5/^7/04 
LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 

PRINCETON, N. J. 
PRESENTED BY 

PRES. F. L. PATTON 

Division..!! 

Section. ..x. 



1 668 



GOD'S WORD WRITTEN: 

THE DOCTRINE 



OF THE 



INSPIRATION OF HOLY SCRIPTURE 

EXPLAINED AND ENFORCED***-* _ 

\>' - 

( * 5/ &' 

REV. EDWARD GARBETT, IfrSg&tfJcal $f ^ 



AUTHOR OF "RELIGION IN DAILY LIFE ;" 

INCUMBENT OP CHRIST CHURCH, SURBITON ; BOYLE LECTURER FOR 1861, 1SC2, AND 
1S63; SELECT TREACHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OP OXFORD IN 1S62 AND 1863. 



" Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Pet. 1 : 21. 



PUBLISHED BY THE 
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW YORK. 



PREFACE. 



The object of the following pages is to explain, 
and in explaining to enforce, the doctrine of the 
plenary inspiration of Holy Scripture. On the 
general subject I believe an entire concurrence of 
opinion to exist between myself and the Society 
under whose auspices the work has been prepared. 
But for the method of the argument, and the de- 
tailed views maintained in the course of it, I am 
solely responsible. 

The method adopted will probably appear to 
some minds to include matters not strictly related 
to the subject of which I profess to treat. I ear- 
nestly crave the indulgence of my readers on this 
point, and ask for their patient forbearance during 
the earlier stages of the argument. In support of 
this plea I am anxious briefly to explain for what 
reasons this particular line has been selected. It 
will appear, I believe, that no topic has been intro- 
duced devoid of an immediate and important bear- 
ing on the specific question of inspiration, and not 
requisite for the elucidation of some vital principle. 



4 PKEFACE. 

The most embarrassing difficulty in the settle- 
ment of this great question has long appeared to 
me to consist in the ambiguous use of terms. So 
long as the same words or phrases convey different 
meanings to the various parties to the controversy, 
there cannot be the slightest chance of even an 
approximation to unity of opinion. There is not a 
distinctive phrase employed in the discussion which 
has wholly escaped this ambiguity of usage. The 
term "inspiration" is itself no exception. All par- 
ties perfectly understand the nature of the thing 
denoted, and the bearings of the question at issue; 
but they differ very considerably in the definition 
they are prepared to accept. The familiar terms 
"mechanical" and "dynamical" afford another ex- 
ample. We are told, for instance, that verbal in- 
spiration must necessarily be mechanical; and the 
writer who makes the assertion, consistently enough 
with his own theory, considers himself to have 
proved that the inspiration of the Scriptures was 
not verbal, when he has proved that it was not 
mechanical. In other quarters the significance and 
relative bearing of the words "inspiration" and 
"revelation" have been eagerly discussed. The 
expressions "Divine element" and "human ele- 
ment" have been the centre of a circle of ambiguities 
of their own. An able writer of late date maintains 
that verbal inspiration is logically inconsistent with 
the admission of a human element in Scripture ; 
while a learned professor in one of our ancient uni- 



PEEFACE. 5 

versities has publicly employed the words " human 
element" as avowed equivalent to the asserted fact 
of human mistakes in the sacred writings. 

These complicated misapprehensions render the 
employment of the utmost caution necessary in all 
who desire to maintain a positive doctrine of inspi- 
ration. They embarrass a believer in proportion as 
they supply valuable weapons to the skeptic. To 
commence a work of this kind with a string of 
definitions, before some common truths have been 
reached and common principles accepted, would be 
to plunge headlong into the very perplexities which 
it is a matter of the highest moment to remove. I 
have, therefore, been anxious to avoid all defini- 
tions during the earlier steps of the argument, and 
to reserve such formal propositions as might be ne- 
cessary for its latest stages. The inductive method 
offered the only means of securing this object. I 
have, therefore, endeavored to base my arguments 
on facts, and from facts to ascend to principles. 

Two advantages are secured by this plan. The 
course of the inquiry is simplified. At each step of 
it the reader has but to ask, Are these things so? 
And if the answer be in the affirmative, to consider 
for himself the conclusions founded on them. I 
have also been enabled to avoid, in a great meas- 
ure, the ambiguous terms already alluded to. With 
the exception of the word "inspiration" itself, and 
the phrases "Divine element" and "human ele- 
ment," which I have found it impossible to avoid 



6 PKEFACE. 

without prolixity, none of thein will be found in 
these pages. 

It would be presumptuous to expect that their 
contents will carry conviction to all classes of read- 
ers. To some I venture to hope that the argument 
will carry the same conclusiveness which it has to 
my own mind. Where it does not convince, it may 
yet assist in some measure towards laying down a 
broader and more satisfactory platform for the dis- 
cussion of this great and vital question. It is too 
great to be hedged up into some special corner of 
theology ; for it pervades all theology from end to 
end. I commend these pages to the blessing of 
God, with a profounder conviction than ever of the 
supreme authority and absolute truth of God's 
Word written. 

EDWAKD GARBETT. 

SUKBITON, SUKREY. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 
What is Christianity? page 9 

CHAPTER II. 

Christianity identified with the Christian Scriptures 24 

CHAPTER III. 
The Authority of the Christian Scriptures 36 

CHAPTER IV. 
The whole Scriptures are the Word of God 61 

CHAPTER V. 

Does the Scripture bear Witness to Itself ; and how ? 89 

CHAPTER YI. 

The Testimony of Scripture to its Own Character 101 

CHAPTER YII. 
The Scriptures are the True Word of God 118 

CHAPTER VIII. 

A Revelation implies Two Parties, and therefore Two Elements 138 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Human Element of Scripture in Its Relation to the Divine 148 



8 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEK X. 

The Divine Element of Scripture in Its Eelation to the Human 1 GO 

CHAPTER XL 

What is Truth? - 177 

CHAPTER XII. 
Historical Truth 191 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Truth of Scripture proved by the Testimony of Facts - - - 210 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Evidence of Experience 236 

CHAPTER XV. 

Alleged Instances of Inaccuracy in Scripture examined and ex- 
plained - — - 257 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Word of God is verbally inspired 289 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Objections against Verbal Inspiration considered- 321 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Recapitulation and Summary 313 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Conclusion - 367 



GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 



CHAPTER I. 

WHAT 18 CHRISTIANITY? 

Relation of Christianity to the Christian Scriptures — Christianity a 
Definite Historical System — Origin and Meaning of the Word — ■ 
Christianity as a Faith, and the Christian Church as a Society — 
Influence of Christianity upon the World — Elements of its 
Power — Its Supernatural Element — Its Doctrinal Form — 
Church Creeds— Their Circumstantial Diversities and Sub- 
stantial Identity. 

" God's Word written," is the title applied by 
the church of England to the Scriptures of the Old 
and Xew Testaments ; and the phrase expresses the 
concurrent belief of the church catholic throughout 
all lands and ages. The title either expresses one 
of the grandest facts it is possible for us to conceive, 
or one of the fondest delusions ever palmed by reli- 
gious enthusiasm upon the credulity of mankind. 
A revelation from God, as truly his as if his voice 
of thunder uttered it audibly from the skies, would 
be among the grandest of known facts. The appli- 



10 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

cation of so great a title as " God's word written" to 
a fragmentary collection of human traditions and 
human theories, would be among the fondest of 
existing delusions. It is certain that the early 
fathers, and also the great divines of the church of 
England, from the Reformation period down to 
recent times, accepted the Scriptures as the infalli- 
ble word of God, conclusive on all questions of reli- 
gious belief, and binding on faith and conscience. 
Modern rationalism loudly affirms this belief to be 
a mistake, and irreconcilable with the results of 
modern criticism. To examine the grounds of this 
allegation, and gather, from a careful induction of 
all the facts of the case, what are the true character 
and authority of the Scriptures, is the object of the 
present work. 

Foremost among these facts is the relation held 
by the canonical SciTptures towards Christianity 
itself. It is sometimes asserted that they are wholly 
independent of each other. It is necessary, there- 
fore, to carry the inquiry a step backward, and ask, 
What is it we mean by Christianity ? 

St. Luke records, in the Acts of the Apostles, 
11 : 26, that the disciples were called Christians first 
at Antioch. The epithet is an evident enlargement 
of the honored name of Christ, the official title of 
the Saviour of the world, and suggests the intimate 
dependence of the religion professed upon the per- 
son of its divine Founder. The recognition of places 
and persons as a bond of union between sections of 
mankind, and the consequent derivation from them 
of distinctive names, had long been familiar before 



WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY? 11 

the times of our Lord. All the great kingdoms of 
antiquity supply instances of generic names. This 
was probably the beginning of the habit. It soon 
acquired more particular application. The schools 
of ancient philosophy followed each other in rapid 
succession; and each of them, as it took definite 
form and gathered disciples, gave rise to a corre- 
sponding name. Stoics and Academics derived 
their name from the localities where the respective 
systems were taught; Pythagoreans, Epicureans, 
and Platonists, from the person of the teacher. It 
was natural, therefore, that the verbal analogy 
should be followed in the case of the disciples of 
our Master ; and that the lively inhabitants of An- 
tioch, famous for wit and satire, should be the first 
to suggest it. The disciples were called Christians 
from Christ, as others were called Pythagoreans 
from Pythagoras, Epicureans from Epicurus, Plato- 
nists from Plato. Another natural step in advance 
formed the name of the system from the name of 
the men who followed it. As Stoicism expressed 
the bond of union common to all Stoics ; Platonism 
the bond common to all Platonists; so Christianity 
expresses the bond of union common to all Chris- 
tians. 

The analogy illustrates not only the origin of 
the name, but likewise the ideas involved in it, and 
the necessary limits of its use. The ideas involved 
are two : the idea of a society more or less intimate, 
more or less organized according to the nature ot 
the case ; and the idea of a defined system of thought 
out of which it has grown. The claim of member- 



12 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

ship in the society would include discipleship to 
the system. No man, for instance, could fairly 
appropriate the name of Platonist who did not share 
the opinions of Plato. To originate a new system, 
either by the omission of some essential principles 
from the old, or by the addition of new particulars, 
and yet to call it by the old name, would not be 
consistent with either truth or honesty. It would 
not be consistent with truth, because the title and 
the thing signified by it would no longer correspond ; 
it would not be consistent with honesty, because 
such an ambiguous use of words would only deceive. 
This rule would become more absolute in proportion 
to the length of time during which the name has 
been thus appropriated, and the number and pub- 
licity of the events associated with it. Established 
usage and historical association would combine to 
invest the title both with definiteness and with 
authority. The principle has been admitted and 
acted upon in past times. After the establishment 
of Christianity, a great effort was made, both within 
and without the limits of the church, to combine 
the principles of Plato with the teaching of the 
Christian Scriptures; but the advocates of the sys- 
tem did not venture to call it by the old name, Pla- 
tonism ; recognizing its distinctness alike of inter- 
nal character and of historical descent, they modi- 
fied the name accordingly, and called it Neo-Pla- 
tonism. 

The same principles of usage should, in all can- 
dor, be applied to Christianity. To form an ideal 
person, different from the historical personage born 



WHAT IS CHKISTIANITY? 13 

at Bethlehem and crucified upon Calvary — to sur- 
round him with attributes and characteristics dif- 
ferent from what are imputed to him in the author- 
itative records of the faith — to connect him with a 
system of teaching varying from the doctrines inau- 
gurated under his authority, and then to call this 
new production Christianity, is to do in regard to 
things religious what no man has ventured or would 
venture to do in regard to things secular. The mo- 
rality of religious controversy would be lowered, by 
assent to such an act, below the standard of all other 
controversy. Mutual misapprehension and danger- 
ous mistakes could be its only result. The name of 
Christianity is already appropriated to one defined 
form of religion, by virtue alike of the society called 
into existence and of the belief on which it is 
founded, and cannot be transferred to any other. 
The two have ever existed together from the begin- 
ning of the Christian era to our own day. Down 
the whole line of these nineteen hundred years, the 
outward society has existed alike by unbroken de- 
scent and by continuity of belief. The creed taught 
by the church of England, from the times of the 
Reformation to the present day, can be shown by 
undoubted proofs to be the same as was taught in 
the primitive and apostolic times. The reformers 
laid great stress upon this fact. The Eomish church 
admits it equally. Her documents claim the right 
to add additional truth to the body of doctrine held 
by the reformed churches ; but they never deny 
that this body of doctrine is both primitive and 
apostolical. The whole of Christendom may, there- 



14 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

fore, be called as witness to the existence of an iden- 
tical faith in the church of Christ from the day of 
Pentecost till now. This faith has, moreover, been 
maintained and handed down by a society compris- 
ing many branches, and subject to many modifica- 
tions, but identified, nevertheless, throughout them 
all, by points of external habit and organization, 
such as public worship, the sacraments, and the 
ministry. This defined and continuous society is 
the church of Christ ; and the S}*stem constituting 
its bond of union, alike in its inward life and its 
outward doctrines, is Christianity. 

By Christianity, therefore, we do not mean any 
imaginary belief about any imaginary Christ, but 
we mean the definite religion preached, in its com- 
pleted form, in the first century of our era, cen- 
tred around the personal Christ described by the 
four evangelists, incorporated in the society speci- 
fied in the Acts of the Apostle, expanded in the 
doctrines of the apostolic epistles, and propheti- 
cally depicted in the great outlines of its outward 
fortunes in the book of the Apocalypse. 

This identification of the word "Christianity" 
with a known historical system is confirmed when, 
having specified what we intend by it, we go on to 
examine more closely into its nature. Let us sup- 
pose the attention of a thoughtful and educated 
man to be seriously drawn for the first time to the 
claims and promises of this Christianity. Up to 
this time he has received the ordinary education 
given in a Christian household ; but the subject has 
never previously interested his feelings or actively 



WHAT IS CHBISTIANITY? 15 

occupied his understanding. Perhaps his studies 
in other directions have brought him into contact 
with the question. Perhaps the prominence of 
modern controversy has called his attention to it. 
Perhaps the influence of some Christian example 
has reacted upon him, and he is tempted to inquire 
into the sources of its spiritual power. Perhaps 
the great questions of life and death have been 
brought home to him, and the moral wants of his 
own soul have begun to make themselves felt. Per- 
haps, in the spirit of a former Lord Lyttleton and 
of Mr. West, he wishes to examine in order to refute ; 
and, like them, has the honesty to inquire and the 
candor to be convinced. Whatever may be the 
cause, he sits himself down to search into the ques- 
tion, and examine for himself the foundations of 
Christianity. 

His inquiry necessarily starts from the stand- 
point of his own times and his own position towards 
them. It would not be just, nor is it possible for 
him to leave them out of view. His object is to 
investigate an actual, not an imaginary Christian- 
ity ; and he must deal with the case, therefore, not 
as it might conceivably have been, but as it actu- 
ally is. The beginning of Christianity cannot be 
the beginning of his inquiry about it. The first in 
order of time is the last in order of investigation. 
He begins from his own stand-point, and commences 
with the facts of the case as presented in his own 
times and related to his own position. 

He finds Christianity to be the dominant reli- 
gion of the world. This fact is the more striking 



16 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

because it is not the religion of the greatest number 
of mankind. There are wide tracts of the earth's 
surface peopled by teeming millions either ignorant 
of its existence or contemptuously incredulous of its 
claims. The votaries of Buddha outnumber the dis- 
oiples of Jesus of Nazareth beyond all comparison. 
But these wide regions are the sterile plains of the 
moral and intellectual world. A stereotyped civili- 
zation that has outgrown its own vitality, and is 
like a dead leaf retaining the form of its former self, 
but performing none of its functions ; or a quies- 
cent and self-satisfied stagnation of all life and activ- 
ity brood over them, depressing energy and crush- 
ing effort. Every nation prominent in the transac- 
tions of the world is, without exception, professedly 
Christian. Within Christendom are included all 
the springs of enterprise and wealth ; all the active 
influences of art, science, and civilization; all the 
wheels of the world's political action, and the secret 
causes of its movements. The portion of the globe 
occupied by Christianity constitutes a small portion 
of its surface, but reigns the acknowledged mistress 
of all the rest. 

Within these limits Christianity exercises a 
moral influence without a parallel elsewhere. Un- 
equally exercised, and exhibiting a restraining and 
ameliorating power even where its highest effects 
are absent, it stands without an equal, almost with- 
out a rival, in the education of mankind. No other 
power but itself claims to regenerate human nature 
after so lofty a model. The facts are too evident 
for denial, that it succeeds in making the drunkard 



WHAT IS CHEISTIANITY ? 17 

sober, the profligate chaste, the liar truthful, the 
cheat honest, the idle industrious, the cruel gentle, 
the churl generous, the disorderly peaceful and obe- 
dient. It is accepted as an instrument of govern- 
ment where it is rejected as a means of personal 
happiness. It has covered the world with schools 
and hospitals and institutions — a costly and elabo- 
rate apparatus of benevolence, to which nothing 
remotely corresponding ever existed before. It has 
evoked a self-denying zeal and an amount of labor 
for the good of other men so enormous as to make 
adequate calculation impossible. No want appears 
to be too minute to escape the anxiety of Christian 
benevolence, no enterprise too gigantic to exhaust 
its energy. The voluntary efforts of individuals 
accomplish what no compulsory organization could 
attempt. In the course of these ceaseless and pro- 
digious labors all over the world, it has wrought so 
great a change in human habits, opinions, and prin- 
ciples, as to amount to a revolution. Whether 
Christianity be true or false, it is confessedly the 
most amazing moral force ever exhibited in the his- 
tory of mankind. 

The adoption of this conclusion suggests a fur- 
ther inquiry relative to the sources of this power 
and the nature of the religion which exercises it. 
"What is Christianity, and what the elements of its 
influence ? The reply is given by putting into the 
hands of the inquirer some authorized confession 
of faith. Let us suppose it to be the Articles of the 
Church of England. A comparison of them with 
other church confessions serves easily to eliminate 



18 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

the distinctive peculiarities belonging to any par- 
ticular branch of the universal society, and to leave 
behind the common principles of the Christian faith. 
These principles constitute a formal and complete 
body of doctrine, united by a close dependency of 
one part upon another. The truths themselves are 
of the grandest and most elevating description, 
including divine action as well as human, and ex- 
tending to the prospects, wants, and hopes of uni- 
versal human kind. Certain broad characteristics 
distinguish them sharply from all known systems 
of human thought. They are not speculations, a 
fabric woven out of the operations of the human 
mind, but definite statements made with the tone of 
conscious authority and truthfulness. They profess 
to be based throughout on a substructure of actual 
facts, events either completely transacted, or begun 
and still in process of transaction. These facts are 
partly supernatural, accomplished by God himself 
in the sphere of the unseen world ; such as the ses- 
sion of Christ in glory, his mediation at the right 
hand of the Father, his government over the world, 
and the act of a sinner's justification before God. 
Others are historical events, matters lying within 
the sphere of things visible and known, actions 
accomplished upon the earth, cognizable by the 
senses, and admitting of being measured and tested 
by the ordinary methods of all historical investiga- 
tion. Such are the facts relative to the birth, life, 
ministry, death, and resurrection of our Lord. Of 
all this portion of Christian faith, it may be asserted 
that it is by its very nature beyond the possibility 



WHAT IS CHBISTIANITY? 19 

of change. The only point of discussion is the 
truth of the facts. If the events have been trans- 
acted, or are in process of transaction, it is impos- 
sible that they can be undone. Any form of words 
expressive of the possibility destroys itself, and 
becomes a sound without a sense. 

These facts constitute, however, but one portion 
of the Christian faith. The other portion consists 
of doctrinal truths, stated in the form of general 
principles, requiring belief in the first place, moral 
acceptance in the second, practical adoption in the 
third. Such, for instance, are the doctrines relative 
to justification, good works, Christ without sin, pre- 
destination, and similar articles of faith. It is 
observable, in regard to the whole of them, that 
more or less immediately they are dependent upon 
the historical facts ; and this so closely, that if the 
facts were disproved, the doctrines would be de- 
stroyed at the same time. The case is not, that 
the facts form one independent portion of the Chris- 
tian faith, and the doctrines another; but that the 
two portions constitute one common and indivisible 
whole. The faith is a fabric so made up of both, 
that the act of taking away, not alone the facts in 
general, but any one part of the facts, loosens the 
coherence and destroys the nature of the fabric 
itself. If without irreverence such great matters 
may be illustrated by very familiar things, the faith 
may be compared in this respect to some produc- 
tion of the modern loom, manufactured of two ma- 
terials, and deriving its name and qualities from 
the union of the two. Take either of them away, 



20 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

and the fabric ceases to be itself, and becomes 
something else. 

This body of truth does not, however, make up 
the whole of Christianity. We need to add to it a 
living and superhuman power, working in and 
through the faith, and constituting the really effi- 
cient agent of its wonderful triumphs. This is the 
grace of God the Holy Ghost, and this is his special 
function in the plan of human redemption. It is 
not possible to sever these operations of the Spirit 
from the truths whereby he operates. The experi- 
enced result must be referred back to the corre- 
sponding doctrine in the Scriptures. It is exactly 
the result that might be expected to follow, if the 
doctrine be true, and it presents in its own nature 
exactly the characteristics the doctrine leads us to 
expect. If there be a Holy Ghost, and if his office 
in the scheme of salvation be to infuse a new life, 
and renew the soul after the image of Christ Jesus, 
then the facts of Christian experience could not be 
otherwise than they are ; and being what they are, 
they confirm and verify the doctrine. 

Hence, in asking what Christianity is, the truths 
of the Christian faith can alone supply the answer. 
There is an unseen and supernatural element about 
it. But this element, in its very nature, does not 
admit of intellectual inquiry and examination. As 
it presents itself for investigation, Christianity can 
only be resolved into the truths constituting the 
substance of the Christian faith. 

Hence has arisen the use of church standards. 
The form of creed was at first exceedingly short 



WHAT IS CHKISTIA^ITY? 21 

and simple. As the church acquired a more per- 
fect organization, and felt the necessity of guarding 
herself against false teaching within, as well as 
violence without, the formula of faith became more 
definite and exact. The three ancient creeds — the 
Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian — exactly 
illustrate the process. The Apostles' Creed is the 
most ancient and the most simple. Although not 
composed by the apostles, its composition must be 
referred back to a period closely touching the apos- 
tolic days, and it undeniably embodies the doctrines 
of primitive Christianity. But they are stated in a 
very condensed form, and follow so strictly the bap- 
tismal formula given by our Lord himself, as to be 
only an amplification of it: "Go ye, teach all ricV 
tions, baptizing them in the name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." The 
Nicene Creed was adopted by the Council of Nicea 
after the establishment of Christianity by Constan- 
tine, and when the Arian heresy already threatened 
to rend the unity of the faith. It is accordingly 
longer and fuller, and more controversial, and fills 
up in definite detail the apostolic outlines. The 
creed attributed to Athanasius was later in date by 
more than two centuries, and evidences in every 
part of it the adoption of an exact theological lan- 
guage. It deals primarily with two great doctrines 
only — the trinity of persons in the Godhead, and 
the unity of the divine and human natures in the 
one person of Christ, because these were the prom- 
inent subjects of debate in the sixth century. 

The creeds of different branches of the church 



22 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

of Christ have carried this expansion still farther. 
They have in all cases been colored by the circum- 
stances of the times and the variations of contro- 
versy. But although they vary in form and in the 
relative prominence given to truths, they are iden- 
tical in substance, both with themselves and with 
the more ancient creeds. The body of truth is one 
and identical. I use the word body to express, not 
simply a collection of separate doctrines, but a con- 
nected and organized system of belief. That the 
parts of this teaching are not isolated and frag- 
mentary truths, but harmonious portions of one 
intelligent scheme, may be illustrated by such a 
work as Calvin's " Institutes," by the Westminster 
Confession, or by the Thirty-nine Articles of the 
Church of England. The members of a body are 
not more closely united to each other than are the 
doctrines of the Christiau faith. The existence of 
such a body of truth is repeatedly asserted in Scrip- 
ture under the expression "the faith," where the 
context defines the application of the phrase beyond 
the possibility of doubt; as, for instance, in the 
words of St. Jude, "The faith which was once deliv- 
ered unto the saints." 

Many lines of evidence thus concur in limiting- 
even the name of Christianity to one recognized 
system of truth. Its distinct origin, its definite his- 
tory, its supernatural characteristics, its organized 
body of doctrine, its embodiment in visible churches, 
its distinctive principles, its world-wide effects, its 
series of creeds and formularies, its sacraments and 
institutions, its unbroken descent and perpetuity of 



WHAT IS CHEISTIANITY? 23 

life and power, belong to itself alone. Christianity 
in its outward form, and as presented for inquiry, 
is identified with a body of systematic truth, cen- 
tring round the person and work of Christ, and has 
the church of the past and the present as its visible 
witness and embodiment. 



24 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 



CHAPTEE II. 

CHRISTIANITY IS IDENTIFIED WITH THE 
CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES. 

The Case regarded as a Matter of Fact — No other Source of Infor- 
mation within the Pale of the Christian Church — Origin of the 
Scriptures and their Recognized Authority — No Source of In- 
formation on Christian Doctrine Outside the Church— Profane 
History : "what it supplies and does not supply — Human Phi- 
losophy : its Struggles and its Failure. 

We have seen that Christianity, in its outward 
aspects, consists of a series of definite and positive 
statements, constituting together a complete and 
harmonious body of doctrine. In this sense the 
word will be invariably used in the course of the 
present inquiry. I affirm nothing more about it at 
present. I neither pronounce upon its truth nor 
upon its obligation ; I only define what it is. It 
may be right to reject it altogether, or it may be 
necessary to make a selection of its doctrines, and, 
separating what we conceive to be true from what 
we conceive to be false, blend them into another 
system. I only affirm that such a system would not 
be Christianity — that Christianity which points to 
its history in the past, exercises its influence in the 
present, and claims the promises of the future. 

This being Christianity, the question is, Upon 
what authority are these doctrines taught, whence 
are they gathered, and what are their claims upon 
the acceptance and obedience of mankind ? The 



GOD'S WORD AND CHRISTIANITY. 25 

success of Christianity, if it stood alone, would not 
of itself suffice to prove its Divine authority, how- 
ever strong a presumption to that effect it might 
justify. It would remain open to dispute whether 
these alleged effects are attributable to Christianity 
or to some other cause; or, granting that they are 
its product, they might still be referred by an ob- 
jector to the effect of one or two great truths 
embodied in Christianity, rather than to the whole 
body of its teaching. To ascertain whence these 
doctrines are derived is, therefore, the next essen- 
tial step in the inquiry. The Bible, placed in the 
hands of the investigator, supplies the answer. 
Christianity is identified with the Christian Scrip- 
tures. 

This is the answer of no one section of Christen- 
dom, but of Christendom at large. Wherever Chris- 
tianity is found to flourish in its greatest activity 
and closest alliance with human liberty and civili- 
zation, the Bible is enthroned as the absolute rule 
of faith. That is the weapon of its warfare, this the 
instrument of its progress. The history of its mis- 
sions is the history of the Book. To the heathen, 
on whose darkness is poured the light of the Chris- 
tian day, its missionaries are the men of the Book. 
The Protestant divine, in constructing his scheme 
of theological belief, acknowledges no other author- 
ity ; the private Christian derives from it his daily 
strength and comfort, and listens to its teaching as 
to the voice of God. It has become the centre of a 
prodigious and ever-enlarging literature. Even sci- 
ence, in all its branches, is deeply indebted to it : 



26 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

and history, so far as it lias any fixed and certain 
chronology, derives it from this source. Such a 
thing as a Christianity without the Bible is un- 
known. Its facts and its doctrines, its triumphs in 
the past, and its hopes for the future, its power, its 
character, its existence, its very self, are all derived 
from this fountain — this issuing forth of the divine 
mind in the written revelation. 

The Bible is the source, and the only source, of 
information on Christian truth. Take away every 
thing derived from its authority, and Christianity 
would be gone. We should know nothing about it. 
Had not the Bible existed, there would have been 
no creeds to be believed, no promises to be remem- 
bered. It is exceedingly difficult even to conceive 
its absence, so inextricably has its influence become 
mixed up with the whole order and fortunes of the 
world. Our state without it would be simple hea- 
thenism, if not something worse ; for it is very doubt- 
ful whether paganism, as it actually existed, could 
have ever grown into its life, such as it was, without 
the influence of the Hebrew revelation. The world 
without the Bible would be like a globe without 
light — a firmament without a sun. 

I. There is no other source of information within 
the circle of Christianity itself. The church has no 
independent source of teaching. Neither a solitary 
fact nor a solitary truth has ever been added to the 
sum of Christian doctrine from any other quarter. 
It has been said that the church was before the 
Bible, and must, therefore, be independent of it ; 
and in one very limited sense the assertion may be 



GOD'S WOED AND CHRISTIANITY. 27 

admitted. Undoubtedly the facts of our Lord's 
life, and the offer of salvation through his atoning 
death were preached before they were written in the 
New Testament Scriptures. Undoubtedly it is pos- 
sible to conceive of Christianity apart from its in- 
spired records ; but it is useless to argue about what 
might might have been. It is in vain to tax the 
brain with ingenious suppositions relative to the life 
of Christianit} 7 , if the Scriptures never had been 
written, and the preservation of its doctrines had 
been intrusted to oral teaching alone. Such theo- 
ries are valuable to the opponent of Christianity, 
because they enable him to lose sight of the case as 
it is, in a cloud of ingenious theories ; but they 
should be rigidly watched, and most carefully 
avoided by the advocate of Christianity. What 
God might have done is a question for himself 
"What he has done is the only question for us. 
Looking from the stand-point of our own times and 
our own circumstances, our sole and only knowl- 
edge of Christian facts and Christian doctrines is 
dependent on the Christian Scriptures. 

The facts are few and simple. For a short period 
after the day of Pentecost the gospel was extended 
by oral preaching. But even during this period it 
was a preaching constantly referred back, as we see 
in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles, to 
the prior authority of the Scriptures. The design 
of God in perpetuating the revelation of his will 
through the permanent form of written documents 
instead of by word of mouth, had undoubted refer- 
ence to considerations as powerful, in the times 



28 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

after Christ, as in the times before. We find, ac- 
cordingly, the same method to have been adopted 
by the apostles under the New Testament dispensa- 
tion as by the prophets under the Old. The gospel 
of St. Matthew, the earliest of the New Testament 
books, has been ascribed to dates varying from one 
year to fifteen years after the ascension. The Reve- 
lation of St. John, the latest of the New Testament 
Scriptures, is by some referred to a date as early as 
a. d. 60, and by no critics to a later date than a. d. 96. 
Within the lifetime, therefore, of the last survivor 
of the apostles, the canon of the New Testament 
was finally completed. The oral teaching of living 
men passed away, and was succeeded by the teach- 
ing of authoritative Scriptures. 

How completely these Scriptures stand alone as 
the sole fountains of revealed truth will be seen 
from a brief statement of the facts. The caution 
must be continually borne in mind, that we can only 
deal with the case as it is, not as we can conceive 
that it might have been. The number of believers 
was very large at the close of the apostolic period, 
and conceivably many writers, besides the inspired 
authors of the New Testament, might have written 
on the events and doctrines of Christianity. But as 
a matter of fact, we have no such sources of infor- 
mation. Christian books of the same antiquity as 
the canonical Scriptures lie within a very narrow 
limit. All that we possess are an epistle of doubt- 
ful genuineness, ascribed to Barnabas, the compan- 
ion of St. Paul ; part of a letter supposed to have 
been written by Clement, bishop of Rome ; the 



GOD'S WORD AND CHRISTIANITY. 29 

" Shepherd of Hernias," a work, like the letter of 
Barnabas, of disputed authority ; the Seven Epistles 
attributed to Ignatius, a. d. 70 ; and a letter of Pol- 
ycarp, bishop of Smyrna, A. D. 108. These are the 
sole extant remains of the Christian literature of 
the apostolic period. A broad gulf of time, as well 
as of character and position, separates all the other 
Christian fathers from the inspired writers of the 
New Testament. 

These apostolic fathers, as the name signifies, 
lived during the first century, when the memory of 
Christ himself must have been fresh, and his divine 
voice, as it were, still thrilled upon the ears of men ; 
when, consequently, a large amount of oral informa- 
tion, relative to him, must still have survived. They 
were acquainted with the apostles, and are said to 
have conversed with them. Yet, standing in this 
immediate contact with the sacred writers, they 
never professed to be themselves independent teach- 
ers ; but both by direct statement, and still more by 
free reference and quotation, refer back to the au- 
thority of the Scriptures as their rule of faith. With 
exceptions equally slight and uncertain, not the word 
spoken, but the word written, was their professed 
guide and authority. Their writings, consequently, 
are only reflected copies of the Scriptures, and 
derive their teaching from the Scriptures they 
reflect. 

The later Christian writers followed in their 
footsteps. As they lived and died they were but 
links in one successive chain — the first link of which 
rested on the written Word. If those who lived 



20 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

nearest the times when the New Testament canon 
was closed claimed to have, and had, no authority 
beyond what they derived from Scripture, still less 
had those farther off from them. It was but a 
remoter succession from one and the same begin- 
ning. Could it be conceived, therefore, that the 
original Scriptures had been allowed to perish, and 
that their contents had been perpetuated only in the 
writings of the uninspired successors of the apos- 
tles ; even then these writings would have had no 
authority of their own, but would have possessed just 
that claim for credence which they derived from the 
original Scriptures and no more. If the Scriptures 
had not existed, neither would their writings have 
existed. The absence of the one would have inclu- 
ded equally the absence of the other ; and in the 
void thus produced we should possess no source of 
information whatever upon the subjects included 
within the range of Christian faith. 

The claims of church authority, and of a tradi- 
tion of divine truth, advanced by the church of 
Rome, constitute no exception to this principle. 
These claims are not only without evidence, but they 
are contradicted by the facts of history and exj)eri- 
ence. As a mere question of fact, no consentane- 
ous and universal tradition of truth does exist, or 
has ever existed. But, putting this out of the ques- 
tion, the claim does not invalidate the fact that the 
Christian Scriptures furnish our exclusive source of 
information on the subject of Christianity; for the 
church of Home rests it on the authority of Scrip- 
ture, however falsely our Lord's words may be 



GODS WORD AND CHRISTIANITY. 31 

alleged for tins purpose. If the Christian writers 
could not have existed without the Christian Scrip- 
tures, neither could Romish perversions have ex- 
isted, since in the absence of the written Word there 
would have been nothing to pervert. I take the 
facts simply as they stand. As the case is, the ab- 
sence of the written "Word would have involved 
equally the absence of the false gloss, as well as of 
the truthful interpretation. There is, therefore, no 
other source of information on divine things within 
the circle of Christianity itself than the Christian 
Scriptures. 

II. There is no other source of information out- 
side the circle of Christianity. Let it be supposed 
that the Lord Jesus Christ lived, suffered, taught, 
and^died; and that the apostles carried on the 
preaching of the gospel after his death ; that all 
the facts of the New Testament history up to the 
day of Pentecost took place as they are recorded, 
but that no written Scriptures, and consequently, 
no patristic writings, founded on those Scriptures, 
survived. Let us suppose that this being the case, 
some of ourselves, nineteen hundred years after- 
wards, wished to inquire into the facts of Christ's 
life, just as we may inquire into the life of Julius 
Caesar, or any other hero of antiquity, what authen- 
tic sources of information would be open for such 
an inquiry? The answer is, "Literally none." Were 
we confined to a knowledge of such facts relative 
to the person and work of our Lord, as profane 
history is able to supply, his nationality and his 
death would be nearly the whole of our information. 



32 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

We cannot even say that the history of the church 
of Christ would, nevertheless, have continued to 
witness to his person and his doctrine, because this 
involves the assumption that the church would have 
flourished and triumphed all the same, if no author- 
itative records of his life and doctrine had been 
given. So far as can be judged, experience would 
directly disprove such an assumption. As a matter 
of fact, Christianity and the Christian Scriptures 
lived and triumphed together, and so far as we 
know, were never separated. Secular history might 
possibly have recorded the result of the apostolic 
labors, as it has recorded other temporary outbursts 
of human enterprise and enthusiasm; just as Taci- 
tus has left on record the historical peculiarity of 
the Jews as they appeared to a heathen historian, 
and just as the letter of Pliny to TrcSjan has left on 
record the picture of Christianity and Christians as 
they appeared to a heathen philosopher ; but this 
would have been all. A few distorted lineaments 
would, have represented all the world could have 
known of the glorious Jesus of Nazareth, and of 
the sublime doctrines that he preached. 

One other supposition only remains to be con- 
sidered. Let it be supposed that neither Christ 
nor Christianity had existed, is there any other 
source whence mankind could have derived a knowl- 
edge of the lofty and animating doctrines relative 
to God and man contained in the Christian Bible, 
and constituting the substance of the Christian rev- 
elation? Should we know any thing of a personal 
God, his attributes of wisdom, love, and justice, or 



/ 



GOD'S WORD AND CHRISTIANITY. 33 

his moral government over the world ; any thing of 
the past history of human nature, the immortality 
of the soul and the resurrection of the body ; any 
thing of a man's justification before God ; of the 
eternal distinctions of right and wrong ; or of the 
relative and social duties between man and man ? 
To take away these truths would be the same calam- 
ity to our moral life as it would be to our physical 
being were the sun extinguished in the midst of the 
heavens. Yet the history of pagan philosophy 
proves that we are entirely indebted for them to 
Christianity and the Christian Scriptures. This 
philosophy was already in its decline at the begin- 
ning of the Christian era, and profane history con- 
tains nothing more pathetic than its plaintive con- 
fession of its own absolute vanity. 

The highest attainments of heathenism never 
exceeded- a system of guesses. It was fertile in 
doubts; barren of fixed conclusions. Common 
principles, it had none ; ascertained truth univer- 
sally accepted, it had none; acknowledged creed, 
it had none. It was a thing many-shaped and 
many-colored, fickle and inconstant as the clouds 
across the summer sky. What one thinker suggest- 
ed another thinker denied. It sometimes guessed 
what might be ; it could never say what was. In 
its best and highest form, attained under Socrates 
and Plato, it caught some dim outlines of great 
truths; but could never give them definite form, 
frame them into intelligible truths, nor invest them 
with power over the intellect, or authority over the 
conscience. 

2* 



34 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

These guesses amounted, moreover, to very little 
solution of the great and pressing problems of hu- 
man life and death. Was there a God at all ? If 
so, was he a personal Being, or a universal all-per- 
vading substance ? Did he take notice of human 
affairs as the moral governor of the world ; or did 
he repose idly in the abstract contemplation of 
his own glory? Was it an intellectual will or a 
blind fate whereby human affairs were ordered? 
Is there any other law for man than the instincts 
of his own nature ? Has he a soul ? and what will 
become of it at death ? Is there another life ? and 
what will be its character? Is there such a thing 
as truth ? and if so, is every thing truth, or nothing 
truth ? These are questions pressing so closely on 
the conscience, and brought so intimately into con- 
tact with the heart that some definite answer to 
them is necessary for happiness. Without some 
clear knowledge of them there can be neither secu- 
rity for life nor peace for death. Yet these vital 
questions heathenism left unsolved, and was as in- 
competent to solve them as the human hand is to 
bind the winds and change the ordinances of the 
sky. 

We do not adequately appreciate what we owe 
to the Christian Scriptures, or what we should lose 
by their absence. Take them away, or destroy their 
authority, and we are absolutely ignorant on all 
these subjects. We should neither know what we 
ourselves are, nor what God is ; neither understand 
the meaning of life, nor the significance of death. 
The moral and spiritual darkness of mankind 



GOD'S WORD AND CHRISTIANITY. 35 

would be as thick and absolute nineteen centuries 
after Christ as it was seven hundred years before 
Christ, when "darkness covered the earth, and 
gross darkness the people." Isaiah 60 : 2. 

Hence the inquiry on which we suppose our- 
selves to have entered has issued in one definite 
conclusion, one firm and solid link in the chain of 
truth — the Christianity of the historical past is 
identified with the Christian Scriptures. As a 
matter of fact, it has been identified with them 
throughout. As a matter of theory we are un- 
able to conceive what would have been the pres- 
ent condition of the world had the two been 
separated. For our present purposes the separa- 
tion may therefore be considered as inconceiv- 
able. Dealing with the case as it is, all our 
knowledge of the faith is derived from this source, 
and from this source only. Christianity and the 
Christian Scriptures have ever stood together in 
the past, and for all that we can see, they must to- 
gether stand or together fall in the future. 



36 GODS WOKD WRITTEN. 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHRISTIAN SCRIP- 
TURES. 

The Authority of the Scriptures as a Revelation from God— Its 
Threefold Grounds : I. The Inspired Character of their Au- 
thors, and the Scriptural Teaching on the Nature and Limits 
of their Commission — No other "Writings of Inspired Men ex- 
tant — II. The Structural Unity of the Whole Collection of 
Sacred Books and its Producing Cause — III. The Sublimity and 
Superhuman Character of its Contents. 

In prosecuting an inquiry into tlic character of 
God's word written, every conclusion gained must 
be accepted as a settled principle, and as the basis 
of fresh conclusions. To go back and undo what 
has been done would make all definite result im- 
possible. All our processes of thinking depend 
upon a number of conclusions, each one of which 
depends upon the one preceding it, like consecutive 
links of a chain. We must not disturb the founda- 
tions on account of any difficulty in the superstruc- 
ture. Each link in the series cannot be too care- 
fully tested, or too clearly understood. But once 
accepted, it must not be called into further question, 
but must be adopted as affording a firm hold for 
further progress. 

The considerations presented in the preceding 
chapter prove the authority of Christianity to be 
identical with the authority of the Christian Scrip- 
tures, inasmuch as these records constitute our only 



GROUNDS OF ITS AUTHORITY. 37 

source of information. Had they not existed, or 
existing, were their credibility now destroyed, we 
should find ourselves in almost absolute ignorance 
on all points relative to Christ and to his teaching. 

This conclusion rests on a consideration of the 
facts of the case as they are, and not as they might 
conceivably have been. This caution cannot be 
too frequently reiterated, or too rigidly maintained. 
The facts of Christianity are clearly distinct from 
its records. The events themselves are different 
from our knowledge of the events. The work of 
Christ might have been completed in his life, death, 
and resurrection; his gospel might have been 
preached by the apostles, and been accepted by the 
world although no authoritative records had been 
given. An ingenious fancy might occupy itself with 
an imaginary history of Christianity under such 
circumstances. But a mental exercise of this kind 
can have no weight in a practical inquiry after 
truth, because this inquiry must deal with things 
as they are; and under the actual facts of the case 
the progress of Christianity has never been distinct 
from its authoritative records, but has been bound 
up with them in such a way that if the records had 
been absent all our knowledge of Christianity would 
have been absent likewise. 

It is, for instance, conceivable in the nature of 
things that the knowledge of Christ and of his doc- 
trine, as it existed during the lifetime of the com- 
panions and witnesses of his ministry, might have 
been perpetuated in a series of uninspired compo- 
sitions linked in point of time to the New Testa- 



38 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

merit writings, but independent of them for their 
authority. These conceivable writings might have 
derived their information on points of fact and doc- 
trine from the oral tradition of the living church, 
and not from the inspired writings of the apostles. 
This is conceivable ; but in point of fact it is not 
the case. No such writings exist. The earliest 
compositions of the primitive church are not inde- 
pendent witnesses, but witnesses dependent on the 
inspired writings, and consistently referring back 
to them. It is useless therefore to argue upon a 
theory devoid of correspondence with the actual 
facts of the case. 

Or again, it is conceivable that the great Head 
of the church might have provided a succession of 
inspired men to perpetuate the oral teaching of the 
church, and have authenticated their inspiration by 
extraordinary signs and miracles. But this is not 
the case. Inspired men, attested by their posses- 
sion of the powers of the world to come, have ceased 
to exist ; and it is not only useless, but mischievous, 
to distract attention from the facts as they are, in 
order to fix it on the facts as they might have been, 
but are not. 

Or again, it is conceivable that God might have 
laid up the gift of infallibility in his church, and 
constituted the succession of her ministry into an 
authoritative instructor in all truth, qualified to 
pronounce what is and what is not true. But God 
has not done this. For centuries after Christ, no 
whisper of any such claim was heard. "When the 
claim was subsequently made, it was based on the 



GROUNDS OF ITS AUTHORITY. 39 

promises of the written word, and consequently 
could never have been made if the word had not 
existed. As a further matter of historical fact, the 
earthly church has erred repeatedly. The church 
of Rome, the only branch claiming to possess an 
oral tradition of truth, has contradicted herself over 
and over again; and no authority can make two 
contradictory statements to be equally true. As a 
matter of fact, therefore, God has not adopted such 
a mode of preserving truth ; and as we cannot im- 
pose conditions on God, it cannot be right to argue 
upon what God has not done, instead of what he 
has done. 

In the same way, God could have established, 
maintained, and propagated Christianity without 
the use of inspired writings at all. Had he done 
so, it would have been our duty to accept such evi- 
dences of truth as he might have been pleased to 
provide. But God has acted differently. As the 
fact actually stands, we have nowhere and in no 
form any tradition of Christian truth independent 
of its inspired documents. All the knowledge of 
the church has been derived from this source ; and 
no mere extension of an indefinite series of teachers 
can change the foundation on which their teaching- 
rests. Let the links in the chain be ten or ten thou- 
sand, the original authority is the same. Divine 
Providence has so ordered matters, that we possess 
no independent and coordinate sources of informa- 
tion. From the moment of the completion of the 
canon, the Bible has ever stood, and still stands, 
alone. No authentic documents survive which do 



40 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

not refer their own authority to this source. Either 
; we must accept the knowledge of Christianity we 
gain from it, or we must be content to be without 
any knowledge of Christianity at all. In the words 
already used, Christianity is identified with the 
Christian Scriptures. 

