objective side of Inspiration : on the other hand, if we dwell solely upon the subjective phase of this influence, we lose sight of the living connexion of the writer with God. Were this latter conception correct, the authors of Scripture, following the impulse of their own genius, and in accordance with their own judgment, proceeded, in the natural course of things, to develop new inferences from the germ of Truth implanted within them; and hence, as some have argued, we cannot accept all the conclusions at which they have arrived as either infallible or authoritative. The true theory, as it recoils from any such negation of the Divine majesty of the Bible, so it equally ignores the defective estimate of the opposite extreme." The human element,

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Bishop Warburton has fallen into another. His definition of Inspiration opens with the statement: "That the Holy Spirit so directed the pens of these writers that no considerable error should fall from them by preserving them by the more ordinary means of Providence, from any mistakes of consequence," &c. p. 568: to which remarks he appends the curious conclusion: "This seems to be the true idea of the Inspiration in question. This only doth agree with all appearances; and will fully answer the purpose of an inspired writing, which is to afford an INFALLIBLE RULE [the emphasis is the Bishop's own] for the direction of the Catholic Church."

1 "A gift," observes Mr. Morell, speaking of the Pentateuch, which its author "was left to make use of as necessity or propriety might suggest." See the passage already quoted, p. 27, note 4. "I know," continues Mr. Morell, "that I am speaking the conviction of many learned men and devout Christians, when I say, that the blind determination to represent every portion of the Old Testament as being alike written entirely under the guidance of God, and by the special direction of the Spirit, has been one of the most fearful hinderances which ever stood in the way of an honest, firm, and rational belief in the reality of a Divine Inspiration at all."-Philosophy of Religion, p. 178.

* "The earliest apologists of modern times confined themselves to the literal assertion of a mechanical power. They regarded the Divine agency as operating externally and not internally; -as acting on man and not through man; they lost the idea of an active energy in that of a passive state. At present the case seems reversed, and the reason is evident. Our predecessors had to assert the reality of Inspiration against those who ridiculed its very name, and denied the possibility of a revelation; while we have to show that it is a peculiar influence, against those who see in the Apostles only the ordinary working of God. They had to contend with those who denied the spirit through the outward form; while we have to resist those who deny the outward form to secure the spirit, -who claim as the primal attributes of man what we hold to be the after-gifts of heaven." -Westcott, Elements of the Gospel Harmony, p. 5. Mr. Morell again supplies us with an illustration which will exhibit the justice of Mr. Westcott's remark: "If it be said that the Providence of God must have watched over the composition and construction of a canonical book, which was to have so vast an influence on the destiny of the world, we are quite ready to admit, and even ourselves to assert it. But in the same sense Providence watches over every other event which bears upon the welfare of man, although the execution of it be left to the freedom of human endeavor. And what, after all, need we in the Scriptures more than this? Why should we be perpetually craving after a stiff, literal, verbal infallibility? Christianity consists not in propositions-it is a life in the soul; its laws and precepts are not engraven on stone; they can only be engraven on the fleshy tables of the heart." - Ibid. p. 183. Few, indeed, will be found to deny that "Christianity consists not in propositions: "-as few, perhaps, as would allege that an electric current consists in the formulæ by which Gauss or Faraday

instead of being suppressed, becomes an integral part of the agency employed; -moulded, it is true, and guided, and brought into action by the co-operation of the Spirit, but not the less really, on that account, participating in the result produced. Nay more, the peculiar type of each writer's nature was even essential to the due reception of that particular phase of truth presented by his statements: his share in the great work was apportioned to the order of his intellect and the class of his emotions; while his characteristic form of expression was absolutely requisite, for the adequate and complete conveyance of his Divine message. Without the moving power, man could not have grasped the Divine communications; without the living instrument those communications could not have received fitting expression. The Bible, it has been well observed, " is authoritative, for it is the voice of God; it is intelligible, for it is in the language of men."

