us and with us alway, and not simply a Christ whom we hope to see at the end of the journey.”

Beyschlag, N. T. Theol., 2:18—“Paul declares his own prophecy and inspiration to be essentially imperfect (1 Cor. 13:9, 10, 12; cf. 1 Cor. 12:10; 1 Thess. 5:19-21). This admission justifies a Christian criticism even of his views. He can pronounce an anathema on those who preach ‘a different gospel’ (Gal. 1:8, 9), for what belongs to simple faith, the facts of salvation, are absolutely certain. But where prophetic thought and speech go beyond these facts of salvation, wood and straw may be mingled with the gold, silver and precious stones built upon the one foundation. So he distinguishes his own modest ???? from the ?p?ta?? ?????? (1 Cor. 7:25, 40).” Clarke, Christian Theology, 44—“The authority of Scripture is not one that binds, but one that sets free. Paul is writing of Scripture when he says: ‘Not that we have lordship over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for in faith ye stand fast’ (2 Cor. 1:24).”

Cremer, in Herzog, Realencyc., 183-203—“The church doctrine is that the Scriptures are inspired, but it has never been determined by the church how they are inspired.”Butler, Analogy, part ii, chap. iii—“The only question concerning the truth of Christianity is, whether it be a real revelation, not whether it be attended with every circumstance which we should have looked for; and concerning the authority of Scripture, whether it be what it claims to be, not whether it be a book of such 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 than they are, could overthrow the authority of the Scripture; unless the prophets, apostles, or our Lord had promised that the book containing the divine revelation should be secure from these things.” W. Robertson Smith: “If am asked why I receive the Scriptures as the word of God and as the only perfect rule of faith and life, I answer with all the Fathers of the Protestant church: ‘Because the Bible is the only record of the redeeming love of God; because in the Bible alone I find God drawing nigh to men in Jesus [pg 222]Christ, and declaring his will for our salvation. And the record I know to be true by the witness of his Spirit in my heart, whereby I am assured that none other than God himself is able to speak such words to my soul.’ ” The gospel of Jesus Christ is the ?pa? ?e??e??? of the Almighty. See Marcus Dods, The Bible, its Origin and Nature; Bowne, The Immanence of God, 66-115.

“The Scriptures are given to teach us, not how the heavens go, but how to go to heaven.” Their aim is certainly not to teach science or history, except so far as science or history is essential to their moral and religious purpose. Certain of their doctrines, like the virgin-birth of Christ and his bodily resurrection, are historical facts, and certain facts, like that of creation, are also doctrines. With regard to these great facts, we claim that inspiration has given us accounts that are essentially trustworthy, whatever may be their imperfections in detail. To undermine the scientific trustworthiness of the Indian Vedas is to undermine the religion which they teach. But this only because their scientific doctrine is an essential part of their religious teaching. In the Bible, religion is not dependent upon physical science. The Scriptures aim only to declare the creatorship and lordship of the personal God. The method of his working may be described pictorially without affecting this substantial truth. The Indian cosmogonies, on the other hand, polytheistic or pantheistic as they are, teach essential untruth, by describing the origin of things as due to a series of senseless transformations without basis of will or wisdom.

So long as the difficulties of Scripture are difficulties of form rather than substance, of its incidental features rather than its main doctrine, we may say of its obscurities as Isocrates said of the work of Heraclitus: “What I understand of it is so excellent that I can draw conclusions from it concerning what I do not understand.” “If Bengel finds things in the Bible too hard for his critical faculty, he finds nothing too hard for his believing faculty.” With John Smyth, who died at Amsterdam in 1612, we may say: “I profess I have changed, and shall be ready still to change, for the better”; and with John Robinson, in his farewell address to the Pilgrim Fathers: “I am verily persuaded that the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth from his holy word.” See Luthardt, Saving Truths, 205; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 205 sq.; Bap. Rev., April, 1881: art. by O. P. Eaches; Cardinal Newman, in 19th Century, Feb. 1884.