This conclusion may be used in two ways. Either 
a man may argue that Christianity is true, and that 
therefore the Bible must be true ; and such an argu- 
ment, although very insufficient, would carry with 
it a great presumption in its favor. Or a man may 
argue from the Bible to Christianity ; and if he be 
an opponent, he may say that the Bible is not true, 
and therefore Christianity cannot be true. Either 
mode of arguing, however, involves inquiry into the 
character of the Christian Scriptures. In what 
aspect do they claim to be regarded, and what au- 
thority is there for the claim ? The church univer- 
sal more or less explicitly gives the answer to the 
first question when she declares her belief that the 
Scriptures are the word of God. What is the full 
meaning of the expression "word of God," will 
come to be considered hereafter. The first thing- 
is to examiue the general right of Scripture to such 
an appellation. By this means alone shall we ascer- 
tain how far the assertion sometimes made is true, 
that the authority of Scripture is independent of 
the ques tion of its inspiration. 

The evidences for its authority are more or less 
familiar to every Christian. They constitute a 
necessary stage of the inquiry to which this work 
is directed, but a preliminary stage only. For the 



GROUNDS OF ITS AUTHORITY. 41 

full statement of them the reader is referred to 
books on the evidences; such, for instance, as the 
excellent work of Bishop Mcllvaine. A slight 
sketch only of the argument can be given in this 
place ; but it is essential that its outline should be 
borne in mind, or else the conditions of the ques- 
tion cannot be properly appreciated. 

I. The Scriptures are accepted as authoritative 
because they are the composition of inspired men. 
These words are apparently very simple; yet, in 
relation to our present inquiry, almost every one of 
them requires explanation. A difficulty meets us on 
the threshold which cannot satisfactorily be passed 
over ; for how do we know that the books of Scrip- 
ture were written by inspired men, except from 
Scripture itself? But at the present stage Scrip- 
ture cannot be brought as a witness, because the 
character of Scripture, and the amount of authority 
more or less due to it, is the very question under 
inquiry. "We must first show that it is the produc- 
tion of inspired men, before it can be accepted as 
a decisive witness. The proof must be found some- 
where outside Scripture. Yet if we have no source 
of information upon the facts and doctrines of Chris- 
tianity except the Christian Scriptures, and the 
Christian Scriptures cannot be called to bear wit- 
ness to the inspired character of their own authors, 
where is the proof to be found? The difficulty is 
apparently perplexing, but admits of a very simple 
answer. It resolves itself into a mere question of 
historical credibility. For the sake of clearness, I 
take the case of the New Testament Scriptures only. 



42 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

We discard for the time all notions about the 
divine authority of these writings, all questions rel- 
ative to their religious character and credibility. 
We take them simply as a collection of ancient 
books, and submit them to precisely the same pro- 
cess of examination to which all other literature is 
submitted. What is the time when these books 
were written, and who were their authors ? The 
existence of the books at the present moment, what- 
ever may be thought of their character, is a fact of 
common experience, to be doubted by none but a 
madman. It is equally certain that their existence 
in their present collected form can be traced back- 
wards as a matter of fact to within a period of two 
hundred years after Christ, and separate books 
more than a hundred years earlier, even to the life- 
time of the companions of the apostles. In alleg- 
ing this antiquity for these writings, we rest upon 
the testimony of enemies as well as of friends — on 
Celsus, Julian, and Porphyry, as well as on Justin 
Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, and Jerome. The same 
testimony affirms that they constituted at that 
period, as at the present, the sacred books of the 
Christians. This fact proves them to have been 
accepted as the undoubted productions of their 
reputed authors by those who enjoyed personal 
acquaintance with them, and lived at the times and 
places when and where the facts recorded in them 
took place. 

These are the undeniable facts of the case, and 
we proceed to decide from them on the authenticity 
of the books, just as we decide from evidence of 



GROUNDS OF ITS AUTHORITY. 43 

exactly the same kind, although much weaker in 
degree, on the authenticity of other old books. Is 
it possible that men nearly contemporaneous with 
the apostles could have been mistaken on the gen- 
uineness and authenticity of these books? For 
instance, could they have believed the fourteen 
epistles ascribed to St. Paul to have been really his 
composition, had the fact been otherwise? Is it 
possible that the church at Corinth can have be- 
lieved themselves to be in possession of a letter 
from St. Paul, attested by his own signature, if it 
was not the case? That letter professed to come 
from one who was personally acquainted with them, 
and to refer to matters lying equally within the 
knowledge of the writer and of the persons ad- 
dressed. Is it possible that such a letter should 
ever have been accepted as the genuine composi- 
tion of St. Paul, if no such man had ever been at 
Corinth, if no such events had happened within 
their knowledge ? 

What is true of the Corinthians is equally true 
of the Eomans, Galatians, Colossians, Philippians, 
Thessalonians. The autograph letters addressed 
to these churches are asserted to have been extant, 
and open to the examination of all men in the time 
of Tertullian. I do not say a word at present about 
the inspired character of these books, or the nature 
of their contents. I only note that the letters of 
St. Paul, such as we have them now, were in exist- 
ence immediately after the times of St. Paul, and 
were accepted as his genuine writings by his con- 
temporaries and their immediate successors in the 



44 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

churches he is asserted to have founded. It is on 
testimony of this kind that we accept the genuine- 
ness and authenticity of all ancient books. In re- 
gard to the apostolic writings, the witnesses arc so 
much more numerous than they are in regard to 
any secular writings, that if we refuse to accept the 
testimony in their case, we are much more com- 
pelled to reject it in all other cases. If the cur- 
rency obtained by the Pauline epistles so shortly 
after the lifetime of St. Paul be no proof of their 
being really his epistles, then we have no proof of 
the authorship of any portion of ancient literature. 
Once let it be admitted that these old books are 
the genuine and authentic letters of their reputed 
author, and we have an independent fact from 
which step by step the historical credibility of the 
entire gospel history can be deduced. 

For then such a man as St. Paul really lived, 
really exercised an apostleship, really founded 
churches, really preached Christ, really wrought 
miracles in attestation of his authority. Then the 
facts he preached relative to the life, actions, suffer- 
ings, death, and resurrection of Christ must have 
been true; for if they were not true, the apostle 
who preached them could never have been believed. 
Then was Paul himself but one of a company of 
apostolic men, inspired like himself, and like him- 
self, proving their commission as inspired teachers 
by signs and wonders and miracles. 

In short, the facts of Christianity are so linked 
to each other, that if we can prove any one part of 
the series, the truth of all the rest must be admit- 



GROUNDS OF ITS AUTHORITY. 45 

ted likewise. The comparative anatomist, when he 
has found one bone of an animal, can argue from 
that one conclusively for the existence of all the 
others necessary to the complete animal, even 
although he should not actually discover them. 
He might not be able to determine certainly all the 
particulars relating to them in the absence of the. 
bones themselves, but he can argue certainly for 
their existence. In the same way, one independent 
fact relative to the Christian Scriptures must in- 
volve the truth of many other facts. We find this 
one fact in the existence of the books themselves, 
and their current acceptation in the earliest times 
of the Christian church, proved, as we may prove 
any other historical fact, by the testimony of con- 
current witnesses. 

But what is true of the writings of St. Paul is 
equally true of the other New Testament writers — 
of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Jude, and 
James. In each case the existence of the old books, 
and their general currency as genuine productions, 
are the simple facts of ordinary history, ascertained 
by an easy train of reasoning, wholly independent 
of their religious character and inspired authority. 
Each one of these facts may be made singly the 
proof of many other associated facts. The result 
of them altogether goes far to construct the whole 
fabric of New Testament history and doctrine. They 
constitute an independent testimony to this truth, 
at all events, that the Scriptural books were written 
by miraculously endowed men. 

This is the first reason, therefore, for which the 



46 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

/ Christian Scriptures are accepted as authoritative ; 
) that they are the productions of men authorized to 
S teach, and themselves specially instructed for this 
f purpose. Their appointment was not made by man, 
but by God. When an earthly messenger conveys 
a communication of importance, he may justly be 
asked for the credentials of his commission, and 
such as are the credentials, such will be the author- 
ity under which he acts. No credentials from a 
lower authority could authenticate a message pro- 
fessing to come immediately from a monarch. A 
monarch's commission can only be authenticated 
by a monarch's sanction. It is equally true, on the 
other side, that if a messenger brings credentials 
from a monarch, he is justified in claiming a mon- 
arch's authority for his commission. The writers 
of the sacred books belonged to a company of men 
claiming a special commission to teach mankind, 
and referring this commission to the immediate will 
of God himself. In proof of the Divine authority 
given to them, they raised the dead, healed the sick, 
made the blind to see and the lame to walk, and 
even conferred these extraordinary powers upon 
others by the laying on of their hands. Such works 
lie beyond the sphere of any unassisted human pow- 
ers. The miraculous can only be wrought by God, 
because the incapacity of man to do it is the ele- 
ment winch makes it miraculous. The miracles of 
the apostolic men were their credentials, open and 
visible to all men. The credentials were of God; 
therefore the commission attested by them was of 
God likewise. 



GROUNDS OF ITS AUTHORITY. 47 

The commission to teach confers authority on 
the teaching ; but this authority does not extend 
beyond the purpose contemplated in the gift of it. 
When an earthly ambassador presents the creden- 
tials of his commission, he represents the monarch 
by whom he is appointed in those acts specified in 
his commission, but in no others. Because a man 
is authorized to negotiate a treaty, he is not there- 
fore authorized to sell a province or to confer an 
estate. The dignity of his ambassadorship is at- 
tached indeed to his person, but its authority is not 
attached to all his acts, but only to acts done in 
accordance with and in virtue of his instruction. 
He maybe a skilful diplomatist, and furnished with 
every necessary information for his guidance; but 
he may also be, at the same time, an immoral man 
in his private life, venal, false, profligate. The pri- 
vate sins of the man would not invalidate the acts 
of the ambassador. It would be absurd to call 
into question the authority of his commission in his 
public acts because of mistakes committed in the 
sphere of private life. The authority of a commis- 
sion, therefore, extends so far, but so far only, as 
the purposes for which it is given. 

The sacred writers, in like manner, brought with 
them an authority to teach ; and to their teaching, 
therefore, and not absolutely to themselves, the 
authority belongs. The God who gave the creden- 
tials must have given the commission, and his 
authority attaches to the discharge of its duties. 
What they taught was not theirs, but God's ; 
ried with it not alone their weight, but the 



duties, 
s ; car- / 
weight j 



18 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

of God, who authenticated, commissioned, inspired 
them to teach it. To argue that the sacred writings 
cannot be infallibly true, because their writers made 
mistakes in their private life, is to confuse what 
they did on God's authority with what they did on 
their own authority. It is the same mistake as it 
would be to confound the private life of the man 
with the public acts of the ambassador. There is 
not a word in Scripture to assert that the sacred 
writers were secured from all mistakes in every 
thing they said and did. We are directly taught 
the very reverse, since Scripture itself makes us 
acquainted with the quarrel between Paul and Bar- 
nabas, and the open disagreement on a point of 
Christian action, not of Christian teaching, be- 
tween Paul and Peter. Paul rebuked Peter to his 
face, not for teaching that a man can be justified 
by the works of the law, but for giving way to the 
exclusive habits of the Judaizing teachers. "He 
withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which 
were of the circumcision." Gal. 2 : 12. The inspi- 
ration of the sacred writers was not therefore abso- 
lute and universal, but strictly relative to that spe- 
cial work of communicating divine truth for which 
they w r ere commissioned. 

This limitation is frequently expressed. Thus, 
when our Lord first sent forth the twelve apostles, 
their special commission was, " As ye go, preach." 
Matt. 10 : 7. The promise of his special presence 
and help exactly followed the commission. On 
points of ordinary practice they were taught to 
exercise their own sanctified prudence: "Be ye 



GEOUNDS OF ITS AUTHORITY. 40 

therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." 
Matt. 10 : 16. But in emergencies, their words were 
to be guided by a special inspiration : " It is not 
ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which 
speaketh in you." Matt. 10 : 20. When he gave-^ 
his final commission, not to the apostles alone, but 
to his church at large, the instruction was the same, 
"Go ye, therefore, and teach." Matt. 28:19. In 
our Lord's deeply mysterious prayer to his Father, 
recorded in John 17, the same purpose is repeatedly 
affirmed : "I have given unto them the words which 
thou gavest me ;" " I have given them thy word ," 
" Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also 
which shall believe on me through their word." 
When Matthias was elected in the place of the 
traitor Judas, it was to be as "a witness :" " Thou, 
Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show 
whether of these two thou hast chosen, that he may 
take part of this ministry and apostleship." Acts 
1 : 24, 25. When St. Paul was subsequently called of 
God to be an apostle, "straightway he preached 
Christ." Acts 9:20. He declared the object of his 
own calling to be, that he "might preach him among 
the heathen." Gal. 1:16. In asserting the inde- 
pendence of his apostolical authority, his expressed 
jealousy is not for an}' assumed universal infallibil- 
ity, but solely for the gospel he preached. Of it, 
and of it onl} T , he asserts, " I neither received it of 
man, neither was T taught it, but by the revelation 
of Jesus Christ." Gal. 1:12. In writing to Timo- 
thy, he reiterates the same fact : " Whereunto I am 
appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher 



50 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

of the Gentiles." 2 Tim. 1:11. In three other pas- 
sages he uses almost the same words. In the first 
chapter of the Hebrews, the commission to teach is 
extended to the writers of the Old Testament; and 
the teaching is so immediately identified with the 
teaching of God, that the act of the one is declared 
to be the act of the other. " God, who at sundry 
1 inns and in divers manners spake in time past unto 
the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days 
spoken unto us by his Son." Heb. 1:1, 2. And, 
lastly, St. Peter asserts the same limitation in regard 
to the holy men of old : they " spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1 : 21. 

The commission given to the apostles, and the 
inspiration supplied to qualify them for their work, 
have thus ever been limited to their teaching, and 
never been extended absolutely to their persons. 
In their private lives and conduct, they were left to 
the ordinary guidance of the Holy Spirit, promised 
to all believers without distinction. Scripture does 
not contain a syllable to extend the extraordinary 
inspiration from the teaching to the persons of the 
teachers. "While they lived, it was embodied in 
their words. Since their death, it survives embod- 
ied in their writings. Had other inspired teachers 
succeeded them, then the oral teaching of the living- 
apostles would have taken precedence of the written 
teaching of the dead apostles. But since no such 
line has ever been perpetuated, and both the mirac- 
ulous inspiration and the miraculous credentials 
have ceased together in the church, the written 
teaching of the dead apostles stands alone. The 



GROUNDS OF ITS AUTHORITY. 51 

inspiration of the men is perpetuated in the wri- 
tings — the unalterable utterance of an authoritative 
revelation for all time. 

Thus St. Paul expresses himself. That inspira- 
tion primarily existed in the men inspired cannot 
be doubted; that, secondarily, it is embodied in 
their writings, is directly taught. It is the Scrip- 
ture which is " God-inspired." The words were 
written towards the close of the apostle's life. With 
the exception of the two epistles of Peter and the 
Book of the Revelation — perhaps with the further 
■exception of the Epistle of the Hebrews and the 
short letter of Jude — the canon of the New Testa- 
ment was already completed. St. Paul's earlier 
epistles had already been collected, and were so 
widely read that St. Peter, writing shortly after the 
date of the second Epistle to Timothy, could speak 
of them as familiarly known, "as also in all his epis- 
tles." He then proceeds to identify these epistles 
with the general body of the Scriptures, " which 
they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they 
do also the other Scriptures." 2 Peter 3:16. This 
occurs in a letter, not directed to one particular 
church, but to the general body of believers, " them 
that have obtained like precious faith with us." 
2 Peter 1:1. St. Paul's words to Timothy cannot 
therefore be restricted to the sacred writings of the 
Old Testament alone, but must have included the 
great mass of the New Testament writings likewise. 
He refers the authoritative teaching of the church, 
not to the men, but to their writings. The Scripture 
is "God-inspired," and is "profitable for doctrine" — 



52 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

not only profitable, but sufficient — " able to make 
the man of God perfect, thoroughly furnished unto 
all good works." 2 Tim. 3:16, 17. 

But the Scriptures are authoritative, not simply 
because they are the compositions of inspired men, 
but because they are the only existing compositions 
of inspired men. They stand therefore alone, with- 
out any rivals or companions. Whether other com- 
positions of the same body of inspired men ever 
existed, and have been lost, is a question wholly 
devoid of any practical importance. Its suggestion 
and discussion serve only to divert attention from 
the real point at issue. If it could be proved that 
these men had drawn up a formal body of truth of 
which the existing books were but a portion, there 
might arise a suspicion of incompleteness and con- 
sequent insufficiency in the surviving portions : but 
it will shortly appear that the evidence leans strongly 
in the other direction. It is enough for the present 
to rest on the fact that the books which we have are 
inspired books, and carry with them the authority 
due to the commission and supernatural gifts of 
their authors. What other books, not in existence, 
may have been written, is a matter of useless spec- 
ulation. As a matter of fact, we can only deal with 
the books we have. Their inspired character has 
been already shown, and no others exist like them. 

The care exercised by the ancient church in the 
formation of the New Testament canon, is evidenced 
by the number of spurious books rejected as not 
being the genuine writings of inspired men. Xo 
Less than thirty spurious gospels are known to have 



GROUNDS OF ITS AUTHORITY. 53 

existed, sixteen books of Acts, and five Epistles. 
Eighty books have been at various times presented 
for acceptance into the canon, and have been re- 
jected. These works have not been excluded out 
of any arbitrary decision that certain writers only 
should be accepted as inspired, but because they 
bear upon themselves the manifest proof of impos- 
ture, in anachronisms, contradictions, and absurdi- 
ties which render it impossible that they could be 
the real productions of their professed authors. 
The critical tests applied to the canonical and to 
the apocryphal books are precisely the same. The 
examination confirmatory of the claims of the one 
is destructive to the claims of the other. The ca- 
nonical books are the production of inspired men, 
and are the only writings of the kind extant. 

. rr^The Scriptures are accepted as authoritative 
because they are found to constitute in their col- 
lected form one complete and harmonious revela- 
tion. They have been termed an organic whole. 
The component parts of this one revelation display 
every conceivable variety of style, date, circumstan- 
ces, and personal peculiarity. The Bible contains 
sixty-six different books from about thirty different 
writers. Their composition extends over a period 
of fifteen hundred years. They were written one 
by one, under circumstances as widely different as 
can be conceived. Yet when brought together they 
are found to constitute one book, bridging over the 
whole course of human history, from the creation 
to the judgment and the final kingdom of the Mes- 
siah. An unbroken historical continuity pervades 



54 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

them all. Tbey are so linked together, that the 
absence of any one book of the whole would inter- 
rupt this order, and make some other portions unin- 
telligible, which, as they now stand, are intelligible 
and consistent. The same doctrinal truths relative 
to God and man are found, more or less prominently 
i aught, from the first book of the series to the last. 
These truths, moreover, are peculiar to this revela- 
tion, and stand out in sharply-defined contrast from 
all the schemes of religious belief existing in ancient 
heathenism. One consistent scheme of God's deal- 
ings towards man runs like a thread of gold through- 
out the whole, latent in the promises to the patri- 
archs, shadowed in the types and ceremonies of the 
law, predicted with ever-increasing clearness by the 
prophets, and finally accomplished in the eternal 
substance of the gospel. The progression is as 
orderly and consecutive as is the progress of the 
natural sun, as from his rising in the east he marches 
up the heavens into meridian light and glory. This 
unity in variety implies the design of an intelligent 
mind; but as no human intelligence could act over 
so vast a lapse of time, the mind can be no other 
than the mind of God. The books must therefore 
be divine in their origin, and equally divine in their 
authority. 

The conclusion thus formed is only strengthened 
by the tendencies of skeptical criticism. The whole 
course of modern thought tends to give to the scrip- 
tural books a greater variety of date and multi- 
plicity of authorship. But the more largely we 
increase the number of writers and the variety of 



GBOUNDS OF ITS AUTHOKITY. 55 

supposed sources of information, the more aston- 
ishing becomes the organic and indestructible unity 
of doctrinal teaching, historical sequence, and intel- 
ligent design pervading the whole. If this unity 
among thirty writers be so wonderful that we can 
only refer it to the over-ordering interference of 
God, it must be much more wonderful among a 
hundred, and consequently still more manifestly 
divine. 

In this particular likewise the Christian Scrip- 
tures stand alone. No other sacred books existing 
in the world exhibit either the same variety or the 
same unit}'. The religious books of the Persians, 
Hindoos, and Chinese do not contain any intelligi- 
ble or consistent scheme of faith. Comparison be- 
tween them and the Christian Bible lies beyond the 
wildest extravagance of skepticism. 

It must also be briefly noted that this harmo-") A 
nious scheme of revelation is connected throughout 
with corresponding events in human history. Its ' 
sphere is not in some imaginary cloud-land, but 
amid the actual events and transactions of the 
world. At no time has the divine revelation been 
introduced abruptly, but has filled its appropriate 
place in the orderly dealings of Providence and the 
actual wants of humanity. The whole of the Old 
Testament Scriptures are inseparably identified 
with the history of the Jewish nation, and consti- 
tute the only explanation of its past fortunes and 
present condition. The New Testament Scriptures 
are the sequel and complement of the Old, and only 
complete what would otherwise be fragmentary and 



56 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

imperfect. As the existence of the Jew establishes 
beyond a doubt the historical groundwork of the 
Old Testament Scriptures, so the existence of 
Christianity and of the Christian establishes the 
historical character of the New. 

Lastly, this unity of design, perceptible through 
the whole series of the separate scriptural books, 
supplies the appropriate answer to all useless spec- 
ulations relative to other supposed works of inspired 
writers; for if the books we have form one complete 
scheme, it is natural to suppose that they are all we 
were ever meant to have. Providence has ordered 
that these, and these alone, should be preserved; 
and divine wisdom has ordered that these should 
constitute a complete scheme of revelation. Can 
it be doubted that the one is as intentional as the 
other, and that the wisdom overruling the compo- 
sition of the books and the power preserving them 
are equally of God? 

III. ;The Christian Scriptures are accepted as 
authoritative, because their superhuman contents 
witness to their superhuman origin. This argument 
branches out into several particulars. 

(a.) The subjects treated in them lie beyond the 
possible scope of any human knowledge. This is 
true of many of the historical facts, such as the 
facts of the Creation, the Fall, and the Deluge, of 
which no human testimony can exist. It is true 
throughout of the interpositions of God in human 
affairs, and of the purposes contemplated in them, 
alike as regards the events of the past and the 
prospects of the future. The mind of God can only 






GROUNDS OF ITS AUTHORITY. 57 

be known to God himself, and can be communicated 
to others only by a revelation analogous to the ver- 
bal communications of man with man. It is true 
especially in regard to the divine nature, and the 
incomprehensible mysteries of the being of God — 
mysteries as clearly not contrary to human reason 
as they are clearly above it; for the human reason 
can have no knowledge where it has no experience. 
The contents of the Bible stand, in this respect, in 
very striking contrast to all human speculations 
relative to God. The latter are exaggerations, and 
sometimes caricatures of the nature of man himself, 
and in their intense humanness betray their earthly 
origin. The revelation of God in his word, on the 
contrary, represents his nature as wholly different 
from our present knowledge, and therefore wholly 
above our present apprehension. The history, the 
doctrines, and the morality of the Bible lie equally 
beyond the sphere of human reason; yet at the 
same time they furnish the only key to explain the 
mysteries of human life, the only hopes to supply 
the wants of human souls, the only motives and 
influences to sanctify human conduct. Nor is the 
mode of communication unworthy of the grandeur 
of the truths communicated. The sublimity, ma- 
jesty, and beauty of Scripture, and its tone of con- 
scious authority, are confessed!)- unparalleled in the 
whole circle of earthly literature. 

(b.) The miraculous element of prediction stamps 
the impress of a divine omnipotence upon the scrip- 
tural books. In virtue of the organic unity linking 
the whole series of writings together, the witness of 



58 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

prophecy to any one part of the series would suffice 
to reflect its own authority upon the rest. In truth, 
however, the thread of prediction is wonderfully 
interwoven throughout the whole. The New Testa- 
ment at large is the fulfilment of the Old. Many 
signal predictions of the ancient prophets are ful- 
filled within the knowledge of our own day, and 
their accomplishment is found to be the more exact 
and accurate, the more we know about the circum- 
stances. Egypt. Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, are as 
yet but half-deciphered pages, but every line blazes 
with its testimony to ancient inspiration. The very 
history of the world is the history of accomplished 
prophecy. The living Jew, amid all changes of 
time and circumstance still the Jew, as distinctive 
and characteristic in his dispersion among every 
nation under heaven as he was in the days of Solo- 
mon or the heroic times of the Maccabees, stands 
in the full front of the Word, its mj-sterious and 
imperishable monument. To know the future is 
the sole prerogative of Him who orders it. The 
emphatic stress laid upon this evidence in Scrip- 
ture itself is very memorable. It is the great argu- 
ment of the prophet Isaiah ; it is the topic of sub- 
lime expostulation on the part of God himself, 
"Who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it, and set 
it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient 
people? and the things that are coming, and shall 
come, let them show unto them. Fear ye not, nei- 
fcher be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, 
and have declared it ? Ye are even my witnesses." 
Isaiah 14:7, 8. Not, however, on the Old Testa- 



GROUNDS OF ITS AUTHORITY. 59 

ment alone is impressed this stamp of Omnis- 
cience. The predictions of our Lord himself, the 
warning declarations of St. Paul relative to the 
man of sin, and the whole structure of the apoca- 
lyptic vision, are full of the same prescience, and 
have already entered upon the same course of 
accomplishment. 

Thus, from three separate directions is attested 
the authority of the Scriptures. They are the 
permanent embodiment of the inspiration of their 
authors : being dead, they yet speak — yet fulfil 
their great commission as the channels of a divine 
revelation. In their collected form, the Scriptures 
bear in their very front the unity of their Author : 
the outward world, composed of ten thousand 
forces and elements, is not more manifestly one 
cosmos, nor witnesses more eloquently to the glory 
of its Creator, than the collected Scriptures are one 
book, and testify to the one Mind which has mould- 
ed after his own will such discordant and disordered 
elements into one completed revelation. The sub- 
limity of its subject-matter and the singular beauty 
of its composition, attest its higher than human 
authorship. These lines of argument present to us 
the exterior of the temple of truth. Full of praise 
and wonder, we enter into its courts; and what is 
the voice that fills them but the voice of God, pen- 
etrating and solemn as that "still small voice" 
before which the prophet of Israel veiled his face 
in his mantle as one who could not look upon God? 
The three lines of argument concur in one conclu- 
sion, blend into one ray of heavenly light, constitute 



60 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

one diadem of glory, swell into one song of praise. 
The Christian Scriptures are a revelation from 
God, and come clothed with his authority to the 
human heart and conscience. Nothing less than 
this can be admitted — nothing more or higher can 
be said. The Bible is the word of God. 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 61 



CHAPTEE IV. 

THE WHOLE SCRIPTURES ARE THE WORD OF 
GOD. 

Presumption that an Equal Authority attaches to the whole Scrip- 
tures — Difference of containing the Word of God, and being the 
Word of God — Modern Theories — The Inspired Authorship of 
the Bible belongs to all its Contents without Distinction— Its 
Historical Details as clearly comprehended within its Unity of 
Design as its Doctrinal Revelations— Connection of the De- 
tailed Parts of Scripture with its Sublime Doctrines — The 
Authority coextensive alike with the Authorship, the Structu- 
ral Unity, and the Doctrinal Revelation. 

The character of a whole must necessarily be 
the character of its component parts. Any simple 
and complete object may be taken as an illustra- 
tion — a piece of sculpture, a painting, a building, a 
machine. We may judge of one part separately 
from another part, but we cannot judge of the whole 
separately either from any or from all its parts, 
simply because the aggregate of all the parts makes 
up the whole. Take any one part away, and what 
is left ceases to be the whole. The statue and the 
painting may have many exquisitely beautiful parts, 
and yet another part may be either incorrect in 
conception or faulty in execution. The architect's 
design may exhibit features of surpassing excel- 
lence, and yet be marred by great defects : it may 
be exquisite in its details, and yet want breadth of 
effect; or it may possess dignity of outline, and yet 



G2 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

its minor parts may be disproportioned and out of 
place. The machine may exhibit great ingenuity 
of construction, and yet some practical defect may 
baffle the resources of the inventor, and render his 
ingenuity comparatively useless. There may exist 
great beauty and acknowledged merits, in spite of 
defects, and yet in every case, without exception, 
the standard of excellence attained by the whole is 
lowered by the defects of the parts. No work can 
be perfect unless all its parts are perfect ; the char- 
acter of the whole must follow the character of its 
component parts; and, on the other side, the com- 
ponent parts must partake of the character of the 
whole. Let it be said that this particular produc- 
tion of art is a perfect statue, a perfect painting, a 
perfect building, a perfect machine; and the state- 
ment involves the absence of perceptible fault in 
any and all of its parts. 

The same mode of speaking must hold good in 
regard to the word of God. What its exact char- 
acter and the amount of its authority may be, de- 
pends upon further examination. But before the 
inquirer proceeds to investigate these questions, it 
is right for him to recognize the presumptive proof 
already readied, that this character and authority, 
whatever they may be, will pervade equally the 
whole Bible, unless some specific reason can be 
alleged to the contrary. A want of attention to\ 
this preliminary probability lies at the root of any r" 
difficulties upon the question of inspiration. 

Three principal varieties of opinion are percep- 
tible in modern controversv, and contain within 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 63 

themselves many shades and degrees not calling 
for special notice. The first denies the Divine au- 
thority of the Bible, and refusing to recognize it as 
a complete book, claims the liberty of rejecting its 
particular portions at pleasure. The second accepts 
the Divine authority of the Bible, but denies that 
this authority extends equally throughout all its 
parts. The third accepts the Divine authority of 
the whole Bible, without reserve or limitation. The 
first and the last of these are consistent, because 
they attach an equivalent value to the whole and 
to its parts — the one denying the whole, and the 
other accepting it; the second is inconsistent, be- 
cause it affirms that the whole Bible is a Divine 
revelation, and yet denies that all its parts are a 
Divine revelation. The first of these opinions al- 
ready falls behind the present course of inquiry, 
since it concentrates opposition on the three rea- 
sons alleged in the last chapter, and denies with 
equal vehemence the inspired authority of the 
scriptural witers, the structural unity of their wri- 
tings, and the supernatural character of their con- 
tents. We therefore leave this class of opinion be- 
hind, although it will be indirectly touched by the 
whole course of the argument. The second variety 
of opinion accepts the three reasons above named, 
and therefore advances side by side with us to the 
further discussion of the extent of scriptural inspi- 
ration. The conclusions already stated will there- 
fore be assumed to be admitted principles, to 
which appeal may be made towards the settlement 
of the specific question, whether the inspiration of 



01 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

Scripture extends only to parts of the canonical 
books, or to the whole of them without exception. 

But a presumption in favor of its unlimited ex- 
tension already arises from the grounds of its au- 
thority. If this presumption can be clearly estab- 
lished, it will throw the weight of proof on the other 
side of the question. It will remain for those who 
accept the general authority of Scripture, but deny 
its extension to all its parts, to prove the necessity 
of the limitation, and to establish the positive evi- 
dence of it. 

The grounds of the authority of Scripture have 
been already stated to be mainly three. The argu- 
ment must follow their order, and run on the same 
/ lines. To what extent, if at all, are these three rea- 
sons applicable to the whole contents of the canoni- 
cal Scriptures? 

I. The authority of the writers clearly extends 
over the whole of their writings, unless there be 
some expressed limitation to the contrary. In its 
absence, the authority must be coextensive with the 
authorship. "We might have possessed books in 
which fragments by inspired writers may have been 
incorporated with other matter from inferior pens. 
In such a case, the authors would have been re- 
sponsible for what they wrote, and for no more. 
Where they wrote all, they are resj^onsible for all. 
Whatever authority the character of the writer 
confers, extends to every part equally of the writing 
emanating from his pen and attested by his sanc- 
tion. It is thus we judge of secular books, nnd 
thus, therefore, we ought to judge of sacred. What- 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. Go 

ever was written by St. Paul carries with it what- 
ever weight the apostolic commission and inspired 
authority of the author may be supposed to confer. 
The nature of the subject-matter does not affect 
the identity of authorship in any way. An histori- 
cal work, for instance, will necessarily contain pas- 
sages of widely different character, and which tax, 
in widely different directions and degrees, the re- 
sources of the author. On one page we read an 
eloquent exposition of the character of an age, or a 
philosophical analysis of the causes concurring in 
its production. On another page we read an array 
of details relative, for instance, to the industrial re- 
sources of some country, the nature of its revenues, 
its comparative exports and imports, or the amount 
of its warlike preparations, the number of its 
armies, or the exact extent of its available forces 
in some special crisis of its history. Passages of 
the first character will have called into play much 
higher intellectual faculties, and have taxed them 
to a much greater extent, than passages of the 
latter kind. The one demands thought, discrimi- 
nating judgment, careful generalization, and the 
exercise of the imaginative faculties ; the other re- 
quires honesty of purpose, diligence of research, 
and accuracy of statement. Yet for the purposes 
of the historian, the one class may be as absolutely 
important as the other; for if the facts were wrong, 
the conclusions founded upon them would, in all 
probability, be wrong likewise. The historian is 
therefore equally responsible for them both. Both 
classes of statement are equally the fruit of his la- 



GG GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

bor and the production of his pen ; both equally 
share the authority of his character. The confi- 
dence we repose in the accuracy of the facts is as 
great as the admiration with which we follow the 
progress of his argument ; or rather, we are much 
more dependent upon the character of the writer in 
the one case than we are in the other ; for we shall 
be less capable of ascertaining the accuracy of the 
facts than of testing the soundness of his conclu- 
sions from them. Each varying passage exhibits 
its appropriate quality in the author, and receives 
its corresponding acceptance from the reader. But 
the fact of the authorship, and whatever claim upon 
our credence may be involved in it, extends to all 
the passages alike. The claim may be great or lit- 
tle, but it extends equally to all the parts of the one 
work of the one author. 

In the same way the contents of the Bible differ 
very much in their subject-matter. Thus the Old 
Testament contains books of history, books of devo- 
tion, books of prophetic teaching. Some of the his- 
torical books are remarkable for the subordinate 
place occupied in them by the directly religious 
element ; as, for instance, the books of Joshua and 
Judges and the books of Buth and Esther. In the 
last of these, the name of God does not even occur. 
The devotional books are replete with the utter- 
ances of a personal experience which would have 
been wholly out of place in historical narratives. 
The prophetic books, professing to contain the ap- 
plication of the divine promises and threatenings to 
the religious exigencies of the times of the proph- 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 67 

ets, are distinguished by the lofty sublimity of their 
language and the grandeur of their predictions. 
The style and structure of each book necessarily 
follows the character of its subject-matter and the 
objects contemplated in its production. The asser- 
tion that all these various books may have been 
alike issued under the authority of a superintending 
and inspiring God does not contradict in the slight- 
est degree any principle of human consistency, but 
may rather be supported by many human analogies. 
For instance, the architect employs many classes of 
workmen, and many different men in each class, in 
the production of the building; through a gradu- 
ated series of subordinates, he extends the influence 
of his own mind and will throughout the whole of 
the workmen, and thus models the entire building 
into conformity with his design. The influence of 
his paramount care and authority extends as truly 
to the ordinary mason who constructs the solid 
parts of the edifice, as to the sculptor and the 
painter who contribute its ornaments. But his 
responsibility for success or failure is co-extensive 
with his authority. In the same mode, there is no 
reason why God, in planning and gradually carry- 
ing into effect the whole scheme of his revelation 
to mankind, should not have employed the narra- 
tive of the historian as well as the experience of the 
sacred poet and the genius of the prophet. Every 
part proceeding from the design of God will, there- 
fore, carry with it equally the authority of God. 

The same truth may be applied to the separate 
books of the Scripture. The books of Moses, for 



G8 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

instance, contain portions differing widely from each 
other in their subject-matter, and consequently in 
their style. Thus, within the limits of Genesis are 
comprised the sublime description of the creation 
and the pathetic narratives of the patriarchal his- 
tory on the one side, and on the other bare gene- 
alogical lists such as occur in Genesis 10 and 11. 
Similarly, Leviticus contains an enumeration of de- 
tailed laws, bearing on questions very minute and 
apparently trivial ; while Deuteronomy contains the 
last addresses from God to the people of Israel, 
through the lips of Moses, before they entered into 
the promised land. In each case the style and dic- 
tion are appropriate to the subject-matter and to the 
object contemplated in the revelation ; they exhibit 
variances in these respects precisely analogous to 
what are found in uninspired compositions. Some 
critics appear to think that the narrative of the cre- 
ation, in Genesis 1, ought to have been written with 
the terse brevity of the Toldoth Beni Noah of Gen- 
esis 10 ; or, on the contrary, that this ethnological 
statement should have been conveyed with the lofty 
simplicity and graphic vividness of the account of 
the creation. To suit their views, the enumeration 
of the legal enactments of Leviticus should either 
have exhibited the rhetorical force and rich gran- 
deur of Deuteronomy, or the prophetic warnings of 
Deuteronomy should have been couched in the cold 
and unimpassioned language of Leviticus. The 
strict naturalness with which, as the case stands, 
the language of each portion of the Pentateuch fol- 
lows the character of its subject-matter, confirms in 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 69 

the strongest manner the genuineness of the whole. 
There is no more reason why the same man may 
not have written both Leviticus and Deuteronomy, 
both Genesis 1 and Genesis 10, than there is why 
the same Homer may not have composed the list 
of ships in one book of the Iliad, and the parting 
of Hector and Andromache in another; or why 
the same Lord Macaulay may not have composed 
equally the account of the Loan Bill of December 
15, 1692, and the graphic history of the Irish rebel- 
lion in 1691, contained in the same volume, of his 
history. But if Moses was the author of these 
respective passages alike, then the weight of his 
authority, however it may be estimated, belongs in 
equal degree to them all. If one is to be believed 
because Moses wrote it, the other must be believed 
equally for the same reason. The conclusion must 
be applied to all the scriptural books. "Whatever 
inspired writers wrote carries with it the weight of 
inspired authority. 

The question is therefore a matter of fact. Are 
all the parts of the scriptural books equally the 
composition of their reputed authors? The reply 
is, that whatever weight of proof exists for ascribing 
to their authorship a part of them, exists for ascri- 
bing to their authorship the whole of them. We 
have the strongest possible reasons for believing 
that the existing books of the sacred canon are 
substantially co-extensive with the original auto- 
graphs of the Old and New Testaments. The evi- 
dence is derived from the outside, since no asser- 
tion made in the books themselves could have 






/ 



70 GOD'S WORD ^Y^vITTE^ T . 

proved it, while the amount of credit due to the 
books was the question for decision. God has so 
ordered the circumstances relative both to the Old 
and New Testaments, that no alteration of the man- 
uscripts is conceivable so long as the ordinary mo- 
tives of human action are allowed to have influenced 
past times as they influence the present. 

In regard to the Old Testament, the proof is 
supplied by the divided and scattered condition of 
the Hebrew people at the time of the Ptolemies, a 
time falling within the recognized historical period 
of the world. The most imaginative of modern 
writers will not call into question that the books 
of the Old Testament as we have them now were 
in existence at the time of the translation of the 
Septuagint, or that they were acknowledged among 
the Jews all over the world, or that they were 
regarded by them with a reverence so great that it 
ran into superstition, and may almost be regarded 
as idolatrous. Nor will it be denied that the most 
ancient portions of these sacred books, the Penta- 
teuch, are still extant in two different forms, the 
Jewish and the Samaritan ; or that these two ver- 
sions, substantially agreeing, are yet distinguished 
by characteristic peculiarities of their own ; or that 
the jealous hostility existing from the times of Itc- 
hoboam downwards between these two separated 
1 tranches of the one ancient race must have ren- 
dered collusion impossible. All modern criticism 
has found it much more convenient to ignore the 
question altogether than to suggest a reasonable 
and conceivable hypothesis how documents so 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 71 

handed down can have undergone any wilful pro- 
cess of corruption or addition. No other mode of 
proof can be conceived so free from all possible 
suspicion or partiality as this which God has actu- 
ally provided. 

It is the less necessary to enlarge on this evi- 
dence, because the substantial identity of our pres- 
ent copies with the ancient manuscripts of the Scrip- 
tures is not seriously called into question. Modern 
criticism scarcely dares to suggest more than an 
occasional interpolation on the part of the tran- \ 
scribers. The grounds on which even these inter- 
polations are asserted are ludicrously arbitrary and 
capricious. Critics have undertaken to arrange the 
original manuscripts of the Pentateuch on the au- 
thority of a critical instinct of their own ; and when 
any passage has not lent itself easily to a favorite 
hypothesis, it has been at once accused and sum- 
marily sentenced as an interpolation. Such a mode 
of argument is wholly undeserving of serious notice. 
But the probability of occasional mistakes in the 
transcription of the sacred books, and the occa- 
sional insertion of notes into the text, may be read- 
ily allowed without throwing doubt upon the fact 
that the autographs of the sacred books were sub- 
stantially identical with our existing copies, and 
contained the same admixture of historical narra- 
tive and detail with doctrinal teaching and author- 
itative prediction. 

The conclusion therefore remains, that the au- 
thority of the inspired writers extends to all that 
they wrote ; and consequently that whatever author- 



72 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

itv is affirmed for some portions of their writing is 
really claimed for the whole. The language nsed in 
one scriptural book towards other scriptural books 
confirms this conclusion. They are described by 
single names, descriptive of the whole of their con- 
tents, and which receive, from the known habit of 
speaking among the Jews, a definite application. 
Thus the five books of Moses are described under 
the single epithet, " the Law;" the sixteen prophet- 
ical books under the name " the Prophets :" " the law 
and the prophets were until John," Matt. 11 : 13. Or 
more tersely still, the Pentateuch is described by 
the single name of its reputed author, " Moses ;" 
" they have Moses and the prophets." When we 
find an independent testimony that the Jews were 
accustomed to divide the Old Testament books into 
the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa, it is 
impossible to give to these expressions any nar- 
rower signification. That the threefold Jewish di- 
vision contained the same number of books as the 
existing canon of the Old Testament, is known to us 
positively by the impartial testimony of Josephus. 

In accordance with this habit, David in his day 
applied to the books of Moses expressions of a cor- 
resj tonding kind. He refers with great frequency to 
God's law,' or God's word, or God's statutes, in pas- 
- where it is impossible to apply the expression 
t ) anyone particular passage, or any special immedi- 
ate message from God ; as, for instance, in the analogy 
drawn in Psalm 19 between the light of the natural 
sun and the influences of Scripture. The same mode 
of speaking can be traced downwards to the Xew 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 73 

Testament times. When the temple copy of the 
books of Moses was discovered in Josiah's days, it 
was described as " the book of the law," 2 Kings 22 : 8. 
Isaiah asserts the perpetuity of "the Word of the 
Lord," Isa. 11:8. Jeremiah declares its precious- 
ness : " Thy Word was unto me the joy and rejoi- 
cing of my heart," Jer. 15 :16 ; this expression imme- 
diately follows a message of judgment, so that it 
could not be of the immediate message, but of the 
general body of the promises, that the prophet 
spake. Our Lord charged it upon the Pharisees 
that they made "the Word of God" of none effect 
through their tradition, Matt. 15 : 6. St. Paul speaks 
of " Scripture," and, in a manner parallel to the lan- 
guage of David, applies what may be called corpo- 
rate epithets to it : " The Word of God is quick and 
powerful," Heb. 4 : 12. St. Peter declares it to be "the 
incorruptible seed," and identifies it with the word 
just preached, and then written by the apostles : 
" This is the word which by the gospel is preached 
unto you," 1 Pet. 1 : 25. This habitual use of single 
terms, or of nouns of number, to describe a series of 
books, supplies a strong attestation to the unity of 
their respective authorship, and their consequent 
unity of authority. 

II. Beyond the authority given to the sacred 
books by the inspiration of their authors, a further 
attestation is given them by their own structural 
unity. The historical sequence preserved through- 
out the revelation, the identity of doctrinal truth, 
and the orderly method of its exposition, can only 
be the result of intelligence. In the case of books 

Word. -j. 



74 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

ranging over such vast periods of time, and com- 
posed by so many different writers, the intelligence 
exercised can only be that of God. We have already 
seen that the contents of Scripture differ very widely 
in their subject-matter, and comprise history, biog- 
raphy, devotional poetry, prediction, and the dog- 
matic statement of doctrines at once the most varied 
and the most sublime in the world. Does this unity 
of plan include all these various parts, or rather does 
it require them for its completeness? What has 
been already said in regard to the authorship is 
true also of the unity. Whatever stamp of author- 
ity is given to the Scriptures by their internal unity 
extends so far and only so far as the unity extends. 
If the unity comprises the doctrinal portions of 
Scripture only, then to those portions only will it 
give the stamp of a Divine intelligence. But if it 
comprises the historical, biographical, and devo- 
tional likewise, and would itself be destroyed by the 
removal of any portion of the canonical books, then 
to these, without exception, does it extend the au- 
thority of a revelation schemed in the Divine mind, 
and, through the agency of human instruments, ex- 
ecuted by the Divine wisdom. 

The existence of a manifest order pervading the 
entire series of books from Genesis to Revelation 
lies upon the surface, patent to the most casual 
observation. There is not a book which does not 
contribute something to our stock of information 
relative to the ways of God with man ; not one the 
absence of which would not produce a gap in the 
continuity of our knowledge. The complete Scrip- 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 75 

tures contain an entire history of man in his rela- 
tion towards God. They take up the wondrous 
story in the eternity before time, carry it on con- 
secutively over the whole course of time, and only 
cease with the eternity after time, when the condi- 
tion of man, his moral trial over, shall again be- 
come fixed and absolute as it was before the fall. 
Throughout the whole of these ages one harmonious 
plan of redemption marches on towards its accom- 
plishment. The successive steps of the plan are 
likewise the exact gradations of the record. We are 
presented with its first beginnings in the promise of 
a Redeemer, made to man in Eden ; are invited to 
watch the calling and growth, first of the family, 
and afterwards of the nation selected to furnish its 
human instruments. We are made acquainted with 
their education, their national obligations and sins, 
their rise, greatness, decline, and fall. Amid the 
course of the history we watch the development of 
the Divine plan, and its progressive revelation as 
the times drew on for its accomplishment. We view 
its actual execution in the incarnation, life, death, 
and resurrection, of the Lord Jesus Christ. We 
watch the commencement of its outward life in the 
labors of the apostles, and the exposition of its in- 
ward life in their teaching. Lastly, we find in the 
Apocalypse a sketch of its fortunes in the world up 
to the time of our Master's predicted return, and 
the consummation all things. Throughout this con- 
nected line no one book could be omitted without 
omitting a link. Nay more, no one separate class 
of books could be omitted without leaving some 



76 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

crucial and essential point of the history unex- 
plained. 