It appears to me, however, that the 'dynamical' theory, taken alone, is not sufficient to account for all the phenomena which the Bible presents to our view. By it, the first Condition, only, of our problem is satisfied. We must, therefore, seek for a further principle, according to which the remaining Condition, which the nature of the case equally imposes, may be complied with. This Condition arises from that class of facts which indicate, as I have observed above, that a considerable portion of what the Bible contains consists of matters already known to the sacred writers, or the knowledge of which might be-nay, which we actually know often was-derived from the ordinary sources of information that were at their command. Other portions, again, are such as they could not have become acquainted with, except by an immediate communication from heaven. The

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have expressed its laws. The knowledge, however, of what Christianity is, as well as of the laws of electricity, must be communicated by propositions; and it is not more unnatural that the Christian should "crave" for an assurance that God's Revelation has came to him unclouded by human error, than that the student in the exact sciences should "crave" for perfect accuracy in the structure of the formulæ, by which the philosopher from whom he derives his information, has expressed the secrets of Nature. For some remarks on the meaning of the phrase 'Christian knowledge,' see infra, Lecture vi.

'Westcott. Ibid. p. 8.

2 See, for example, the statement of S. Luke in the introduction to his Gospel, the opening of S. John's First Epistle, &c. Compare also the remarks on this subject in Lecture i. pp. 39, 40, &c.

3 E. g. The announcements of the future; the account of the Creation, &c. I

principle which satisfies this Condition is that of the distinction between Revelation and Inspiration. I have shown, on a former occasion, that this distinction is specific, and not merely one of degrec; and we perceived, in the last Discourse, that the sources, too, from which Revelation and Inspiration respectively proceed, are also different: -the former having as its author the Second, the latter the Third, Person, in the Holy Trinity.

It may be well, moreover, again to observe, that the gift of Inspiration was equally required by those among the authors of Scripture who had received revelations, as by those to whom Divine knowledge was never thus imparted. In the former case Inspiration was necessary, not only in order to enable the sacred writer correctly to apprehend, and faithfully to express, the substance of the Divine communication; but also for a further reason. It is to be remembered, that when a revelation had been once conveyed to any individual and publicly announced by him, it became as much a matter of history as any natural event of which the Bible takes notice. We have reason to believe that, in the great majority of cases, the Divine communications were not committed to writing, for some time after they were received :* there are even instances of several years having elapsed before they were thus placed on record. Now, in all such cases the co

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do not, of course, mean to deny that some of the sacred writers received immediate revelations even of matters of fact which they might have learned from human testimony. I have already adduced one instance of this kind, recorded in the passage quoted (p. 40, note 2) from 1 Kings, xiv. 5. The case of S. Paul is still more to the point. He tells us of "the Gospel which was preached of him," that he "neither received it of man, neither was he taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" Gal. i. 11, 12; and we know from 1 Cor. xi. 23; xv. 3, that such revelations conveyed the knowledge of matters of fact which he might have learned from the other Apostles, as well as of matters of doctrine. It is plain, however, that such cases were exceptions to the usual course of the Divine Economy-see e. g. the last note.

1 Lecture i. p. 42, &c.

* See Lecture i. p. 43, and infra, p. 175, note 2.

* This obviously took place whenever God's will was unfolded by means of dreams; whether we regard the dreams of men who were never inspired, -as Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, &c., or those of prophets, who were also to the fullest extent guided by Inspiration. Thus Daniel writes: "In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and vision of his head upon his bed: then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters. Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night," &c. vii. 1, 2. The same is to be said of the communications from heaven which the Patriarchs received, and which Moses has recorded in the Book of Genesis. We cannot doubt that the promises to Abraham, for example, were handed down and preserved by his descendants; and that Moses was familiar, from his childhood, with those revelations which unfolded the future glories of his nation. Thus, too, in the New Testament, S. Luke has given an account of the Annunciation (ch. i. 26-38), of the communication of the Angel to Cornelius (Acts, x.), &c. &c.

* Thus we read: "And it came to pass in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of

operation of the Holy Spirit was indispensable, in order both to bring the original revelation before the mind of the sacred writer, in its primitive perfection, and to enable him to record it with infallible accuracy.1

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By attending to these principles, which satisfy the second Condition of our problem, we are able at once to perceive the weakness of the great mass of those arguments, which are commonly brought forward in order to prove the existence of error or imperfection in the Bible. In such objections it is tacitly assumed that the matters, to which exception is taken, are recorded as being actually revelations from God; while in truth they are often nothing more than historical details, which have been inserted, as simple matters of fact, in the Scripture narrative, under the guidance of its Divine Author.