Thus, for instance, no one of the five books of 
Moses could be destroyed without breaking the 
links of the historical narrative. If Genesis had 
been absent, we should have known nothing of the 
descent, character, and Divine election, of the people 
who were oppressed in Egypt. If Exodus had been 
omitted, the giving of the Law upon Sinai, and the 
history of the forty years' wanderings would have 
been unintelligible. Without Leviticus we should 
be ignorant of the details of the law, and, conse- 
quently, be unable to explain the phenomena of 
Jewish history, either in the past or in the present. 
If Numbers were absent, we should be without in- 
formation on the history of the forty years inter- 
vening between the Exodus and the settlement in 
Canaan. If Deuteronomy were absent, the pur- 
poses of God towards the people, the solemn alter- 
natives of reward or punishment under which they 
entered upon their mission, and the astonishing 
attestation furnished to the Divine authority of 
Scripture by the correspondence between the pres- 
ent condition of the Jewish race and the Mosaic 
predictions, would have been lost to us. If the Pen- 
tateuch had been absent altogether, we should have 
had a history without a beginning, a superstructure 
without a foundation, a narrative without a key to 
its explanation. If the books of Joshua and Judges 
had been absent, the political and religious condi- 
tion of the Jews of the days of Samuel and David 
with the striking changes accomplished since the 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 77 

settlement, would have been inexplicable. If the 
historical books from Samuel to Ezra had been 
omitted, the writings of the prophets would have 
been divorced from the occasions on which they 
were written ; and in this severance of the histori- 
cal connection the prophetic books would have been 
deprived alike of the evidence to their authority, 
and of the means of their interpretation. Lastly, if 
the historical books had existed, and the prophet- 
ical had been absent, the adaptation of the Divine 
dealings to the facts of the history, the close rela- 
tion between the two, and the full development of 
God's plan of salvation as, amid the decline of the 
earthly kingdom, the spiritual empire of the Mes- 
siah was thrown more and more into prominence, 
would all have been hidden from the world. 

In the New Testament the dependence of the 
various books upon each other is yet more con- 
spicuous. Had the gospels been absent, the facts 
of our blessed Lord's life, sufferings, and death, 
and the consequent fulfilment in them of the Old 
Testament prophecies, would have remained un- 
known. In that case, the doctrinal books would 
have so far resembled the sacred books of Persia 
and India, that they would have become specula- 
tive theories, without any firm foothold on the facts 
of actual history. How much would have been 
lost by the absence of any one of the gospels, is 
seen in the fact that the sublime portraiture of 
Christ, now possessed by the church, is composed 
of lineaments contributed by all the four evange- 
lists. The picture is complete in no one of them, 



78 GODS WORD WRITTEN. 

and yet, as gathered out of the four, does not pre- 
sent a single incongruous or superfluous feature. 
If the Acts of the Apostles had not been written, 
the mode of preaching the gospel 'adopted by the 
apostles and their contemporaries, and the nature 
of the opposition it encountered, would have been 
matters of conjectural probability, not of certain 
knowledge. Many of the allusions of the apostolic 
epistles would also have become unintelligible. If 
the Epistles had been absent, we should have been 
deprived of an authoritative explanation of the doc- 
trines of the gospel, and their relation to the wants 
of the soul and the practical necessities of life. 
Lastly, had the Book of the Revelation been ab- 
sent, and the church consequently had not pos- 
sessed its divine warning of the ceaseless conflicts 
through which Christianity should accomplish its 
work, there would have been danger of thinking 
that the gospel had failed, and of regarding the 
past with disappointment and the future with 
despair. 

Viewing the entire range of the scriptural books 
together, we see that, had any one portion of them 
been absent, the wonderful system of mutual refer- 
ence and connection now perceptible between the 
Mosaic books and the historical, the historical and 
the prophetical, the books of the Old Testament 
and the books of the New, would have become 
impossible. As the books stand, they present one 
continuous history. ^Ve are able to grasp it as a 
whole, as vividly as we can grasp the history of any 
secular people. So closely connected are all its 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 70 

parts, that the break of four hundred years between 
Malachi and Matthew serves rather to illustrate 
than to interrupt the continuity. It is also worthy 
of remark, that during this period secular history 
came into existence, and serves to throw very con- 
siderable light on the history of the dispersed tribes. 
The information thus gained in a large number of 
particulars confirms, and in no one single instance 
contradicts the statements of Scripture, but fits in 
with an equal harmony to the preceding books of 
the Old Testament, and the succeeding books of 
the New. 

But the same unity of plan traceable between 
the various canonical books can be traced likewise 
between the various parts of the same books. The 
dependence of the doctrinal teaching of the New 
Testament upon the historical facts interwoven with 
it is so transparent, that it suits my present pur- 
pose better to take an illustration of the fact from 
the more doubtful, or rather the less plaiu and pal- 
pable instances of the Old Testament. Of all the 
portions of the Scripture writings commonly alleged 
to be traditional and fragmentary, the genealogical 
lists of Genesis, Numbers, and Chronicles constitute 
the most conspicuous instances. If I may so say, 
the weakest part of the case is here. If, therefore, 
even these can be shown to fill their harmonious 
place in the structure of the whole, the same conclu- 
sion may be confidently claimed in other instances. 

To attempt to trace this connection into every 
minute detail and particular word, would not only 
be unnecessary, but preposterous; for in human 



80 GOD'S WOKL WRITTEN. 

works allowed without dispute to be the product of 
one mind and one pen, and to be pervaded by one 
intelligent purpose, no such unity can be traced. It- 
is enough to find its existence in the subordinate 
section of which particular words form a part. 

For example, the detail given by Lord Macaulay 
of the Loan Bill of December 15, 1692, has already 
been cited. . The object of the writer in noticing 
this bill is obvious. The national debt of Great 
Britain, with all the complicated interests involved 
in it, took its rise in this measure. But it would 
be impossible to trace an intelligent motive in every 
detail of the narration. Who could trace any 
important object in the statement that the duties 
levied under the act were to be kept separate from 
all other receipts, and that the rate of interest was 
to be changed in the year 1700 ? But these details 
are added for the sake of accuracy, and constitute 
the circumstantial character of the narrative. They 
fill their appropriate place as a part of the whole 
account of the bill, as the whole account of the bill 
fills in its turn its own appropriate place in the 
order of the history. The details are therefore to 
be judged not as single and isolated statements, 
but as parts of the whole. 

Just thus it is with the Scriptures. The ethno- 
logical lists, for instance, in Genesis, constitute a 
very important part of the narrative. There is a 
manifest object in roughly tracing out the divisions 
of mankind in a record where the unity of the hu- 
man race and its descent from a single pair stands 
not only as a matter of fact, but as the foundation 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 81 

fact of moral and religious truths of the highest 
importance. The lists contained in Numbers and 
Chronicles were of value to the Jews in relation 
alike to their lands of inheritance and to the descent 
of the expected Messiah. Their presence gives 
circumstantial reality to the narrative, and consti- 
tutes one of the evidences of its genuineness and 
credibility. They are closely connected with the 
genealogical lists of St. Matthew and St. Luke. 
The purpose of these latter lists in linking together 
the Old and New Testament histories, and placing 
upon the head of Jesus of Nazareth the crown of 
the predicted Messiah, lies upon the very surface of 
the narrative. But had they been preceded by no 
information of a kindred kind in the earlier Scrip- 
tures, they would have been comparatively useless. 
There would have been no means of testing their 
accuracy, in the absence of any corresponding- 
sources of information. The tribal character incor- 
porated into Jewish life and habits appears every- 
where in the historical and prophetical books of 
the Old Testament; recurs in the doctrinal argu- 
ments of the New, as, for instance, in the Epistle to 
the Hebrews ; and still colors the habits and insti- 
tutions of the historical Jew. Consequently, had 
these earlier lists been absent, broken links would 
have met us everywhere, and the practical and life- 
like characteristics of the sacred writings would 
have been absent. 

We are justified, therefore, in saying that these 
lists constitute a connected part of God's intelligent 
design in the framework of his revelation. But to 



82 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

endeavor to trace a design linking every detail to 
the comprehensive plan of the whole would be ab- 
surd. It would be absurd, for instance, to attempt 
to trace the importance to the plan of salvation of 
the detailed fact that Joktan had thirteen sons, and 
that their "dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest 
unto Sephar," Gen. 10:30; or that Gamaliel was 
the captain of the tribe of Manasseh, as recorded in 
Numb. 1 : 10 ; or that Shamed, the son of Elpaal, 
built Ono and Lod, as recorded in 1 Chron. 8 : 12. 
It is enough that they constitute parts of genealogi- 
cal lists, that these lists form part of their respec- 
tive books, and that the respective books in their 
turn form consistent parts of the whole revelation. 
But if it would be absurd to carry the proof any 
farther than this, it is at least equally absurd to 
rest objections against the unity of Scripture on our 
inability to do so. To pick out a detail such as 
those mentioned above, and then triumphantly to 
ask whether we consider this to be an instance of 
Divine inspiration, is about the same as to ask 
whether we consider Lord Macaulay to be a great 
writer of history, because he records the fact that 
the memorable law of 1692 passed its third reading 
on the twentieth day of January. Each part must 
be considered in relation to its whole. The genea- 
logical lists of Scripture, for instance, form an inte- 
gral part of the respective books where they are 
found, and these respective books form an integral 
part of the whole record. We can trace intelligent 
design in the entire record, in its component books, 
and in the genealogical information they contain; 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 83 

and this is enough. So close a connection suggests 
a strong presumption that the mind which schemed 
and framed the whole, schemed and framed the 
parts. The conclusion appears irresistible, that 
they all enter into the unity of design pervading 
the sacred books. Whatever proof of authority this 
unity of design may be admitted to carry with it, is 
coextensive with itself. If the design is everywhere, 
the authority involved in it must be everywhere 
likewise. 

III. A third reason for accepting the authority 
of Scripture as a Divine revelation rests upon the 
sublimity of its subject-matter and the superhuman 
truths it reveals. It may be admitted by us, with- 
out the slightest hesitation or reluctance, that these 
truths are found side by side with matter of a very 
different kind, and with details of an apparently 
trivial description. Many persons devoutly accept 
the Divine inspiration of the one class of passages, 
but cannot accept it in regard to the other. For 
instance, they admit that the sublime description of 
the creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, bears 
upon it the stamp of Divine authority ; but for the 
genealogical lists contained in the same book they 
can only admit a human origin. The most impor- 
tant sources of this difficulty must be left for a while, 
till the positive objections urged upon this ground 
to what is commonly known as the doctrine of ver- 
bal inspiration come to be considered. For the 
present, some general considerations only must be 
adduced in support of the assumption, that what- 
ever authority attaches to one part of Scripture 



84 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

attaches to all. It will suffice to show, in the pres- 
ent stage of the investigation, that the difference in 
the subject-matter of Scriptures constitutes no prima 
facie objection against the equable inspiration of 
the whole. 

In the first place, we must recognize the inti- 
mate relation subsisting between the doctrinal and 
the historical portions of the word. The doctrinal 
are admitted to be above human discovery in the 
nature of the truths revealed, and sublime above 
human conception in the character of God, and in 
the hopes proposed to man. But then these doc- 
trines are founded, without exception, upon histori- 
cal facts. For instance, the doctrine of the person 
of Christ depends upon the combination of the hu- 
man and Divine natures in him. The Divine na- 
ture involves the eternal generation and the self- 
existing glory of the Son of God. The human 
nature depends upon the incarnation ; and the in- 
carnation involves the human mother, and the hu- 
man home, and the human relationships, and the 
human life, with all its true ordinary sympathies 
and affections. The doctrine of the atonement de- 
pends upon the sinless holiness of our Lord's nature, 
and upon the free and undeserved character of his 
sufferings and death. Again, his sufferings and 
death involve the human agents, motives, passions, 
and acts. The same connection of the supernatural 
and the Divine with the human nature and the hu- 
man sphere of action pervades, more or less, the 
entire system of doctrine. To take the one element 
away is to take them both away. The historical 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 85 

facts are therefore interwoven inextricably with the 
doctrinal truths. Our knowledge of the one is de- 
pendent upon our knowledge of the other. If the 
doctrines are dependent upon the historical facts, 
and we are not sure that the historical facts are 
true, neither can we be sure that the doctrines are 
true. The nature of the Christian revelation and 
of the doctrines revealed necessitates an earthly 
platform and earthly associations. Hence the mi- 
nute facts of the life and sufferings of our Lord do 
not pull down to their level the associated doctrines 
of the incarnation and atonement, but the doctrines 
lift up the facts to their own height. The same re- 
mark is true of the whole series of facts recorded in 
Scripture. However minute and unimportant, they 
share the dignity and importance of the wonderful 
events ancT sublime doctrines of which they form 
the necessary conditions. 

Similar is the relation existing between the bio- 
graphical and the purely historical portions of the 
record. The accumulated biographies of the living- 
men of every age would constitute the history of 
that age, the sole difference of biography being that 
the events are traced primarily in reference to the 
character and fortunes of the individual, and only 
secondarily in reference to bodies of mankind. The 
biographies of Scripture have, indeed, a twofold 
character, and both are maintained with an admira- 
ble and undeviating consistency. On the one side, 
the private history of the individual is invariably 
presented in its relation to the whole revelation of 
the Divine purposes, and as a link in their com- 



86 GOD'S WOED WRITTEN. 

pleteness. On the other side, the private lesson is 
itself full of religious instruction : it is at once the 
illustration of some doctrinal truth, and an example 
of its practical application. Had all the Scriptural 
biographies been absent, the whole record would 
have lost its external reality, and being deprived of 
its foothold in the common sympathies and circum : 
stances of mankind, would have floated off into the 
dreamy cloudland of abstract speculation. 

Lastly, we must bear in mind the relation of the 
great to the small. The great is indeed, in human 
affairs, the accumulation of the small. We speak 
of God as flie moral Governor of the universe, and 
the conception of the great universe he governs 
helps us to form some faint conception of the great- 
ness and glory of the Governor. But what is the 
universe, but the aggregation of innumerable par- 
ticulars in one complete and harmonious system? 
This is the case with all things known to us, saving 
God himself. The self-existent Source is distin- 
guishable from all else in being "without body, 
parts, or passions." 

Not only does the great consist of the aggrega- 
tion of the little, but through the long series of 
causes and effects pervading all life the great is de- 
pendent on the little. The most trivial events are 
very often the beginnings of the mightiest results. 
The dependence of the great upon the small is, 
therefore, the invariable condition of all human 
things ; and if the connection had been absent in 
Scripture, the absence would only have served to 
isolate the revelation of God's will from all God's 



IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE BIBLE. 87 

other acts, alike in creation and in providence. We 
should then have failed to see, as we do now, the 
infinitely little as well as the infinitely great of 
God's acts; and losing sight of the minute superin- 
tendence of the world, we should equally have fail- 
ed to estimate the omnipotence of God, and to 
comprehend his omniscience and omnipresence. 

Thus it appears that the argument for the Di- 
vine authority of Scripture from the grandeur and 
sublimity of its contents is not weakened by the 
fact that all its contents are not equally grand and 
sublime, or by the association of the great in God 
with the little in man. To argue that because the 
subject-matter of different portions of the word dif- 
fers in importance it therefore differs in inspiration, 
is to confound the subject of the message with the 
author of the message. All the parts of Scripture 
are equally true and equally inspired, just as the 
insect is as much the creature of God as the star; 
but they are no more equally important than the 
insect and the star — the insect that perishes un- 
known, and the star whose destruction would dis- 
turb the complicated and delicately-balanced organ- 
ism of the universe. 

Hence on all three lines of argument — the in- 
spired character of the writers, the unity of design / 
pervading the writings, and the sublimity of their / 
subject-matter — the presumption holds good that! 
the authority due to one part of Scripture is due \ 
equally to all, because the reasons for it are equally 
applicable to all. To divide the Bible into two 
parts constantly intermingled and intersecting one 



88 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

another, and to say that the one part is divinely in- 
spired and not the other, is to lower the character 
of the whole Bible. We might retain, it is true, the 
full authority of the parts admitted to be Divine in 
one sense, but we do not retain equally the author- 
ity of the whole, because the whole contains both 
the parts supposed to be inspired and the parts 
supposed to be uninspired. The parts supposed to 
be marked with Divine infallibility, and the parts 
supposed to be marked by human fallibility, are in- 
cluded in the same revelation. Hence the charac- 
ter of the whole must be lowered, and the security 
for the truth damaged, by the rejection of any of 
its parts. The parts and the whole composed of 
them must correspond. "Whatever authority over 
human belief is claimed and assigned to one portion 
of Scripture, is equally claimed and must be equally 
assigned to all. If the Scriptures are the word of 
God, it follows that the whole Scriptures are the 
word of God. 



IT BEARS WITNESS TO ITSELF. 89 



CHAPTEK V. 

DOES SCRIPTURE BEAR WITNESS TO ITSELF ; 
AND HOW ? 

Does the Bible assert its own Authority and Infallibility ? — Various 
Answers to this Question — Cause of the Misapprehension — -Ar- 
bitrary Nature of the Proof demanded — Reasons why Reiter- 
ated Assertion of its Inspired Character should not be expect- 
ed — The True Proofs of Credibility — How afforded by the 
Inspired Writers to their Contemporaries, and by their Wri- 
tings to Ourselves — The Clear Inferences of Scripture as 
Authoritative as its Direct Assertions. 

It lias been shown, in the preceding chapter, 
that whatever claims of authority are asserted for 
one part of Scripture, are really asserted for the 
whole. This conclusion rests on the identity of in- 
spired authorship pervading the entire body of 
Scripture, the structural unity connecting the whole, 
and running undiminished through all the variations 
of its subject-matter, and the essential dependence 
of its great facts and sublime doctrines on minute 
details, historical, biographical, and genealogical. 
The express claim advanced in one specific portion 
is not confined to that individual portion, but ex- 
tends to the whole of which it forms a component 
part. In ordinary matters, the principle is accept- 
ed without dispute. The mind and authority, and 
therefore the responsibility, of the architect extend 
to every part of the building ; that of the artist, to 
every part of the painting or the sculpture ; of the 



DO GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

mechanician, to every part of the machine; of the 
author, to every part of the book. The possible 
employment of subordinate agents upon the coarser 
portions or on separate parts of the whole in no 
degree affects this responsibility, since the author- 
ity of the higher and controlling agent takes up into 
itself the action of the lower and subordinate. In 
the same way, if the Scriptures be a revelation from 
God, the authority, whatever it may be, attached to 
a Divine revelation extends to all its parts, and in- 
cludes all the subordinate agencies employed in its 
communication. 

We are now, therefore, prepared to ask to what^ 
C this authority amounts. What is the character of 
\ the Bible? what influence must be allowed to it 
upon the belief and conduct of mankind? 

r These questions cannot be determined by the- 
ory, but must be settled by an appeal to Scripture 
itself, and a careful examination alike of its facts 
and of its principles. All parties to the controversy 
agree in this. The variations of conclusion arise 
only from the adoption of different modes of con- 
ducting the inquiry. For instance, the rationalist 
considers that when he has proved the variety of 
books contained in Scripture — the diversity of their 
dates, authorship, and subject-matter — and has 
shown the probability that particular books contain 
older documents incorporated into themselves — that 
he has disproved the existence of a Divine inspira- 
tion. He forgets that there are two sides to the 
question, and that both must be taken into account. 
Arbitrarily affixing the charge of narrowness of 



IT BEARS WITNESS TO ITSELF. 91 

thought to all dogmatic assertion of scriptural au- 
thority, lie limits his own view to one class of Bib- 
lical phenomena, and to one alone. Thus he loses 
sight of the fact, that if diversity be a characteris- 
tic of Scripture in one point of view, unity is no less 
a characteristic of it in another. His process of 
breaking up the Scripture into fragments only 
strengthens the argument for the inspiration of 
Scripture. His disintegrating process leaves the 
unity just where it was before, and renders it the 
more wonderful in proportion to the variety of de- 
tails comprehended and over-ordered by the one 
superintending Mind. 

The rule of discarding all theory upon what we 
think Scripture ought to be, and confining ourselves 
to an inquiry as to what Scripture really is, cannot 
be too rigidly maintained. To take facts as they 
are, and not as they might conceivably have been, 
is a rule never to be forgotten. On this specific 
ground we have been led to the conclusions of the 
previous chapters. It has been shown that Chris- 
tianity is inseparably identified with the Chris- 
tian Scriptures, that these Scriptures contain a 
revelation from God, and that they are invested 
throughout with an equality of authority co-exten- 
sive with the identity of authorship and unity of 
structure. 

In settling the amount of this authority, we 
must neither go beyond, nor must we fall short of, 
what Scripture claims for itself. But we must take 
care that the appeal is not made in a false and one- 
sided manner. AVe must not establish any arbitrary 



92 GOD'S ^YOPvD WRITTEN. 

standard of our own, and say that Scripture ought 
to assert its own authority in one way, and in one 
way only, and that if the assertion be not made in 
this one way, we will not accept it in any other. 
The nature of the assertion and the mode of making- 
it belong to the Giver of the revelation, and our 
duty is simply to examine the facts. Whether the 
mode of assertion may be agreeable to our views or 
not is a mere matter of theory, and of no impor- 
tance. "What does Scripture assert? is the one 
practical and all-important question. 

The objection has been often made, and reiter- 
ated even to weariness, that the Scriptures contain 
no assertion of their own infallibility. How con- 
trarv the objection is to the facts of the case will 
appear shortly. Meanwhile the meaning of the 
objection must be considered, and the fallacy in- 
volved in the arbitrary demand of one particular 
Imode of proof exposed. The objector means that 
the assertion of an infallible truthfulness is not 
made in so many words. We reply to him by 
quoting passages in which the assertion is plainly 
) made, or by an immediate inference necessarily 
\ involved. For instance, we allege the words of 
David, "Thy word is true from the beginning;" 
" The testimony of the Lord is sure;" " Thy law is 
the truth." Or we refer to the language of St. Paul, 
where he declares the Scripture to be profitable for 
doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction; or to 
expressions like that of our Lord, '"The Scripture 
cannot be broken;" or to the words of St. John, in 
the concluding book of the canon, " These are the 



IT BEARS WITNESS OF ITSELF. 93 

true sayings of God." Psa. 119:160; 19:7; 119:142; 
2 Tim. "3 : 16 ; John 10 : 35 ; Key. 19 : 9. 

But the objector immediately replies, that these 
epithets are applied to certain particular portions 
of the Bible, and not to the whole Bible. For in- 
stance, the language of John refers to the declara- 
tion relative to the blessedness of the holy dead. 
Our Lord refers to the Old Testament application 
of the word " gods," and makes an appeal to men 
familiar with Old Testament language, and treating 
it with almost superstitious reverence. In the same 
way St. Paul refers to the ancient Scriptures, and 
David to the books of Moses only. 

However confidently this rejoinder may be urged, 
the conclusion reached in the previous chapter re- 
futes it. We are justified in extending the charac- 
ter claimed for one part of the Bible to all the other 
parts issued under the same sanction, contained in 
the same plan, and united as the greater and lesser 
links in the same chain of truth. 

But the objection enables us to appreciate the 
kind of proof the objector demands. If no evidence 
but immediate verbal assertion is enough, and the 
demand is to be pushed to its full limits, it would 
be necessary that each individual sentence in the 
entire Scriptures should be sealed with an asser- 
tion of its infallible truthfulness, either fully ex- 
pressed or at all events comprised in some acknowl- 
edged formula, such as the significant and oft-re- 
peated scriptural phrase, " It is written." The 
statement of such a demand suffices to show its 
absurdity, and yet nothing less could stop the loop- 



94 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

holes against possible scruples. Or if men were 
not so unreasonable as to ask for this, the objec- 
tion would at least demand some such verbal and 
reiterated claim at the beginning or the close, or 
both, of each individual book of the canon. It is 
therefore important to see that, had such a verbal 
claim existed, it would have been absolutely useless, 
and would have proved literally nothing. 

For such a verbal claim would carry with it the 
credibility due to the writer, and no more. Where 
the amount of this credibility is the point of dispute, 
as it is between the Christian and the skeptic, it 
could not be taken into account. Familiar experi- 
ence shows that we do not believe persons on their 
assertion of their own credibility. We expect some 
positive evidence of trustworthiness ; and then, but 
not till then, we believe them. Otherwise we may 
make two replies, according as we think the speaker 
to be deceiving or deceived. We may say, "I do 
not believe your statement, for I consider you to 
be an impostor ;" or we may say, " I do not doubt 
}-our own honest belief in the truth of your state- 
ment, yet I do hot believe the statement, because I 
consider you to be deceived, either by your own 
ignorance and fanaticism or by the duplicity of oth- 
ers." In either case the speaker's own assertions, 
if unsupported by evidence, would not carry with 
them a feather's weight. Thus, on one or other of 
these grounds, according to individual opinion, we 
repudiate the self-assertions of Mohammed, of Jo- 
anna Southcott, and of the prophet of the Mor- 
mons. We disbelieve them, not because they f;iil 



IT BEARS WITNESS TO ITSELT. 95 

to advance claims on our belief, but because the 
claims advanced are unsupported by evidence. 

The same mode of arguing would have been 
as applicable to the sacred as to secular writers. If 
they had been fond of reiterating their own claims, 
and had appended to every book or to every sen- 
tence of every book, the affirmation of their own 
infallible authority, not only would such assertions 
have been perfectly ineffectual to establish their 
credibility, but they would have been effectual to 
throw doubts about it. The very redundancy of \ 
claim would have awakened suspicion. Why this 1 
constant protestation, it would have been argued, 
if there did not exist some secret consciousness of 
weakness and of the absence of valid claims upon 
belief? Our Lord himself did not scruple to assert 
the vanity of claims that rest only on the words of 
the claimant : " If I bear witness of myself, ruy Avit- 
ness is not true." 

The assertion, therefore, that the scriptural wri- 
ters do not assert their own inspiration or their own 
infallibility, is only true in this sense, that they do 
not make it the subject of formal declarations to any 
great extent. For instance, we search in the other 
books in vain for assertions corresponding to the 
language used by St. John in regard to his account 
of Christ's death : " He that saw it bare record, and 
his record is true : and he knoweth that he saith 
true, that ye might believe ;" or to the declaration 
appended to his gospel: "This is the disciple which 
testifieth of these things, and wrote these things : 
and we know that his testimony is true." 1 John 



96 GODS WORD WRITTEN. 

19:35; 21:24. These passages stand alone in 
Scripture ; but we do not expect a truthful man to 
be always parading his own truthfulness. He con- 
tents himself with the delivery of his testimony, 
and falls back upon his known character for its 
credibility. 

On this principle the sacred writers evidently 
acted in their own personal ministry. They carried 
their attestation with them to the generation among 
whom they lived. The word written was in the 
first case the word spoken, and the credentials of 
the speaker consisted in his own prophetic office 
and supernatural gifts. Thus Moses was accredited 
to the Hebrews of his own day by the miracles of 
the exodus, and the forty years' sojourning in the 
wilderness. When his commission from God was 
called into question, as by Miriam, and afterwards 
by Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, direct appeal was 
made to God to show whom he had chosen, and 
the answer was given by some outward and visible 
miracle. The prophetic office of Samuel was known 
to all Israel, for " the Lord was with him, and did 
let none of his words fall to the ground." The 
commission of the later prophets was attested by 
their office in general, and special signs in particu- 
lar ; as by the prescient visions of Isaiah, the spe- 
cial deliverance of Jeremiah, the mysterious call 
of Ezekiel, and the wise interpretations of Daniel. 
Our Lord's ministry was accredited by the miracles 
which, like flashes of the indwelling Deity break- 
ing through the veil of the flesh, proved Him to 
be more than man. " The works that I do they 



IT BEAES WITNESS TO ITSELF. 97 

bear witness of me." The apostolic company ex- 
hibited the same credentials : " God bearing them 
witness both with signs and wonders, and with 
divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost." 
Heb. 2:4. To men thus divinely accredited, the 
verbal assertion of their right to teach would have 
been as unnecessary to those who recognized their 
character as it would have been useless to those 
who denied it. 

As the inspired prophets acted in their personal 
ministry, so it is natural that they should act in 
their writings. Their claims did not cease with 
their lives, or with the generation for which they 
wrote. It is perpetuated by the historical fact that 
their books have been received in the canonical 
Scriptures. This reception could not have been 
obtained unless the inspired authority of the books 
had been the subject of contemporary belief, and 
this belief can only have been founded on the cre- 
dentials attached to the living men. It could not 
have been founded on their own assertion ; for, as 
our opponents object, the formal and reiterated 
assertion is not found in their written words, and 
therefore may be concluded to have been absent 
from their spoken words. It must have been found- 
ed on their personal office and character, because 
this was the only kind of proof available, and to it 
the writers themselves consistently appeal. What- 
ever authority was due to the spoken teaching of i 
the living men is therefore perpetuated in the writ- 
ten teaching of the dead men. The personal his- 
tory and the official authority rest on the same his- 



98 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

torical evidence, and are sealed by the unbroken 
descent of their writings and their continuous posi- 
tion among the canonical Scriptures down to the 
present day. 

That this is the true account of the matter, is 
evidenced by the exceptional circumstances distin- 
guishing those books of the New Testament which 
were for a time called into question. These are 
enumerated by the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius 
as being the Epistle of James, the second Epistle 
of Peter, the second and third Epistles of John, and 
the Epistle of Jude. At the beginning of the fourth 
century the persecution of the emperor Diocletian 
against the church, and his determined effort to 
destroy the Christian Scriptures, led to a very 
searching examination of the books belonging to 
the canon. On the close of the persecution, those 
who had given up their books to be destroyed were 
called "traditores," and were excluded from the 
church. Hence it became a matter of great im- 
portance to decide what were and what were not 
inspired books. It was evidently the interest of 
persons compromised by such a denial of their 
Christian profession, and actuated more by consid- 
erations of personal safety than by the sense of 
religious duty, to limit to the utmost the number of 
books, the betrayal of which constituted a traditor, 
and Avas punished by exclusion from the church. 
The epistles above enumerated were found, on 
examination, not to be universally received as 
authoritative. But even this exception was but of 
short duration, for in the middle of the same cen- 



IT BEARS WITNESS TO ITSELF. 99 

tury the whole of our present books were enumer- 
ated by Atlianasius as belonging to the New Testa- 
ment canon. The large number of spurious books 
rejected, proves the severity of the inquiry. The 
fact that it issued in affirming the inspired charac- 
ter of all the books now received without exception, 
supplies an historical testimony of the highest value 
to their genuineness, authenticity, and credibility. 

The authority of Scripture, therefore, as a reve- 
lation from God, does not rest upon its self-asser- 
tion, but on independent credentials inherent in the 
character and office of the writers. The indirect 
assertion of such an authority pervades, however, 
as I shall proceed to show, the whole language of 
Scripture, and is ingrained into its very structure. 
What is true in regard to the general authority of 
Scripture, is specially true in regard to its inspira- 
tion and infallibility. They all rest on the same 
foundation, aud must stand or fall together. If the 
only sufficient proof consists in formal and reiter- 
ated assertion, then we must give up not only the 
plenary inspiration, but the authority of Scripture 
altogether, for no such formal and reiterated asser- 
tion exists. The fact that such assertions would 
have been worthless, had they existed, proves the 
absurdity of setting up any capricious standard. 
We must accept whatever evidence is available, 
although it should not be direct, but indirect ; not 
formal, but inferential; not couched in the shape 
of distinct propositions, but involved in its moral 
claims, its subject-matter, and its professed defects. 
The conclusions so reached, if founded on a solid 



100 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

chain of reasoning, are as much founded on facts, 
and not on theory, as they would be if every chapter 
and verse of Scripture contained the assertion of its 
own authority. They are founded on fact, because 
they rest on the statement of Scripture itself, and 
not on any human conjecture formed beforehand 
relative to what Scripture should be or should not 
be. Those who deny the authority of the Bible 
altogether as a Divine revelation, will consistently 
reject its assertions regarding itself, as they reject 
its assertions upon other matters; but those who 

1 accept it as a Divine revelation, and believe its 
teaching on other matters, must equally believe its 
teaching relative to itself. It cannot alter the case 

* in the slightest degree, whether the teaching is im- 
plied or expressed. The necessary inference carries 
the same weight as the formal assertion. 



ITS TESTIMONY TO ITSELF. 101 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE TESTIMONY OF SCKIPTURE TO ITS OWN 
CHAEACTEE. 

Testimonies of Scripture to its own Character classified — I. A 
Revelation from God as well as of God — II. Accredited with 
his Formal Authority — III. Given for the Purpose of Reli- 
gious Instruction, and Sufficient for the Purpose intended — 
IV. Provided to supply the Defects of Natural Light and 
Conscience — V. True alike in its Eecorded Facts and in its 
Revealed Doctrines, and claiming to be implicitly believed — 
VI. Unbelief in them declared to be a Sin, and deserving the 
Punishment of Sin. 

The testimony of Scripture borne to its own 
character is exceedingly copious and varied. Hav- 
ing shaken off the trammels imposed upon inquiry 
by the supposed necessity of direct and reiterated 
self-assertion, we enter upon a sphere of evidence 
so wide, that the only difficulty is to embrace the 
whole in one consistent view. For this purpose it 
is necessary to classify the statements of the sacred 
writers relative to the authority of their ow T n books. 
They may be resolved into six propositions haying 
immediate bearing on the question of inspiration. 

I. The Scriptures are a revelation from God. 
The entire mission of Moses to the Hebrew people 
was performed under this commission : " Thus shalt 
thou say unto the people of Israel : ' I Am ' hath 
sent me unto you." Exod. 3 : 14. The book of the 
Law, believed by those who accept the Diviue au- 



102 GOD'S WOttD WRITTEN. 

thority of tlie Pentateuch to be identical with the 
five books of Moses, was written by the express 
commandment of God. Exod. 24 : 4-7. We are 
taught that the lawgiver perpetuated in this written 
form not only doctrines and laws, but likewise his- 
torical facts. Exod. 17 : 14. The mantle of Moses 
descended upon Joshua. He was " full of the spirit 
of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him." 
The book called by his name opens with the asser- 
tion of this Divine commission : " The Lord spake 
unto Joshua." His last solemn charge to the peo- 
ple before his death was prefaced with the words, 
" Thus saith the Lord God of Israel." The histori- 
cal books contain no such positive affirmations; 
indeed, their form does not admit of them. Their 
contents describe God's direct dealings — the imme- 
diate interferences of his wisdom and power in the 
fortunes of his people. These books, from Judges 
to Nehemiah, are a narrative of facts. To their 
accuracy we have the direct testimony of David 
and Samuel. The seventy-eighth and one hundred 
and sixth Psalms are founded upon their narratives. 
But we have yet more specific testimony. St. Paul 
quotes the language of the Book of Kings as "the 
Scripture." 1 Kings 19:14; Bom. 11:3. A pas- 
sage from the Second Book of Samuel, 7 : 14, is 
adduced in the first chapter of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews as God's words towards his Son : " I will 
be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son." 
Heb. 1 : 5. Of Samuel himself we are told, " The 
Lord revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the 
word of the Lord." David refers his own language 



ITS TESTIMONY TO ITSELF. 103 

to the express authority of God : " The Lord said." 
" The wisdom of God was" in Solomon. The books 
of the prophets are composed almost entirely of 
direct messages from heaven. Isaiah refers his 
commission to an immediate vision of the Almighty. 
" The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the proph- 
et," and to "Ezekiel the priest." "A vision ap- 
peared" unto Daniel, and an archangel was sent to 
interpret it. Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Micah, Zepha- 
niah, Haggai, Zechariah, and -Malachi, claim to be 
divinely employed ; in the striking phrase of Jere- 
miah and Ezekiel, " the word of the Lord came to 
them." Amos and Obadiah open their prophecies 
with the solemn phrase, " Thus saith the Lord." 
To Nahum "the Lord gave commandment," and on 
Habakkuk laid the charge, " Write the vision, and 
make it plain." 

If these testimonies appear to be in any degree 
defective, the language of our Lord and his apos- 
tles supply the void. Thus our Lord quotes from 
four out of the five books of Moses, from David, 
Isaiah, Malachi, arid Zechariah, with the formula 
"It is written." St. Paul quotes in the same way 
from the other book of Moses not quoted by our 
Lord, from David, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. "The 
Prophets," as a well-known division of the Jewish 
Scriptures, are referred to as authoritative on mat- 
ters of faith. The author of the Epistle to the He- 
brews states that "God spake by the fathers;" and 
St. Peter, with a special reference to unfulfilled 
prophec}-, that "holy men of old wrote as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost." 



1(M GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

This is the attestation of our Lord aud his apos- 
tles to the authority of the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures; but what of their own authority? Our Lord 
himself, in his prayer to his Father, declares of his 
teaching in general, " I have given unto them the 
words which thou gayest me," John 17:8. So far, 
then, as the gospels contain the actual teaching of 
our Master, they are affirmed to be the words of 
God. Not only so, but the same authority is 
ascribed to the books in general containing these 
words. Our Lord's statement contains a threefold 
chain, in which each link in the descent is equally 
strong, from the Father to himself, from himself to 
his apostles, therefore from the Father to his apos- 
tles through him. Accordingly, a special promise 
of the presence of God the Holy Ghost was given to 
them : " It is not ye that speak, but the Holy 
Ghost," Mark 13 : 11. Or if these words appear to 
be limited to definite occasions, we do but turn to 
the broader promises ; such as, " The Holy Ghost, 
whom the Father will send in my name, he shall 
teach you all things, and bring all things to }~our 
remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." In 
the fulfilment of this promise, St. James did not scru- 
ple to declare, at the first council at Jerusalem, "It 
seemeth good to the Holy Ghost and to us." In a 
similar spirit, St. Paul, over and over again, refer- 
ring the gospel he preached to an immediate reve- 
lation, identifies his own words with the words of 
the Holy Ghost : " Which words we speak, not in 
the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which 
the Holy Ghost teacheth." In another striking 



ITS TESTIMONY TO ITSELF. 105 

passage St. Peter first asserts the inspiration of the 
Spirit for the ancient prophets, " Searching what or 
what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was 
in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the 
sufferings cf Christ, and the glory that should fol- 
low." Then, in the words following, he asserts the 
the same Divine influence for himself and his fel- 
low-apostles : " Unto whom it was revealed, that 
not unto themselves, but unto us, they did minister 
the things which are now reported unto you by them 
which have preached the gospel unto you with the 
Holy Ghost sent down from heaven," 1 Pet. 1 : 11, 
12. Finally, St. John declares the book of his proph- 
ecy to be " the revelation of Jesus Christ which God 
gave unto him." 

Thus, in various forms, the contents of the Scrip- 
ture are declared to be a communication from God. 
They are a revelation not only of God, but from 
God, in the truest and closest sense — in which the 
authority of a message depends not upon the char- 
acter of the messenger, but upon the character of 
him by whom he is commissioned. 

II. The Scriptures assert themselves to be ac- 
credited with the authority of God, as of a higher 
power claiming by right acceptance and obedience. 
It is conceivable that a superior authority may deal 
with an inferior in the way of condescension as a 
friend with a friend, giving advice, but neither claim- 
ing nor exercising control. It is the characteristic 
of Scripture, that it not only conies from one in- 
vested with an authority so absolute that no human 
relation can furnish a parallel, but that it is itself 



106 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

invested with this authority. It is formally enuncia- 
ted, as a proclamation from a King, who as Creator 
has a right to command creatures who, by virtue of 
their dependence, are under obligation to obey. 
Thus the books of Moses were issued as containing 
the will of an autocratic Lawgiver. The Scriptures 
laid up in the ark by the order of Moses were " the 
book of the Law." Its details of enactments are 
designated in the New Testament " the law r of the 
Lord." Ten out of sixteen of the Old Testament 
prophets use the same word "law" with reference 
to their own special communications. The terms 
"statutes" and "ordinances" carry the same force of 
an obligatory revelation, and are nearly coextensive 
in their use with the word "law." Thus David, speak- 
ing of the Scriptures extant in his day as the word of 
God, declares, " The law of the Lord is an undenled 
law .... the statutes of the Lord are right." To 
the legislative power of the Lawgiver is added the 
administrative power of the King. The very words 
" the commandments" express alike the form of au- 
thority maintained in the language, and the sanc- 
tion of authority given to the enactments. Our 
blessed Master, by his own repeated use of the word, 
placed the seal of his own witness to this character 
of revelation. Our Lord asserted it as strongly for 
his own teaching as he attributed it to the teaching 
of the fathers, " He that hath 1113- commands and 
keepeth them," John 14 : 21 ; nor did this authority 
cease with his personal ministry, but by virtue of 
his commission extended to the ministry of his apos- 
tles. " The things that I write unto you," declares 



ITS TESTIMONY TO ITSELF. 107 

St. Paul, " are the commandments of the Lord." 
" The commandment of us, the apostles of the 
Lord," is the language of St. Peter. The apostle 
of love reechoes the language, " This is his com- 
mandment;" and towards the close of the apocalyp- 
tic vision he seals up the record with the words of 
Christ in his glory, " Blessed are they that do his 
commandments." 

III. The Scriptures affirm themselves to have 
been given in the specific character of a revelation, 
and for the specific purpose of communicating a 
knowledge of salvation. Of the Old Testament wri- 
tings in general St. Paul affirms that they are prof- 
itable for "instruction in righteousness, that the 
man of God may be perfect," and that they are able 
to make " wise unto salvation." In the Epistle to 
the Corinthians he declares that the narratives of 
the Mosaic books " were written for our instruc- 
tion ;" and more generally still he teaches the Pio- 
nian Christians that " whatsoever things were writ- 
ten aforetime were written for our learning." That 
the word "whatsoever" is coextensive with the an- 
cient sacred writings, and neither exceeds nor falls 
short of them, is proved by his applying to them 
the recognized and generic name, "the Scriptures;" 
for the passage continues, " that we through pa- 
tience and comfort of the Scriptures." Our Lord 
declared, "He that believeth my word hath ever- 
lasting life." The commission to his apostles was 
to "go and teach," and the object of the teaching 
is defined in the baptismal formula to be belief in 
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The official 



108 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

titles of the apostles bear the same meaning; they 
are termed " messengers," " evangelists," " teachers," 
"prophets." Of the preaching of the gospel at 
large, first by the prophets and subsequently by 
the apostles, St. Paul affirms that it was "according 
to the commandment of the everlasting God made 
known to all nations for the obedience of faith." 

Two remarks must be interposed at this place. 
1. It is admitted that whatever God does he does 
perfectly; that is, not perfectly according to any 
arbitrary standard of our own, but perfectly accord- 
ing to the designs of his own will. What God de- 
signs to do lies beyond the competenc}' of our judg- 
ment, and can only be revealed by himself. The 
texts quoted above supply the information. The 
object is to make "wise unto salvation." Hence 
we must believe that in giving information for this 
purpose he has given information sufficient for the 
purpose. The assistance bestowed upon every cho- 
sen agent of God is specifically related to the work 
to be done, and adjusted alike in kind and in' quan- 
tity to that work. When God inspired Bezaleel 
and Aholiab "with the Spirit of God in wisdom, 
and in understanding, and in knowledge," that in- 
spiration had special reference to the workmanship 
of the tabernacle, to "make all that I have com- 
manded thee." For the purpose intended it was 
sufficient. "Bezaleel . . . made all that the Lord 
commanded Moses." But it was not an unlimited 
inspiration ; it was not, for instance, an inspiration 
to teach, but only to make. When "the Spirit of 
the Lord came mightily upon Samson," it was an 



ITS TESTIMONY TO ITSELF. 109 

inspiration for a specific purpose, as in the case of 
Bezaleel, but the purpose was different. It was de- 
clared by the angel to be that he should "deliver 
Israel out of the hand of the Philistines." It was 
adapted for this purpose, and was sufficient for it. 
"Thou hast given great deliverance into the hands 
of thy servant," was the language of Samson him- 
self. But this inspiration did not give skill in work- 
manship, as it gave to Bezaleel, but astonishing 
strength of body. It included exactly what was 
necessary for the work, but no more. In the same 
way, when "holy men of old spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost," the inspiration was 
specific to the work to be done. This work was to 
teach, and to the work of teaching their inspiration 
had strict reference. It neither gave skill in work- 
manship as to Bezaleel, nor strength of body as to 
Samson; but he gave them what the work requir- 
ed, "a mouth and wisdom." This the apostle re- 
peatedly affirmed. "We speak wisdom," "we speak 
the wisdom of God," God "abounded towards us 
in all wisdom and prudence, having made known 
unto us the mystery of his will." As the skill of 
Bezaleel was sufficient for the workmanship of the 
tabernacle, and the strength of Samson was suffi- 
cient for the deliverance of Israel, so the knowledge 
and wisdom bestowed upon the sacred writers were 
sufficient to make them "teachers of the Gentiles in 
faith and verity." 

2. The Scriptures are the only provision assert- 
ed to have been made by God for the purpose of 
making men wise unto salvation. This character is 



110 GOD'S WOHD WKITTEN. 

never affirmed of our Lord's person, or said to have 
formed the purpose and design of his incarnation, 
suffering, and death. He was not himself a revela- 
tion of God, given for the specific purpose of teach- 
ing, as the Scriptures are. 

Doubtless he did himself teach, and is the 
Prophet as well as the Priest and King of his 
church. Thus, in the synagogue of Nazareth, he 
applied to himself the language of Isaiah: "The 
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath 
anointed me to preach the gospel;" and we know 
that he fulfilled the prediction, for " all bare him 
witness, and wondered at the gracious words that 
proceeded out of his mouth." We are repeatedly 
told that he went about "preaching the gospel;" 
he was "the Word" of God, and all our knowledge 
is derived from the "Light of the world." The en- 
tire ministry of the church is derived from his au- 
thority. His ministers are "ministers of Christ," 
"messengers of Christ." "God hath in these last 
days spoken unto us by his Son." And that this 
message is identical with the gospel preached by 
the apostles, we are expressly told in the context of 
the same passage. The great salvation "began to 
be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us 
by them that heard him." In the same spirit St. 
Luke describes his gospel as being a record "of all 
that Jesus began both to do and teach until the 
day in which he was taken up." The whole of his 
personal teaching was but the beginning of a pro- 
phetic office perpetuated in the living church. 

But this teaching of our Lord is so far from 



ITS TESTIMONY TO ITSELF. Ill 

standing in contrast with the Scripture, that it is 
contained in this inspired record, and is absolutely 
unknown to us from any other source. It is an in- 
tegral portion of the sacred record, and to us has 
no existence apart from it. 

When therefore the assertion is made that the 
Scriptures are the only provision made for teach- 
ing the church, the verbal teaching of our blessed 
Lord is included, not excluded. But our Lord, 
apart from his teaching, was not in himself and in 
his life a revelation in the same sense as the Scrip- 
tures are. We are told indeed that we see the' 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; but 
it is in Jesus Christ as personated in the writ- 
ten word, "We preach not ourselves, but Christ 
Jesus the Lord. For God hath shined in our 
hearts, to give the light of the knowledge T>f the 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 2 Cor. 
4:6. Our Lord himself was the object of the gos- 
pel, its subject, its end, its everlasting theme ; but 
he was not himself the revelation of the gospel, nor, 
apart from the spoken or written word, is he ever 
so presented. His office, as prophetically described, 
was to do the Father's will, so he himself declared : 
"I came from heaven not to do mine own will, 
but the will of him that sent me." "I have fin- 
ished the work which thou gavest me to do," was 
the language of his prayer to the Father. What 
was this work his own words express : "The Son 
of man is come to seek and to save the lost;" and 
still more specifically, "The Son of man is come to 
give his life a ransom for many." Thus he is ever 



112 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

presented in the apostolic writings as " the Lamb 
of God which taketh away the sin of the world." The 
whole presentation of his person, work, and offices, 
is hereby summed up in the language of St. John : 
"We have seen and do testify that the Father sent 
the Son to be the Saviour of the world." 1 John 
4:14. 

IV. The Scriptures affirm themselves to have been 
given to supplement the light of nature, and to sup- 
ply that knowledge of God which neither the witness 
of the outward creation nor the teaching of inward 
conscience was competent to give. Thus the lan- 
guage of Moses, reechoed by St. Paul, states the pos- 
session of the Scriptures to be the grand and eleva- 
ting distinction of the Jews, making them illustrious 
over the rest of mankind " as a wise and understand- 
ing people." The benighted ignorance and moral 
corruption of the Gentiles are described in the most 
vivid language. The prophet depicts the heathen as 
sitting " in the valley of the shadow of death." The 
psalmist declares them to be ignorant of the " judg- 
ments " of God. Psa. 10 : 20 ; 147 : 20. St. Paul des- 
ignates them as " having the understanding dark- 
ened, being alienated from the life of God through 
the ignorance that is in them, because of the blind- 
ness of their heart." Again, he exhorts the Thes- 
salonians not to live " in the lust of concupiscence, 
as the Gentiles which know not God." Our Lord, 
by his description of his own office, throws into 
contrast the hopeless condition of mankind without 
him : " I am the light of the world ; he that follow- 
eth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have 



ITS TESTIMONY TO ITSELF. 113 

the light of life." John 8 : 12. The song of Zach- 
arias declares it to have been the object of the mercy 
of God " to give light to them that sit in darkness 
and in the shadow of death." St. Paul, at Athens, 
vividly describes the best condition of the Gentiles 
as that of men who " seek the Lord, if haply they 
might feel after him and find him," and then places 
the past and the present in sharp contrast : " The 
times of this ignorance God winked at, but now 
commandeth all men everywhere to repent." Acts 
17 : 30. The entire argument of the first chapter of 
the epistle to the Romans turns upon this. The 
apostle expresses his readiness to preach the gospel 
both to the Greeks and to the barbarians ; and he 
proceeds to give his reason, as if anticipating the 
modern rationalism which considers Christianity to 
have nothing to give to the heathen. He declares 
that the light of nature was in itself sufiicient to 
teach the primary truths of the eternal power and 
Godhead of the Creator, but that, nevertheless, the 
guilty ignorance of man was incapable of learning- 
even this lesson, and was without excuse ; " they 
became vain in their imaginations, and their fool- 
ish heart was darkened." 

God's word was therefore given, because God's 
works were insufficient. Hence the formal revela- 
tion made in Scripture must be clearly distinguished 
from the revelation given in nature. In a secondary 
and figurative sense, we say that outward nature 
witnesses of God, because to a thinking mind it 
points upward to its great Architect: "The heav- 
ens declare the glory of God, and the firmament 



114 GOD'S WOED WRITTEN. 

showeth his handiwork." But it is a book the les- 
sons of which depend upon men's intellectual and 
moral capabilities of learning ; and Scripture itself 
declares them to be insufficient. To argue, there- 
fore, that because mistakes and errors are made by 
man in his interpretation of God's book of nature, 
therefore God may be expected to have left fallible 
elements in his own book of revelation, is to con- 
found two things between which God himself has 
drawn the separation. Doubtless God's works are 
as perfect as God's word ; the error is not in the 
book, but in the interpreter. But it is because man 
has failed to understand the book of nature that 
God has given him the book of revelation. The 
primary object of nature cannot be properly said to 
be teaching ; but God has given revelation for this 
specific purpose of teaching, and has therefore 
made the teaching as complete as was consistent 
with his own ordained permission of man's moral 
action. The elements of error still remain, but in 
the interpreter, not in the book. Even in regard to 
the interpreter, God has reduced them to the lowest 
degree consistent with his declared purpose of hu- 
man probation. 

V. The Scriptures affirm absolute credence to 
be due to their contents, by virtue alike of the God 
from whom they come and of the evidence by which 
they are authenticated. Thus both elements are 
combined in the witness God gave to Moses when 
he came down to him "in a thick cloud" upon Sinai : 
" That the people may hear when I speak with thee, 
and may believe thee for ever." The words of Je- 



ITS TESTIMONY TO ITSELF. 115 

hoshaphat, addressed to the people during their 
solemn act of devotion in the wilderness of Tekoa, 
asserted the same claim : " Believe in the Lord 
your God, so shall ye be established ; believe his 
prophets, so shall ye prosper." Our Lord rebuked 
the want of faith in the two disciples at Emmaus : 
" O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the 
prophets have spoken." The unbelief of the Jews 
was the frequent subject of denunciation. " If ye 
believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he 
wrote of me ; but if ye believe not his writings, how 
shall ye believe my words ?" St. John twice states 
the object of his gospel to be, " that ye might be- 
lieve." St. Paul declares that "the god of this 
world hath blinded the eyes of them that believe 
not." And the angel in the Apocalypse, rejecting 
the proffered worship of the apostle, declared him- 
self to be a member of the church of God, under 
the striking epithet of " them that keep the sayings 
of this book." 

It is in strict accordance with this that the apos- 
tolic writers appeal to the Old Testament as author- 
itative upon all questions of faith : " What saith the 
Scripture ?" This appeal is made, not only to dec- 
larations of doctrine, but to narratives of facts. 
Thus our Lord refers to the order of the creation, 
to the events of the forty years' wanderings, and to 
the story of David. St. Peter refers in the same 
way to the history of the creation and of the deluge ; 
while St. Paul appeals so copiously to the facts of 
the Old Testament history as to render detailed ref- 
erences unnecessary. 



116 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

VI. The Scriptures assert their own claim to a 
believing acceptance to be so authoritative that the 
absence of it is a sin, and will be punished as a sin 
at the last day. Thus our Lord asserts the rejec- 
tion of the Old Testament to be the result of such 
a hardness of heart as to be beyond the reach of 
hope : " If they believe not Moses and the proph- 
ets, neither will they believe though one rose from 
the dead." In regard to his own teaching, he im- 
putes the unbelief of the Jews to their sinful love of 
the world : " He that rejecteth me and my words 
hath one that judgeth him. The word that I have 
spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." 
St. Peter finds in their contempt of the Scripture, 
and their wilful disbelief of God's creation of the 
world and its subsequent destruction by the deluge, 
the characteristic of the scoffers of the last daj'S. 
He first urges the authority of the Old and New 
Testament Scriptures. Of the Old, "Be mindful 
of the words that were spoken before by the holy 
prophets;" of the New, " And of the commandment 
of us, the apostles of the Lord and Saviour." In 
this immediate relation, he predicts the rise of 
"scoffers walking after their own lusts, and saying, 
"Where is the promise of his coming?" Then he 
traces their sin to disbelief of the Scriptures: "This 
they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of 
God the heavens were of old." In the close of the 
same chapter, he puts his seal alike to the canon- 
icity of the Pauline epistles and to the authority of 
the entire word : " Which they that are unlearned 
and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scrip- 



ITS TESTIMONY TO ITSELF. 117 

tores, unto their own destruction." What destruc- 
tion is intended, majr be gathered from the language 
of St. Paul : " The Lord Jesus shall be revealed 
from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire 
taking vengeance on them that .... obey not the 
gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ : who shall be pun- 
ished with everlasting destruction from the pres- 
ence of the Lord." 

These assertions might be variously stated, and ) 
largely increased in number ; but the texts quoted \ 
suffice to show how freely Scripture speaks of itself, \ 
and asserts its own authoritative character. It does } 
not deal, indeed, with direct and reiterated asser- 
tions of its Divine origin and authority, because 
such assertions would have been equally incongru- -\ 
ous and useless. But in a large variety of forms, / 
and in a great many direct passages, it assumes to S 
itself the qualities, and makes upon others the de- I 
mands, which belong to a Divine origin and author- \ 
ity, but would be utterly out of place in writings 
owning an exclusively human authorship, or tainted 
with a human fallibility. Instances of these direct 
assertions have now been given. It remains to put 
them all together, and to see what conclusion is 
necessarily involved in their accumulated and con- 
sentient testimony. 



118 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE SCRIPTURES ARE THE TRUE WORD OF 
GOD. 

Force and Meaning of these Claims— The Bible neither a Specula- 
tion, nor a Fiction, nor a Blunder, nor a Fraud — Assertion of 
Scripture of its own Absolute Veracity— This Veracity not Lim- 
ited, but Universal— The Theory that the Bible is partly True, 
partly Untrue, measured by these Claims — The Scriptures not 
only Truly the Word of God, but the True Word of God. 

It has been shown in the preceding chapter, that 
the testimony of Scripture in regard to itself may 
be reduced into six varying, but consistent asser- 
tions. These assertions must be recapitulated in 
order that, bearing them distinctly in mind, we may 
the more fully appreciate their force and combine 
their consentient testimonj'. These passages are 
independent of the direct and formal affirmations 
of positive truthfulness appended to some portions 
of the word. They supply the data for further con- 
clusions ; and these conclusions, if they can be shown 
to be necessary, will have the same authority as 
their data ; that is, they will be matters of revealed 
fact, not of human theory. 

The first assertion in the natural order of the 
argument is, that the Scriptures constitute an imme- 
diate communication from God to man. (2.) They 
are invested with the supremacy of their Divine 
Author — not speculative propositions for discus- 



THE TRUE WORD OF GOD. 119 

sion, but royal ordinances for acceptance and obe- 
dience. (3.) They are not simple statements, but 
communications immediately addressed to man, 
with the specific object of teaching him the truths 
necessary for salvation. (4.) They have avowedly 
been given to supplement such sources of informa- 
tion as were independently available from the light 
of conscience and the outward works of creation; 
because, in the estimate of God, his fallen creatures 
were incompetent to gather from them what they 
needed to know. (5.) They claim to be believed as 
" faithful sayings, and worthy of all acceptation," 
not only in those parts which deal with the sublime 
mysteries of God and of his will, but in those parts 
also which recall earthly transactions and human 
conduct. (6.) They are so authenticated as to leave 
unbelief without excuse, and to constitute it a sin 
for which God will call men into judgment, and 
which he will punish when the dead " shall come 
forth, they that have done good unto the resurrec- 
tion of life, and they that have done evil unto the 
resurrection of damnation." It has been shown 
that each of these six assertions is made of the 
entire series of the Scriptures : they sweep the 
whole course of revelation, from its beginning in 
the books of Moses to its conclusion in the vision of 
St. John. 

It is impossible to conceive any claims more sol- 
emn, any sanctions more tremendous, than these 
assertions involve. Their grandeur and dignity, 
when placed in contrast with the more familiar ob- 
jects of human life, would almost startle the mind 



120 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

into incredulity, if the testimony authenticating 
them were less ample and cogent. We are almost 
inclined to ask, "Can all this be true?" Yet they 
are as harmonious alike with God and with our- 
selves as any thing can be conceived to be. If 
there be a personal God, what more natural and 
what more blessed than the possession of his re- 
vealed will ? The Most High has not vacated his 
throne of government, nor dropped out of his mighty 
hands the reins of active power. The Lord is in 
his holy temple, and these Scriptures are the utter- 
ances of his will. The dignity of the monarch who 
speaks in them, the sublimity of their subject-mat- 
ter, the breadth of universal man included in their 
application, the tremendous interests of heaven and 
hell involved in them, the responsibility resting upon 
man if they are true, and the hopeless darkness 
brooding over him if they are not true, invest them 
with an awfulness almost oppressive, and an impor- 
tance without a parallel in all the other spheres of 
human life and action. 

Whether they are true or not in our judgment 
does not constitute the immediate subject of in- 
quiry. The present question relates to the charac- 
ter given by the revealed word to itself. It has 
been shown to assume certain characteristics, and 
the question is, what quality or qualities are neces- 
sarily involved in their assertion. It may all be 
summed up in one word ; and this word expresses 
the whole gist and substance of the controversy 
relative to the Christian Scriptures. This word is 
their truth. They assert themselves to be not only 



THE TKUE WORD OF GOD. 121 

truly the word of God, but the true word of God — 
the word of God, and therefore true. 

Into the exact nature of truth and truthfulness 
it will be necessary to look more closely in a subse- 
quent chapter. For the present, it is enough to fall 
back on the common acceptation of it. It is one of 
those words which it is alike easy to understand 
and difficult to define. Our trust, credence, confi- 
dence, assurance, rest on truth; it is the pillar 
which bears up the entire fabric of human hope, 
and round which is clustered every form of human 
action. 

Truth is asserted in contrast with unreality. 
The imagination may conjure up many an idle form 
floating in the cloudland of the fancy, but having 
no foothold on the actually existing things of life. 
Delirium and madness people the world with shapes 
which have no being save in the disordered brain. 
The dream presents to the eye and mind of the 
sleeper scenes, and acts, and persons, which actually 
affect the feelings for the time, but which/when the 
sleeper awakes and resumes the mastery of his 
mental and moral self, are found to have gone, and 
to have no reality save in the sensations excited by 
them. The inspired type of vanity is "as a dream 
when one awaketh." "A hungry man dreameth, 
and behold he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul 
is empty : a thirsty man dreameth, and behold he 
drinketh; but he awaketh, and behold he is faint.*' 
But truth abides independently of all subjective 
sensations. It is truth still, when it is forgotten as 
when it is remembered ; when it is denied as when 

GofVfi Word. (! 



122 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

it is believed; when it is accepted as when it is re- 
jected. The dream was, indeed, used by God as a 
means of communication with his prophets; but 
the reality and perpetuity of his own words are 
expressly contrasted with the idle fancies of hea- 
then dreamers. "Hearken not to dreamers," was 
warning of Jeremiah ; and Jude, warning the church 
against the foes of "the faith once delivered unto the 
saints," designates them " these filthy dreamers." 

Truth is asserted in contrast to fiction. Works 
of imagination, as they are called, do not profess to 
be the narratives of actual events accomplished un- 
der the conditions of time, place, person, and con- 
nection in which the fiction presents them, but only 
to have that kind of verisimilitude about them 
which enables them to touch the feelings and awa- 
ken the sympathies. They are the unreal reflection 
of real things ; they do not appeal- to belief, or 
claim the acceptance and authority of history. It 
has been suggested that the Bible, or at least por- 
tions of it, such as the Pentateuch, are onl} T a work 
of fiction, a kind of religious romance. A very 
strange and wild suggestion it is; since the Bible, 
instead of reflecting, as all fiction does, a real world 
outside, has revealed a new real world of its own, 
and a consentient body of such grand truth, that 
our highest human knowledge only consists of scat- 
tered rays from this sun. When we assert the Bi- 
ble to be true, we assert the contradictory of this. 
It is not a fiction — not even a fiction composed by 
God himself, like some of the parables of our Lord ; 
but it is the actual record of real things existing 



THE TRUE WORD OF GOD. 123 

either in the heavenly or in the earthly sphere. 
Thus, by the mouth of Isaiah, God repeatedly as- 
serts his own supremacy from this argument, that 
he had shown to his people "the former things" 
before "they came to pass," and that he would 
show them "things to come." Thus, St. John de- 
clares, "The things that we have seen and heard 
declare we unto you." And St. Peter expressly re- 
pudiates this suspicion of a fiction: "We have not 
followed cunningly devised fables." 

Truth is asserted in contrast to errors and mis- 
takes. These may occur in any statement consis- 
tently with the honest intention of a narrator, but 
they prove imperfect information and inaccuracy of 
statement ; they are wholly inconsistent with Divine 
attributes, and constitute the distinctive proof of 
human fallibility. It has been already shown to be 
the declared object of Scripture to correct the mis- 
takes into which man had fallen regarding God. 
St. Luke declares his own purpose in writing his 
gospel to be, that Theophilus might know " the cer- 
tainty " of the things in which he had been in- 
structed ; and the ground of the assurance was, that 
the writer himself had " a perfect understanding of 
all things." 

Truth is asserted in contrast with fraud. Fraud 
is the deception practised by wilfully representing 
circumstances to be different from what they really 
are. It involves a design to deceive. Such an ac- 
cusation was actually brought against our Master 
by the Jews of his day : " We remember that this 
deceiver said." On the other hand, the Spirit pro- 



124 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

phetically vindicated Christ's perfect truthfulness : 
" Neither was there any deceit in his mouth." The 
prophetic witness is reechoed in the apostolic de- 
scription : " Who did no sin, neither was guile found 
in his mouth." St. Paul presents the charge 
brought by the world and its contradiction, side by 
side, in a brief and startling paradox when he de- 
scribes himself and his fellow-apostles as " deceiv- 
ers and yet true." The charge of intentional de- 
ceit brought in former days against Christ and his 
apostles has been abandoned by modern skeptics 
as plainly untenable. The question yet remaining 
concerns not themselves, but their words. Could 
the authors be honest, and yet intentional fraud be 
charged upon their words ? 

Truth involves, therefore, the reality of the 
things recorded, the earnestness and gravity of the 
narration, the absence of intentional errors, and the 
freedom from intentional fraud. If any one of these 
things 'can be proved to exist in any book, the book 
cannot be true. In saying that the six characters 
claimed by Scripture for itself involve the assertion 
of truth, we say that Scripture is neither a specula- 
tion nor a fiction ; that it is as free from error in its 
details as it is above the possible suspicion of im- 
posture in the motives of its authors. There is no 
third quality between truth and untruth ; the proof 
of the one involves the exclusion of the other. If 
the Scriptures be true, there must be absent from 
them any element of unreality, or fiction, or igno- 
rance, or fraud. If they are untrue, they must be 
tainted* either with unreality, or ignorance, or fie- 



THE TRUE WORD OF GOD. 125 

tion, or fraud. Are either of these qualities con- 
sistent with the assertions of Scripture relative to 
itself? I answer unhesitatingly in the negative. 

Can we conceive that a revelation from God 
should be tainted either by ignorance or fraud? 
Can God either be supposed to make mistakes, or 
to represent things in aspects inconsistent with 
external reality? On this question, infidelity, at all 
events, gives a most decided negative. It replies, 
that the first attributes conceived to belong to a 
perfect Being are truth and truthfulness; the one 
being the knowledge of things as they are, the other 
the statement to others of things as they are. It 
argues that there are certain statements in the Bible 
which are proved not to be true; therefore it con- 
cludes that the Bible cannot be a communication 
from God. The second or minor premise in this 
argument, namely, that the Bible contains things 
provecrvto be untrue, is equally rash, hasty, and 
devoid of proof. But, supposing the charge to have 
been just, the conclusion that the Bible, containing 
mistakes, cannot be the word of God, appears to me 
to be unanswerable. Any other conclusion shocks 
the natural instincts of reverence, and imputes to 
the Divine Being the very defects and imperfections 
which the Scriptures indignantly repudiate. A 
Christian can scarcely entertain a lower conception 
of the attributes of God than a skeptic. One who 
studies his character as dispkxyed in the sufferings 
and death of his atoning Son, can scarcely frame 
lower conceptions of him than one who knows him 
only from the witness of external nature. 



126 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

Let the possibility be tested by an earthly illus- 
tration. Let us conceive the case of a message 
sent from one human being to another on a subject 
of the highest conceivable importance, and touch- 
ing the mutual honor of both parties. The message 
is a written one, for this is the analogous case. That 
the inspiration was first seated in the men, does not 
at all affect the fact that it is now incorporated in 
the writings, "the Scripture is God-inspired." Such 
a written message from man to man might undoubt- 
edly contain mistakes; but what would be their 
origin? There are only three alternatives — igno- 
rance, carelessness, or untruthfulness. 

Ignorance is plainly inconceivable in God, be- 
cause he filleth all in all. His creative care is over 
all his creatures, and does not overlook a single one 
of the countless myriads of living things which peo- 
ple the earth and the air and the seas. But can 
carelessness be predicated of God ? We can under- 
stand that a human creature may intrust a message 
to another, and may either fail to superintend its 
correct transmission, because his own attention is 
otherwise engaged, or superintending it, may fail to 
notice some wrong word or some inaccurate expres- 
sion. But God is as wise as he is omnipresent, 
and his Divine activit}^ is as infinite as his good- 
ness. It would be blasphemy to ascribe to him 
either lassitude of mind or defects of attention. 
But Ave can no more conceive that God can be 
untruthful, than we can conceive that he can be 
ignorant or careless. That he would sa}- what is 
untrue, directly or indirectly, or would in any way 



THE TRUE WOED OF GOD. 127 

be a party in inducing his creatures to believe what 
is false, is directly contradictory to the character of 
"the only true God." "Yea, let God be true, and 
every man a liar;" "just and true are thy ways, 
thou King of saints." It is, therefore, incredible 
that any communication sent by God can be untrue. 
But every successive step of the argument makes 
the incredibility still more incredible. The Scrip- 
tures are the formal proclamation of a King to his 
subjects, claiming obedience by virtue of their alle- 
giance, and on pain of his displeasure. What should 
we think of an earthly monarch who should pledge 
his royal word for some ingenious fiction, and give 
the weight of his royal authority to a romance? 
The Bible professes to contain the sovereign will of 
the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is direct- 
ed, indeed, to mankind, but reaches farther and 
higher than the race of Adam — to angelic intelli- 
gencies. St. Paul, speaking of his own letters and 
of their teaching, declares it to be the purpose of 
God that unto " principalities and powers might be 
known by the church the manifold wisdom of God." 
St. Peter, speaking of the great truths conveyed by 
the preaching of the gospel, adds, "Which things 
the angels desire to look into." The angel who 
appeared with John in the Apocalypse declared his 
own membership in the written promises : "I am of 
thy brethren the prophets, and of them that keep 
the saying of this book." The Scriptures constitute 
therefore a royal proclamation, made before the 
universe, and sealed with the yea and amen of Him 
that cannot lie. This is what Scripture says of 



128 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

itself; and is it conceivable that such a proclama- 
tion should not be true? 

Again, Scripture is given for the very purpose 
of teaching. Its declared object is to make wise. 
How can it fulfil this purpose if its contents be not 
true ? If it teaches what is untrue, it undermines 
the very basis of all wisdom, and becomes the in- 
strument of demoralizing deception. What would 
be thought of an earthly master who should put 
into the hands of his pupils a manual of instruction 
made up of fact and fiction, and should teach them 
an imaginary and fictitious history instead of the 
record of the world's actual events? Such an act 
would rather unteach than teach. Shall we sup- 
pose that the all-wise God, of his sovereign mercy 
towards mankind, has voluntarily professed to sup- 
ply us with a text-book of religious instruction, and 
yet that it is not true ? 

Scripture is the latest and most special instru- 
ment for making known God's will. First, God made 
man in his own image, and in the intimate inter- 
course of Paradise met him face to face. Man fell, 
and lost in the fall this immediate access to God. 
He carried with him indeed into his banishment 
from Eden the knowledge already received in his 
unfallen state. But for the preservation of this 
tradition of truth, and its extension to succeeding 
generations, he became dependent on his reason 
and conscience, and the teaching of the outward 
world. The spring of truth was no longer gushing 
forth unceasingly from its Divine fountain-head 
But reason and conscience proved inadequate. 



THE TRUE WORD OF GOD. 129 

" They became vain in their imagination, and their 
foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves 
to be wise, they became fools." Wherefore God 
ceased to strive with them. " As they did not like 
to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them 
over to a reprobate mind." He still retained a good 
seed in the world, a remnant according to the elec- 
tion of grace. He still made himself known by 
prophets beyond the Abrahamic line, such as Mel- 
chisedee and Jethro and Balaam, and the old 
prophet of Bethel. But this oral teaching was 
proved to be inadequate for the ever-deepening 
darkness of the Gentile world. God therefore made 
use of one other means for the declared purpose of 
maintaining a truth which unassisted human nature 
had failed to preserve, and this other means con- 
sisted of a written revelation. But if this written 
revelation itself contained mistakes, and was dark- 
ened by the reflection of human ignorance, its very 
objects were frustrated. It would not only fail as 
other agencies had failed, but it would aggravate 
the evil. Containing errors under the form of a 
revelation from God, it would enlist human rev- 
erence on behalf of the false, not on behalf of the 
true, and would perpetuate the darkness it was 
intended to remove. 

But, further, the Scriptures demand human be- 
lief, not alone to their doctrines, but also to their 
facts. But such a claim would be monstrous if its 
assertions were accompanied by the consciousness 
that the teaching claiming belief was not true. It 
would be contrary to the first instincts of justice to 



130 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

insist upon credence in the absence of sufficient 
grounds for it ; for the higher nature of man clings 
to the true, and rebels instinctively against the false; 
its noblest faculties and purest affections stand up 
in arms against a lie. It is unimaginable that a 
holy God should have endowed man with a capacity 
for knowing and loving truth, and then should ex- 
pect him to contradict his heaven-given nature by 
believing what is untrue. The New Testament wri- 
ters, men miraculously endowed with the extraordi- 
nary gifts of the Spirit, quote the Old Testament 
Scriptures as the final court of appeal, the conclu- 
sive and unanswerable arguments for truth. Yet, 
if the contents of the Old Testament Scriptures be 
not true, we are shut up to this conclusion, that 
God moved his servants to appeal to the unerring 
certainty of a standard which he knew all the while 
to be erring and deceptive. 

The alternative thus presented is yet further 
strengthened when the last of the six specified as- 
sertions of Scripture relative to itself is taken into 
account. This is, that disbelief in Scripture is a 
sin, and will be punished as a sin. It becomes as 
strong an argument for the absolute truth of the 
revealed word as can possibly be conceived; for the 
absence of such a truth would charge the conduct 
of God (I speak the very words with awe and fear) 
with the highest conceivable injustice. It amounts 
to nothing less than this : that if the Scriptures be 
not absolutely true, God must have sent a communi- 
cation to mankind clothed with all the sanctions of 
his own authority, and sealed ostentatiously with 



THE TRUE WORD OF GOD. 131 

Lis awful name, and that lie lias declared his purpose 
to punish mankind for not believing it, though false — 
that is, for not obeying a revelation of his will, in- 
tentionally made through human messengers, and 
which, either through a defect of power or of will, 
(it matters not which alternative is adopted,) he has 
not preserved from being mixed with idle fancies, 
weakened by fiction, distorted by mistakes, or tainted 
by fraud. 

It follows, therefore, that Scripture does assert 
its own absolute veracity, and does it in the mode 
most consistent with the self-consciousness of an 
inspiring Deity. Reiterated affirmation of truth 
attached to each writer or each book, or each state- 
ment in each book, would have been equally useless 
and incongruous. The claim is asserted in the ma- 
jestic attitude and Divine character of revelation, 
and cannot be separated from them. Absolute truth 
is the immediate and necessary inference, or rather, 
perhaps I should say, the essential condition in- 
volved in all the statements of Scripture relative to 
itself. Six separate lines bear the same indepen- 
dent testimony; their voices combine in one har- 
monious and consentient witness, like the voices of 
angels proclaiming trumpet-tongued the spotless 
excellence and abiding authority of the everlasting 
gospel. 

But the same argument avails to extend with 
great force the assertion of this quality of truth to 
all and every part of Scripture. The Bible not only 
contains some true things, but it contains no un- 
true things. All its contents are true, according to 



132 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

the nature of their truth. Its deep mysteries, its 
grand promises, its records of the past, its predic- 
tions of the future, its majestic history, its graphic 
narratives, its ethnological and genealogical details, 
all are true. Let us not shrink from accepting the 
only legitimate conclusion in all its length and 
breadth. None will deny that errors have taken 
place in transcription, that dates have been inaccu- 
rately copied, that glosses have been interpolated. 
We leave the determination of these questions, and 
the settlement of the true text in those minute de- 
tails on which alone existing copies differ, to the 
ordinary resources of criticism. We take the text 
as thus settled, and for this text, thus identified 
with the original autographs, we affirm that it con- 
tains truth, and nothing but truth. We base the 
assertion, first of all, on the Divine character of 
Scripture as a revelation from God; and secondly, 
on the positive statements of this divinely-revealed 
Scripture as to its own character. As they involve 
the truth, so they involve also the universal truth of 
their contents. We have already seen how strong- 
presumption of this equality of character arises from 
the nature of the attesting evidence. We now gather 
the same conclusion from its positive teaching. 

Let the conditions of the case be again borne in 
mind. The Scriptures are a revelation from God, 
sanctioned with his authority as Creator and King, 
and for the express purpose of teaching us the 
things that belong to salvation, intended to correct 
the defects and mistakes of what is called natural 
religion, claiming absolute credence alike for its 



THE TRUE WORD OF GOD. 133 

statements of facts and revelations of doctrine, de- 
nouncing disbelief as a sin, and pronouncing upon 
it the severity of God's wrath. Now let us place 
side by side with these claims the supposition that 
the Bible is partly true and partly untrue, and note 
what would be the consequences. 

Several theories have been advanced as to the 
source and extent of this admixture of truth and 
error in one and the same book. It has been said 
that its doctrines are true, but not its historical nar- 
ratives; and yet the narratives are so interwoven 
with the doctrines as to make a separation practi- 
cally impossible, and reduce the attempt to an utter 
absurdity. It has been said by others that those 
portions are true which immediately affeot salva- 
tion, but not those portions which affect details of 
character and conduct ; and yet the minute maxims 
of the Bible are all corollaries from its fundamental 
principles. It has been said that its teaching, so far 
as it affects questions lying beyond the range of the 
human intellect, is true ; but not its teaching on mat- 
ters falling within the legitimate range of human 
discovery and knowledge ; and yet it is an unsettled 
question what subjects are discoverable by man and 
what are not. Some think that the human intui- 
tions are able to discover infallibly even God him- 
self. Some think that human knowledge cannot 
deal infallibly even with the minutest fact; and cer- 
tainly of the two the weight of experience inclines 
very decidedly towards the latter. 

But for the present let either theory be adopted; 
the Scripture then is partly true and partly untrue. 



134 GODS WORD WRITTEN. 

Part of it may be accepted with the most implicit 
and unreserved faith ; part needs to be scrutinized 
with the most jealous suspicion, and part to be 
rejected with the most unhesitating promptitude. 
The embarrassing difficulty lies in the intermixture 
of these portions. If each of them occupied its own 
distinctive and distinguishable sphere, so that it 
could be taken bodily out of the rest, and being 
regarded as a whole of itself, could be either ac- 
cepted or rejected as the case might be, the task 
would be comparatively easy. But, unfortunately 
for such a supposition, the two are intermingled 
everywhere, lying side by side, and even compacted 
together as the fine metal and the earthy dross may 
be. Nor is there any thing on the surface to guide 
the mind in distinguishing them. The same air of 
validity and verisimilitude surrounds the whole. 
They are all framed into one consecutive and har- 
monious revelation ; they fit naturally into each 
other ; they are surrounded by the same external 
sanctions. The case is not that, upon the theory 
of skepticism, the Bible is like a mass of rock, with 
the glittering gold intermingled with the baser ma- 
terial in one conglomerate, but so sparkling and 
bright in contrast with the dross that the eye can 
immediately and certainly distinguish it; but the 
case is, that the Bible is like an ore which needs to 
be submitted to the furnace, and from which the 
purifying fire alone can separate the precious metal 
from the worthless admixture. 

Hence, to distinguish the true from the untrue 
is a work of admitted difficulty. Upon the theory 



THE TRUE WOED OF GOD. 135 

of the skeptic it requires an intuitive critical in- 
stinct, accurate scholarship, and unflagging indus- 
try, assisted by all the resources of a criticism per- 
fected only in the course of four thousand years, 
and disciplined by many years of exercise; and 
when the study has been pursued for a life, the 
result attained is indefinitely variable and uncer- 
tain. An individual critic will speak of his own 
conclusions, it is true, with the utmost confidence; 
but it is scarcely possible for other men to accept 
them with the same feeling, both because of the 
frequent changes of the individual opinion, and the 
utter contrariety of view existing between him and 
others of the same craft. Modern critics are like 
an arm}', where every man's hand is against his 
fellow. The utmost approximation to certainty in 
such a case does not exceed a probability. But if 
within the charmed circle of critical experts this is 
true, what must be the hopeless condition of the 
outsiders? A large proportion of mankind have 
neither time nor ability for such studies, nor inter- 
est in such questions. How can such men discrim- 
inate the true and the untrue, mingled as they are 
asserted to be in the same books, the same chap- 
ters, and the same verses? The position of an 
educated man, with the ordinary resources of an 
average education at hand, is not much more favor- 
able. For which of the critics shall he take as his 
master, Schleiermacher, or Paulus, or Strauss, or 
Kenan ? At whose feet shall he sit as an obedient 
disciple, Eichhorn or Vater, De Wette or Ewald, 
Donaldson or Colenso ? To cast lots among them, 



136 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

and allow what men call chance to settle the ques- 
tion, would perhaps be as reasonable a mode, and 
as likely to be satisfactory, as any other that can 
be suggested. 

Thus the picture presented to us on the suppo- 
sition that the Scriptures are partly true and partly 
untrue, is a Bible not blended of sharply contrasted 
colors, but bearing a thousand hues and tints and 
shades; a mass of confusion hopelessly and inex- 
tricably blended together, making inquiry doubtful 
and certainty impossible. 

Yet, according to the positive statements of 
Scripture, life and death, obedience or disobedience, 
a blessing or a curse, heaven or hell, hang upon the 
solution of that problem. If any partiality of feel- 
iDg, any self-love, any personal prejudice or hostil- 
ity, blind a man's judgment, he may incur the awful 
risk of setting himself against God on the one side, 
or of imputing to God what never proceeded from 
him on the other. If indeed a man could rest 
secure on the consciousness of an unclouded purity 
of intention, an unsullied love for truth, an unmixed 
and unfailing wish to do right, and only to do right, 
he might venture to throw himself upon the un- 
known mercies of God, and trust to be pardoned for 
his involuntary and inevitable mistakes. But the 
position even of such a man as this would be a very 
awful one in face of the severe warnings and un- 
qualified denunciations of the Word — awful as if he 
walked amid the thunders and voices of Sinai, and 
nigh to the quivering sides of the mountain which 
none might touch and live. As to the certainty of 



THE TRUE WORD OF GOD. 137 

the Bible, its clear guidance and the security of its 
teaching, why, what David described as a lamp 
would be either a flickering spark struggling amid 
the darkness, or a false meteor luring men to their 
death. 

But such a conclusion cannot be avoided, if, on 
the one side, Scripture makes these six assertions 
relative to itself, and if, on the other, its contents 
be not all true. I believe that no mind whatever 
can accept such a conclusion, can believe in such 
an alternative; and if we are thus shut in on one 
side and on the other by results equally tremendous 
and incredible, what remains but that we should 
follow the one open path, and adopt the one natu- 
ral and consistent belief, that the contents of Scrip- 
ture are true, and all true? The conclusion is no 
matter of theory, but one of positive and revealed 
authority. The word of God claims certain charac- 
ters for itself. It is God's own voice, with his own 
solemn utterance affirming his word to be truth 
without admixture of error. On this assurance let 
faith calmly rest, and before this warning let spec- 
ulative theories be hushed into obedient silence — 
" Thus saith the Lord." 



138 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

A REVELATION IMPLIES TWO PARTIES, AND 
THEREFORE TWO ELEMENTS. 

Skeptical Denial of the Truth of all Scripture — Must be settled 
by Appeal to Facts— Preliminary Settlement of the Standard 
to be followed — Misapprehensions relative to the two Elements 
of Scripture — Their Existence Inevitable and Agreeable to all 
God's Mode of Working — Both must be maintained, and yet 
not separated — No Inconsistency between them — Analogy of 
the Personal Word — The whole of Scripture Human, and the 
whole of Scripture Divine. 

It has been shown in the two preceding chap- 
ters that the Scriptures assert their own plenary 
authority and absolute truth. The loftiest epithets 
supplied by human language are not too strong to 
express its aspect and attitude. The immediate 
( sanctions of a Divine authorship, the solemnity of 
• a royal proclamation, the sufficiency of an inspired 
teaching, the claims of an unerring veracity, the 
/ obligations of a moral duty, and the sanctions of 
an everlasting reward or punishment, invest it with 
\ a character alike solemn and unique, like the vest- 
ments of power upon the shoulders of a manifested 
Deity. This is the account Scripture gives of itself. 
Is this account to be accepted as conclusive, or do 
other considerations imperatively modify it ? 

Whatever authority belongs to the Christian 
Scriptures in general belongs equally to their asser- 
tions relative to themselves in particular. It has 



TWO PAKTIES IMPLIED. 139 

been shown that they fill a position peculiar to 
themselves and without a parallel. The inspired 
character of their human authors, attested as it 
was by signs and wonders — the organic unity char- 
acteristic of their contents, and by the very diver- 
sity of the human authorship and date suggestive 
of a Divine intelligence planning and superintend- 
ing the whole — the sublimity of its contents, and its 
revelation of mysteries far transcending the utmost 
powers of the human intellect — attest with one con- 
sentient voice its supernatural character. It is 
scarcely possible for a mind which accepts this 
evidence to demur to the authority of its teaching, 
whether it has reference to the character of Scrip- 
ture itself or to any other portion of the Divine 
dealings with mankind, if the teaching be suffi- 
ciently definite and precise. Do Ave rightly inter- 
pret its own language? will be, to a devout Chris- 
tian, the only open question. 

The proofs already alleged appear to be suffi- 
ciently precise. Yet, if the assertions ostentatiously 
made and paraded by modern skepticism be true, 
there must be some mistake, since it is inconceiva- 
ble that God should allege claims not substantiated 
by the facts of the case. It is asserted that the 
contents of Scripture are not all true, and have been 
proved to be not all true. Its facts are alleged to 
be inaccurate, its recorded events incredible, and 
some of its revealed doctrines monstrously at vari- 
ance with man's first conceptions of a pure and 
holy God. Could these assertions be substantiated, 
it would inevitably follow that the contents of the 



140 GODS WORD WRITTEN. 

Bible could not be all stamped with Divine infalli- 
bility. With regard to the special claims quoted 
in the preceding chapter, two alternatives only 
would remain. Either we should conclude that 
these passages did not really involve the claim of 
absolute truth, however plain and cogent the infer- 
ence may apparently be, or that these passages con- 
tradict the claim to a Divine authorship; since, in 
their proved untruthfulness, they must only be the 
extravagance of a human fanaticism, and not the 
utterances of a Divine word. 

Having, therefore, examined the claims asserted 
by the Bible, as it is, and regarded it as a whole, 
relative to its own authority, it becomes a matter 
vof the highest importance to examine the evidences 
>n the other side, and ascertain how far they inval- 
idate the force of the positive claim. Have inaccu- 
racies, mistakes, and contradictions been proved to 
exist in Scripture? We need not fear to enter 
upon the inquiry with the utmost frankness. From 
the investigation, faith in the Divine authority of 
the Scriptures will but emerge trebly armed. In 
the face of all modern argument, its ingenious spec- 
ulations and elaborate inquiries, we need not fear 
to maintain with unabated confidence, and deeper 
conviction than before, the inerrability of the word 
of God, and that its contents are all, in the fullest 
and plainest sense of the word, true. 

The critical tests applied to the solution of this 
question are, however, variable, arbitrary, and ca- 
pricious in the extreme. The mode of forming a 
conclusion is frequently so replete with misappre- 



TWO PARTIES IMPLIED. 141 

hensions, alike as to the real nature of the question 
at issue and the actual facts of the case, that it is 
necessary to clear the ground somewhat farther 
before we enter upon its discussion. By carefully 
marking the road as we advance, we shall avoid 
those ambiguities of language by which the ques- 
tion of inspiration has been most seriously embar- 
rassed. 

The conclusion already reached is, that the 
Scriptures are not only truly the word of God, but 
that they are the true word of God. Their charac- 
teristic is not only their truth, for this they may 
possess in common with many human works, but 
their guaranteed truth. The very signature, as it 
were, of God himself is upon his written word. 
Human books may be true or may not be true, 
because the human mind is fallible, and its highest 
exercise affords no demonstrative evidence of vera- 
city ; but the word of God must be true, because it 
is the word of God. The assertion of its truth 
involves, therefore, the assertion of its inspiration, 
and the assertion of its universal truth the asser- 
tion of its universal inspiration. The two things 
must be correlative and coextensive; for we mean 
by the word inspiration that Divine side of the 
Scriptures by virtue of which they are the word of 
God. 

The specific question of inspiration thus comes 
before us in its natural and its Scriptural order. 
The course of the argument has not been that the 
Scriptures are inspired, and that therefore they are 
the true word of God, but that they are the true word 



142 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

of God, and therefore are inspired. This is the 
natural order; for what is first in the act of God is 
necessarily last in the knowledge of man. "We be- 
fein with the facts nearest to ourselves, and trace 
them back to their original and originating cause. 
It is the Scriptural order ; for although Scripture is 
comparatively silent in the assertion of its universal 
inspiration, it has been shown to be particularly full 
and specific in the assertion of its Divine and au- 
thoritative character. A further advantage gained 
\ by this order is, that the stress of the controversy 
( is not laid upon the word " inspiration." Much has 
been said of the usage of the word, alike in ancient 
times and in the formularies of the churches of our 
day. It is unnecessary even to discuss such a 
question; for it can only affect our employment of 
a word, not our acceptance of a truth. That the 
almost unanimous voice of all Christian theology, 
-alike in the primitive days and in the times of the 
\ Reformation, has asserted the predominant author- 
ity and absolute truth of Scripture, cannot be de- 
nied. Whether the word inspiration be the best 
word to express the Divine element by virtue of 
which Scripture possesses these qualities is a mat- 
ter of very secondary interest. We use the word 
I because it is a convenient term, and the term most 
\ closely corresponding in our language to the apos- 
/ tolic fjto-vEvoTog; but the object near to the heart of 
the Christian is not the defence of a word, but the 
vindication of the truth expressed by it. 

The expression that the Bible is the true word 
of God is, perhaps, the most absolute assertion of 



TWO PARTIES IMPLIED. 143 

Hie Divine element that can be made in words. It 
therefore serves to illustrate the impossibility of 
stating the claim without including a human ele- 
ment as well as a Divine. Much discussion has I 
been raised as to the existence of a human element. 
The term itself has been employed with singular 
uncertainty and ambiguity of sense, and the belief 
in a plenary or verbal inspiration has been repre- 
sented as necessarily involving the denial of its ex- 
istence. The discussion is little better than a con- 
flict about words. There must be two elements in) 
a revelation, because there must be two parties con- ( 
cerned — the party by whom the revelation is made, \ 
and the party to whom it is made. If the second 
party be absent, it ceases to be a revelation, and 
becomes a mere act of self-consciousness on the 
part of God. It is impossible to state the facts of 
the case in words which do not involve a human 
element ; that is, human action in the composition 
of Scripture. The very description of the word is 
human in the terms, in their construction, and in 
the sense conveyed. If we say that the Bible is the ^ 
true word of God, the term "word" involves the 
human element, for it denotes at once the fact of a / 
communication and the channel through which it is / 
made. If we say that the Bible is "God's word," 
we express it yet more distinctly in the further term, 
"written;" written how but in human words, by 
human hands, through human materials, and for 
human readers ? To talk of a revekition devoid of 
a human element, is to use words devoid of sense. 
Such an element must exist ; and no theorist, how- 



144 GODS WORD WRITTEN. 

ever extreme, can ever have intended to deny its 

existence. All discussion is needless here. The 

C question remaining to be settled is, In what sense, 

a or more accurately, To what extent it exists in 

( Scripture ? For if there be nothing to qualify its 

extent, it must evidently involve the possibility of 

human error, as well as the employment of human 

words and the agency of human minds. 

The answer is to be found in the very fact of the 
existence of the two elements ; for if they are two, 
they must be distinct from each other ; if they are 
not distinct, the}' become one ; if they are elements, 

Ithen they are constituents of some common whole. 
The two are consequently ever distinct, but never 
separate. Let us keep them so, neither confusing 
them together nor allowing either one to absorb the 
other, and the question will be found to be answered. 
The perfect Divine element is to be maintained on 
the one side ; the perfect human element is to be 
maintained on the other ; but the Divine is neither 
to absorb the human, nor is the human to derogate 
from the Divine. 