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saying, from the thirteenth year of Josiah

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Josiah king of Judah, that this word came unto Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day."-Jer. xxxvi. 1, 2. But we also know that such revelations were given during a period of twenty-three years: "The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim even unto this day, that is, the three and twentieth year, the word of the Lord hath come unto me, and I have spoken unto you rising early and speaking." -Jer. xxv. 1-3. 1 E. g. in the case to which the last note refers, "after that the king had burned the roll" on which the prophet had written all that God had commanded him "the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying, Take thee again another roll and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll." - Jer. xxxvi. 27, 28. Indeed, if a record of Prophecy was to be preserved at all, this Divine guidance was obviously indispensable. Eichhorn observes that Greek antiquity seems to have attached no importance to such preservation of the words of an oracular announcement. Hence, when one writer has not copied another, such oracles have been handed down in different forms, which often convey meanings altogether dissimilar. E. g.--When the Thasians, in obedience to the laws of Draco, cast into the sea the statue of the athlete Theagenes (by the fall of which a man had been accidentally killed), the Pythia, consulted on the subject of a famine which occurred shortly afterwards, replied: Θεαγένην δ' ἄμνηστον ἀφήκατε τὸν μέγαν ὑμέων-according to the version given by Pausanias (Lib. vi. 11); while the form in which it is reported by Eusebius ("Præpar. Evang." v. 34), is altogether different: Εἰς πάτρην φυγάδας κατάγων Δήμητραν ἀμήσεις. See his "Einleitung in das A. T." B. iv. s. xxiii.

2 As exemplifying the neglect of the distinction here insisted upon, and its results, I may adduce the words of M. Athanase Coquerel: "God's share in Revelation is called Inspiration. Inspiration is a transmission of ideas from God to man."-Christianity, p. 202. "Religious and moral truth exist in Revelation in a relative degree only; scientific truth, therefore, could not be found there in an absolute degree. These considerations end in leading to the discovery that Revelation must contain errors in what regards scientific truth. This was a condition strictly necessary to the gift of Revelation."-Ibid. p. 211.

* See, for example, the quotation from Mr. Coleridge, supra, Lecture i. p. 41, noto' Or, still more to the point, take the class of objections founded, as in the case of M. Coquerel, upon the (alleged) mistakes committed by the writers of Scripture, when touching upon matters of science. As illustrating the bearing of the distinction between Revelation and Inspiration in answering such objections, I would refer the

Having made these preliminary remarks, I now proceed to

state the arguments by which the 'dynamical' theory of Inspiration may be supported. Inspiration, I must again repeat, is to be understood as denoting that Divine influence, under which all the parts of the Bible have been committed to writingwhether they contain an account of ordinary historical facts, or the narrative of supernatural revelations. In the reception and utterance of such revelations, it is admitted by all who allow that any communication has taken place between earth and heaven, that the human agent can be regarded in no other light than as an instrument in the hand of God, by whose intervention His counsels have been made known to man. If in any case here assuredly, the strict 'mechanical' theory of Inspiration (if true) must hold good; - a theory according to which each phrase and expression in the Bible has been set down by the sacred penmen at the dictation of the Holy Ghost. But if the facts which we are about to consider warrant our asserting that, even in the reception of what are, in the most literal sense, revelations, human agency has had its full scope; and that each prophetic announcement, as recorded in the pages of Scripture, bears the undoubted stamp of the genius, and mental culture, and circumstances of the prophet who has given it utterance; we are surely justified in concluding that, when relating matters of history or drawing inferences from previous revelations, the same scope, at least, was allowed to the individual characteristics of the inspired writers.

The general method according to which the Divine Scheme has been developed, might, indeed, of itself, justify such a conclusion. We are expressly taught by the whole tenor of Scripture, that the course which God has pursued in conveying His revelations to man has been always singularly marked by the employment of natural means: and further, that at each step in the progress of His providential dispensations, and in the accomplishment of prophetic announcements, the expenditure (if one may reverentially use the term) of miraculous agency has

reader to the remarks on "Joshua's Miracle," Lecture viii. infra, where other topics of this nature will be considered. With great truth Jahn observes: Diese Bestimmung des Begriffs der Inspiration, und der Unterschied von Offenbarung muss sorgfältig beobachtet werden, indem beyde sehr häufig verwechselt werden, woraus dann grosse Schwierigkeiten erwachsen."-Einleit. ler Th. s. 92.