In holding this equipoise of the two, we are 
assisted by the analogy of the personal Word of 
God. In him " two whole and perfect natures, the 
Godhead and manhood, were joined together in one 
person, never to be divided." Article 2. Here, 
therefore, is distinction, but not separation. If we 
say that the two natures were mingled so that there 
was a third something made up of both, but itself 
neither Godhead nor manhood, then we destroy 
both natures, " confounding the substance." If we 



TWO PARTIES IMPLIED. 145 

separate tlie two natures, so that Christ was at one 
time and in one act simple Godhead and in another 
simple manhood, then we destroy " the unity of per- 
son," and make two Christs instead of one. Scrip- 
ture asserts him to have been perfect God and per- 
fect man, and we therefore accept him as both in 
one, although the point of contact between the two 
and the mode of their union are beyond all human 
comprehension. Truly, " Great is the mystery of 
godliness : God was manifest in the flesh." 1 Tim. 
3:16. 

We must learn to think and speak in exactly the 
same mode relative to the Divine and human ele- 
ments in Scripture. If we attempt to confound" 
them together, and say that Scripture is neither 
human nor Divine, but something made up of both, 
we are corrected by the plain facts of the case, for 
the distinct human element is palpably there in the 
language, imagery, and style ; and the distinct Di- 
vine element is also there in the all-pervading unity 
of design and sublimity of subject. We can no more 
suppose the former to be Divine than we can sup- 
pose the latter to be human. To confound the two 
together is only to destroy both. 

Nor are we any more able to separate the two 
elements than we are to confound them. For if we 
say that part of the Scripture is Divine and part of 
it human, we are again contradicted by the facts ; 
for in the part we acknowledge to be Divine the 
human element still survives. We can indeed say, 
if we like, that the whole is human, for this is per- 
fectly conceivable. But in saying so we are met by 



140 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

the other class of facts specified in chapter ni., 
which prove that it cannot be all human, since the 
supernatural is ingrained into its very structure, 
and stamped as with a visible signet alike on its 
external and internal evidences. 

The only alternative, therefore, left open to us is 
to maintain both elements, distinct and yet insepar- 
able. The whole of Scripture is Divine, and the 
whole of Scripture is human; none the less Divine 
because it is human; none the less human because 
it is Divine. To argue that because it is Divine it 
cannot be human, or that because it is human it 
cannot also be Divine, is practically to argue that 
the Divine and the human cannot be united. No 
believer in the hypostatics! union of the two natures 
in the one person of Christ can with any consistency 
adopt such a plea. The glorious person of Christ 
is the living protest against it; for if the two can be 
united in the personal Word, why may they not be 
united equally in the written word ? The agent of 
the union is the same in both cases, t v T en God the 
Holy Ghost. In the personal Word we believe that 
he was "conceived by the Holy Ghost" — here was 
the Divine side of the one person ; and that he was 
"born of the Virgin Mary" — here was the human 
side. In regard to the written word, " holy men of 
old wrote " — here is the human side ; " as they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost " — here is the Di- 
vine. Yet both meet in the same word, as the two 
clauses are but the constituents of one sentence : 
" Holy men of old wrote as they were moved by 
the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1 : 21. 



TWO PARTIES IMPLIED. 147 

We must therefore maintain the Divine element 
of Scripture in all the infallibility of its truth, and 
all the authority of its source. We must no less 
maintain the human element in all its fulness and 
essential characteristics. Whatever is peculiar to 
human writing is there ; whatever is peculiar to 
Divine authority is there. The sole limitations are 
supplied by the union of the two. We must neither 
so press the Divine as to exclude the human, nor 
so extend the human as to exclude the Divine. 



148 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE HUMAN ELEMENT OF SCRIPTURE IN ITS 
EELATION TO THE DIVINE. 

Plan's Tart in the Composition of Scripture to be maintained in 
all Particulars Essential to Human Agency— The Personal Pe- ? 
culiarities of the Writers— The Human Point of View, and the | 
Human Mode of Thinking and Speaking— Opposite Theories 
of the Capability of Man to receive Divine Knowledge— Imper- 
fection of Human Language, yet Reality of Divine Truth— Pe- 
culiarities of Human Language — Structural Identity of Inspired 
and Uninspired Compositions. 

I have said that the human and the Divine ele- 
ments are distinct on one side, and yet inseparable 
upon the other. Neither of them can therefore be 
considered b} r itself, but must ever be viewed in 
connection with its correlative. To regard the case 
otherwise is to violate one of its ascertained condi- 
tions. Thus, in examining what is meant by the 
human element, and the extent of agencj^ exercised 
on the part of man in the production .of the Scrip- 
tures, we must view it from the standpoint of the 
Divine element, or of God's part in the accomplish- 
ment of the same work. In the same manner, in 
examining into the extent of the Divine element in 
Scripture, and the characteristics involved in it, we 
must view it from the standpoint of the human, 
maintaining alike their distinctive attributes and 
their inseparable union. 

I. Thus the Divine element is not to absorb the 
human. God, in giving his revelation, employed 



THE HUMAN ELEMENT. 119 

liumart agents as Lis messengers. There was no 
other mode consistent with the recognized princi- 
ples of his moral government over the world con- 
ceivable by our minds for the purpose, except this 
use of human instruments. The only mode of test- 
ing this fact is to exhaust the alternative methods, 
and then to see what would have been the necessary 
consequences of their adoption. This has been fully 
done by the writer in a previous work, and it is un- 
necessary to recapitulate the argument. On the 
supposition that God deals with mankind as crea- 
tures invested with moral responsibility, and in 
whom therefore the work of Divine redemption 
must be conducted in harmony with the constitu- 
tion he has given us, there is no possible method of 
making a revelation of God's will to man except 
through the vehicle of human language. This lan- 
guage, moreover, must have been used according 
to its known and ordinary laws, and not employed 
in a mystical and secondary sense, contrary to its 
familiar usage. Moreover the human language could 
only be used through human agents with a recog- 
nized standing-ground of their own in the working 
world, and amid the ordinary activities of human 
life. The caution must be borne in mind that these 
conclusions do not exist in the form of a fatalistic 
necessity imposed from without upon the freedom 
of the Divine action, but arise out of the sovereignty 
of the Divine choice, and the principles avowedly 
adopted in his moral government over the world. 

God employed human agents as the messengers 
of his will ; they must be accepted therefore, and 



150 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

judged as regards the manner of fulfilling their 
commission as human agents. They do not them- 
selves become Divine, because they are used by a 
Divine wisdom, and made the channels of a Divine 
revelation ; they lose none of their human charac- 
teristics, but retain them to the full. All that is 
human belongs to them to the utmost limits impos- 
ed by the concurrent action of the Divine. There 
is a wonderful harmony in this very fact ; for as the 
truths revealed are intended to incorporate them- 
selves as it were into human life, and to pervade as 
a blessed leaven the whole mass of practical thought 
and action, so they are brought closely into contact 
with it by the familiar sympathies, habits, and 
speech of the messengers who conveyed them. It 
is no more possible to draw a sharp line of demar- 
cation between the principles of language used by 
inspired writers and the principles of language used 
by uuinspired writers, than it is possible to separ- 
ate the mental faculties of religious men from the 
ordinary faculties of irreligious men. Human na- 
ture is elevated and sanctified by grace, but it is 
not changed in its essential qualities. The inspired 
writers acquired from the Holy Spirit, working in 
them and through them, qualities not possessed 
by uninspired writers ; but they never ceased to be 
human or to use the ordinary modes of communica- 
tion between man and man, however much these 
modes may have been elevated into more than or- 
dinary force and beauty by the Divine agency. 
They continued to be human instruments through- 
out, and as human therefore they are to be judged. 



THE HUMAN ELEMENT. 151 

Thus the inspired writers retain their respective 
peculiarities alike of intellectual gifts and moral 
character. The effect still survives in their writings, 
which are just as characteristic of the respective 
authors, and of their times and circumstances, as 
are the productions of uninspired writers. The 
mode of viewing and stating truth, with the method 
of its illustration, the selection of the appropriate 
language, the use of illustrative figures and their 
specialities, the manner of argument, and the liter- 
rary style, and even the influence produced on all 
the foregoing, by the moral qualities of the writer 
and his constitutional temper and tendencies of 
feeling, constitute the patent features of the scrip- 
tural books. This portion of the human element is 
acknowledged by all parties to this controversy, at 
least as fully and distinctly by the advocate of a 
verbal inspiration as by others, if not more fully 
than by others. The only peculiarity of his view is, 
that he maintains this human element as one con- 
stituent only of the composition, and not the whole, 
keeping it alike distinct and inseparable from the 
concurrent element of Divine inspiration. To 
charge him with denying or forgetting it, is either 
a blundering misapprehension of his belief, or a 
libellous perversion of it. 

II. But we enter upon more difficult ground 
when we take another step, and assert for the in- 
spired composition the essential peculiarities of all 
human thought. Here we need to steer our course 
between two extremes. On the one side of the 
scale stands the avowed claim of rationalism to be 



152 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

the competent and self-sufficient judge of all truth, 
even that relative to the nature and will of God. On 
the other side stands the mistake of supposing that 
we are incapable of knowing any truth relative to 
God, and that the teaching of revelation itself does 
not present to us the truth of things, but only such 
an adumbration of them as alone the highest facul- 
ties of the human intellect are competent to receive. 
The just and scriptural view holds the mean be- 
tween these extremes. Against the rationalist it 
maintains that the human mind is wholly incompe- 
tent to find out God for itself, and that even the 
conceptions it gathers from revelation are inade- 
quate to comprehend the full majesty of the facts. 
At the same time it maintains that although the 
revelation of God contained in his word is limited 
by the capacities of a finite intellect and the capa- 
bilities of a finite language, it is real and true as far 
as it goes — not a mere shadow of truth, but truth 
itself. What we know is but a small part of the 
whole ; but it is real and true so far as it extends. 

The claims advanced on behalf of the compe- 
tency of the human reason to judge of Divine 
things, involve a controversy much wider than the 
question now under discussion. It is remarkable 
that the claim is based on no process of the reason, 
but on the intuition. It is, therefore, tacitly ac- 
knowledged in the very form of the argument, that 
we possess no data from which the reasoning facul- 
ties are competent to argue about God, and that 
those quick, subtle, sudden flashes of truth, which lie 
so wholly beyond the range of definite argument, 



THE HUMAN ELEMENT. 153 

that we call them intuitions, are alone supposed to 
be capable of discovering him. But the utmost pos- 
sible distrust must attach to processes of the rea- 
son which do not admit of reasoning. It may be 
justly suspected that these flashes of unconscious 
truth are no more than the reflections of revealed 
knowledge, principles so absorbed in the process of 
education, into the very texture of our mental selves, 
that we become unconscious of the source whence 
we obtain them, and attribute to some latent divin- 
ity in the mind itself, what are really the reflected 
rays of an external revelation. So far are the intui- 
tive conceptions of the intellect from being compe- 
tent to supply the place of a revelation, that they 
are themselves its witnesses and fruits. 

With this argument, however, the question of in- 
spiration is only concerned in a secondary degree. 
It concerns us more closely to note that human 
language can only correspond to human ideas, 
and that human ideas are only coextensive with 
human objects. If any thing exists — and doubtless 
in the wide universe there are many such things — 
totally dissimilar to any thing that has ever fallen 
within our own range of knowledge, it would be 
neither possible for us to conceive it in the absence 
of the appropriate ideas, nor to describe it in the 
absence of appropriate words. This would be the 
extreme case. But in proportion as any object dif- 
fers from the lessons of our own knowledge, we lose 
our power of comprehending it ; and only so far as 
it resembles them can the description of it be 
framed into words. 



154 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

Now, the rationalist assumes that God must be 
wholly like man, and is therefore to be reckoned 
among the things knowable by man. The philoso- 
pher, at the other extreme, avers that God is totally 
unlike man, and therefore is unknowable by man. 
We turn from both to the Scriptures, and there we 
find the Deity described, in some respects, as abso- 
lutely beyond the power of our understanding, and 
in other respects within it. 

Thus God's natural attribute of omnipotence, 
omnipresence, omniscience, his self- existence and 
nature, lie wholly beyond our comprehension. But 
why? Because we have no experimental knowledge 
of such attributes in ourselves, and therefore we 
cannot understand them in another. We use the 
words, and understand that there must be attri- 
butes corresponding to them ; but we cannot un- 
derstand the attributes themselves, because they 
are the natural attributes of Deity, and the nature 
of God must be wholly different from that of man. 
But it is otherwise with God's moral attributes and 
relations. These are repeatedly described in Scrip- 
ture as the objects of our human knowledge, and the 
model for our imitation. Thus, in our Lord's words, 
"This is life eternal, to know thee, the only true 
God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent," John 
17:3. Again I ask, Why? Because we have ex- 
perience of similar attributes in ourselves. Our 
human qualities, at best, fall infinitely short of the 
glories of the Divine perfection, and are, moreover, 
so corrupted by sin as almost to have lost their 
original stamp ; yet they arc in themselves the 



THE HUMAN ELEMENT. 155 

moral reflection of the Creator. We know what 
love and pity, kindness and benevolence, approba- 
tion and sympathy, are in ourselves, and we can 
therefore understand what they are in God. For 
where but in our moral nature are we to find the 
image of God, in which we were created, and into 
which the operating power of the Holy Ghost again 
renews the regenerated soul? Thus St. Paul ex- 
horts his Ephesian disciples " to put on the new 
man, which after God is created in righteousness 
and true holiness," Eph. 4 : 24. To the Colossians he 
writes, " Put ye on the new man, which is renewed 
in knowledge after the image of Him that created 
him," Col. 3 :10. The Spirit, by St. Peter, uses this 
remarkable language : " By these ye might be par- 
takers of the Divine nature," 2 Pet. 1 : 4. There is 
therefore in the moral nature of man a similitude to 
God, defaced by the fall, but again renewed by the 
work of the Holy Ghost. We possess qualities simi- 
lar in kind to the qualities of God. From this ex- 
perience, consequently, we gather the appropriate 
ideas, and from the ideas the appropriate language, 
through which a true knowledge of the Divine Be- 
ing, and of his relation towards us, and our relation 
towards him, may be communicated. 

When, therefore, we say that the Divine element 
in Scripture is to be so understood as not to swal- 
low up the human, the principle accounts for the 
employment of human conceptions and human' 
methods of thinking, since by no others could we 
receive truth. In every case the revelation is as 
complete as the most perfect use of human Ian- 



156 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

guage — confessedly an imperfect instrument, at the 
best, to express our thoughts, much more the 
thoughts of God— could make it. As regards the 
distinctive attributes of Deity, they are presented 
through human analogies. Thus the knowledge of 
God is depicted by the all-seeing eye ; his power 
by the all-mighty hand ; his acquaintance with our 
thoughts and words by his open ear; his majesty 
and power by the illustration of crowns, and thrones, 
and sceptres. But the illustrations are at the same 
time accompanied by explanations which prevent 
all imputation of carnal ideas to God, and teach us 
to regard the outward images as no more than the 
vivid delineation of the spiritual God to the facul- 
ties of a sensuous creature. The truth is there, but 
we are warned of the imperfection of its represen- 
tation. The same inadequacy of our conceptions 
applies in part, but in part only, to the moral attri- 
butes of God and our relation towards him. Our 
ascription of various qualities to God is a human 
thing altogether, and a mode of speaking exactly 
analogous to what we use in speaking of his eye, 
his hand, his ear. God is one, "without body, parts, 
or passions." But we can only understand him by 
analogies drawn from ourselves; and so we transfer 
to him the notion gathered from our own experience 
of various qualities subsisting in one person. But 
when avc come to the qualities themselves, we drop 
the use of figures altogether, and speak and think of 
God no longer mediately, but immediately. In re- 
ceiving the revelation of his love towards us, of our 
original relation to him, of our separation by sin, of 



THE HUMAN ELEMENT. 157 

our restoration through an atonement, of our regen- 
eration after his image, of our position as sons by 
adoption, and of the promise of present peace and 
future glory, the corresponding ideas in our own 
experience enable us to understand the revelation 
and grasp the truth without the necessity of inter- 
vening illustrations. Still, in both cases it is a rev- 
elation to human thought, and therefore through 
human methods of thought and all the distinctive 
peculiarities of human thought. They are part of 
the human element; and without the human ele- 
ment there could not be a revelation at all. 

III. Lastly, the Divine inspiration not only 
leaves untouched the peculiarities of human lan- 
guage, but makes use of them as the appropriate 
vehicle of truth. Thus the construction of senten- 
ces, the method of argument, the admixture of ex- 
postulation and appeal, the use of poetical phrases. 
the employment of imagery, and, what requires spe- 
cial notice, the free adoption of all the recognized 
figures of speech, necessarily follow the ordinary 
standard of language. So far from shrinking from 
this plain principle to its utmost extent, we should 
find it difficult to conceive how it could be other- 
wise. Once admit the use of human language, and 
it is impossible to frame any other limit of its ordi- 
nary usages than is supplied by its contact with the 
Divine inspiration. Within this range there can be 
no restriction, or the language of Scripture will have 
ceased to be the ordinary speech of mankind. Why 
should the liberty of a sacred writer to use the full 
resources of language be restrained within narrower 



158 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

limits than the liberty of a profane writer ? The 
broad principle must be maintained, that whatever 
modes of expression are consistent in an uninspired 
writer are equally consistent in an inspired one. 

Thus we see the futility of an objection some- 
times urged against a belief in verbal inspiration, 
that modes of expression found in Scripture are 
inconsistent with the majesty of a Divine Author. 
The plea is only gained by separating some one 
detail in the plan of revelation from the other parts 
of the same scheme, and then leaving out all the 
intermediate links, and bringing into sharp contrast 
the individual word or phrase and the omniscient 
Mind which framed the entire plan. The objection 
is mainly urged against the hyperboles of Scrip- 
ture ; as when, for instance, it is predicted that the 
seed of Abraham should be as the sand upon the 
seashore for multitude. It is much the same as if 
a man objected, on a similar ground, against the 
gift of the Spirit of God to Bezaleel and Aholiab. 
These men worked under a special inspiration, 
directed not alone to the quality of the workman- 
ship, but to the correspondence of the work to the 
divinely-given pattern. How absurd, it might be 
said, to suppose that God gave his Spirit to Beza- 
leel in order to enable him to carve a pomegranate 
or make a candlestick. Let the whole be consid- 
ered together, and it is not absurd, for the entire 
tabernacle was a visible prophecy of no ordinary 
grandeur, and the little details were but the essen- 
tial conditions of the whole design. A similar argu- 
ment might be used with regard to Samson, if rev- 



THE HUMAN ELEMENT. 159 

erence to the inspiring Spirit did not teach ns cau- ( 
tion in coupling his immediate inspiration with the 
minor acts of the Israelitish champion, such as tying 
together the tails of the foxes, or eating honey out 
of the jaw of a dead lion. Doubtless God's Spirit 
did really move Samson to these very acts ; for the 
difference between great and little which impresses 
our minds can really have no place in the mind of 
God. Samson was raised up for a special work in 
delivering Israel, and of that work each little detail 
was an inseparable part. Thus it is in the present 
case. God has been pleased to give a revelation 
through human language; and of this human lan- 
guage figures of speech constitute an inseparable 
part. We must learn to follow principle with great- 
er decision than is ordinarily the case. When we 
have found a truth, let us not shrink from accepting 
it, and from following it out to its full legitimate 
results. 

The Divine element in Scripture is, therefore, to 
be maintained in consonance with its human ele- 
ment. It is not to be so understood as to destroy 
the peculiarities of the individual writers, the prop- 
erties of human thought, or the characteristics of 
human language. All these are essential to the 
human element, and must therefore be maintained 
in their utmost integrity and freedom. 



160 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 



CHAPTER X. 

TIIK DIVINE ELEMENT OF SCRIPTURE IN ITS 
RELATION TO THE HUMAN. 

God's Part in the Composition of Scripture to be maintained in all 
Particulars Essential to Divine Agency — The Selection of the 
Sailed Writers, and their Education for their Work — The Sub- 
ject-matter of their Writings communicated, verified, select- 
ed — Intelligent Comprehension of their own Writings on the 
Part of the Inspired Authors, with its Limitations and Excep- 
tions — The Language of Scripture, and its Importance — A 
Revelation from God to the Prophets not Identical with the 
Communication of Revealed Truth from the Prophets to us — 
What the Accurate Transmission of Truth involves — The Abso- 
lute Truth of Scripture Inseparable from Divine Agency — The 
Relation of the two Elements, that of Superior and Inferior. 

The principle already applied to the adjustment 
of the human element in Scripture must equally be 
applied to the Divine. Whatever is characteristic 
of Divine action must be maintained, and only 
modified, on points nonessential, by the concurrent 
action of the human intellect and will. It has been 
shown that the Divine element must not be allowed 
to swallow up the human : it must now be shown 
that the human must not be allowed to derogate 
from the Divine. 

It must not be said that because the mode of 
conception or expression in Scripture is character- 
istic of man, that therefore it cannot be inspired. 
The human and the Divine elements exist together, 
and Die existence of the one is consequently no dis- 



THE DIVINE ELEMENT. 161 

proof of the existence of the other. As on the one 
side every essential of the human is to be main- 
tained in its union with the Divine, so on the other 
side every essential of the Divine is to be main- 
tained in union with the human. 

I. The authoritative character of the Scriptures, 
as being a formal communication from God to his 
creatures, is not lessened by the employment of 
human instruments as the channel of conveyance. 
Not only is the will conveyed the will of God, but 
the manner of its conveyance — the times, places, 
and persons — the literary structure and doctrinal 
proportions of the revelation — were planned by his 
sovereign wisdom, and executed under the super- 
vision of his omniscience. In pursuance of his own 
eternal plan he selected the men by whose means 
he would reveal himself, living at such an especial 
period, placed under such peculiar circumstances, 
endowed with such definite gifts of intellect and 
qualities of heart, as were accordant with his pur- 
poses. Thus he selected Moses to be his agent, not 
in the full flush, of his manhood and vigor of his 
courage, but tempered and matured by age, and 
sobered by experience. "Come now, therefore, 
and I will send thee unto Pharaoh," Exod. 3 : 10, 
was the charge laid upon him against his will by 
the God of his forefathers. Samuel was established 
from his childhood to be a prophet of the Lord. 
David was taken from the sheepfolds. Isaiah re- 
ceived his commission in a special vision of the 
glory of the Lord. Jeremiah was warned by God 
himself: "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew 



1G2 GOD'S WOED TVKITTEN. 

thcc ; and before thou earnest forth out of the womb 
I sanctified thee, arid I ordained thee a prophet 
unto the nations." Jer. 1 : 5. The vision of God 
by the river of Chebar prepared Ezekiel the priest 
for his prophetic office. Daniel was the " man 
greatly beloved "of God. Dan. 10:11. " The Lord 
took" Amos "as he followed the flock." Amos 
7 : 15. Jonah accomplished his mission against 
Nineveh under the immediate compulsion of a chas- 
tising Providence. The apostles were chosen by 
Christ : the latest of them, as one born out of due 
time, was " separated from his mother's womb." 
Gal. 1 : 15. 

Thus the writers of the Scriptures were specially 
selected for their work. They were not taken at 
haphazard, but immediately chosen ; and it cannot 
be doubted that the choice involved the special 
adaptation of their constitutional gifts and qualities 
to the work they were called to do. As an earthly 
architect selects his subordinate agents with direct 
reference to their special qualifications, so the sa- 
cred writers were in the hands of God but as clay 
in the hands of the potter. He called them into 
existence, gave them their special faculties, ordained 
their place and circumstances, and then employed 
them, each to do his special part in that general 
scheme of a revelation, the whole order and purpose 
of which was known to the mind of God alone. 

It is farther evident that God provided for his 
chosen instruments a special training, alike intel- 
lectual, moral, and religious. The forty years' ban- 
ishment of Moses, the military experience of Joshua, 



THE DIVINE ELEMENT. 163 

the education of Samuel under aged Eli, the adven- 
turous youth and enterprising manhood of David, 
the visions of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, the 
early trials and training of Daniel, constituted their 
preparatory discipline for their subsequent minis- 
tries. In the history of St. Paul this adaptation of 
the early experience to the particular work subse- 
quently intrusted to him, is especially remarkable. 
His early life, his associations, his education, his 
own religious struggles, his fanatical attachment to 
the law of his fathers, and the mode of his conver- 
sion, bear palpably upon them the signet of an 
overruling Providence. They equally combined to 
give intensity to his natural force of genius, depth 
to his religious experience, definite direction to his 
teaching, and influence to his personal example. 

The God who gave the sacred writers their 
work, first fitted them for it. The language pro- 
phetically applied by Isaiah to our Lord may be 
used to describe the prophetic office in general, 
and is indeed used by the writer primarily of him- 
self. " He hath made nry mouth as a sharp sword ; 
in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me ; he made 
me a polished shaft." Isa. 49 : 2. In these matters 
the human qualities of the writers so little inter- 
fered with the Divine power and authority of the 
ultimate author of the Kevelation, that they formed 
the material which they moulded and the instru- 
ments through which they were declared. 

II. The same harmonious suitability exists in 
the further action of the Divine Spirit in conveying 
to the human instrument the knowledge of the will 



164 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

and purposes of God. Here the subject-matter of 
the revelation divides itself into two parts. On the 
one side is the knowledge lying wholly above the 
reach of the unassisted human faculties; and on 
the other the knowledge lying within it. The 
teaching of Scripture falling under the first head, 
that, namely, relative to the nature of God and of 
unseen things, to the history of the past and the 
prospects of the future, and to the purposes of t]^e 
Divine mind towards mankind, can only have been 
known to the writers through an immediate revela- 
tion, "Who hath known the mind of the Lord? or 
who hath been his counsellor ?" Rom. 11 : 34. 
Inspiration here includes the whole communication 
of the truth to be conveyed to the mind of the 
earthly writer. 

In regard to the second head, much information 
must have been naturally acquired through the 
ordinary processes of experience and observation 
prior to any action of the Divine Spirit. Neverthe- 
less the sphere of inspiration remains here as clear 
and specific as elsewhere. It would act in two 
directions. In the first place it would complete and 
authenticate the information already possessed, and 
supplement it on points where personal knowledge 
must necessarily have been wanting. For instance, 
Moses must have possessed a personal acquaintance 
with a large number of facts relative to the exodus, 
but he has recorded others with which he could 
have had no immediate connection, and which he 
could only have known through the testimony of 
other men. I do not allude to the early history of 



THE DIVINE ELEMENT. 165 

Genesis, which belongs properly to the class of 
things natnrallv unknown and immediately reveal- 
ed; but I allude to such facts as those relative to 
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and to the narrative 
of Balaam and Balak. Moreover we find in Scrip- 
ture not alone a narrative of men's acts, but an 
explanation of their motives, and these could not 
be known save to the Searcher of hearts. Exodus 
14 : 5 ; Numb. 14 : 2-4 ; 2 Kings 2 : 17. The same 
remark applies with still greater force to the actions 
recorded of God himself, an element very largely 
and jtt'oniinently pervading the whole of Scripture ; 
for in imputing motives and acts to God, the writer 
must either have guessed them out of his own 
imagination, or have learned them from God him- 
self. In the first case the narrative would possess 
no higher character than a human fiction, which we 
have already seen that it is not. The knowledge of 
them must have been communicated by God him- 
self. In regard, therefore, to matters falling within 
the range of possible human knowledge, inspiration 
acted in completing, correcting, and verifying infor- 
mation which was or might have been otherwise 
possessed. 

But it occupied also a further sphere in direct- 
ing what portions of the facts should be recorded 
and what should not. Facts may be in themselves 
exceedingly trivial, and yet may have very impor- 
tant bearing on some special form of religious temp- 
tation. An instance of this is found in 2 Timothy 
4 : 13, a favorite quotation on the part of those who 
object to the plenary inspiration of the word. The 



1G6 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

subject will only be slightly alluded to here, because 
an admirable answer will be found in Prof. Gaus- 
sen's " Theopneustia." His vindication serves to 
illustrate the principle that inspiration was exer- 
cised in directing what should be recorded and what 
not; but it by no means exhausts the teaching of 
the passage in question; for, in addition to the 
touching picture presented of the apostle's loneli- 
ness and bodily privations, we have the farther 
illustration how completely the inspired apostles 
were men like ourselves. There is great religious 
danger in conceiving of them as men of another 
mould, and by natural constitution of a more heroic 
type than ourselves — thus depriving ourselves of the 
comforts of their experience and the force of their 
example. With what vividness is the danger met 
by the simple portrait of the man so preoccupied as 
to have forgotten his cloak and papers, and subse- 
quently distressed by their absence. It identifies 
the great apostle by a single vivid touch with our 
ordinary human nature and its familiar wants and 
weaknesses. 

But this function of inspiration extends not 
alone to the selection of individual acts to be re- 
corded, but to considerable passages, and even to 
the construction of entire books. This has been 
frequently forgotten, and as a result men have fallen 
into mistakes which would be ludicrous were it not 
for the gravity of the subject and the unhappy effects 
flowing from the misapprehension. For instance, 
God has been charged with uttering sentiments in 
the book of Job formally condemned in the very 



THE DIVINE ELEMENT. 107 

same book as not being in accordance with God's 
mind, Is not, then, the book of Job an inspired 
book? Certainly; bu t the inspiration covers the 
accuracy of the account, not the justice of the sen- 
timenfa^Jt is true, indeed^lEsit three passages 
from this book are quoted in the New Testament; 
but these passages derive authority not from Eli- 
phaz the speaker, but from the inspired apostle who 
quotes and applies them. For of Eliphaz in gen- 
eral, in common with Bildad and Zophar, we have 
God's immediate condemnation: "My wrath is kin- 
dled against thee, and against thy two friends, for 
ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right." 
Job 42 : 7. It would therefore be as unjust to 
charge upon inspiration the sentiments it records 
to have been uttered, as it would be to make a hu- 
man historian responsible for all the bad deeds and 
unrighteous sentiments recorded in his history. 

In all the historical and biographical portions 
of Scripture the relation of God towards the mat- 
ters recorded is exactly the relation of an historian 
towards the materials of his history; his respon- 
sibility is for the relation, and not for the things 
related 

How natural this province of inspiration is, may 
be seen by the analogy of human things. Suppose 
a superior, not employing an amanuensis, for that 
would suggest the erroneous idea of a mechanical dic- 
tation, but superintending the composition of a narra- 
tive; what more natural than that his suggestions 
and corrections should produce the concurrence of 
two minds in one and the same composition ? 



1G8 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

This subject must not be dismissed without a 
further caution. The communication of truth to the 
intelligence of the sacred writer appears to have 
been the ordinary rule. But, as if presciently to 
guard against the supposition that the Divine ele- 
ment in Scripture closes with this, some notable 
exceptions have been recorded. That the prophets 
did ordinarily understand the messages they em- 
bodied in words, and were as far as possible remov- 
ed from mere machines bereft of intelligent con- 
sciousness of what they were doing, is evident from 
the effect produced by the message in certain speci- 
fied cases upon the feelings of the writer. Thus 
Ezekiel, divinely warned of the unbelief and oppo- 
sition of Israel, and amazed at the picture of human 
sin and Divine vengeance presented to him, "re- 
mained astonished for seven days." Ezek. 3:15. 
Thus Daniel was " astonished" at the vision by the 
river Ulai. Dan. 7 : 27. In the same way, Habak- 
kuk " trembled " at the knowledge of the Divine in- 
dignation against his people, and gave utterance to 
his own unshaken confidence in God amid the sor- 
est national calamities : " Yet will I rejoice in the 
Lord." Hab. 3 : 18. There was, therefore, an in- 
telligent apprehension of the messages conveyed ; 
not, perhaps, to the full height of their meaning, 
but as to their general character. On the other 
hand, we are warned that the prophets themselves 
did not always understand the entire purport of 
their own revelation. St. Peter asserts distinctly 
that the prophets "inquired and searched diligently 
what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ 



THE DIVINE ELEMENT. 169 

which was in them did signify." 1 Peter 1:11. He 
also teaches that "no prophecy of the Scripture is 
of any private interpretation." Why? Because 
"the prophecy came not in old time by the will of 
man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved 
by the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1 : 21. 

Here, as in other instances, both sides of the 
teaching must be combined into one common truth. 
On the one side, we are taught that inspiration was 
no mechanical influence, acting solely from the out- 
side, as if it were possible to conceive that the liv- 
ing Spirit, the Spirit of life, its Lord and Giver, 
could pass over a living man's intellect and heart 
without stirring it into activity to the utmost capa- 
city of its finite powers. On the other hand, we 
are warned against the opposite extreme of meas- 
uring the meaning of the Divine message by the 
meaning given to it by the human messenger. Not 
what the man intended, but what God intended, 
should be the object of our inquiry. As if to make 
this lesson as distinct as possible, we have not only 
the prediction of Caiaphas, but we have the inspir- 
ed explanation of it. As understood by the wicked 
speaker, his words were an iniquitous encourage- 
ment to murder. As overruled by the Holy Spirit, 
they conveyed an interpretation of the profound 
mystery of the atonement. "This spake he not of 
himself, but being high priest that year, he prophe- 
sied that Jesus should die for (imep) that nation, and 
not for that nation only, but that also he should 
gather together in one the children of God that 
were scattered abroad." John 11:51. 



170 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

III. This undeniable instance of a verbal inspira- 
tion suitably introduces the farther element of Di- 
vine authority underlying the patent human agency. 
God not only chose the writers, prepared and dis- 
ciplined the writers, supplemented and verified their 
information, but he also acted concurrently with 
them in its conveyance. Leaving in all their natu- 
ral peculiarity the human elements of style and 
manner of thought and expression, or rather em- 
ploying them as his foreintended instruments, the 
Spirit of God yet so far concurred as to secure that 
the truth should be accurately conveyed and ex- 
pressed just as God willed it to be expressed. This 
will be seen if we consider that the existence of a 
divinely given knowledge in the minds of certain 
men could be of no possible good to any one else 
but themselves, except so far as it is made known. 
It is, therefore, as important to know whether the 
message has been accurately given by the sacred 
writers to us, as it is to know that it was accurately 
given by God to the sacred writers. The introduc- 
tion of error, whether in the process of transmission 
from God to them, or in the process of transmission 
from them to us, would be equally fatal. We stand 
at the farther link of the chain ; and if a failure ex- 
ists in any part of it, it matters not in the slightest 
degree in what particular link it exists. If the 
chain snaps next to the hand that holds it, it is the 
same to us as if it snapped at the farther end. It 
must be secure throughout, or it cannot be secure 
at all. If the Divine will has not been accurately 
conveyed to us, then we have not got a revelation. 



THE DIVINE ELEMENT. 171 

The sacred writers had it, and they have given us 
their conceptions of it; but as these conceptions are 
simply their own, and as we are specifically taught 
that they did not fully understand their own predic- 
tions, an indefinite element of contingency and doubt 
is introduced fatal to all absolute certainty and 
truth. For what then, if truth comes to us in this 
shape and in this only, becomes of the lofty claims 
advanced by Scripture, and of the tremendous issues 
of life and death asserted to hang upon our accept- 
ance or rejection of it ? Surely we must be judged 
by the revelation as it is received by ourselves, not 
as it was received by men, the latest of whom died 
nearly two thousand years ago. But if the Divine 
authority stopped with the transmission of the rev- 
elation to the writers, and did not extend to its 
transmission from the writers to us, then we have 
only the human description of a Divine revelation, 
and not the Divine revelation itself. 

But the whole question becomes so indefinitely 
complicated and embarrassed by limiting the Divine 
agency in this manner, that it becomes impossible 
to frame any consistent conceptions of inspiration 
at all. If it had been possible to bring the human 
mind in any way into immediate contact with the 
inspired minds of the prophets and apostles, without 
the intervention of any secondary instrument, then 
we might have received the Divine revelation with 
no farther sources of error than are inherent in any 
case in the intellectual and moral weaknesses of 
man ; but of such a possibility the wildest visionary 
does not dream. What they received from God we 



172 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

can only receive from them through the vehicle of 
words, and nothing can alter the fact that the ve- 
racity of the truth transmitted must be equivalent, 
neither more nor less, to the accuracy of the words 
which convey it. 

But, further, it is generally admitted that the 
scriptural writers were inspired men. Is it meant 
that they were inspired only to receive, and not in- 
spired to communicate? If so, then, so far as the act 
of putting into words the teaching of God is concern- 
ed, they were not inspired. The inspiration ceased 
with the act contemplated in it; that is, with the 
receiving of truth from God. So far as concerns 
their writings, they were inspired men no longer; 
they were, therefore, ordinary men, and no more — 
liable to ordinary human weaknesses and mistakes. 
If it be replied that they were inspired men all 
through, in the act of transmitting to us as well as 
in the act of receiving from God, then this is all we 
contend for; then the inspiration extended to their 
writing, and the authority of God is coextensive 
with the inspiration; that is, it extends to the wri- 
ting. Accordingly, it is of the writing, not of the 
men who wrote, that inspiration is directly affirm- 
ed. The specific word occurs but once, and then 
is applied to the thing, not the persons. The Scrip- 
ture is God-inspired ; but the Scripture is not the 
sense. The soul possesses no orthography. The 
words expressing the sense are written, but not the 
sense separate from the words. Unless, therefore, 
by the inspiration of the writing we are to under- 
stand the mere act of moving the pen, the inspira- 



THE DIVINE ELEMENT. 173 

tion must be the inspiration of the words, since the 
words, and the words alone, are written. The lan- 
guage of the Bible undeniably suggests an immense 
presumption in favor of the inspiration of the words. 
The reiterated use of such phrases as "thus saith 
the Lord," "the word of the Lord," or in the plural, 
"the words of the Lord," as the term is employed 
with great frequency in the New Testament, when 
the plural word cannot possibly refer to any thing 
but to the separate words making up the one com- 
munication — can bear no other meaning than that 
of a verbal inspiration, if the language has a mean- 
ing at all. Whatever reason we have for believing 
the Bible to contain a true revelation from God, we 
have equally for believing in the inspiration of the 
Avoids which convey it, and through which alone it 
is known to us. 

The human element, therefore, is not so to be 
understood as to derogate from the action of God 
in his word, as selecting, preparing, and teaching 
the writers, and by a concurrent act protecting the 
transmission of the message from verbal inaccuracy 
and mistakes. 

IV. But, further, the Divine authority carries 
with it the guarantee of unerring veracity. Scrip- 
ture is the product of two constituent elements, the 
Divine and the human. But it is formed, not by 
their fusion together in a third something, neither 
Divine nor human, but by their coincidence and co- 
operation. Hence it follows, as already stated, that 
both the elements are to be maintained complete. 
This can only be done by retaining what is essen- 



171 GODS WORD WRITTEN. 

tial on cither side — all, without reserve, necessary 
to the existence of the authority of God on the one 
side, and the intelligent instrumentality of man upon 
the other. It follows that the human element does 
not derogate from the absolute truth of Scripture. 
When the words "human element" are used in the 
sense of necessarily involving in the composition of 
Scripture the mistakes characteristic of secular coin- 
positions — in other words, as implying that, because 
there is a human element in the word of God, there 
must also be mistakes in it — their use involves not 
only ambiguity of language, but a fallacy of thought. 
Man is as clearly fallible as God is clearly infallible. 
But to be fallible, or capable of making mistakes, 
is not the same as making mistakes; the liability 
must not be confounded with the act. To be wrong- 
is a separable accident, not an inseparable property 
of human nature. If it was of the essence of hu- 
manity, then man never could be right, but must be 
universally and invariably wrong ; but man is some- 
times right, sometimes wrong. Many human nar- 
ratives are wholly true ; a thing may be wholly hu- 
man, and yet not untrue. To be wrong, therefore, 
is not essential to the human element ; and the fact 
that the Scriptures were written by human instru- 
ments does not prove the existence of mistakes in 
them ; all it proves is, that in the absence of any 
other influence to prevent it, there might be mis- 
takes in them. But this corrective influence is sup- 
plied by the Divine element; for to be right is an 
essential of the Divine nature. It is not even con- 
ceivable that the Omniscient should be capable of 



THE DIVINE ELEMENT. 175 

ignorance, the All-wise capable of mistake, the All- 
holy capable of fraud. What is not essential to the 
agency of man may therefore be omitted, without 
affecting the true human element. What is essen- 
tial to the agency of God must be maintained, or 
else the perfection of the Divine element is lost. 
There is no reason on the human side why there 
should be errors in Scripture ; but there is the most 
conclusive reason on the Divine side why there 
should not be. The Divine authority, therefore, 
carries with it the Divine veracity. 

Thus the two elements are each maintained in 
their fulness and integrity. How they were united 
we can no more explain than we can explain the 
union of the Godhead and the manhood in the one 
inseparable person of Christ. But we assert the 
fact on the authority of a revelation bearing a Divine 
stamp on its very front. If we cannot explain how 
it can be, neither is any one competent to say that 
it cannot be, since our human experience supplies 
repeated analogies to prove its possibility. We 
maintain the fact of the union, without propound- 
ing any theory to account for it. Both elements 
exist together everywhere. The Divine element 
does not destroy the human individualities of char- 
acter, thought, style, and language ; the human ele- 
ment does not derogate from the authority of a rev- 
elation from God, or necessitate the admixture of 
error with the all-embracing knowledge and uner- 
ring wisdom of the Omniscient. Every part of the 
Bible is human, and every part is Divine. There 
are two concurrent elements, and the result is the 



176 GOD'S WORD WEITTEN. 

word of God, that "liveth and abidetli for ever." 
1 Pet, 1 : 23. 

But while there is concurrence between the two, 
there is likewise a manifest subordination. The 
spring of all the revelation, as the spring of all life, 
is in God, and man is but his instrument. No other 
relation than this is conceivable, when the Creator 
and the creature are brought together in a commu- 
nity of action. In entering upon the study of the 
Scriptures, it is with the human element that we 
are brought first into contact; for this is the link 
of the chain nearest to ourselves. The earthly 
messenger, with his earthly language and personal 
peculiarities, is the first object presented to us. 
But we must not stop with him, but must trace the 
revelation upwards, through its secondaiy instru- 
ments, to its originating cause. The voice is no 
longer human, but Divine. We pass into the imme- 
diate presence of Him whose sovereignty invests 
the written word with authority, and whose wisdom 
bestows upon it the attribute of perfect and unmin- 
gled truth. 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 177 



CHAPTER XI. 

WHAT IS TRUTH? 

What is meant by saying that Scripture is True or Untrue— Adjec- 
tives of Intensity and their Meaning, " Strictly True," "Liter- 
ally True" — Adjectives of Quality, and the Ambiguous Sense 
in which they are used, "Logically True," "Scientifically 
True "' — Nature of Truth the Same in all Cases— The Objective 
Fact or Facts — The Subjective Account of It— The Intention 
of the Narrator — The Selection of the Language involves no 
Change in the Truth of the Fact — Logic and its Forms — The 
Pauline Epistles — The Professed Character and Object of the 
Scriptures. 

Misaitrehexsioxs arising from the ambiguous 
use of the terms "Divine element" and "human 
element," have been corrected in the previous chap- 
ter. It has been shown that the two are concur- 
rent constituents of Scripture, and that they must 
be maintained everywhere distinct, and nowhere 
separate. 

Another class of misapprehensions is next to 
be considered. These arise from an uncertain use 
of the word " truth," and from the addition of epi- 
thets to the word, as if there were degrees of truth, 
or kinds and qualities of truth, and as if truth were 
not itself invariably and universally the same. 

Two classes of expressions require to be consid- 
ered. The one consists of adjectives of intensity 
and force, as in the phrases, " strictly true," " sim- 
ply true," " absolutely true," " literally true." The 
other arises from the use of adjectives of quality, as, 

8* 



178 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

"logically true," "scientifically true," " historically 
true." These are generally employed to express 
doubt in the veracity of Scripture, and in its iner- 
rability, or freedom from all error. The expres- 
sions are themselves highly ambiguous. Upon a 
theory of universal doubt, they might be consist- 
ently employed ; but such a theory finds its refuta- 
tion in the common sense and conscience of man- 
kind. On any other theory, they can only serve to 
conceal the real nature of the objection they are 
intended to convey, and its actual bearing upon the 
authority of Scripture. 

In the first place, care must be taken not to 
confound what is meant by truth with the word 
truths, as commonly used. Truths are simply 
statements that are true. There may, therefore, be 
a great variety of truths, for the} T may be found in 
every branch of human knowledge. There may be 
historical truths, scientific truths, moral truths. 
The common word " truths " is applied to them be- 
cause they have this common quality — that they are 
true. The question now to be settled is, What is 
that common quality we express by the word 
"truth?" 

Truth is the correspondence of a representation 
with the thing represented. This correspondence 
must be measured by the avowed purpose of the 
representation. Thus the term may be applied to 
a picture in two ways. The painting may be true 
to some reality of actual life, or it may only be true 
to an ideal existing in the mind of the painter. A 
portrait is an instance of the first kind. TVhat is 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 179 

called a fancy landscape, or a grotesque representa- 
tion of fairies, sprites, and ghosts, are instances of 
the second kind. It would be very unjust to meas- 
ure the ideal picture by the standard applied to 
the portrait. It would be vain, for instance, to 
object to it, that it was not true to the reality, or 
that such forms as are presented on a canvas can 
never have existed. The answer would be, that the 
painting was never intended to be true to an exist- 
ing reality, but only to represent forms existing in 
the fancy of the painter. To the intention of the 
artist the picture would be true, and only untrue to 
the blundering misapprehension of the critic. The 
professed purpose of the representation must, there- 
fore, be taken into account in judging of its accu- 
racy or inaccuracy. 

When, therefore, it is said that truth is the cor- 
respondence of a representation to the thing repre- 
sented, the statement involves three things: (1) It 
involves the actual existence of the things to be 
represented. (2) It involves the accuracy of the 
representation. (3) It involves the intention on the 
part of the agent to represent certain things, and 
no others. A painter does not intend his picture 
to represent any thing or every thing a critic chooses 
to make it; but he intends it to represent certain 
defined objects, and by its correspondence with their 
reality, its truth or otherwise must be measured. 
No opinion can be formed on this point without 
knowing the reality as it exists on one side, and 
keeping in view the avowed purpose of the repre- 
sentation on the other. 



180 GOD'S WOBD WRITTEN. 

This is as true of a representation made by words 
to the understanding, as of a representation made 
by form and color to the eye. The familiar expe- 
rience of ordinary life may readily suggest an illus- 
tration. Let it be supposed that some event has 
taken place, a disastrous accident, a great public 
spectacle, a hotly contested battle. Let it be sup- 
posed that some person is giving to another a nar- 
ration of the event. Such a circumstance may occur 
every day. Let it be recalled, and a very little con- 
sideration will show that belief or disbelief in the 
story involves all the three conditions abovenamed, 
namely, the occurrence of the facts, the correspond- 
ence of the narrative with the facts, and the inten- 
tion of the narrator. 

If the facts never occurred, the story could not 
be said to be either true or untrue, since it would 
become a mere fiction. If the facts took place, and 
the narration corresponds with the occurrence, then 
it would be true ; if it does not correspond, it will 
not be true. But this correspondence must be 
measured by the professed object of the narrator. 
Suppose a person to object that the story was not 
true because it omitted some of the facts, the objec- 
tion would only hold good if the narrator professed 
to tell all the facts ; otherwise it would still be true, 
although a part of the facts were omitted because 
they did not fall in with the design of the narrator. 
For instance, a man has lost his life in some fatal 
accident. It is the object of an eye-witness to nar- 
rate to his relatives the mode in which he perished. 
Would his narration be untrue unless he included 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 181 

in his tale the entire series of facts connected with 
the whole of the accident ? Thus, whenever truth 
is in question, the question involves the reality of 
the thing narrated, the correspondence of the nar- 
ration, and the purpose of the narrator. 

In discussing whether Scripture is true or not 
true, all these conditions must be kept in mind. We 
can only say that it is untrue when, from our knowl- 
edge of the realities, we can compare the Divine 
narrative with them, and ascertain the correspon- 
dence or otherwise. In regard to roairy facts of 
Scripture, such as relate to the nature of God, his 
actions and will, and the unseen and future world, 
we have no independent knowledge of our own, and 
therefore no means of measurement. But in regard 
to many other facts of Scripture, we possess suffi- 
cient independent information to judge, and are 
therefore able * positively to affirm the truth or 
untruth of the sacred narrative. The question will 
be, not whether all the facts of the case have been 
accurately recorded, but only whether that portion 
of them has been accurately recorded which it was 
the purpose of the sacred writers to record. 

Here, therefore, we find the answer to the skep- 
tical question whether there is such a thing as truth, 
or whether any thing is true which men believe to 
be true. Thus one school of infidels have said that 
the Bible is true ; only meaning by the words that 
it accurately describes the religious belief of man- 
kind at different periods of the world. Others have 
said that " every truth is a falsehood," which is an 
absurdity ; for what is false cannot be a truth. The 



182 GOD ; S WOKD WRITTEN. 

words can really mean no more than that what one 
man believes to be true, some other man believes to 
be false. 

Is there nothing absolutely true — nothing abso- 
lutely false? The definition already given supplies 
an answer. Truth is the correspondence of the 
representation with the thing represented. Do 
things exist independently of our conception of 
them, or do they only exist because we conceive 
them, and cease to exist when we cease to conceive 
of them ? The latter would be an absurdity indig- 
nantly rejected by men's plain sense. Every instinct 
of reason and conscience decides otherwise. We 
owe allegiance to a real God; we live in a real 
world ; we form part of a real system ; we are affect- 
ed by real events; we are real ourselves, with real 
bodies and souls; and there is a real eternity for 
which to provide, however idly men -may dream of 
such matters. But if there are existing things to 
be represented, then it must be possible that the 
representation should correspond or should not 
correspond with the reality of the thing. In the 
one case it is true; in the other it is false. Things 
are not, therefore, what men make them, true to 
one man and false to another, but they exist in 
themselves fixed as the Creator; "by whom are all 
things, and for whom are all things." Heb. 2 : 10. 

There can therefore be no degrees in truth. 
Either the description corresponds, or it does not. 
When we meet with the phrases "partly true" or 
"perfectly true," "simply true," "entirely true," 
we must understand that they refer to degrees of 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 183 

extension or application, not to degrees of truth. 
By partly true, we mean that part of it is true and 
part untrue, not that the same part is in one sense 
true and another untrue. By "perfectly true," 
"simply true," "entirely true," we mean that the 
whole is true without exception, and that every 
part of the representation corresponds to the thing 
represented. With regard to each individual part 
there can be no degrees, no gradations; it is either 
true or it is not true. 

The same rule should be applied to the second 
class of phrases — logically true, scientifically true, 
historically true. Their only proper meaning is, 
that those parts of the Bible referring to logical 
arguments, to matters of science, or points of his- 
tory, are true or not true as the speaker may intend 
to say. But this is not the sense in which they are 
ordinarily used. They are employed to disguise 
the naked alternatives of truth or falsehood alone 
open to our adoption, and to suggest that there are 
different kinds of truth, so that the Bible may be in 
one sense true, and yet in another sense untrue. 
They are employed to soothe the sense of reverence 
towards the word of God, and to put it off its guard. 
Their use disposes men to give up their belief in 
the truth of the Bible without experiencing a shock 
to faith, or perceiving the full meaning of the charge 
they are bringing upon its Divine Author. The 
interests of Christianity demand that the question 
should be fearlessly faced. The authority of the 
Christian Scriptures must stand or fall with their 
truth. We cannot lose the one and yet in any de- 



184 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

grec maintain the other. If their contents are not 
true, they cannot be the infallible word of God. If 
they are true, no false distinctions must be allowed 
to detract from their full and plenary authority over 
the human intellect and conscience. If they are 
true at all, they are logically true, scientifically 
true, historically true — in every sense true. 

For these words denote no variety of truth, but 
only variety in the mode of its statement, and in 
the character of the language chosen to express it. 
This language necessarily varies with the stand- 
point from which the subject is regarded. An 
object may be one in itself, and yet may be regard- 
ed in many relations and from many points of view. 
The sun is but one; but it may be regarded with 
reference to its office as light-bearer to our world, 
or to the influence of its genial warmth in quick- 
ening nature, or to the solar system of which it is 
the centre, or in its relation to the other portions of 
the universe, or with reference to its own substance, 
or with regard to its office of irritating into motion 
the luminous ether, or as to the chemical qualities 
of its rays, or as to their component parts, or as to 
their relation to color, or in other points which an 
ingenious mind ma}' easily suggest. The one object 
may thus enter into the inquiries of half a dozen 
different branches of naturalscience, and each one 
of them would have its special point of view, and a 
technical language of its own. To combine all these 
modes of conceiving, and consequently of speaking, 
into one, would be impossible. It is necess.ny, 
therefore, to select the aspect in which it is to be 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 185 

regarded ; whether it shall be viewed with the eyes 
of an ordinary observer, or of a poet, or of a philos- 
opher, or of an astronomer, or of a geographer, or 
of a chemist. 

Yet all this variety of view would make no dif- 
ference in the object itself; the difference would be 
only in the thinker and speaker, and the common 
phenomena would remain absolutely unaltered by 
the verbal differences of description. The statement 
might be equally true in any case, and the varieties 
of description would not be degrees of truth, but 
only diversities in the mode of presenting it. The 
same thing is true of groups of objects as of single 
objects, of trains of thought, and of processes of 
argument. No subject can be submitted to the 
action of the human mind which does not admit of 
being viewed in different relations, and consequently 
of being described in different forms of words, with- 
out compromising in any of them the perfect corre- 
spondence of the representation with the thing rep- 
resented on that side of it which alone enters into 
the purpose of the writer. 

With this plain principle applied to the phrases 
now under discussion, it will appear that the truth 
of any statement is independent of the mode of its 
expression ; and that, however widely the expres- 
sion may vary, the truth remains the same so long- 
as the representation continues to correspond with 
the thing represented. The use of one class of terms 
in preference to another varies the form of the state- 
ment, but not the truth of it. When it is objected 
that one part of Scripture is not logically true, an- 



186 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

other not scientifically true, another not historically 
true, the phrases mean no more than that they are 
not couched in the technical forms of the logician, 
expressed in the technical language of the man of 
science, or framed after the technical methods of the 
historian. 

The first two of these phrases require a few ad- 
ditional remarks ; the last will need a more extended 
examination, and will consequently be postponed for 
another chapter. 

1. It has been objected that some of the reason- 
ings in the Pauline epistles are not "logically true." 
But logic has no special kind of truth peculiar to 
itself. It simply professes to give an account of the 
necessary laws of thought — laws invariably observed 
in all correct reasoning, however unconsciously they 
may be used by the reasoner himself. If reasoning- 
be correct, it follows these laws ; if it does not fol- 
fow these laws, it is not correct. All reasoning- 
consists of premises and a conclusion, the premises 
being what are popularly called the reasons on 
which we rest the conclusion. If the conclusion 
properly follows from the premises, then it is logi- 
cally correct, although the special terms and pecu- 
liar forms adopted by logicians may be wholly 
absent. 

Hence an argument may be stated in many dif- 
ferent ways, and may be amplified in this part of it 
or in that, according to the mental habits and ten- 
dencies of the arguer. Or parts of the train of rea- 
soning may be omitted, and it may be left to the 
intelligence of the reader to supply it. Or the mode 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 187 

of arguing may deal in abrupt transitions and com- 
plicated connections, or connections apparently com- 
plicated, because Ave do not hold the explanatory 
thread of reference which existed in the hands of 
the original writers and readers. Or it may admit 
of rhetorical interruptions, vehement appeals, im- 
passioned outbursts, or lofty description. These 
peculiarities belong wholly to the minds of the wri- 
ters, and they are perfectly familiar to us in all 
branches of human knowledge. No two men will 
state an argument in precisely the same way, be- 
cause their mental gifts are not precisely similar ; 
yet the argument itself, when reduced to logical 
form, may be identical and as absolutely conclusive 
in the one form as in the other, each form being 
adapted to some special tendency of mind. 

Now all these peculiarities are to be found in 
different parts of the Bible, and many of them are 
very prominent in the writings of St. Paul. They 
belong to the human element of Scripture, for it 
has been already shown that the personal individu- 
alities of the writers are essential to it, and only so 
far belong to the Divine side as God saw fit to use 
the agency of men gifted with these peculiar ten- 
dencies of thought and utterance. To have reduced 
the whole of Scripture into a series of digested syl- 
logisms would have been to make it unintelligible 
to the mass of mankind, would have destroyed its 
power and sublimity, would have rendered the wri- 
tings of inspired men wholly dissimilar to the wri- 
tings of uninspired men, and would have absolutely 
contradicted in this one sphere of God's action the 



188 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

principles of moral discipline maintained by him in 
every other sphere without exception. Technical 
precision is happily as absent from Scripture as is 
loose inconclusiveness. Logical truth is as univer- 
sally present as logical forms are universally absent. 
2. It has been objected that parts of Scripture 
are not " scientifically true." The stock objection 
of infidelity to the standing still of the sun in the 
days of Joshua is still urged by modern writers, and 
may therefore be used as an illustration, although 
it has been refuted even to weariness. I do not dis- 
cuss the possibility of the miracle, for that belongs 
to a different branch of inquiry altogether, but only 
the language in which it is described, and the ob- 
jection brought against the inspiration of Scripture 
from its alleged want of scientific accuracy. That 
the language is that of the ordinary spectator, and 
not that of the man of science, is most true; but it 
is the language of the ordinary spectator of every 
age, and no more peculiar to the fourteenth century 
before Christ than to the nineteenth century after 
Christ. An uninspired writer recording the fact in 
our own day would use exactly the language used 
by Joshua. The event is described from the opti- 
cal point of view, as it appeared to the eyes of the 
spectators. But this mode of description is as accu- 
rate in this point of view as the most precise lan- 
guage of the astronomer would be in his point of 
view. The truth or otherwise of the fact does not 
come into question, and must be decided on per- 
fectly different grounds, namely, as a matter of evi- 
dence. The only possible question that can be 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 189 

raised is whether Joshua's mode of describing the 
miracle is the best. When men are writing with a 
view to ordinary life, they use the language of or- 
dinary life, just as Joshua did. I open a modern 
almanac, and I find it stated that on the 14th day 
of May the sun will rise at 4h. 13m. Is not the 
statement true, and scientifically true, since science 
attests its accuracy? And yet it is not expressed 
in scientific language. In the same way, and for 
precisely the same reasons, those portions of Scrip- 
ture which speak of the phenomena of the natural 
world are not written in scientific language, and 
yet they may be true, and scientifically true, never- 
theless. 

The language used in any book, whether inspired 
or uninspired, must ever be selected with reference 
to the object contemplated by the book and to the 
readers for whom it is intended. To write a poem 
or a history in the language of science would be 
ridiculous. Equally ridiculous is it to object to the 
inspiration of Scripture, that it is expressed in lan- 
guage appropriate to tbe times, circumstances, and 
personal peculiarities alike of the authors and of 
the readers. Would it be expected that God should 
employ human language as the channel of a revela- 
tion for mankind, and yet so employ it as to make 
it absurd? We need to watch against being mis- 
led by our own descriptions of parts of Scripture 
when we speak of some portions as poetry, some as 
histoiy, some as biography. All these and other 
portions are but parts of one great plan, and them- 
selves share in the characteristics of the plan. To 



190 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

take separate parts, and judge them separately from 
the design of the whole, is only to mistake the con- 
ditions of the case. The Bible at large is not a 
poem, nor is it a work of science, nor is it a history, 
nor is it a manual of biography ; and therefore it 
cannot be measured by the rules applicable to com- 
positions belonging to the sphere of poetry, or sci- 
ence, or history, or biography. The Bible is a rev- 
elation given for the declared purpose of making- 
men wise unto salvation. In constructing the whole 
marvellous book, God has used poetry, and history, 
and science, and biography, just so far as he saw 
each of them to be appropriate to the contemplated 
object and harmonious with the general design of 
the whole. To measure the whole by its parts, and 
not the parts by the whole, would be a strange per- 
version indeed of our ordinary modes of arguing. 
The Scriptures constitute a revelation adapted in 
its separate stages to the ages when it was given, 
and in its totality, adapted to universal humankind. 
We may venture to apply to it the test which our 
Lord applied to the Sabbath, and to say that the 
Bible was made for man, and not man for the Bible. 
Its Divine congruity with human habits and meth- 
ods of speech is not less remarkable in the diversi- 
ties entering into its human element, than in the 
overshadowing authority inherent in the Divine. 



HISTORICAL TRUTH. 101 



CHAPTER XII. 

HISTORICAL TRUTH. 

History distinguished from Biography — The Partial Character of 
all History — Its Diverse Branches and Objects — A Human 
Transcript of the Divine Knowledge Impossible — Events and 
Their Causes — Principles and Their Evidences — I. "What His- 
torical Truth does not require — II. What it does require — The 
Genealogies of St. Matthew and St. Luke — Historical Truth 
not involved in Their Reconciliation — The Object and Charac- 
ter of the Genealogies. 

" The books of Moses are not historically true/' 
So says the modern objector. "What then is histor- 
ical truth, and in what respects does it differ from 
airy other truth ? I reply that it differs in no re- 
spect. The words are but a euphemism to disarm 
suspicion, and to soften down by gentle words what 
might otherwise appear as a harsh denial of the ve- 
racity of Holy Scripture. 

History constitutes a separate branch of human 
literature. It may therefore have methods of its 
own, and a mode of speaking belonging to itself. 
This is not the case at present ; for what professes 
to be historical criticism, is as yet little more than 
the arbitrary opinion of individual men, guided by 
no settled principles and working by no recognized 
rules. But let us suppose that historical science 
should acquire a shape as distinctive as logic, or 
astronomy, or geology, it would in that case acquire 



192 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

a language and form of its own, in the same way as 
these have done. In such a case, the phrase histor- 
ically true might be used, as the phrases logically 
true or scientifically true are used, to express one 
particular mode of viewing truth and one particu- 
lar mode of expressing it. And the objection, the 
Bible is not historically true, would mean, its state- 
ments are not couched in the historical form ; or 
if not this, it would have no definite meaning. But 
such an objection is really no objection at all. 
Scripture no more professes to be a human history, 
or to be a formal history at all, than it professes to 
be a book of human poetry or a compilation of hu- 
man biography. It contains history, and poetry, 
and biography, but only as parts of something 
higher than them all. Scripture professes to be 
a Divine revelation of saving truth, conveying a 
knowledge of the facts of the past only so far as 
they are necessary to the duties of the present and 
the prospects of the future. As it bears a character 
different from all other books, so it must be meas- 
ured by a different standard ; as it springs from the 
highest of all authority, it cannot be subject to laws 
inferior to itself. 

History consists of a record of the past, with 
this limitation, that it concerns itself primarily with 
the fortunes of some society or body of men, and 
subordinately only with individual men. The lat- 
ter is the province of biography. History occupies 
the wider circle of groups of men. Hence it was 
said by Dr. Arnold, History " is the biography of a 
society : it does not appear to me to be history at 



HISTORICAL TRUTH. 193 

all, but simply biography, unless it finds in the per- 
sons who are its subjects something of a common 
purpose, the accomplishment of which is the object 
of their common life. History is to the common 
life of many what biography is to the life of an 
individual." 

History will therefore consist of two parts, the 
explanation of causes and the statement of facts. 
Its highest object is, to record the great events of 
the past, and to trace their producing causes. The 
mere outward circumstances of mankind will consti- 
tute its least important portion ; the mental, moral, 
and religious circumstances its most important por- 
tion, since the outward events of the world have ever 
been shaped by its moral influences and conditions. 
A mere disjointed accumulation of detailed facts 
will not constitute a history. It is necessary that 
they should be regarded in their mutual order and 
relation towards each other, and be presented, not 
only in their true succession of time, but in their 
proper sequence of cause and effect. The past has 
not consisted of a series of abrupt disconnected and 
isolated facts, but of a series of events where each 
one has been as closely united to what went before 
and what has followed after, as are the links of an 
unbroken chain. The record of the moral causes 
that have operated on the fortunes of mankind is 
the highest purpose of history. But these causes 
can only be explained by a knowledge of facts in 
detail; and history therefore deals, in the second 
place, with their investigation, analysis, and accu- 
rate narration. But these facts are the proofs or 



194 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

evidences of the causes, and must therefore corre- 
spond with them. It is the object of the historian 
to record, not all the facts of the past — for it will be 
seen that such a record would be simply impossi- 
ble — but those classes of facts which elucidate the 
principles of the history, and belong to that spe- 
cial side of it which it is his object to narrate. The 
selection of the facts will consequently follow the 
professed purpose of the record. Such as are the 
causes the historian desires to explain, such will be 
the facts selected to prove their existence and illus- 
trate their action. 

Now a historian may write from any one of 
many standpoints, or for one of many purposes. 
In each case the facts narrated will correspond with 
them. He may chronicle the history of some par- 
ticular race or of some special tribe, and the origin, 
progress, and downfall of that particular body will 
constitute the limits of his history. Or he may 
enlarge the area of his labors, and deal with groups 
of nations ; as, for instance, Mr. Alison has done in 
his " History of Europe." On this wider sphere, 
many persons and many events which stood prom- 
inent on the narrower stage of one particular peo- 
ple will naturally disappear amid the broader inter- 
ests, and another set of persons and events take 
their place. On the other hand, new sets of facts 
altogether will be introduced, bearing on the mu- 
tual relations of separate nations towards each other, 
their affinities and conflicts, and the international 
interests of the larger whole constituting in this 
case the primary object of the historian. Or, again, 



HISTOEICAL TRUTH. 195 

the writer may take a bolder flight, and select the 
history of mankind in general as his theme. Here 
again, as the point of view is varied, so will the 
topics be varied and the correlative facts be varied 
likewise. He will deal less with national peculiari- 
ties of race, constitution, country, and climate, and 
more with facts, and qualities, and moral influences 
belonging to all men in common. The very char- 
acter and moral color of his picture will be varied 
by the variation of his standpoint. Perhaps at the 
very period when the historian of some particular 
nation would have to dip his pen in the gloom}' 
hues of national disaster, the historian of mankind 
at large may depict a condition of advancing civili- 
zation and progressive prosperity. 

Still wider diversities of object and standpoint 
in the work of the historian may arise in ofher direc- 
tions. Thus he may propose to himself to write the 
history of literature ; and then the literary men of 
the world, its great thinkers and writers, stand out 
at once into the foreground. Or he may wish to 
write the history of human thought ; and then its 
various schools of philosophy will occupy the page, 
and the reader will pass into a class of subjects so 
different from what he finds in the pages of the or- 
dinary historian, that it is like stepping into a new 
world. Or again, he may undertake to record the 
history of the industrial arts and manufactures of 
mankind ; and here a new set of words and phrases, 
a new order of facts, and a new series of events and 
circumstances, will supply the materials of his story. 
Or he may take upon himself the more intricate 



196 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

and difficult task of writing the history of its scien- 
tific discoveries in the various but closely-related 
provinces of astronomy, geology, chemistry, botany, 
mineralogy, etc. Or his sphere may be a more fa- 
miliar one ; and he may deal with the domestic and 
social habits of mankind, widely varying as they 
have done in different lands and climates, and during 
different stages of civilization. Still, when these 
have been enumerated, the varieties of human his- 
tory are not nearly exhausted. Their possible num- 
ber almost defies enumeration. The history of gov- 
ernment, of religion, of representative institutions, 
of ecclesiastical affairs, of laws, of architecture, of 
trade and commerce, of wars, of military and naval 
affairs, are further instances of the almost endless 
diversity of object and standpoint from which hu- 
man affairs may be regarded. 

These varieties are not imaginary. Actual his- 
tories exist under each of these separate heads. 
Grote's "History of Greece," Gibbon's "Decline 
and Fall of the Roman Empire," Rollin's "Uni- 
versal History," Pritchard's "Physical History 
of Man," are illustrations. Hallam's " History of 
Literature," Brucker's " History of Philosophy," 
WhewelTs "History of the Inductive Sciences," 
Merryweather's "Domestic Habits of the Middle 
Ages," Delolme on " The Constitution," Neander's 
"Ecclesiastical History," Ferguson's "Handbook 
of Architecture," Napier's "History of the Penin- 
sular War," James' " Naval History of Great Brit- 
ain," or Kinglake's " Crimea," may be enumerated, 
and the list might be indefinitely increased. 



HISTORICAL TRUTH. 197 

But without entering on a wider range, seven- 
teen different kinds of history have been enumer- 
ated, sharply distinguished from each other in the 
classes of facts recorded and the character of the 
language employed. If these are even cursorily 
compared, it will be found (a) that whole classes of 
facts are included in one history, and omitted in 
another; (/>) that where the same classes of facts 
are recorded, the details widely differ; in regard to 
particular events, circumstances will be found to be 
recorded with the utmost particular^ in one case, 
which are passed over in total silence in another; 
(c) that the same facts are stated in different pro- 
portions, the stress lying from one point of view on 
facts which, from another point of view, become 
wholly unimportant ; (d) instances are found of 
facts recorded by different writers which appear to 
be directly contradictory to each other, but which 
a third fact incidentally noticed proves to be per- 
fectly consistent and harmonious. In some instan- 
ces the contrasts presented by different histories to 
each other are so strong as to call into play a dif- 
ferent set of faculties on the part of the reader, and 
to constitute a totally distinct line of study. 

Yet a moment's reflection will show that the 
subject-matter of all these various histories is but 
one and the same throughout. Mankind has only 
had one history, and not a dozen different ones. It 
has not lived the same stage of its existence over 
and over and over again. Its life has been but one, 
its order of events one, its progress one. It is but 
the same human nature in the same world viewed 



198 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

from different standpoints, and from different parts 
of the united whole. The diversity is not objective 
in the history, but subjective in the historian. He 
selects those portions of the whole which accord 
with his particular object and fall in with his special 
purpose ; but in the occurrence the entire history of 
mankind has progressed together, the individual 
nations and the collective whole, their literature, 
philosophy, arts, science, habits, government, re- 
ligion, laws, and commerce, have advanced side by 
side, the distinct but inseparable parts of one ag- 
gregate whole. 

Suppose therefore that some skeptic should take 
his stand on some one branch of histoiy, and mak- 
ing this the standard of all other branches, should 
object to the credibility of all the others, because 
the}' do not harmonize with that one, he would do 
exactly what is done when men object to the ple- 
nary inspiration of Scripture on the ground that its 
contents are not "historically true." The answer 
is the same in both cases, because the mistake 
would be the same. The diversity is not in the 
truth or otherwise of the facts, but solely in the 
mode of its narration. It does not represent de- 
grees of truth, but only varieties of the standpoint 
from which it is regarded. 

These considerations render it easy to lay down 
the conditions which historical truth does not re- 
quire and which it does require. 

I. It does not require (a) that no facts should 
be omitted, since such a condition would be imprac- 
ticable. In the infinite complexity of human affairs, 



HISTOKICAL TKUTH. 199 

and the variety of causes concurring to bring about 
the events of human history, it is a natural impos- 
sibility that human knowledge should comprise 
them all, or if they were known, that human under- 
standing should be able to unravel them all. The 
only mind capable of knowing all, without omission, 
is the mind of the Omniscient. But human history 
is not a mere transcript of the Divine mind, nor 
can it be so. " We cannot by an} r amount of re- 
search know all that all the successive millions 
forming a community have thought, said, done, suf- 
fered, or seemed; the facts that we can know, or 
that knowing we can visibly take into account, are 
at least in every case but a miserable percentage of 
this ideal aggregate. . . . The real question is, since 
all cannot be known and remembered, What is it 
best to know and remember? Since the facts out 
of which we must construct our histories in idea 
are but a small proportion, a mere remaining shred 
of that enormous intertwined infinity of facts which 
actually went into the histories while the web was 
being woven, are there any kinds or orders of facts 
which more than others it is desirable for the pur- 
poses of history to secure and keep hold of?" (En- 
cycl. Brit., art. History.) The mere omission ol 
facts out of a series is therefore no failure of his- 
torical truth. It is open to an objector to allege 
that such and such facts should not have been 
omitted ; but the mere fact of omission is no ground 
of objection. Omission somewhere is inseparable 
from the defects of the creatures to whom God has 
given the revelation. 



200 GOD'S WOED WRITTEN. 

(h) Historical truth docs not require that in sev- 
eral narratives of the same events the facts record- 
ed should be absolutely identical. One part may 
be given and another omitted. Or the facts given 
may be viewed from different points, corresponding 
either to the objects or to the personal character of 
the narrator. Such variations furnish a strong evi- 
dence of the veracity of the writers, and not a dis- 
proof of it, since they show their independence of 
each other, and therefore present as many witnesses 
as there are writers. These variations only become 
contradictions when the different statements are so 
palpably opposed to each other, that one and all 
cannot equally be true. Thus, in regard to the ad- 
mitted variations in the evangelical narratives ot 
the New Testament, as, for instance, in regard to 
the blind men cured at Jericho, the skeptic must 
prove that both accounts cannot be true. The 
Christian advocate has to show that they may both 
be true. He is not called to prove any particular 
mode in which they are true. If half a dozen con- 
ceivable modes of reconciling them present them- 
selves, this very variety only presents the stronger 
disproof of the skeptical assertion that they cannot 
both be true. 

This may be illustrated by the passages referred 
to. It is objected that St. Matthew speaks of two 
blind men who addressed our Lord as he departed 
from Jericho. St. Mark speaks only of one at the 
same spot; and St. Luke, of one as our Lord "was 
come nigh unto Jericho." Luke 18 : 35. Hence it 
is argued that the narratives are not "historically 



HISTOEICAL TRUTH. 201 

true," and therefore cannot be inspired. We reply 
that there is no necessary contradiction between 
the narratives, and that therefore they may all be 
equally true. Mark mentions by name one of the 
two referred to by St. Matthew, and many conjec- 
tural reasons may be assigned for his doing so, such 
as that Bartiimous was personally known to St. 
Mark himself, or to those into whose hands his gos- 
pel was first placed. Luke states one blind man 
to have been healed as our Lord entered Jericho, 
and Matthew two to have been healed as he left it. 
AYe do not know what pause our Lord made in Jeri- 
cho. AYe are told indeed, not only that he passed 
through Jericho, but that he "entered and passed 
through it;" and the expression seems to imply a 
pause more or less. That the words "passed 
through " imply direction only, and not continuous 
and unbroken movement, is shown by the fact that 
the same word is used of journeys which could not 
have been accomplished without pauses for rest 
and sleep. Thus St. Luke records (ch. 17, ver. 11) 
that he "passed through" the midst of Samaria and 
Galilee, a journey occupying several days. If our 
Lord made a pause in Jericho, what more natural 
than that the tidings of the cure wrought on enter- 
ing the city should become known throughout the 
community of the blind in Jericho, and that others 
should have sought the same help as he left the 
city, and should have asked it purposely in the 
words which had effectually attracted the attention 
of the wonder-working Son of David in the case of 
their companion. Or the apparent difficulty may 

9* 



202 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

be solved in another direction altogether, for at the 
time of our Lord there existed two Jerichos, the 
ancient city and the new, situated in proximity to 
each other, and in coming out of the one our Lord 
and his apostles would have been drawing nigh 
unto the other. Thus variation is not contradic- 
tion. Historical truth neither requires the absence 
of omission nor the absence of variation in the nar- 
rative. 

II. But it requires (a) that the facts should have 
taken place as they are recorded to have taken 
place ; that they should be real facts attested by 
persons qualified to bear witness to their occur- 
rence ; (b) that the facts should correspond with 
the statements they are adduced to illustrate, as 
when St. John states the object of his gospel to be 
" that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the 
Son of God; and that believing ye might have life 
through his name," John 20:31 — where it is in- 
volved that the facts narrated in his gospel are suf- 
ficient to prove the divinity of the Son of God and 
his atoning efficacy. 

No better illustration can perhaps be adduced 
of these conditions than is afforded by the two ge- 
nealogies of Christ. A great deal of learned inge- 
nuity has been expended in reconciling them, and 
at least two hypotheses have been suggested, either 
of which sufficiently meets the facts of the case, 
since, as already said, the Christian apologist only 
needs to show that they may be reconciled, and not 
to decide absolutely upon the mode of reconcilia- 
tion. I refer to the supposition that the genealogy 



HISTOKICAL TRUTH. 203 

of Matthew contains our Lord's legal descent 
through Joseph, and the genealogy of Luke his 
actual descent through Mary, and to the alterna- 
tive supposition that the one contains his official 
and the other his personal genealogy. The ques- 
tion is one of very considerable interest to the bib- 
lical student, and is especially valuable as leading 
us to realize more than we are accustomed to do, 
the peculiarities of Jewish genealogy as they sprang 
out of the peculiar enactments of the Law and the 
tribal divisions of the Hebrew people. But the 
solution of an interesting problem must not be con- 
founded with the question of the truth of the gene- 
alogies. This is quite distinct, and would be wholly 
unaffected by our absolute inability to reconcile the 
two accounts, if such an inability really existed. 

AVe must view the details with reference to the 
proposition they are intended to prove. This is sta- 
ted in the first words of St. Matthew : " The book of 
the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the 
son of Abraham." The proposition to be proved is 
that Jesus Christ was the lineal heir of David, as 
David was the lineal descendant of Abraham. Now, 
supposing the facts to be true, they undoubtedly 
prove this, since they trace an unbroken genealogi- 
cal line from Abraham down to Christ. If the 
names recorded by St. Matthew represent succes- 
sive descent in the same line, then the proposition 
is proved. This would not be affected in the slight- 
est degree by the. fact that the genealogy of St. 
Matthew is avowedly artificial, that it is so arranged 
in an artificial form under three divisions of fourteen 



204 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

each, and that some names have been omitted in 
order to bring it into this shape. The use of these 
artificial forms is known to have existed among the 
Jews as a common practice, and instances are fur- 
nished in the genealogical list of Philo, who divides 
the generations from Adam to Moses into two classes 
of ten descents, and one of seven. A Samaritan 
poem arranges the descents of the same period into 
two sets of ten, and for this purpose omits six of 
the least important names. Thus omission does not 
invalidate the accuracy of the descent. For in- 
stance, in the second list of fourteen given by St. 
Matthew, three names — Ahaziah, Joash, and Ama- 
ziah — are omitted between Joram and Ozias ; but 
the omission of the three intermediate links does 
not alter the fact that Ozias was the lineal descend- 
ant and heir of Joram, and this is all that the his- 
torical truth of the genealogy requires. Thus, in 
the third list, Eliakim is omitted between Josias and 
Jeconias ; but this does not alter the fact that Jec- 
onias was the lineal descendant and heir of Josias. 
It is the fact of this unbroken descent by blood 
which alone is expressed in the technical phrases 
uniting the successive stages of the descent to- 
gether. Whether, in the descending scale of St. 
Matthew, the expression employed be that A begat 
B, or, in the ascending scale of St. Luke, it be that 
B was the son of A, the truth expressed is the same 
fact of lineal descent, and is wholly unaffected by 
the mode of its expression. That this class of 
phrases was used with much more latitude among 
the Jews than it would be used among ourselves, 



HISTORICAL TRUTH. 205 

is proved by a variety of instances. Tims, in the 
Old Testament Jehu is described as the son of 
Nimshi, 1 Kings 19 : 16, whereas he was the son 
of Jehoshaphat, who was the son of Nimshi. The 
special form of speech employed must in every case 
be interpreted by its known usage. The names 
specified in the lists of St. Matthew and St. Luke 
lay in the natural order of generation and descent, 
and if so, they prove what they were intended to 
prove, and the genealogy is historically true. 

Now there is not the shadow of an evidence to 
impugn the fact of this lineal descent in any one 
case specified in either genealogy. The objections 
raised by skeptics from an early age of the Chris- 
tian era downwards, have been solely founded on 
the internal variations of the genealogies them- 
selves. Into their discussion it is not my purpose 
to enter, because, however interesting, I regard 
them solely as a question for curiosity. The only 
point with which I concern myself is to show thai 
both genealogies may be true, and that there is 
nothing in their variations to impugn their truth. 

The proposition which they are employed to prove 
is our Lord's lineal descent, either by natural or by 
imputed filiation. The proposition itself is made in 
order to prove that the predicted marks of identity, 
by which the Messiah of the prophets was to be 
recognized, met in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. 
Whether the two genealogies are both the geneal- 
ogies of Joseph, or whether they represent the one 
a legal heirship, and the other a natural descent ; 
or whether, thirdly, the one is the genealogy of 



206 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

Joseph, and tlie other the genealogy of Mary — in 
either case the conditions of the question remain 
the same. There are two ends, so to speak, to be 
united by a chain of descent, and these, too, cannot 
be altered. But the chain of descent might almost 
indefinitely alter. For the line of descent might 
conceivably be traced, not only through two, but 
through half a dozen varying channels, yet the first 
named and the last would remain the same, and the 
lineal descent uniting them be as close, and real, 
and true, in any one of the six different lines as in 
any other of them. When a genealogy extends 
through such great periods as the two thousand 
years from Abraham to Christ, it must inevitably 
have been divided into many collateral branches, 
parallel streams beginning at the same fountain- 
head, and debouching into the same estuary. This 
is not a matter of conjecture, but of historical fact. 
Instances might be indefinitely multiplied, but 
one is as good for the purpose as a hundred. The 
lineal descent of Henry YJLLL, from king John, may 
be traced in two perfectly distinct lines, containing 
thirteen links in the one case, and eleven in the 
other, and they do not touch each other at any in- 
termediate point. On the other side, the descent 
of James I. from Henry VII., also traceable in two 
lines, conjoins five successions in each line, and the 
five successions touch at two points, namely, Mary 
Queen of Scots, and Margaret, daughter of Henry 
VII. The descent is equally true in either case, and 
the truth would not be affected by any prolongation 
of the descent, so long as each link is connected by 



HISTORICAL TRUTH. 207 

descent or inheritance with the links preceding or 
succeeding. The descent of our Lord from Abra- 
ham by lines of descent, converging at one point 
and diverging at another, is entirely consistent with 
known experience, and therefore with historic credi- 
bility. The exact genealogical tables which are 
known from Josephus to have been carefully kept 
in the temple of Jerusalem, and which perished at 
the destruction of the city, must necessarily have 
been exceedingly complicated, and must have ad- 
mitted of variations in one and the same descent, 
much more intricate and various than are contained 
in the two evangelical genealogies. The reasons 
which may have guided the construction of these 
particular tables along one line rather than an- 
other, may be referred to considerations clear and 
intelligible to the Jews of that day. But in the ab- 
sence of the facts, it would be a wanton waste of 
ingenuity for us to endeavor to supply them. 

We must, however, bear in mind that the pecu- 
liar habits of the Jews, and the reference of all their 
institutions to the coming of the predicted Messiah, 
must very largely have increased the causes of in- 
tricacy existing in a similar case among ourselves. 
Thus it was the invariable habit of the Jews to 
trace their genealogies in the male line ; and there- 
fore to account the next of kin, or the husband of a 
sole surviving daughter, as standing in the place of 
a son. The whole system had reference to the in- 
defeasible tenure of the land, the division of the 
tribes, and the privileges of the houses of Levi and 
David. That, according to Jewish usage, the links 



208 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

of a genealogy implied descent and heirship only, 
but not always the strict relation of a child to a 
father, is. abundantly illustrated in the genealogies 
of the Old Testament. Thus, Ephraim and Manas- 
seh, the sons of Joseph, were reckoned among the 
other patriarchs, as if they had been sons, not grand- 
sons of Jacob. Gen. 48 : 5. The list of the sons of 
Benjamin, (Gen. 46:21,) in the same way, contains 
grandsons as well as sons, and even the names are 
given differently in 1 Chron. 7:7 and 8:1. The 
imperfect acquaintance, which alone we possess, 
with the details of this subject, shows the absurdity 
of attempting to test, by an arbitrary and conjec- 
tural criticism, the details of lists so peculiar in 
their construction, so complicated in their details, 
and so removed in their facts from the possible 
reach of modern knowledge. 

To object against the genealogies of our Lord, 
that they are couched in a Jewish form and framed 
according to Jewish habits, would only be to object 
against a human element of Scripture in the teeth 
of the fact that without a human element a revela- 
tion would have been impossible. Taking the hu- 
man element as it exists, and making the necessary 
allowances for the peculiarity of form it has im- 
pressed upon the Scriptures, the genealogies are 
internally consistent, and bear upon their front the 
signs of genuineness and authenticity. There is not 
a solitary tittle of evidence to impugn their histori- 
cal truth, or, therefore, to call into question the in- 
spiration which directed the selection of these par- 
ticular lists, and the accuracy of their details. 



HISTORICAL TRUTH. 209 

I have dwelt the more fully upon this instance 
in order to illustrate the mode in which Scripture 
must be dealt with, in fully maintaining alike its 
human and its Divine elements. Such a mode of 
interpretation sweeps away an immense mass of 
speculative objection. Historical truth is the same 
as all other truth, and has relation to the corre- 
spondence between the description and the thing 
described. It neither limits the point of view taken 
nor the character of the language selected, but only 
its accuracy. Whether the form of expression 
adopted be prosaic or poetical, didactic or devo- 
tional, popular or logical, optical or scijntiflc ; 
whether it be the language of ordinary biography 
or the stately diction of history, are considerations 
equally consistent with the human element in the 
personal peculiarities of the writers and with the 
Divine element in the sovereign wisdom which se- 
lected and employed them. Varieties of expression 
touch the mode of conveying truth ; not the truth 
conveyed. Of this truth there are no degrees, no 
variations of kind. Truth is but one, and the writ- 
ten word of God is its Divine embodiment. 



210 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN, 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

THE TRUTH OF SCRIPTURE PROVED BY THE 
TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 

Circumstantial Accuracy of the Sacred Narratives — Immense Range 
of its Facts — Corroborations of Profane History — The Govern- 
ing Natious of the Ancient World ; their Manners, Customs, 
and Government — Egypt as depicted in Scripture, and as rep- 
resented on tbe Monuments — Particular Instances of Historical 
Accuracy in the Old Testament — Instances in the New — The 
Persons and Places of the Evangelical History. 

The question has sometimes been suggested, 
What would be the effect on the doctrine of inspira- 
tion of discovering errors in Scripture? To such 
a question I shall reply by simply declining to enter- 
tain the suggestion ; and this upon the principle 
repeatedly explained in the foregoing chapters, that 
our duty is to deal with facts as they are, and not 
to speculate about facts as they might have been. 
The discovery of mistakes in Scripture would alter 
the conditions of the case altogether, and when the 
alteration takes place it would be time enough to 
estimate its effects. The facts of the case are the 
groundwork of our argument in regard to revealed 
truth as much as in regard to natural truth. It is, 
therefore, as useless to attempt to reconcile our 
belief in inspiration with facts which do not exist, 
as it would be to reconcile the theory of gravitation 
with some altered condition of the physical world. 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 211 

We take the case as it is, and resolutely decline to 
go beyond its limits. 

We maintain that no mistake has ever been dis- 
covered in Scripture, and we believe that it never 
will be discovered. We ground this latter convic- 
tion on the astonishing correspondence found to 
exist between the narratives of the Bible and the 
ascertained facts of history and geography as illus- 
trated by modern archaeological discovery. These 
correspondences are so minute and frequently so 
latent, so ingrained into the very structure of the 
narrative as to constitute an authentication of the 
claims advanced by Scripture for itself of the same 
kind as the miracles of the Christian period afforded 
to the authoritative commission of our Lord and of 
his apostles. This conclusion is confirmed by our 
knowledge that many passages charged with inac- 
curacy or manifest error have been proved on fuller 
information to be exactly and minutely true. We 
rest our position on the matter of fact that no mis- 
takes have been proved to exist in Scripture, and 
on the reasonable conclusion, founded on its proved 
accuracy on the one side and its own positive state- 
ment on the other, that no mistake will be found to 
exist in it in the future. To the elucidation of these 
points the present chapter will be directed. 

The Christian advocate rejoices to bring the 
question to this test. In passing out of the sphere 
of abstract argument into the sphere of facts, he 
passes from ground already strong into ground still 
stronger. He places his feet on that solid rock of 
historical truth against which every skeptical at- 



212 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

tack has hitherto beaten as vainly as waves that 
shiver themselves to pieces against the side of some 
immovable cliff. 

These circumstantial evidences divide them- 
selves into two branches. On the one side we 
need to show the positive proofs in support of the 
veracity of Scripture ; on the other side we need to 
examine the grounds on which this veracity has 
been impugned, and show that no evidences exist 
of an opposite character, and consequently that the 
positive proofs stand clear and unassailable. 

In stating the positive evidences for the veracity 
of Scripture, we enter upon an immense field of 
inquiry. Attention would be distracted in so wide a 
sphere, unless some special line be adopted. I pur- 
pose, therefore, briefly to intimate the general char- 
acter of the evidences at large, and then to sub- 
stantiate it by entering more fully into some indi- 
vidual instances. 

The professed object of Scripture is the revela- 
tion of the Divine will; but the communication of 
it is grouped round the history of the chosen race. 
Revealed truth was formally intrusted to their keep- 
ing, and out of their line came the Saviour of the 
world. The most ancient books of Scripture con- 
sequently contain the history of the Hebrew people 
from their first original, through the story of their 
imperial greatness, down to their decline. This his- 
tory, however, bears a definite character through- 
out. It is not directed primarily, as secular histo- 
ries are, to the record of their government, their 
manners, arts, and civilization ; but to their relation 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 213 

towards God, and the development of his designs 
of mercy towards a ruined world. What may be 
called the secular side of their history constitutes 
its secondary, not its primary feature, and is given 
incidentally rather than directly. Yet, incidental 
as this side of the narrative is, it comes, neverthe- 
less, at a great many different points of the story, 
into contact with the history of other nations, and 
with peculiarities of place, climate, habit, and circum- 
stances, relative to which secular sources supply us 
with more or less exact information. There are 
thousands of particulars specified in the Old Testa- 
ment history in which it is conceivable that mis- 
takes might have been detected, and in which, had 
not the books been infallibly inspired, we conclude 
that mistakes would have been detected, simply be- 
cause it is in these very particulars that the imper- 
fection of human knowledge ordinarily betrays itself. 
Now, not only has criticism failed to discover in 
these varied particulars one single contradiction to 
known facts, but it has brought to light an aston- 
ishing accordance with them. Exactly in propor- 
tion as our knowledge of the countries, circumstan- 
ces, and nations alluded to, has become more pre- 
cise and minute, in that proportion have all the 
statements of Scripture been more and more exactly 
verified. 

This is the case with the geography of Scrip- 
ture. The Book of Genesis alone records the names 
of more than one hundred distinct places, adding in 
many cases descriptive epithets which involve local 
details, as in the description of the cities of the 



214 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

plain. The Book of Numbers contains the names of 
one hundred and thirty separate places, or therea- 
bouts, distinguishing them by characteristic details, 
as in the case of the Jordan, Jericho, the plains of 
Moab, the wilderness of Sin, the booths of Succoth, 
and the grapes of Eshcol. The land containing 
these places is well known, and has been searched 
from end to end with restless curiosity during the 
last few years. The places specified, moreover, are 
not mentioned at random, but with a certain rela- 
tion towards each other, as in the enumeration of 
the journeys of the people in the wilderness. Ran- 
dom guesses, names used at haphazard, or fictitious 
references to spots having no real existence, would 
have exposed the narrative to immediate and posi- 
tive disproof. Not only, however, is there a total 
absence of the slightest evidence of any mistake in 
these geographical details, but there is a vast accu- 
mulation of evidence in favor of their minute accu- 
racy. Scarcely a traveller has trodden the soil of 
the Holy Land without furnishing some new illus- 
trations of the sacred narrative, and bringing to 
light fresh corroborations of its truthfulness. 

The case is the same with the details of nations 
and peoples, and the characteristic circumstances 
of manners and habits attributed to them. The 
narratives of the Pentateuch find the illustration of 
their details in the existing manners of the descend- 
ants of Ishmael at the present day. The fortunes 
of the Hebrew people brought them into contact 
with all the most eminent nations of antiquity- 
Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Per- 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 215 

sians, Greeks, and Romans ; jet in every case, with- 
out one solitary exception, the circumstances of 
date, place, persons, and events, are true to the 
reality, as far as modern research has been able to 
trace and identify them. It constitutes an argu- 
ment of singular strength that not one solitary case 
of historical inaccuracy has ever been made out. 

A specific instance will best illustrate the minute 
accuracy of the sacred history and its singular mul- 
tiplicity of detail. Let Egypt be taken as an exam- 
ple. The whole references to Egyptian manners 
and customs are incidental rather than direct. Yet 
many minute details are contained in them, exactly 
corresponding with all we know of ancient Egypt, 
alike from the pages of history, and from those 
silent and impartial witnesses of the past, the 
monumental records. The separation of the native 
Egyptians from foreigners, and yet their allowance 
of them in their lands, their special hatred of shep- 
herds, the character of the government, the power 
of the king, the influence of the priests, the tenure 
of land, the existence of the military class, their use 
of horses and chariots in war, their great buildings, 
and the employment of foreigners in their construc- 
tion, the use of bricks, and of bricks with straw in 
them, the taskmasters, the embalming of the dead, 
the importation of spices for this purpose, the vio- 
lent mournings, the dissolute morals, are all more or 
less fully specified. Our knowledge of their gross 
idolatry throws peculiar light upon the history of 
the plagues. The use of Egyptian names, such as 
Pharaoh, Potiphar, Asenath, Zaphnath-paaneah, and 



216 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

Moses, together with some ordinary words, complete 
the striking chain of evidence. The proof of histori- 
cal evidences tlms afforded is so much the stronger 
because of their incidental occurrence. They do not 
enter into the formal purpose of the history, and 
yet are so intimately connected with the narrative, 
that the events could not have existed separate from 
the local and national peculiarities. For instance, 
the events of the settlement in Egypt, and the Ex- 
odus, could not have taken place in the same way 
in Nineveh, or Babylon, or Susa, or Macedon, or 
Borne. Another striking instance of this accurate 
delineation of national manners is afforded by the 
Book of Esther, and the picture drawn of the Per- 
sian manners and habits. The character of Arta- 
xerxes, himself the hero of profane history, the 
prolonged feast at court, the relation of the queen 
towards the monarch, and the court. etiquette with 
reference to her, the public records, the wholesale 
massacre, the methods of reward, the posts hasted 
by the king's command, the diversity and number 
of the provinces, are all true to the very life. 

A little consideration will show what an immense 
field of inquiry is opened in this direction, when we 
glance hastily down the line of history alike through- 
out the Old and New Testaments. Or if any one 
fails in this mode to form an adequate apprecia- 
tion of the prodigious number of details contained, 
directly or by inference, in the scriptural books, let 
him take up a modern Bible dictionary, and let 
him remember that the whole voluminous work is 
directed solely to the elucidation of these details. 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 217 

Yet from this vast area, searched as it has been, 
with increasing diligence, alike by the foes and the 
friends of the Bible, not one solitary case of proved 
inaccuracy has yet been gathered. This very fact 
is itself a wonder, and witnesses trumpet-tongued 
to the more than human Authorship, which alone 
can explain this more than human accuracy over 
so vast a lapse of time and variety of topics. 

But the truth must be stated in greater detail. 
Enough having been said to indicate the extent of 
the accuracy of Scripture, it is now necessary to 
indicate its degree. Cases of minute accuracy in 
little things and single words occur very exten- 
sively ; and it is by them that the extent of scrip- 
tural inspiration can best be ascertained. This 
purpose, moreover, can only be served by instances 
where an exact confirmation of the accuracy can 
be derived from independent sources. For this 
reason the New Testament supplies them most 
abundantly, and especially the Acts of the Apos- 
tles, because a larger number of geographical and 
other details occur in it than elsewhere. In the 
New Testament we find ourselves within the period 
of recognized history. We have abundant sources 
of information, and the evidences of the minute ve- 
racity of Scripture are proportion ably multiplied. 
But while the New Testament is, for these natural 
reasons, most peculiarly rich in instances, they are 
to be found likewise in the Old Testament ; and the 
constant enlargement of our information is as con- 
stantly enlarging their number. Over the whole 
extent of inquiry open to us it will be impossible 

God's Word. 10 



218 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

even to glance in a work like the present. The 
instances now to be adduced are offered only as 
special illustrations of a general truth. 

1. In Genesis 10:10, the ancient empire of Nim- 
rod is described : " And the beginning of his king- 
dom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, 
in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth 
Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Beho- 
both, (or the streets of the city, margin,) and Calah, 
and Besen between Nineveh and Calah." As the 
names stand in the record, they might be mere 
names, incapable either of identification or of dis- 
proof, and so the case stood till a very recent date 
in our own epoch. But modern investigation has 
examined the mounds of Mesopotamia, and has de- 
ciphered inscriptions of three thousand years ago. 
These inscriptions not only prove the existence and 
importance of these cities, but have enabled explo- 
rers to identify the very sites on which they once 
stood. Babylon, and Erech, and Accad, and Cal- 
neh, and Nineveh, and Calah, and Besen, now stand 
upon our maps as precisely noted by the geogra- 
pher of the nineteenth century after Christ as they 
were chronicled by the inspired historian fifteen 
centuries before Christ. 

2. In the same passage, Genesis 10 : 8, 9, Nimrod 
is spoken of as a prince so great and celebrated 
that his name had become a proverb : " Wherefore 
it is said, 'Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter 
before the Lord.' " The inscriptions confirm this 
celebrity of Nimrod, and local tradition still conse- 
crates his name. We are told that all the great 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 219 

ruins in the Mesopotamian valley are still popu- 
larly associated with his name, and " are made in 
this way monuments of his glory." 

3. In Numbers 34, Moses describes the borders 
of the territory to be occupied by the people, and 
in the eighth verse draws the line of their northern 
boundary: "From Mount Hor unto the entrance 
(or gate) of Hamath." Mr. Porter describes the 
scene as follows : " On its southern side the ridge 
of Lebanon rises abruptly to a height of ten thou- 
sand feet ; and on its northern the lower ridge of 
Bargylus terminates in a bluff promontoiw. Be- 
tween the two lies the only opening from the land 
of Hamath to the coast of the Mediterranean." 
This is " the entrance " from that great sea. " There 
is but one, and it cannot be mistaken. That pass 
between Lebanon and Bargylus is the only open- 
ing from the west into the land of Hamath. I have 
been told that to this day it is called by the people 
of Tripoli Bar-Hamath, ' the door of Hamath.' "* 
"Freshwater Gate" is an instance of the same kind 
of descriptive epithet in our own country. 

4. In Judges 3 :8, Chushan-rishathaim is spoken 
of as "king of Mesopotamia." Now this country 
was included in the great Assyrian empire, and the 
existence of an independent monarch over this spe- 
cial region would therefore appear like an inaccu- 
racy in the historian. But the cuneiform records 
of two centuries later than the date of Othniel show 
that the Assyrian empire did not even at that time 
extend over this land. It was not till the middle of 

* Porter's ;i Giant Cities," p. 310. 



220 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

the twelfth century before Christ that the country 
between the Khabour and the Euphrates was inclu- 
ded in the Assyrian empire. The inspired historian 
is consequently perfectly accurate. 

5. In the account of the slaughter of the kings 
given in Joshua, it is recorded : " It came to pass, 
as they fled from before Israel, and were in the 
going down to Bethhoron, that the Lord cast down 
great stones from heaven upon them, and they 
died," Josh. 10:12. The phrase, " going down to 
Bethhoron," might appear to our modern habits to 
express only the direction of the flight ; but an ex- 
amination of the locality shows its exact accuracy 
and the meaning of the whole passage : " The Isra- 
elites chased them along the way that goeth up to 
Bethhoron. A quarter of a mile west of Gibeon is 
a sharp ascent to a low ridge. Up this the Ammon- 
ites fled, hard pressed by their pursuers. From the 
top of the ridge a long and rugged descent leads to 
Bethhqron, which now appears in front, crowning 
a projecting shoulder of the mountain. The nature 
of the ground favored the fugitives ; but ' as they 
fled before Israel, and were in the going down to 
Bethhoron, the Lord cast down great stones from 
heaven upon them.' Joshua led the van of his 
troops. He saw that the victory was complete, but 
yet that night must eventually save the Ammonite 
a n ii v from total destruction, and enable a large 
body of them to escape to their cities through the 
valley of Ajalon, at the foot of the pass down which 
they were rushing. Then, standing on some com- 
manding rock in the sight of the whole people, in 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 221 

the fulness of faith and enthusiasm, Joshua gave 
utterance to that wondrous prayer-prophecy; glan- 
cing back towards Gibeon and forward upon Ajalon, 
'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, moon, 
in the valley of Ajalon.' "* 

G. Tyre and Sidon occur early and frequently in 
the scriptural narrative. But there is this peculiar- 
ity in the occurrence of the names, that Sidon only 
is mentioned by Moses, and that twice over in the 
Book of Joshua it is described as " great Sidon," 
while in the same book Tyre is only described as a 
" strong city." It is implied, therefore, that at this 
period Sidon has the preeminence in opulence and 
power. But at a later period of the history this 
is changed; Tyre is specified, while Sidon appears 
to have sunk into comparative insignificance. In 
2 Sam. 24 :G it is simply "Sidon and the stronghold 
of Tyre." The whole intercourse between David 
and Hiram implies this reversed order of preemi- 
nence between the two Phoenician cities. Profane 
records exactly confirm this order of superiority. 
Homer, Strabo, and Justin, record the ancient su- 
periority of Sidon, and this is confirmed by the 
ancient Egyptian lists, in which Sidon takes the 
precedence ; but Dins (Josephus c. Apion, i. 17) and 
Menander affirm the superiority of Tyre at the time 
of David. If, therefore, Moses and Joshua had 
used the language of the writer of the Book of Sam- 
uel, or the writer of the Book of Samuel had used 
the language of Moses and Joshua, they would have 
been guilty of historical inaccuracy. But each wri- 

* Porter's "Giant Cities," p. 174. 



222 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

tor preserves the exact order of the facts at his own 
day, and all three are right. 

7. The prophet Isaiah, in chapter xx., mentions 
an Assyrian monarch, not specified in the historical 
books of Kings and Chronicles, as attacking and 
taking Ashdod. In the sixth verse of that chapter 
the prophet predicts that he should take the Egyp- 
tians captive. For a long time criticism identified 
Sargon with some other of the Assyrian kings, as 
with Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon ; 
but the native records are now found to contain the 
name of Sargon as an independent monarch reign- 
ing at Khorsabad, and relate the fact that he cap- 
tured Ashdod, to which they add the further state- 
ment of his conquest of Egypt, in exact accordance 
with the declaration of Isaiah. 

8. The tribute paid by Hezekiah to Sennache- 
rib is stated to have been three hundred talents of 
silver and thirty talents of gold. The annals of 
Sennacherib record the same campaign, and state 
the payment, so far as the gold is concerned, at ex- 
actly the same sum, " thirty talents of gold." The 
amount of silver stated is larger — eight hundred 
talents instead of three ; but it is natural to sup- 
pose that the Assyrian account is exaggerated, and 
includes portions of the spoil. 

9. Both the writer of the Book of Kings and the 
prophet Isaiah record that Adrammelech and Sha- 
rezer, after the murder of their father, tied into 
the land of Armenia. In the history of Moses 
of Chorene the fact is recorded, with additional 
information as to the parts of the country in 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 223 

which they were settled by the then reigning mon- 
arch. 

10. Sennacherib was succeeded by Esarhaddon, 
2 Kings 19 : 37. Isaiah records the same fact, and 
the monuments confirm it. No further mention of 
Esarhaddon's name occurs, however, in Scripture. 
But as Sennacherib was contemporary with Heze- 
kiah, Esarhaddon must have been contemporary 
with his son Manasseh, and is therefore identified 
by a natural inference with the king of Assyria who 
" took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him 
with fetters, and carried him to Babylon," 2 Chron. 
33:11. But why should an Assyrian king carry his 
prisoner to Babylon, and not to Nineveh ? Had the 
fact been recorded of any other Assyrian monarch 
but this one, it must have been reckoned to be a mis- 
statement. But Esarhaddon, and he alone of all the 
Assyrian kings, reigned at Babylon, and held court 
there. The minute accuracy of the history on a 
point wholly incidental is thus singularly confirmed. 

The foregoing list of specific and minute in- 
stances of exact accuracy in the inspired narratives 
might be very greatly enlarged, even in the present 
imperfect state of our information, and therefore 
imperfect means of verification. Nor are the in- 
stances already known confined to historical details. 
Thus, an instance of scientific truth is contained in 
the first chapter of Genesis. The order in which 
the tribes of the vegetable kingdom are specified in 
verse 11, and the orderly creation of animal life in 
verses 21 and 27, have been shown to " fit into the 
most scientific system of classification." An in- 



224 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

stance of another kind, touching a matter of per- 
sonal observation, is found in the account of the 
prospect of the promised land afforded to Moses 
from the top of Pisgah. "And the Lord showed 
him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, and all Naph- 
tali and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and 
all the land of Judah unto the utmost sea." The 
Eev. H. B. Tristram, one of the latest as well as 
one of the most trustworthy explorers of Palestine, 
describes the view as he saw it with his own eyes, 
in language singularly illustrative of the scriptural 
accuracy : " Looking over it (the Jordan) the eye 
rested on Gerizim's rounded top ; and farther still 
opened the plain of Esdraelon, the shoulder of Car- 
mel, or some other intervening height, just showing 
to the right of Gerizim; while the faint and distant 
bluish haze beyond it told us that there was the sea, the 
tit most sea" 

The instances already given have been taken 
from the Old Testament. It is, however, from the 
New that the proofs of scriptural veracity can be 
most abundantly and conclusively drawn. The Acts 
of the Apostles, as already stated, is peculiarly rich 
in them. The evidences are supplied from those 
portions of the Bible where, from the closer prox- 
imity of the period to our own, and our greater 
familiarity with the places and persons mentioned, 
they might most reasonably be expected. To en- 
deavor to give any thing approaching a list of these 
correspondences would extend this chapter far be- 
yond its necessary limits. I shall, therefore, both 
for the sake of brevity and clearness, group a few 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 225 

instances together, under the two heads of the per- 
sons and places mentioned in the New Testament. 

I. The remarkable and discriminating accuracy 
exhibited in the scriptural references of the New 
Testament to conspicuous persons known to pro- 
faue history is worthy of all attention. The politi- 
cal circumstances of Palestine during the period 
covered by the New Testament history were to the 
highest degree intricate and peculiar. I cannot do 
better than quote the description of Mr. Pawlinson, 
to whose research I have been greatly indebted in 
the selection of the illustrative instances already 
adduced in this chapter. " The political condition 
of Palestine . . . was curiously complicated and 
anomalous. It underwent frequent changes, but 
retained through all of them certain peculiarities 
which made the position of the country unique among 
the dependencies of Pome. Not having been con- 
quered in the ordinary way, but having passed un- 
der the Roman dominion with the consent and by 
the assistance of a large party among the inhabi- 
tants, it was allowed to maintain for a while a spe- 
cies of semi-independence not unlike that of various 
native states in India, which are really British de- 
pendencies. A mixture, and to some extent an 
alternation, of Poman with native power, resulted 
from this arrangement, and a consequent complica- 
tion in the political status, which must have made 
it very difficult to be thorougly understood by any 
one who was not a native and a contemporary. The 
chief representative of the Poman power in the 
East, the president of Syria, the local governor, 
10* 



226 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

whether a Herod or a Roman procurator, and the 
high priest, had each and all certain rights and 
a certain authority in the country. A double sys- 
tem of taxation, a double administration of justice, 
and even, in some degree, a double military com- 
mand, were the natural consequence ; while Jewish 
and Roman customs, Jewish and Roman words, 
were simultaneously in use, and a condition of 
things existed full of harsh contrasts, strange mix- 
tures, and abrupt transitions. Within the space of 
fifty years Palestine was a single united kingdom 
under a native ruler ; a set of principalities under 
native ethnarchs and tetrarchs ; a country in part 
containing such principalities, in part reduced to 
the condition of a Roman province ; a kingdom re- 
united once more under a native sovereign, and a 
country reduced wholly under Rome, and governed 
by procurators dependent on the president of Syria, 
but still subject, in certain resj)ects, to the Jewish 
monarch of a neighboring territory."* 

During this period the notable persons men- 
tioned more or less fully by the sacred writers are 
six members of the family of Herod, and four Roman 
governors of Judea. Five of the Herodian family 
exercised the authority of government ; but neither 
were their dominions and authority in any one case 
identical, nor did they succeed each other in order 
of time. Herod the Great reigned by the favor of 
Augustus over the whole of Palestine. On his death 
his dominions were divided into three parts. Arche- 
laus received Judea, Samaria, and Idumea, with the 
* Rawlinson's "Bampton Lectures." p. 2'M. 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 227 

title of tetrarch. Antipas was made tetrarch of 
Galilee and Pera?a ; and Philip tetrarch of Tracho- 
nitis and the adjoining regions. But these three 
governments did not continue for an equal period. 
The power of Archelaus came speedily to an end, 
and Judea was reduced to the condition of a Ho- 
rn an province under the government of procurators. 
Four of these preceded Pontius Pilate; then for a 
time the dominions of Herod the Great were reu- 
nited under his grandson Agrippa. But on the 
death of Agrippa they became again a Boinan 
province ; and yet immediately afterwards there was 
another kiug Agrippa, but without authority in 
Judea. Yet through this tangled maze the scrip- 
tural narrative finds its way without fault and with- 
out stumbling. Not a single inaccuracy is to be 
found, either as regards person, place, or time. 
This veracity is the more remarkable because the 
narrative does not proceed from the pen of the 
same author, but from four authors. These authors, 
moreover, were not men of the higher rank, conver- 
sant with political changes and the balancing of 
concurrent authorities ; yet the narrative steps 
firmly and unerringly along its course. 

Moreover, to the maintenance of the historical 
order of events it adds the precise discrimination of 
individual character. Each person appears in con- 
nection with exactly those events and that conduct 
which our independent information shows to be as 
consistent with that particular person as it would 
be inconsistent with the person preceding or suc- 
ceeding in the order of the narrative. 



228 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

First comes Herod the Great, so jealous and 
suspicious, so treacherous and cruel, that one of his 
own Roman patrons declared that it was better to 
be Herod's dog than his son. Then step upon the 
scene Archclaus, with a character so much dreaded 
that Joseph "was afraid to go" (Matt. 2:22) into 
Judea; Antipas, crafty and sensual, and yet weak 
and impressible, and Philip, undistinguished by 
any special decision of character. Then suddenly 
we find ourselves in the presence of the Eoman 
procurator Pontius Pilate. If we are perplexed to 
understand the motives of his conduct towards Jesus 
Christ, we have but to turn to the illustrative state- 
ments of profane history, and there in his incon- 
stant and cruel character, and in the relation of 
mutual distrust? and reciprocal dislike existing be- 
tween himself and the Jews, we find the explana- 
tion of it all. Then all at once, as it were, without 
any previous hint in the sacred pages of political 
changes, which did not touch the great purpose of 
the inspired narrative, we find ourselves confronted 
with another Jewish monarch excessively popular, 
but through that very cause engaged in a bitter 
persecution of the church. His luxurious tastes, 
love of popularity, delight in state and show, with 
the particulars of his dreadful death, are all touched 
with a graphic brevity equally remarkable and im- 
pressive. Then two successive governors of Judea 
are presented to us; not as mere names, but as liv- 
ing persons with their living peculiarities of charac- 
ter upon them. First appears Felix with his Jewish 
wife, himself vigorous indeed in his administration, 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 229 

but personally so unprincipled, that lie is said by 
Tacitus "in all kinds of lust and cruelty "to have 
exercised "the power of a king with the temper of 
a slave." How natural it was that such a man, 
crouching before the complaints against him pre- 
sented by his enemies at Rome, should seek to gain 
popularity with a party by an act of injustice tow- 
ards an apostle. "Felix, willing to show the Jews 
a pleasure, left Paul bound." Acts 24:27. How 
natural that, with a conscience laden with many 
crimes, such a man should have trembled beneath 
the preaching of righteousness, temperance, and 
judgment to come, and yet should have trembled 
without repenting. Felix was succeeded by Porcius 
Festus, a man of very different character — just, and 
firm, and equitable. It is a naturaVpart of the same 
argument, to remark that the character of Gallio, 
the Pioman governor at Corinth, is also drawn in 
exact accordance with the high character borne 
by him by the historians of his own country. Thus 
the scriptural narrative is precisely true through- 
out, as tested by the most accurate information of 
our own day. 

II. But the case is still stronger with the refer- 
ences to places occurring in the Acts of the Apos- 
tles. Here again the complicated political condition 
of the Roman empire and the minute variations 
arising from it in the political status of different 
cities, or even of the same city at different times, 
must be kept clearly in mind. The relation of the 
various cities of the empire towards Rome herself 
differed very widely. Conquest, or settlement, or 



230 GOD'S WOHD WRITTEN. 

peculiar amity, or special services rendered at some 
crisis of the imperial fortunes, led to the gift of 
very different degrees of independence. Thus some 
were municipal, or foreign cities adopted into a 
close political connection. Some were settlements 
(aicoucuu), offshoots from the parent empire, legally 
independent, but retaining a filial obedience to the 
mother state. Some were free cities, and in virtue 
of freedom were self-governed in all internal affairs 
within the territory assigned to them. Some were 
colonies, being military settlements designed to pro- 
tect the frontier, or to keep a disaffected province 
in subjection. In addition to this it was possible 
for individuals to possess the right of Roman citi- 
zenship, either by purchase, as in the case of Clau- 
dius Lysias, or by reward for some signal service, 
as in the case of Paul's father, or by inheritance, as 
in the case of St. Paul. Privileges accorded to 
citizenship by the Roman law were many and great. 
In addition to these intricate relations, arising from 
the wide extension and varied circumstances of the 
Roman law, other local peculiarities of title, name, 
and office prevailed, in the apostolic times, from the 
admixture of Greek and Roman habits in the same 
civilization. 

Now, we should recall how difficult it is for a 
stranger passing from city to city to enter into 
these exact distinctions, how much more difficult to 
maintain them where no personal acquaintance 
exists to suggest by the mere force of familiar asso- 
ciation the particular title. It would be very diffi- 
cult for a foreigner, for instance, and it is not always 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 231 

easy for an Englishman, to understand the diver- 
sities of local government, and the specific titles of 
local offices in his own country. In regard to the 
sacred writings the difficulty was increased in pro- 
portion to the vast diversities of race, circumstance, 
and constitution, welded together by the adminis- 
trative genius of Piome into the one imperial unity. 
The accurate knowledge exhibited by the scriptural 
narrative on all these questions, and the accurate 
use in each case of the especially appropriate name 
is the more significant, because there is evidence 
that it did not arise from personal acquaintance 
with the places and persons described, on the part 
of the writer. There is an evident reason for con- 
cluding that St. Luke was with St. Paul at Troas 
and Philippi, for he uses the first person " we." 
But there is nothing whatever to indicate his atten- 
dance on the apostle at Thessalonica, Athens, Cor- 
inth, or Ephesus. If, therefore, unfailing accuracy 
of language is maintained, it must be attributed to 
the overruling inspiration of God, and not to the 
special information of man. 

This accuracy is illustrated in the following- 
instances. Cyprus is described as governed by a 
pro-consul, the title ascribed to Sergius Paulus by 
St. Luke being exclusively applied to that dignity. 
Philippi is expressly stated to have been a colon}', 
and the coins of that city bear the title. Thessa- 
lonica was a free city, and this is expressed by St. 
Luke, by the distinctive title he gives to the magis- 
trates of that place. The authorized version sim- 
ply uses the word "rulers of the city." They 



232 GOD'S YVOKD WRITTEN. 

brought "Jason and certain brethren unto the 
rulers of the city." Acts 17 : G. But these rulers 
were native magistrates, as is expressed in the 
term TroTurapKat. The remains of a marble arch still 
remain in Thessalonica, and on this arch is an 
inscription beginning with, this very name. It re- 
cords the existence of seven politarchs at Thessa- 
lonica. At Athens the evangelist records the exist- 
ence of an altar inscribed "To the unknown God." 
Two secular writers, Pausanias and Philostratus, 
confirm the statement that altars with this inscrip- 
tion existed at Athens. Corinth is designated a 
pro-consular province by the application to Gallio 
of the official title of the pro-consul applied to Ser- 
gius Paulus. Yet, in fact, Corinth underwent three 
changes, having been a pro-consular province under 
Augustus, then in the time of Tiberius being gov- 
erned by imperial procurators, and again becoming 
a pro-consular province under Claudius, only ten 
years before the date of St. Paul's visit, and his use 
of the official title "anthupatos." In the account 
of the visit of St. Paul to Ephesus, in the nine- 
teenth chapter of the Acts, four distinctive names 
are used. The first instance' is the peculiar word 
translated in the authorized version as "town 
clerk." The word occurs with unusual frequency 
on the Ephesian coins. The second is furnished 
by the still more peculiar word translated "wor- 
shipper." "The city of the Ephesians is a worship- 
per of the great goddess Diana." Acts 19 : 35. The 
word is expressive in the strongest degree of ex- 
treme reverence and humility, its literal meaning 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 233 

being "a temple sweeper." The expression is found 
in an inscription at Ephesus. The third instance 
is the application of the distinctive pro-consular 
title to the governors of Asia, both the coins and 
the inscriptions confirming the fact that Asia was a 
pro-consular province. The fourth is furnished in 
the one compound word translated "the chiefs of 
Asia." The original word is "Asiarchs." The title 
belonged to the presidents of the public games, for 
which Asia in general and Ephesus in particular 
were famous. They were persons of great wealth, 
dignity, and influence, and are represented by 
St. Luke as the friendly counsellors of the great 
apostles. 

I cannot close this reference to the verbal accu- 
racy of the New Testament Scriptures without 
briefly referring to two other topics. Foremost of 
these is the account given by St. Luke of St. Paul's 
voyage towards Home. This account has been 
laboriously examined and carefully compared with 
known facts of the present clay, by persons profes- 
sionally conversant with nautical matters. The 
result has been, not only to establish the veritable 
and trustworthy character of the narrative, but to 
enable the whole voyage to be traced as accurately 
as if a log-book of the particulars had been handed 
down from that day to this. The very spot has 
been determined on which the necessary action of 
the wind and current would cast a ship situated as 
was the Alexandrian corn-ship of the narrative ; and 
this particular spot is found exactly to correspond 
with all the circumstances of St. Luke's narrative. 



234 GOD'S WOED WRITTEN. 

The second point is the wonderful particularity with 
which the simple incidental notices of the inspired 
narrative depict the peculiar features of Roman 
habits and civilization. I again quote the language 
of Mr. Rawlinson: "If we turn to Rome and the 
Roman system, how truly do we find depicted the 
great and terrible emperor whom all feared to pro- 
voke ; the provincial administration by pro-consuls 
and others, chiefly anxious that tumults should be 
prevented ; the contemptuous religious tolerance ; 
the noble principles of Roman law, professed if not 
always acted upon, whereby accusers and accused 
were brought face to face, and the latter had 'free 
license to answer for themselves concerning the 
crimes laid against them,' (Acts 25 : 16 ;) the privi- 
leges of Roman citizenship, sometimes acquired by 
birth, sometimes by purchase; the right of appeal 
possessed and exercised by the provincials; the 
treatment of prisoners; the peculiar manner of 
chaining them ; the employment of soldiers as their 
guards; the examination by torture; the punish- 
ment of condemned persons not being Roman citi- 
zens by scourging and crucifixion; the manner of 
this punishment, the practice of bearing the cross, 
of affixing a title or superscription, of placing sol- 
diers under a centurion to watch the carrying into 
effect of the sentence, of giving the garments of the 
sufferers to these persons, of allowing the bodies 
after death to be buried by the friends; and the 
like. The sacred historians are as familiar, not 
only with the general character, but even with some 
of the obscurer customs of Greece and Rome, as 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 235 

with those of their own country. Fairly observant 
and always faithful in their accounts, they continu- 
ally bring before us little points which accord 
minutely with notices in profane writers nearly 
contemporary with them; while occasionally they 
increase our knowledge of classic antiquity by 
touches harmonious with the spirit, but additional 
to the information which we derive from the native 
authorities." (Rawlinson's "Bampton Lectures," 
p. 245.) 



236 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

CHAPTEK XIV. 

THE EVIDENCE OF EXPERIENCE. 

Supposed Difficulties proved to be Real Confirmations of the Truth 
of Scripture — Their Origin in Human Ignorance — Defective or 
Erroneoiis Information — Light thrown by these Instances on 
Difficulties still unsolved — Instances in Detail — The Truthful- 
ness of Scripture a Common Characteristic of all its Writers- 
Exhibited in Incidental Particulars — Cannot be referred to the 
Personal Information of the Authors — Illustrated in Matters of 
Detail — No other Mode of showing it Possible. 

The preceding chapter was occupied with in- 
stances of minute accuracy on the part of the 
sacred Scriptures. Before I proceed to point out 
the characteristics of these cases, and the conclu- 
sion they justify us in forming, the argument must 
be further strengthened by another class of instan- 
ces. The foregoing have not been made the sub- 
ject of skeptical objection; but a considerable num- 
ber of cases exist where passages ostentatiously 
paraded as evidences of mistakes in Scripture, and 
as, therefore, conclusive against its plenary inspira- 
tion, have been found on fuller information to bear 
the most positive evidence in the other direction. 
The importance of these instances is great, not 
simply because the weapons of the skeptic have 
become the weapons of the believer, but because of 
the truth illustrated by this very transference of 
the argument from one side to the other ; for it is 
now proved that the difficulty experienced in recon- 



THE EVIDENCE OF EXPERIENCE. 237 

ciling them with known facts was exclusively the 
product of human ignorance. The information on 
which the objection was based was either erroneous 
or defective. 

It was in some cases erroneous, and this in spite 
of apparent ground for believing in its accuracy. 
The prejudice entertained by many critics against 
Scripture, and the disposition to prefer any other 
authority to the authority of the sacred records has, 
however, been illustrated in instances where this 
plea of apparent credibility can scarcely be ad- 
vanced. I may adduce in proof the case of a book 
entitled "A Million of Facts," and which, probably, 
from the multiplicity of its subjects, has acquired a 
circulation even among Christian people engaged in 
instructing others greatly disproportioned to its real 
merit. In this publication, among other strange 
things of the same character, is an article on Jew- 
ish history, in which the entire narrative of Moses 
is quietly rejected on the authority of statements 
imputed to Sanchoniatho, Diodorus Siculus, Taci~ 
tus, Celsus, and others. (P. 986.) On another page 
it is explained that the use made of the first writer's 
authority depends wholly on the supposition that 
" the allies of Ilus or Chronus, whom he called Elo- 
him after Ilus, were Jews." (P. 620.) A more in- 
structive instance of the tendency of many writers 
to give more authority to the slightest hint of a pro- 
fane author, than to the most explicit and circum- 
stantial statements of a sacred author, cannot well 
be conceived. For let it be supposed that Diodo- 
rus Siculus, Tacitus, Celsus, and Julian, do contra- 



238 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

diet Moses in regard to the early history of the 
Hebrew race, yet on no conceivable principle can it 
be pronounced that they are certainly right, and 
Moses certainly wrong. Every fair canon of his- 
torical criticism leans decisively to the other side. 
This case, therefore, illustrates the general tendency 
to treat the scriptural books with foregone prejudice. 
Instances where the case has been fairly tried, and 
the veracity of Scripture finally established beyond 
the possibility of a doubt, constitute its strongest 
rebuke. Let it be allowed that there was apparent 
reason on the other side, yet the stronger these 
reasons were for doubting the veracity of the Bible, 
the more triumphant is the testimony borne to its 
inspiration when this veracity has been finally estab- 
lished. 

Or the skeptical objection may have rested on 
information, accurate as far as it went, but defec- 
tive ; and the supply on this one deficient point 
may have cleared up all the difficulty. That the 
omission of one fact out of a series will make the 
rest unintelligible, and perhaps apparently contra- 
dictory, is a matter within familiar experience. The 
experiment may be tried by a little exercise of the 
imagination. As it is important that this truth 
should be clearly seen, it may be worth while to 
adduce an illustration. The following hi stance is 
quoted by Dr. Lee from "Ebrard:" " On the even- 
ing of Sept. 5, 1839, a rumor prevailed in Zurich 
that an attack was to be apprehended from an 
armed force. The greatest commotion was excited, 
and a body of men were drawn together in the dis- 



THE EVIDENCE OF EXPEEIENCE. 239 

trict of Pfaffikon to repel the attack. The rumor 
was soon found to be without any foundation, and 
means were taken by the government to allay the 
popular tumult. On subsequently inquiring as to 
these events, Ebrard was informed by one person 
that the government despatched N., one of their 
number, at a late hour, with a letter to Pfaffikon. 
On another occasion Ebrard was told by a second 
informant that N., after going a short distance, 
returned with the intelligence that the tocsin was 
already ringing in Pfaffikon. A third related that 
two persons on horseback had been despatched; 
while a fourth averred that N. had sent his messen- 
gers on horseback to the disturbed district. If ever 
four accounts appeared irreconcilable, these do so. 
And if a harmonist were to conjecture that N. had 
been sent to Pfaffikon, that he had been met on the 
Zurichberg by two peasants coming from that place, 
with the intelligence that the people were already 
on the march ; that he had returned with them to 
Zurich, and entering the neighboring house of a 
magistrate, had caused two horses to be at once 
saddled, and commanded the peasants to ride back 
in haste to proclaim peace ; all this would, no doubt, 
be set down as a highly improbable and artificial 
conjecture. And yet it is no conjecture, but the 
simple, true account which N. himself gave me when 
I asked him about that event." 

Now, in records so condensed as are the scrip- 
tural narratives, and dealing as many of them do 
with great periods of time, omission more or less is 
inevitable. Yet its effect may be to lay the whole 



240 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

narrative open to speculative objections by some 
ingenious mind employed in analyzing the details 
in order to impugn their accuracy. In such a case 
nothing but the discovery of the missing fact can 
with absolute certainty make the narrative com- 
plete. Without it we might be able to show that 
the narrative was not improbable, because such 
and such suppositions would render it congruous 
with itself and consistent with the probability. In 
this way it is that we are left to argue in many in- 
stances. The case may be illustrated by a dissected 
map. Suppose one piece of the map to be absent, 
it would be evidently impossible to compose the 
whole map. It is argued that these pieces remain- 
ing cannot really be the parts of one complete map, 
because they cannot be put together into a finished 
whole. Another person might fairly reply that a 
piece is probably absent, and might suggest the 
kind and shape of the piece which would render 
the whole map consistent. But if the missing piece 
were actually discovered, the proof that the skepti- 
cal objection was inconclusive would not only be 
sound argument, but would become veritable and 
indisputable fact. This is exactly the evidence fur- 
nished by instances where passages urged as the 
grounds of skeptical objection have proved to be 
conclusive arguments on the other side. The fol- 
lowing illustrations are presented : 

I. Much objection has been made to the Mosaic 
account of the Creation on the ground that the pro- 
duction of light on the first day was contradictory 
to the creation of the sun and moon upon the fourth 



THE EVIDENCE OF EXPERIENCE. 241 

day. It was commonly supposed that the sun was 
the source of light to our globe, and it appeared, 
therefore, a manifest contradiction to describe light 
as existing three days before its source. The au- 
thorized version gave apparent force to the argu- 
ment: "God called the light Day, and the darkness 
he called Night," was the record of the creative 
work of the first day. On the fourth day, we are 
subsequently told, " God made two great lights, the 
greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to 
rule the night." Gen. 1 : 5, 16. The objection ap- 
peared to be conclusive, and constituted one of the 
stock arguments of the earlier forms of infidelifc}-. 
"How did God make light before the sun?" asked 
Voltaire with apparent triumph, repeating the ob- 
jection urged by Celsus in the early ages of Chris- 
tianity. " Modern astronomy found it contrary to 
order that the earth should not only have been cre- 
ated before the sun, but should also, besides day 
and night, have distinction of the elements and 
vegetation before the sun," were the words of 
Strauss. Kecent investigation has not only suc- 
ceeded in removing the difficulty, but in the remo- 
val has confirmed the inspired account, by virtue of 
the latent scientific truth assumed in it. A more 
accurate scholarship has on one side corrected the 
translation of Gen. 1 : 14-16. The word translated 
light is really light-bearers or luminaries, instru- 
ments for the diffusion of light, but not the sources 
of light in themselves. On the other side, natural 
science advanced to the same solution by successive 
stages. First, it showed that the transmission of 

Ood'B Wont 11 



242 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

light to our globe was dependent on the luminous 
atmosphere surrounding the sun, and that, npon 
what is called the nebular hypothesis, the earth 
and the other planets of our system must necessa- 
rily have been constituted before the sun received 
the luminous atmosphere. Then it began to accu- 
mulate evidence confirmatory of the fact that light 
existed independently of the sun, and consisted of 
the- undulations of a luminous ether. The latest 
theory maintains that the body of the sun is simply 
an irritant, having the property of setting the un- 
dulations of this ether into motion, but wholly 
devoid of light in itself. Light is, therefore, no 
longer an emanation from the sun, but exists 
independently of it. Thus, the inspired narration 
is not only consistent with science, but actually em- 
bodies its latest discoveries, and therefore must be 
held to have anticipated them by more than three 
thousand years. 

II. In Genesis 10 : 8 we are told that the earliest 
inhabitants of the great alluvial plain at the mouth 
of the Tigris and the Euphrates were of Ethiopian 
origin. "Cush begat Nimrod . . . and the begin- 
ning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and 
Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar." The 
great majority of modern ethnologists have held an 
opinion directly contradictory to the scriptural 
statement. They believed them to be Aranmeans, 
sprung from Shein, and not from Ham, the father 
of Cush. A whole array of great names supported 
this conclusion with the utmost confidence. The 
contradiction thus given to Scripture was supported 



THE EVIDENCE OF EXPERIENCE. 243 

by affinities of language between the Babylonians 
of the time of Nebuchadnezzar and the Hebrews, 
and by the close international connection existing 
between the Babylonians and Assyrians. So irre- 
fragable were these arguments held to be, that the 
attempt to maintain the accuracy of the Biblical 
account was scouted almost with contempt. And 
yet it is now certain that the Bible is right, and the 
ethnologists wrong. The mounds of Chaldaoa have 
been recently explored, and inscriptions have been 
discovered proving that the language of ancient 
Babylonia was not the language of the times of 
Nebuchadnezzar, but belonged to a different family, 
and this family Cnshite or Ethiopian. With such a 
remarkable instance at hand, no one need be afraid 
of putting the accuracy of the inspired Scripture in 
points of minute detail against the rash conclusions 
of a science which is at present imperfect in its 
facts, and therefore hasty and inconsequent in its 
conclusions. 

III. In Joshua 8 : 33 we find an account of the 
reading of the law by Joshua in the hearing of the 
people along the sides of Ebal and Gerizim, and in 
the valley lying between them: "All Israel, and 
their elders, and officers, and their judges, stood on 
this side the ark and on that side before the priests 
the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of 
the Lord, as well the stranger, as he that was born 
among them ; half of them over against mount Geri- 
zim, and half of them over against mount Ebal." 
The space between the two hills is considerable, 
and it has been thought to be absurd to suppose 



244 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

that the assembled people could have heard, under 
these circumstances, the voice of Joshua, and still 
more that they could have carried out the instruction 
of Moses, given, it should be remembered, before 
the entrance into the land, that the people, divided 
into two parties, should ratify with a loud "amen" 
the justice of the Divine commandments. Yet it 
has been discovered that this particular spot, under 
the sides of Ebal and Gerizim, possesses such spe- 
cial acoustic properties as to have made a trans- 
action wholly credible here which would have been 
justly incredible elsewhere. The sides of Gerizim 
especially are steep, and broken by caves and cells, 
which serve to collect and repeat the sound. The 
Rev. H. B. Tristram writes: "A single voice may 
be heard by many thousands shut in and conveyed 
up and down by the enclosing hills. In the early 
morning we could not only see from Gerizim a man 
driving his ass clown a path in mount Ebal, but 
could hear every word he uttered as he urged it on ; 
and in order to test the matter more certainly, on a 
subsequent occasion, two of our party stationed 
themselves on opposite sides of the valley, and with 
perfect ease recited the commandments antipho- 
nally." A similar statement will be found in an 
interesting and valuable work on Scripture lands 
by Eev. G. S. Drew. 

This instance naturally carries the thoughts for- 
ward to the astonishing harmony existing between 
the geography of the Pentateuch, and the events of 
the exodus and the wanderings. The rocky plat- 
form of Sinai, for instance, strikes every observer 



THE EVIDENCE OF EXPERIENCE. 245 

by its wonderful adaptation to such a purpose as 
the giving of the law. Thus Dean Stanley writes : 
" The whole impression of that long approach was 
even more wonderful than I had anticipated. What- 
ever may have been the scene of the events of the 
exodus, I cannot imagine that any human being 
could pass up that plain, and not feel that he was 
entering a place above all others suited for the most 
august of the sights of earth." Lack of space makes 
it impossible to enter largely upon this subject; but 
it should be borne in mind as the natural ground- 
work from which points of special and minute accu- 
racy are thrown into notice. Where the whole broad 
platform of the history is found to correspond with 
existing things, the most minute accuracy of details 
is no more than may consistently be expected. 

IY. Deuteronomy 3 contains an account of the 
conquest of the lands east of the Jordan. Among 
the conquests effected at that time was the over- 
throw of Og, the giant king of Bashan, and the cap- 
ture of his cities. " We took all his cities at that 
time, there was not a city which we took not from 
them, threescore cities, all the region of Argob, the 
kingdom of Og in Bashan. All these cities were 
fenced with high walls," gates, and bars; besides 
unwalled towns a great many." The province of 
Argob, the Trachonitis of the New Testament Scrip- 
tures, measures not more than thirty miles by 
twenty. The existence of so large a number of 
cities within so narrow an area appeared to main- 
persons to be absolutely incredible ; and the feeling, 
on human grounds, was not altogether unnatural. 



246 GODS WORD WRITTEN. 

Tlic exploration of this region is a work of extreme 
difficulty and danger, and it is only within the last 
few years that Mr. Cyril Graham, Mr. Porter, and a 
few others, have succeeded in partially penetrating 
it. Enough, however, has been discovered to con- 
firm in a very remarkable manner the inspired nar- 
rative. The cities are still there. Unlike the 
ancient cities of Palestine in general, they still sur- 
vive, some of them complete as when they were first 
built. They are cities desolate and without inhab- 
itants, crowding the plains and hills of Bashan far 
and wide with their ruins, the silent witnesses to 
the truth of the word of God. "That one city," 
writes Mr. Porter, "nurtured by the commerce of a 
mighty empire, might grow till her people could be 
numbered by millions, I could well believe. That 
two or even three great commercial cities might 
spring up in favored localities, almost side by side, 
I could believe too. But that sixty walled cities, 
besides unwalled towns a great many, should exist 
in a small province, at such a remote age, far from 
the sea, with no rivers and little commerce, appear- 
ed to be inexplicable. Inexplicable, mysterious 
though it appeared, it was true. On the spot, with 
my own eyes, I had now verified it. A list of more 
than one hundred ruined cities and villages situated 
in these mountains alone I had in my hands, and 
on the spot I had tested it and found it accurate, 
though not complete." 

V. In 2 Kings 20:12 we read, "At that time 
Berodach-baladan, the son of Baladan, king of 
Babylonia, sent letters and a present unto Heze- 



THE EVIDENCE OF EXPEEIENCE. 247 

kiah." The statement is repeated less circumstan- 
tially in Isaiah 39 : 1, with the sole difference that 
the Babylonian king's name is written Merodach- 
baladan. To this statement it was objected that 
there was no such king, and that Babylonia did not 
constitute a separate monarchy in the days of Hezo- 
kiah. Further inquiry, however, brought to light a 
statement of the Ephesian historian, Polyhistor, to 
the effect that Merodach-baladan was a usurper, 
who reigned at Babylon for six months, and was 
overthrown by Sennacherib. The answer was thus 
complete. But the Babylonian inscriptions have 
now carried our information much farther. The 
annals of Tiglath-pileser record that on the inva- 
sion of Mesopotamia by that prince, the country on 
the seacoast was under the dominion of Merodach- 
baladan, who made his submission to the Assyrian 
monarch, and retained his own authority as a vas- 
sal king on payment of a tribute. During the reign 
of Shalmaneser, the successor of Tiglath-pileser, tho 
monuments afford no information of the relations 
between Babylon and Assyria ; but on the success- 
ful usurpation of Sargon, Babylonia revolted and 
placed itself under the independent government of 
Merodach-baladan. After a reign of twelve years, 
this king was conquered by Sargon; but on the 
death of Sargon, again revolted, and was finally 
overthrown by Sennacherib. Thus the veracity of 
the Bible in this one isolated mention of a Babylo- 
nian monarch, of whom nothing was known till tho 
buried monuments of the past again found voice, is 
literally and indisputably established. 



248 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

VI. Daniel^j records the capture of Babylon by 
the Persians, and the death of Belshazzar, the king 
of the Chaldeans. On two other occasions he marks 
the date of visions by "the years of the reign of 
king Belshazzar," in which they occurred. It is 
objected that these references are in direct opposi- 
tion to the statements of the Babylonian historian 
Berosus, who records that the last Babylonian mon- 
arch, Nabonadius, shut himself up in Borsippa, and 
was there taken after the capture of Babylon. But 
the inscriptions on the Babylonian cylinders again 
confirm the absolute truth of Scripture. At two 
different places have cylinders been found in which 
the name occurs of Belsarussar or Belshareser. 
He is stated to have been the eldest son of Nabona- 
dius, to have been associated with him in the king- 
dom, and to have been slain at the capture of Baby- 
lon. The facts are stated by Sir H. Piawlinson to 
receive further and independent corroboration from 
"the inscription of Bisutan, in that the impostor 
who caused the Babylonians to revolt against Dari- 
us Hystaspes, and who personated the heir to the 
throne, did not take the name of the eldest son of 
Nabonadius Belsharczer, but of the second son, 
Nabukudurusur." 

VII. The preceding instances have been taken 
from the Old Testament Scriptures, and their num- 
ber has only been limited by the rule already ex- 
plained, that such instances only should be given 
(1) as consist of minute points of details; (2) as 
admit of positive evidence from profane sources. 
In passing from the Old into the New Testament, 



THE EVIDENCE OF EXPERIENCE. 249 

it is worth our notice that the instances under the 
present head are fewer just in proportion as our 
information relative to this period is more full and 
precise. This comparative paucity of instances 
arises from no want of exact correspondence be- 
tween the scriptural narrative and the known facts 
of history ; for it has been shown in the preceding 
chapter that the New Testament writings are pecu- 
liarly rich in evidence of this kind. It arises from 
this very abundance of corroborative evidence, 
which has so narrowed the circle of possible objec- 
tion, that the cases are very few indeed where 
the slightest positive evidence has been produced 
against the minute veracity of Scripture. Instances 
where apparent objections against the truth of 
Scripture have been converted into positive evi- 
dences in favor of it are few, simply and solely 
because the instances even of apparent inaccuracy 
are few. This tacit evidence is itself well worthy of 
being remembered. 

VIII. Among the few instances where historical 
inaccuracy has been alleged against the New Tes- 
tament writings, the case of Quirinus or Cyrenius, 
governor of Syria, stands prominent. St. Luke, 
referring to the decree issued by Caesar Augustus 
that all the Roman empire should be taxed, adds 
that " this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was 
governor of Syria," Luke 2 : 2. Now Josephus states 
that he was made governor after the banishment of 
Archelaus, A. D. 6 ; consequently the taxing which 
took Joseph and Mary to the city of David before 
the birth of Mary's "first-born Son," could not have 
IP 



250 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

been made under a governor who did not accede to 
power till six years afterwards. A large variety of 
suppositions have been offered to remove this ap- 
parent contradiction between Josephus and St. Luke. 
But a discovery has recently been made by A. "W. 
Zumpt, of Berlin, which removes the very ground of 
the apparent discrepancy. By a process of argu- 
ment alike marked by its singular ingenuity, and by 
the forcible array of facts on which it is based, he 
has proved that Cyrenius was twice governor of 
Syria. He has even been able, by an exhaustive 
process, to prove that his first period of office was 
from the year B. c. 4 to B. c. 1, when he was suc- 
ceeded by M. Lolius. Consequently, not only is the 
objection removed, since the statement of St. Luke 
and the statement of Josephus may both be true, 
but a positive evidence is afforded for the minute 
accuracy of St. Luke ; for if Cyrenius was governor 
during the years b. c. 4 to B. c. 1, the taxing which 
brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem must have 
been " first made when Cyrenius was governor of 
Syria. 

IX. Another notable instance has already been 
alluded to among the indisputable proofs of scrip- 
tural accuracy, aud must therefore be but briefly 
touched in the character now presented, of an ob- 
jection converted into an evidence. I refer to the 
pro-consular title given b} T St. Luke in the thir- 
teenth chapter of the Acts to Sergius Paulus, the 
governor of Cyprus. It was objected that the title 
was improperly applied to him. This allegation 
was based on the statement of Dio Cassius that the 



THE EVIDENCE OF EXPERIENCE. 251 

emperor Augustus retained Cyprus as an imperial 
province, and that it would consequently be gov- 
erned by a pro-pr»tor, and not by a pro-consul. 
But the historian goes on to explain that an ex- 
change of provinces took place between the emperor 
and the senate, in which Cyprus was transferred 
from the emperor to the senate. It would, there- 
fore, be governed by a pro-consul ; and the fact is 
confirmed by the discovery of Cyprian coins bearing 
the very title used by the sacred historian. 

A review of the instances given in the present 
and in the preceding chapter will exhibit in them 
the following characteristics: 

1. The minute veracity illustrated by them is 
not confined to a single book, or to a single writer, 
or to a single section of the scriptural writings. 
Instances have been given from the Old Testa- 
ment and from the New. The instances from the 
Old comprise passages from the Pentateuch, from 
Joshua and Judges, from the books of Kings and 
Chronicles, from the prophets Isaiah and Daniel. 
The New Testament instances are gathered alike 
from the gospels and from the Acts of the Apostles. 
The veracity of Scripture is not confined to these 
instances. They are but particular illustrations — 
cases where sufficient information has been given 
from independent sources to enable us to prove 
to moral demonstration the accuracy of the sacred 
narrative. These cases are found wherever the 
books themselves are of such a nature as to deal 
with facts in detail. They show, therefore, that the 
accurate truthfulness of Scripture is not a quality 



252 GOD'S WOBD WRITTEN. 

of one or two individual writers, but tlie quality 
of the Scriptures in general. It is not, therefore, 
the result of any thing personal to the individual 
man, but of some general influence, of which they 
partake in common. 

2. This accuracy has been traced in particulars 
which are more or less incidental to the main ob- 
ject of the narrative. They refer to details which 
a human writer, diffident of the extent of his own 
knowledge, might have omitted altogether, or in 
regard to which an indefinite expression might 
have been selected, or where a bold or careless 
writer might have added particulars at haphazard. 
For, on the supposition of the skeptic, that the 
scriptural books are human compositions, it is im- 
possible that their authors could ever have antici- 
pated for their productions that prodigious circula- 
tion and world-wide importance which they have 
actually attained. They could not, therefore, have 
supposed that their works would ever have been 
submitted to such a sifting and reiterated criticism 
as skepticism on one side and faith on the other 
have brought to bear upon them. Comparative 
carelessness as to details would have been perfectly 
natural to them. For instance, whether the path of 
the discomfited Canaanites was an ascent towards 
Bethboron as far as Azekah, and a descent be}*ond — 
whether the sons of Sennacherib fled into Armenia 
or any other neighboring country — whether the 
Jewish captives of Sargon were carried to Babylon 
or elsewhere — are points incidental to the main 
purpose of the narrative. They are, therefore, ex- 



THE EVIDENCE OF EXPERIENCE. 253 

actly the points by which, for this very reason, the 
veracity of a narrative and the extent of knowledge 
displayed in it are most conclusively shown. 

3. Many of these details are such as could not 
possibly have fallen within the personal knowledge 
of the writer, and for which no effort of memory nor 
extent of information can account. For instance, 
Moses could not possibly have known out of his 
own knowledge the line of descent of the ancient 
Babylonians, nor have selected Ebal and Gerizim 
for the public recitation of the law from any indi- 
vidual acquaintance with the acoustic properties of 
the spot. The flight of Adrammelech and Share- 
zer into Armenia could not have fallen within the 
knowledge of the author of the Book of Kings. Nor 
is it conceivable that the political arrangements of 
the Roman empire should have been so minutely 
known to St. Luke as to enable him to exhibit from 
his own individual human information the minute 
accuracy distinguishing his history. No doubt there 
were sources of information open to them of which 
they may have availed themselves, but there is no 
source of historical error so common as reliance 
upon hearsay information. How is it that they 
selected just that information, and that only, on 
points equally numerous and varied, which was 
true to the utmost limits of accuracy? Whether 
we regard them as recording facts lying beyond 
the range of their own knowledge, or as supple- 
menting their own information by the information 
of others, in either case there must have been 
some help common to the whole series of writers, 



254 GOD'S WOBD WRITTEN. 

and over and above human prudence and discrimi- 
nation. 

4. The instances given are all, without excep- 
tion, drawn from matters of detail. The passages 
furnishing them do not deal with the sublime doc- 
trines of the faith, but with their human setting in 
the history of the Hebrew race and of the world at 
large. The}' are taken from that class of subjects 
which some men are disposed to exclude from the 
proper topics of Divine inspiration. The doctrines 
of the Bible thej acknowledge to have been com- 
municated by God, but not the historical facts; }'et 
it is not in the doctrines, but in the historical facts 
alone, that these proofs of the truth of the sacred 
Scriptures are furnished to us. 

Further, it should be noted that this limitation 
is just what might have been expected, and arises 
from the nature of the case. We believe the truth 
of Scripture everywhere, and the belief is justified 
by solid reasons; but it is not everywhere that we 
can prove it in detail. This, I repeat, is natural; 
for as the sublime doctrines of the faith lie beyond 
the reach of human discovery, so they lie beyond 
the reach of human proof. Let it be supposed that 
the Divine Author of the Bible was mercifully 
pleased to confirm the faith of mankind in the 
truth of his revealed word by proofs drawn from 
independent sources within human knowledge and 
discovery. It is only in the minute historical facts 
that verification could, in the nature of things, be 
possible. It must be in history, because this alone 
admits of undeniable moral evidence. It must be 



THE EVIDENCE OF EXPERIENCE. 255 

in definite and therefore minute particulars, because 
otherwise chance, and not intelligent design, might 
be alleged to be its cause. The proof must be 
afforded in exactly the manner we find to be the 
case, and could be given in no other way. 

I submit that we have in this fact a new expla- 
nation of the reason why the same revelation should 
contain the sublimest doctrines and yet the small- 
est details. The dependence of the doctrines for 
their verification upon the little historical details 
with which, as I have shown, they are inseparably 
interwoven, only confirms the arguments already 
adduced for unity of authorship, and therefore for 
identity of authority for the wdiole Scriptures. 

But one other conclusion must be asserted be- 
fore we pass on to the next stage of the inquiry. It 
has been shown that Scripture is wonderfully accu- 
rate in details, and that where ground has appa- 
rently existed for impugning its accuracy, further 
information has confirmed the Scripture, and proved 
the objections urged against it to be only the prod- 
uct of human ignorance. Mistaken or defective 
information on our own part, not on the part of 
the Bible, has been the source of all the difficulty. 
It is therefore natural to conclude that what further 
information has done for some difficulties, it would 
do, should it be vouchsafed to us, for all. That 
some things in Scripture should appear obscure to 
us is natural, if we judge the Scripture simply as we 
judge any other old book. "We can, moreover, 
understand that if Scripture be a revelation from 
God, at once intended to communicate saving 



25(5 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

knowledge, and to be the instrument of moral pro- 
bation, God might in perfect consistency intention- 
ally leave some difficulties to exercise faith and 
discipline submission. To accept the authority of 
Scripture as a Divine revelation, although it con- 
tains some things we cannot understand, is so far 
from being unreasonable, that reason herself com- 
pels us to this conclusion. Multiplied proofs are 
afforded us of the truth of the Bible. As a matter 
of indisputable fact, objections against its accuracy, 
in some cases apparently well founded, have been 
found to arise solely from ignorance in ourselves. 
Hence we are justified in judging of the future by 
the experience of the past. Not only do we assert 
that no mistake has ever been proved to exist in 
Scripture, but we proclaim likewise our conviction 
that no mistake ever will be found in it. We lift 
up our hearts to God, and exclaim with the psalm- 
ist, "Thy word is true from the beginning: and 
every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for 
ever'/' Psalm il9:lG0. 



ALLEGED INACCURACIES. 257 



CHAPTER XV. 

ALLEGED INSTANCES OF INACCURACY IN 
SCRIPTURE EXAMINED AND EXPLAINED. 

The Proofs alleged for and against the Accuracy of the Sacred 
Books compared with Reference to their Character and Relative 
Value — The Supposed Inaccuracies resolved into Mistakes re- 
specting the Human Element and its Operation — Rules for 
testing Them — Interpolations and Errors in Transcription — 
Figures of Speech — Variations of Statement — Omission of 
Facts — Differences of Style — Analogous Transactions and Dis- 
courses— A -priori Probabilities. 

The facts specified in the last two chapters, and 
the conclusion founded upon them, must be borne 
in mind in passing from the positive to the negative 
side of the controversy. Hitherto attention has 
been directed to the evidences confirmatory of the 
minute accuracy of the sacred writings. Attention 
must now be directed to the evidences adduced in 
disproof of it, in order that both sides of the argu- 
ment may be taken into account and fairly balanced 
against each other, before the final conclusion is 
reached. To examine into the character and value 
of these asserted disproofs will be the object of the 
present chapter. In entering upon the examination 
there is manifest reason why both the facts and the 
conclusion already considered should be kept con- 
stantly in mind. 

Without bearing the facts in mind, no fair esti- 
mate can be formed of the comparative weight due 



258 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

to the two opposite classes of evidences. It is not 
enough to count objections, and to decide the ques- 
tion by the numerical balance of one side over the 
other : their worth must be taken into account. 
One conclusive proof will outweigh a thousand 
inconclusive objections. It may be that the two 
classes of evidence differ widely in their character, 
and that the one may be ay rich in claims for credi- 
bility as the other may be devoid of them. 

This is actually the case. The instances of 
scriptural veracity already adduced rest upon proofs 
wholly independent of themselves, and absolutely 
above suspicion. The inspired statement has been 
placed on one side, and the proof of its accuracy 
over against it on the other. This proof has been 
very largely drawn from material monuments of the 
past. Ruined cities — the very sites of which had 
been forgotten for ages — have been called, as it 
were, out of their grave. Their remains are found 
to be so rich in written history as to enable us to 
reconstruct the past as it was never known to us 
before. The restless spirit of modern investigation 
has deciphered them, and gathered from them, over 
and over again, the exact corroboration of the literal 
truth of Scripture. These are witnesses that cannot 
be charged with prejudice : the vain-glorious records 
of a past ambition are beyond all possible suspicion 
of partiality. Here, as in other sources of infor- 
mation less wonderful but equally trustworthy, not 
only do we find the general references of Scripture 
to profane history confirmed without one single fail- 
ure, but we find minute particulars of person, place, 



ALLEGED INACCUKACIES. 259 

and date, and little details of personal adventure 
and natural history, all corroborated even to a mar- 
vel. So complete is the proof, that the Christian is 
filled with adoring gratitude to the providence which 
not only so moulded national character and habit as 
to cause these inscriptions to be made, but which 
has also preserved them intact through intervening 
ages, and now laid the marvellous pages open to the 
instruction of an age peculiarly critical and inquisi- 
tive. Such evidence as this removes the instances 
enumerated out of the category of probable argu- 
ments into that of demonstrative facts. The case is ' 
not, therefore, that the believer in Divine revelation 
asserts the sacred Scriptures to be true, but it is, 
that in many specified instances their truth is 
proved, not only beyond the possibility of disproof, 
but even beyond the possibility of doubt. 

We have, therefore, a right to require evidence 
equally conclusive in its character on the other side. 
The resources of an age rich in antiquarian discov- 
ery and historic information could not fail to supply 
the material for this evidence, if any inaccuracy of 
Scripture had rendered its existence possible. We 
ask for some record of authentic history — for some 
monument of the ancient past — for some inscription 
of the days that are gone, which contradicts in any 
one clear point any one clear statement of the 
sacred Scriptures — those Scriptures which are so 
contemptuously declared to be a mere patchwork of 
old myths and traditions, unhistorical and incredi- 
ble ! We say, If it be so, show us the proof of it. 
Where is the false fact, the historical anachronism, 



200 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

the contradiction of known events? And where, 
among the multitudinous "witnesses of the past, is 
the evidence to make conviction complete and denial 
impossible ? 

AVe ask in vain for any such proof. It is a 
memorable fact that not one such instance has been 
found. There is not a solitary fact disproved by the 
silent evidence of the monuments of Egypt, Assyria, 
Babylon, or Persia. The positive proof stands alone, 
and not a single witness is found to raise a voice on 
the other side. Doubts, cavils, suspicions, conjec- 
tures, we have in abundance; but positive evidence 
we have actually none. 

In its room we are confronted with a host of 
shadowy objections, resting largely on arbitrary 
assumption and personal opinion. One part of 
Scripture is laboriously forced into opposition to 
another part. Speculative judgments are advanced 
as to what the sacred writers, and the Spirit who 
inspired them, knew or did not know, expressed or 
meant to express. Individual variations of man- 
ner, style, and narration, are treated as irreconcila- 
ble contradictions. Facts are summarily denied, 
and doctrines contempt nously discarded, on the 
sole authority of an alleged critical instinct. But in 
all these cases a course of speculative reasoning 
is substituted for the evidence of facts, and this 
reasoning, however honest, is tainted with human 
ignorance, fallibility, and prejudice. Alleged proofs 
of such a kind cannot be placed side by side, even 
for ,t moment, with the demonstrable facts which 
confirm, on the positive side of the argument, the 



ALLEGED INACCURACIES. 261 

singular and, under the circumstances, superhuman 
accuracy of the sacred writings. 

But here comes in the conclusion already drawn 
from these undeniable facts. The familiar instances 
where apparent difficulties have been converted on 
fuller information into real harmonies show that, in 
these cases at all events, the difficulty arose solely 
from human ignorance. We are therefore not only 
justified, but compelled to form the conclusion that 
what is true in these cases is, in all probability, true 
in other cases likewise. Supposing it to be admit- 
ted that a certain number of insoluble difficulties 
still present themselves in Scripture, we must be- 
lieve that defect of information is their producing 
cause, and that, could the defect be supplied, these 
cases, like others, would turn out to be convincing- 
proofs of the veracity they are iioav alleged to im- 
pugn. I fully grant that the force of this conclu- 
sion depends upon the number of the difficulties 
alleged, because evidences very small in themselves 
may yet become strong by accumulation, and by 
the consilience of proof, as it is called, may con- 
ceivably amount even to moral demonstration. To 
ascertain what their number and force maybe is now, 
therefore, my object. But it must be admitted at the 
beginning, that the presumption established in favor 
of the truth of Scripture weakens them, whatever 
they may be, and detracts an appreciable percent- 
age from any value they might otherwise possess. 

The number of these objections is very large, 
and, if numerical preponderance had weight, would 
apparently be very formidable. The unwearied in- 



2G'2 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

dustry exhibited in searching throughout the length 
and breadth of Scripture for the grounds of adverse 
evidence, proves that, if the veracity of the Bible 
remains unimpugned, it will be neither from want 
of will nor want of ingenuity in its assailants. 
They cover so wide an area that it is impossible, in 
such a work as this, to notice or even to enumerate 
them. It is necessary to draw some line between 
what are appropriate to my immediate subject and 
what are not. I purpose, therefore, to omit all 
alleged evidences which are directed to overthrow 
the whole authority of Scripture, and confine my- 
self to those which have recently been put forward 
in disproof of its Divine inspiration and consequent 
inerrability. 

Even so the number is very large, amounting to 
nearly four hundred distinct passages of more or 
less length. The number might receive apparent 
increase, if passages were broken up into their in- 
dividual parts, and single objections separately enu- 
merated. Nevertheless, it will appear that the very 
largeness of the number only serves to attest the 
more absolutely the authority of Scriptures capable 
of passing unscathed through so strict and search- 
ing an ordeal. 

Definite rules can alone guide the inquiry 
through such a tangled mass of objections. All 
arguments, moreover, incapable of being reduced 
to rule, must lie under just suspicion of arbitrary 
caprice. The rules will follow necessarily from a 
principle already asserted, and to which, as to a 
point settled, I claim the right to appeal as the 



ALLEGED INACCURACIES. 263 

groundwork of further argument. This principle is 
that a revelation implies, indeed requires, two par- 
ties, and therefore two elements, and that the two 
elements are to be maintained everywhere, always 
distinct, but never separate. The part which God 
had in producing the Bible must not be so pushed 
as to absorb the part which man had in producing 
it. The part which man had in producing the Bible 
must not be so pushed as to derogate from the part 
which God had in producing it. Consequently, if 
the human element be admitted as indispensable, 
whatever is essential to the human element must 
be admitted likewise ; and yet the admission will 
not take away any quality essential to the Divine 
element. The principle is very simple ; yet the 
great mass of skeptical objection has arisen from 
denying it, and from falsely assuming that whatever 
is characteristically human cannot be at the same 
time characteristically Divine. I have already shown 
that no conceivable reason can be given wh}^ the 
human and Divine should not be as closely and 
invariably united in the written word as, by the 
admission of all orthodox believers, they are united 
in the personal Word — in Him who, bcrn of the 
Virgin Mary, was yet God of God, Light of Light, 
very God of very God. 

The rules to be borne in mind as a soldier may 
grasp his weapons when he descends into the con- 
flict, are as follows : 

Bule 1. — Passages interpolated into the original 
autograpJis, or errors made in transcript ion, are no 
parts of Scripture, and 'furnish, therefore, no argument 



264 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

against its truth. The liability to causes of error of 
this kind arises from the human language of Scrip- 
ture, and the human instruments employed to con- 
vey the revelation. We are not at liberty, however, 
to fall back on this explanation as a mere means of 
escape from a difficulty, unless some reason can be 
alleged to justify it. There is no difficulty in lay- 
ing down canons for guidance in such a case. We 
are justified in adopting this explanation (a) when- 
ever the evidence of the MSS. suggested it ; (b) 
wherever Scripture itself furnishes the data for dis- 
covering or correcting the mistake ; (c) where the 
nature of the passage or the characters of the 
words render an error in transcription easy, and 
therefore probable. Where none of these reasons 
exist we have no right to adopt this mode of 
evading a difficulty. Mere arbitrary and capri- 
cious exercise of individual opinion constitutes no 
justification for it. For instance, the majority of 
the MSS. attest that 1 John 5 : 7 is an interpola- 
tion, and the fact that it only interrupts the argu- 
ment of the apostle is an internal evidence to the 
same effect. Again, the number of men who drew 
the sword in Israel and Judah, as taken in the cen- 
sus made by Joab at David's command, differs very 
widely in 2 Sam. 24 : 9, and 1 Chron. 21 : 5. We 
are therefore at liberty, on the authority of either 
statement of the two, to suppose an error of tran- 
scription in the other, if other explanations fail to 
satisfy us. On the other hand, a similar error on 
the part of the copyist has been suggested relative 
to the number of the Hebrew people at the Exodus ; 



ALLEGED INACCUKACIES. 205 

and it has been supposed that, by a very easy and 
natural error, six hundred thousand has been writ- 
ten for sixty thousand. But in this case, so far is 
Scripture itself from affording any authority for the 
alteration, that it positively forbids it ; for the cor- 
rection would bring this particular passage into 
contradiction with other passages, such as Exod. 
30 : 11-16, 28 : 25 ; Numb. 11 : 21 ; Deut. 11 : 22 ; 26 ; 
1 Cor. 10 : 8, etc. We are, therefore, bound to reject 
it. The reconstruction of the book of Genesis into 
the two supposed documents, the Elohistic and the 
Jehovistic, by the disciples of the "higher criti- 
cism," affords an instance of the arbitrary, and 
therefore unjustifiable, suggestion of interpolations 
on the part of the transcriber. Certain passages 
are found not to yield themselves to this theoreti- 
cal treatment, and are therefore arbitrarily declared 
to be interpolations. Thus Eichhorn conjecturally 
alters Gen. 4:25; 9:27; 17:1; 22:12; 27:28, etc., 
solely on this ground. 

The limitation expressed in this rule is applica- 
ble to some cases not at present claiming consider- 2 /•!** * 
ation. Of the instances taken into calculation in , 
this chapter, it is applicable to four : 2 Sam. 24 : 9 ; 
1 Chron. 21 : 5 ; Matt. 27 : 9 ; and 1 John 5:7. It 
may also be fairly applied to another instance,, to 
which a further examination will be given hereaf- 
ter, viz., Acts 7 : 16. 

Rule 2. The employment of figures of speech and 
of artificial or conventional forms of statement consti- 
tutes no violation of literal truth. Both these peculi- 
arities belong inseparably to the human element. 

God's Word 1 2 



266 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

Figures of speech are employed for the very pur- 
pose of conveying the idea of facts with a greater 
intensity than would otherwise be possible. They 
must therefore be resolved into their meaning, be- 
fore the accuracy or inaccuracy of the description 
can be tested. For instance, when St. Luke records 
that at the crucifixion of Christ " there was darkness 
over all the earth,"" he employs a figure (synec- 
doche) of familiar and undisputed use in all secular 
writers, by which sometimes a part is placed for the 
whole, and sometimes a whole for a part. In this 
instance, " all the earth" is used to express the wide 
and unbroken prevalence of the darkness. When 
a great quantity or number is expressed by such 
phrases as the sand of the sea, the dust of the earth, 
and the stars of heaven — as in Gen. 13 : 16; 41 :49 ; 
Judges 7:12; 1 Sam. 13 : 5 ; 1 Kings 4 : 29 ; 2 Chron. 
1:9; Jer. 15 :8 ; Heb. 11 :12 — a graphic hyperbole 
is emploj^ed to impress upon the mind the more 
vivid conception of the idea. Of artificial modes of 
statement we have a striking instance in the gene- 
alogy of St. Matthew. Of conventional forms, an 
illustration is afforded by the round numbers of 
Scripture, as in Numb. 1 : 21-46 ; 2 Sam. 24 : 9 ; 
1 Chron. 21 : 5. In the same manner, secular his- 
torians familiarly speak of armies as consisting of 
so many thousand men ; but nobody accuses them 
of inaccuracy because of the improbability that an 
army should actually consist of the round numbers, 
without a single man either more or less. 

* Luke 23:44. The word rendered earth, however, probably 
means land, i. c, the land of Judea. 



ALLEGED INACCURACIES. 267 

Alleged objections falling to the ground under 
this rule are based upon the following passages 
Gen. 13 : 16 ; 46 : 12 ; Exod. 6 : 11-27 ; Judg. 7 : 12 
Numb. 1:21, 46; 1 Sam. 24:9; 2 Chron. 21:5 
Matt, 1:1, 17; 27:6, compared with Acts 1:18, 
Luke 23 : 44, Acts 24 : 5. But a list of similar pas- 
sages might be prolonged almost indefinitely. 

Rule 3. Variations of statement are not contradic- 
tions, when they arise either from recording different 
parts of some common event, or from assigning a differ- 
ent emphasis and importance to the same parts. If 
the mental peculiarities of the sacred writers were 
to be maintained, as I have shown that they must 
be maintained — or the human element would be 
destroyed — these variations are inevitable. The 
same common facts will strike different minds dif- 
ferently ; or rather, different minds will take hold, 
so to speak, of different aspects of them. This vari- 
ation is a matter of familiar experience. Let the 
accounts of the same battle by three or four differ- 
ent historians be compared, or the reports of some 
current event as given in half a dozen different 
newspapers ; an absolute similarity will be found 
to exist in no two of them. Yet on the very points 
of variation all the accounts may be equally true. 
So it is with the scriptural narratives. It has al- 
ready been pointed out that no history intended for 
human readers can possibly be a mere transcript of 
the Divine mind. The object is not to give a com- 
plete account of every event as the omniscient mind 
of God sees it, but to record such parts as God has 
seen to be necessary for human instruction. It has 



268 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

pleased God that the evangelical writers, in record- 
ing the same event, should record different parts of 
it ; and in this very variation we find the evidence 
for the independent truthfulness of the narrative. 
We must apply to the sacred writings the standard 
applied to other writings. If variations of narra- 
tive were contradictions, secular history would be a 
mass of inexplicable confusion. It is admitted that 
variations may exist in writings purely human with- 
out any diminution of truth ; and the same princi- 
ple must be admitted with the sacred writings, inas- 
much as they are the production of human authors, 
none the less for being inspired authors, and must 
therefore be expected to present human peculiari- 
ties. 

Under this rule fall, as might be expected, the 
great mass of skeptical objections against the truth- 
fulness of Scripture. An illustrative instance or two 
must be specified. Thus, the accounts of the infancy 
of our Lord given by St. Matthew and St. Luke have 
been represented as irreconcilably contradictory to 
each other ; and the reasons alleged are the follow- 
ing : (a) Matthew simply records the birth of Christ 
at Bethlehem, and does not give the explanatory 
circumstances supplied by St. Luke, (b) St. Luke 
does not record the adoration of the Magi or the 
flight into Egypt, narrated by Matthew ; but, after 
recording the presentation of the infant Jesus in 
the temple, fixes the next scene of his narrative at 
Nazareth. I believe that to most minds the mode 
in which the two accounts fit into one consecutive 
story will appear a signal instance of harmonious 



ALLEGED INACCURACIES. 269 

truth, instead of an illustration of irreconcilable 
contradiction. 

Another instance is alleged in the cure of the 
centurion's servant, recorded in Matt. 8 : 5-13, Luke 
7 : 1-10. Here the point of alleged discrepancy is, 
that St. Matthew states, "There came unto him 
a centurion," while Luke states, "He sent unto 
him [Jesus] the elders of the Jews ;" again, " The 
centurion sent friends unto him." The two state- 
ments are perfectly consistent, and may both be 
true. It is but a touch of nature that the centu- 
rion, in deep anxiety about his servant, should in 
his humility send friends, and yet, in his earnest- 
ness, himself follow, and repeat in person the mes- 
sage previously entrusted to others. 

Where instances are so numerous, a detailed 
explanation of individual cases is impossible. I can 
only indicate the source of the difficulty, and the 
key by which it is to be removed. Passages in the 
Old Testament alleged to be discrepant, but which 
are reconcileable under this rule, are as follows : 

Gen. 1 : 24-28, compared with Gen. 2 : 7-23 ; 

Gen. 6 : 19 with 7:2; 

Gen. 28 : 10-19 with Gen. 35 :6-9 ; 

Exod. 12 : 10 with Acts 7:6; 

Exod. 1G : 35 with Josh. 5 : 10-12 ; 

Exod. 20 : 1-11 with Dent. 5 : 4-22 ; 

Exod. 3 : 1-20 with Exod. 4 : 10-31, 5 : 1-23, 6 : 2-30, 7:1-7; 

Exodus 16 : 1-35 with Numbers 9 : 1, 2, 10 : 11-33, 11 : 1-35, 

33 : 10-17 ; 
Lev. 17 : 1-9 with Dent. 12 : 13-22 ; 
Numb. 21 : 33-35 with Dent. 3:11; 
Numb. 1 : 1-49 with Numb. 2 : 32, 33, 3 : 10-47 ; 
Numb. 4 : 1-48 with Numb. 8 : 23-26 ; 



270 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

Numb. 18 : 8-19 with Dent. 12 : 5-9, 15 : 19-22, 18 : 1-5, and 

Lev. 27 : 26, 27 ; 
Numb. 18 : 20-2G with Deut. 14 : 22-29, and Neh. 10 : 35-38 ; 
Deut. 3:13, 14 with Judges 10 : 1-4. 

Passages of the same character in the New Tes- 
tament are as follows : 

Matt. 1 : 1-17 with Luke 3 : 23-38 ; 
Matt. 1 : 18 with Luke 1 : 26 ; 
Matt 2 : 1, 5-23 with Luke 2 : 4-42 ; 

Matt. 3 : 1 with Mark 1 : 1, Luke 3 : 2-22, and John 1 : 6-15 ; 
Matt. 4 : 18-22 with Mark 1 : 16-20, Luke 6, 1-11, John 1 : 28-44 ; 
Matt. 4 : 25 with Luke 6 : 12-20 ; 

Matt. 6 : 9-15 with Mark 11 : 24-26, and Luke 11:1-4; 
Matt. 6 : 19-21 with Luke 12 : 33, 34 ; 
s Matt. 6 : 22, 23 with Luke 11 : 32-36 ; 
Matt, 6 : 24 with Luke 16 : 11-14 ; 
Matt. 6 : 25-34 with Luke 12 : 21-35 ; 
Matt. 7 : 1-5 with Luke 6 : 37-42 ; 
Matt. 7 : 7-11 with Luke 11 : 5-13 ; 
Matt. 7:12 with Luke 6 : 30-32 ; 
Matt. 7 : 13, 14 with Luke 13 : 22-25 ; 
Matt. 7 : 15 with Luke 6 : 43 ; 

Matt. 7 : 12-23, 8 : 10-13, and 19 : 30, with Luke 13 : 22-30 ; 
Matt. 8 : 5-13 with Luke 7 : 1-10 ; 
Matt. 11 : 10-14 with Luke 16 : 14-18 ; 
Matt. 14 : 3-11 with Mark 6 : 17-28 ; 

Matt. 20 : 29-34 with Mark 10 : 46-52, and Luke 18 : 35-43, 19 : 1 ; 
~ Matt. 19 : 6-19 with Mark 10 : 7-19, and Luke 18 : 18-20 ; 
Matt. 22 :34-42 with Mark 11 : 28-35 ; 
Matt. 21 : 11-18 with Mark 11 : 11-15, and Luke 19 :45 ; 
Matt. 21 : 19 with Mark 11 :2; 
Matt. 26:33-75 with Mark 14:29-72, Luke 22:31-62, John 

13:36-38, and 18: 16-27; 
< Matt. 26:17-20 with Mark 14:12-17, Luke 22:7-15, John 

13:1-30, and 18:28,29; 
Matt. 27 : 45. 46 with Mark 15 : 24-34, Luk 23 : 44-46, and John 

19 : 13-15 ; 
Matt. 27 : 54 with Mark 15 : 39, Luke 23 : 47 ; 
Matt. 26 : 30-32, and 28 : 1-20, with Mark 14 : 26-28, 16 : 1-20, 

Luke 24 : 1-53, Acts 1 : 3-9, John 20 : 1-28, and 21 : 1-22 ; 



ALLEGED INACCUBACIES. 271 

Matt. 18 : 6-15 with Luke 15 : 1-10 ; 
Matt. 22 : 1-14 with Luke 14 : 15-24 ; 
Matt. 25 : 14-30 with Luke 19 : 11-29 ; 
Matt. 24 : 3-3G with Mark 13 : 4-32, Luke 21 : 33 ; 
£ $ Acts 19 : 3-17 with Acts 22 : 6-15, and 26 : 12-19. 

Eule 4. Omissions of parts of a series of facts, or 
of particulars making up facts, are entirely consistent 
with the truth of the narrative in which they occur. 
The reasons for this rule are similar to those alleged 
for the rule preceding, and will not require, there- 
fore, to be repeated. It will suffice to repeat part 
of a quotation from an impartial source already 
made in a previous chapter (chap. 12) : " Since the 
facts out of which we must construct our histories 
in idea are but a small proportion, a mere remain- 
ing shred, of that enormous intertwined infinity of 
facts which actually went into the histories while 
the web was being woven, are there any kinds or 
orders of facts which more than others it is desira- 
ble, for the purposes of history, to secure and keep 
hold of?" The relative importance of facts, it must 
also be remembered, is strictly and solely related 
to the objects proposed by the writer. A variety 
of points of view and of modes of viewing things 
are inseparable from the human element. A vary- 
ing proportion given to facts, even up to their omis- 
sion altogether, is therefore inseparable from the 
human element likewise, since the effect must be 
coextensive with the cause. Variations of narra- 
tive, arising from the omission of some facts out 
of a series, might consistently have fallen under 
the previous rule ; but as they constitute a varia- 
tion of one specific kind, I have thought it best, 



272 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

for the sake of clearness, to classify them by them- 
selves. 

An omission of this kind occurs in Matt. 14:5, 
compared with Mark 6:18. For Mark records a 
foregone purpose on the part of Herodias to kill 
John the Baptist ; but Matthew records no such 
design. Again, John records a visit of Jesus to 
Jerusalem at the feast of the dedication, John 10 :22, 
in regard to which the other three evangelists are 
silent. St. John describes the raising of Lazarus 
from the dead, John 11 : 7-17 ; but no account of 
such a miracle is given by Matthew, Mark, and 
Luke. 

Or to take instances of a more detailed kind : 
Matthew records the curing the two blind men 
at Jericho, Matt. 20 : 29, while Mark and Luke 
(Mark 10 : 46; Luke 18 : 35) record the curing only 
of one. St. Matthew narrates the words of our 
Lord to Peter to be, "This night, before the cock 
crow, thou shalt deny me thrice," Matt. 26 : 34, 
without specifying any definite number of times 
when the cock should crow, Matt. 26:75; whereas 
St. Mark specifies that the cock should crow twice, 
Mark 14 : 72. St. Matthew and St. Mark, in the 
account of our Lord's crucifixion, record that the 
thieves who were crucified with him reviled him. 
Matt. 27 : 44 ; Mark 15 : 32. But they make no 
mention of the further circumstance narrated by St. 
Luke, of the repentance and confession of one of 
the two. Luke 23 : 42. 

Other instances of omitted facts alleged to con- 
stitute cases of contradiction are as follows : 



ALLEGED INACCUEACIES. 273 

Matt. 19 : 1, 20 : 17, 21 : 1-23, 24 : 1-3, 26 : 1-12, compared with 
Mark 9 : 33, 10 : 1-46, 11 : 1-27, 12 : 35, 13 : 1, 14 : 1-9, Luke 
9:51-53, 10:38, 39, 17:11, 12, 18:35, 19:1-47, 20:1, 
22 : 1-7, John 10 : 22-39, 11 : 7-53, 12 : 1-19 ; 

Matt. 23 : 8-22 with Luke 11 : 37-54 ; 

Matt. 27 : 41-45 with Mark 14 : 32-42 ; 

Matt. 22 : 1-14 with Luke 14 : 15-24, 22 : 40-46 ; 

Matt. 25 : 14-30 with Luke 19 : 11-29. 

The same objection is brought against the fol- 
lowing passages in the book of Genesis : 

Gen. 4 : 1-26 compared with Gen. 5 : 1-6 ; 
Gen. 26 : 34, 35, with Gen. 28 : 6-9, and 36 : 1-6. 

Many other objections have been taken similar 
in kind, which yet do not fall within the class here 
dealt with. 

Rule 5. Differences of style in the composition, of 
personal character in the mode of thinking, and of stand- 
point in looking at common truths, are neither inconsis- 
tent with truth, nor with the action of a Divine inspi- 
ration. These differences are inseparable from the 
free use of human messengers as the instrument of 
communicating truth to mankind. The only con- 
ceivable mode of avoiding them would be for God 
in employing human instruments, to merge their 
separate peculiarities, mental, moral, local, circum- 
stantial, in one common and indistinguishable type. 
Such a mode of acting would have been contrary to 
all the ordinary principles of God's moral govern- 
ment, and would have destroyed the foothold of the 
revelation on the historical realities of the world. 
But if God did not see fit to do this, then the per- 
sonal peculiarities of the sacred writers must have 
been retained. God in selecting one man rather 
than another to be his messenger must have had 

12* 



274 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

regard to the special gifts, character, position, 
period, and preparatory education of the messen- 
ger. It has been shown in chapter 9 that the pecu- 
liarities of the men were a necessary condition of 
the human element in Scripture. But these pecu- 
liarities have necessarily left their stamp on their 
productions. The style is different in different men, 
or even with the same man under different circum- 
stances and on different topics. Their modes of 
thinking affect their modes of speaking. Each man 
regards the common subject from the standpoint of 
his own particular theme, particular purpose, or 
particular mode of thought. If, therefore, the exist- 
ence of a human element in Scripture is so essential 
to the very idea of a revelation as to constitute no 
argument against its Divine inspiration, all the 
peculiarities arising from the human element must 
be consistent with it likewise. 

Forgetfulness of this simple truth has been the 
originating source of many adverse criticisms upon 
Scripture. The discriminations of the difference in 
style has been as accurate as the conclusion found- 
ed upon it is unjustifiable and absurd. Thus the 
Mosaic authority of the book of Deuteronomy has 
been called into question because the earnest and 
elevated style of the book stands in such strong 
contrast with the formal language of Leviticus. In 
the same way it has been argued that the teaching 
of the Pauline epistles and the teaching of the Pen- 
tateuch cannot have proceeded from the inspiration 
of one and the same God, because one starts from 
the point of view supplied by a completed salvation, 



ALLEGED INACCURACIES. 275 

the other from the point of view of a preparatory 
and imperfect dispensation. One instance of the 
same difficulty in detail is afforded by the well- 
known passages of Komans 4:1-5, where the apos- 
tle is arguing against the hope of salvation by the 
deeds of the law ; and James 2 : 14-26, where the 
apostle speaks against the reality of faith that is 
not evidenced by its effects on the life and conduct. 
Thus the standpoint of a Divine prescience in 
the speaker is wholly overlooked in the objections 
brought against such passages as Exod. 36 : 31, Gen. 
12 : 6, Numb. 15 : 32-36, Deut. 3 : 12, Lev. 18 : 24-28. 
The peculiar position of the Hebrew people, and the 
necessity of pressing, over and over again, upon a 
half-civilized people respect towards others, are for- 
gotten in the objection raised against the reiterated 
injunctions of Exod. 22 : 21 ; 23 : 9, 17-19 ; 34 : 23-26. 
The relation in which the times of the gospel are 
declared to stand towards the second coming of 
Christ, as being themselves the sole intervening- 
period before the accomplishment of that great 
event, is overlooked in the skeptical comment made 
in reference to the second coming in the epistles : 
e. g., 

. Eom. 13 : 11, 12 ; 1 Cor. 1 : 7, 8, 7 : 19-31, 11 : 2G, 15 : 51, 52 ; 
Phil. 1 : 6-10, 3 : 20, 21, 4:5; Col. 3 : 4 ; 1 Tliess. 1 : 9, 10, 
2 : 19, 3 : 13, 4 : 13-18, 5 : 1-23 ; 2 Thess. 2 : 1-12 ; 1 Tim. 
6 : 13-15 ; 2 Tim. 4:1-8; Titus 2 : 12. 13 ; Heb. 9 : 28, 
10 : 21-37 ; James 5:3-9; 1 Peter 1 : 4-20, 4:4-7, 5:1-4; 
2 Peter 3 : 3-12 ; 1 John 2 : 17-28, 3 : 2, 4 : 3 ; llev. 1 : 3-7, 
2 : 25, 22 : 10-2G. 

The nature of predictive prophecy and the char- 
acteristic difference distinguishing the prediction of 



276 GOD?S WORD WRITTEN. 

the future from the narration of the past are like- 
wise overlooked in commenting upon the variations 
perceptible in such passages as Matt. 24 : 3-36, 
Mark 13 : 4-32, and Luke 21 : 20-33. 

The "wantonness of such conjectural criticism is 
illustrated by another class of instances. In some 
cases it has been remarked that skeptical objection 
is based on the diversity of style. But a further 
class of objection is based on the similarity of style. 
Doubt has been attempted to be thrown upon the 
accuracy of St. John's gospel, from the similarity 
of expression traced between it and some passages 
in the first epistle of the same apostle. The plea is 
that the peculiar style of expression belonging to 
the apostle St. John has colored the language im- 
puted, and as it is hinted, falsely imputed to our 
blessed Master. The argument is urged in charac- 
teristic forgetfulness that the reverse alternative is 
at least equally probable, in that the language of 
our Lord may naturally have colored the mode of 
thinking and speaking belonging to the apostle 
whom Jesus loved, and who," in the familiarity of 
intimate friendship, lay upon his breast. The pas- 
sages adduced are as follows : 

John 1 : 1-14, 21 : 24, compared with 1 John 1 : 1, 2 ; 

John 1:5, 13 : 84, with 1 John 1 : 5, 2 : 8 ; 

.John 1 : 12. 15 : 19, with 1 John 3:1; 

John 1 : 18, with 1 John 4 : 12 ; 

John 3:3, with 1 John 3:9; 

John 3 : 1G, with 1 John 4:9; 

John 3 : 21. with 1 John 1 : G ; 

John 3 : 31, 8 : 23. 15 : 19. with 1 John 4:5; 

John 3 : 3G, with 1 John 5 : 12 ; 

John 5 : 23, 15 : 23, with 1 John 2 : 23 ; 



ALLEGED INACCUKACIES. 277 

John 5 : 24, with 1 John 3 : 14 ; 
John 5 : 36, 37, with 1 John 5:9; 
John 8 : 12, 12 : 35, with 1 John 1:7; 
John 8 : 32, with 1 John 2 : 24 ; 
John 8 : 44, with 1 John 3:8; 
John 8 : 46, with 1 John 3:5; 
John 8 : 47, with 1 John 4:6; 
John 9 : 31, with 1 John 3:2; 
John 11 : 51, 52, with 1 John 2:2; 
John 12 : 35, with 1 John 2 : 11 ; 
John 13 : 15, with 1 John 2:6; 
John 14 : 13, with 1 John 5 : 14 ; 
John 14 : 15, with 1 John 5:3; 
John 14 : 16, 17. with 1 John 2:1; 
John 14 : 21, with 1 John 2:5; 
John 14 : 26, with 1 John 2 : 20-27 ; 
John 15 : 10, with 1 John 2:3; 
John 15 : 11, 16 : 24, with 1 John 1:4; 
John 15 : 13, with 1 John 3 : 16 ; 
John 15 : 18. with 1 John 3 : 13 ; 
John 16 : 33, with 1 John 5:4; 
John 20 : 31, with 1 John 5 : 13. 

Rule 6. Separate transactions are not to he vI<h~ 
tljied with each other because of a parallelism between 
some circumstances of an event, or some portions of a 
discourse. It is a •true and profound remark, that 
human history has a tendency to repeat itself; 
under analogous circumstances men are likely to 
adopt an analogous course of action. A partial 
similarity is therefore no proof of identity. This 
caution is practically needed in regard to the trans- 
actions of our Lord's life and his recorded discour- 
ses. The resources of his own wisdom, knowledge, 
and power, were indeed infinite ; but the sphere of 
his ministry was narrow, being confined to the 
Jews. The circumstances were rigidly peculiar. 



278 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

The general characteristics of the persons with 
whom he came into contact were, from the strong 
and peculiar type of the Jewish character and the 
religious condition of the Jewish church of his day, 
marked by a strongly defined similarity. In his 
teaching under such circumstances there could be 
but little comparative variety. The same truths, 
the same warnings, the same expostulations, the 
same promises, must have recurred over and over 
again ; for why should a perfectly wise teacher vary 
the form of his words, when the circumstances to 
which they were addressed were not varied? A 
certain monotone and repetition was inevitable. 
But if this existed in our Lord's teaching, it must 
equally be expected to exist in the records of his 
teaching. To argue from a similarity of circum- 
stances or of truth for the absolute identity of two 
transactions or two discourses, is to put a forced 
and unnatural construction upon the inspired rec- 
ord. 

It is not necessary for me to enter elaborately in 
each case upon the consideration of these asserted 
cases of identity. It is enough for me to assert that 
the conclusion is, in such cases, precarious in the 
extreme, to say the very best of it ; and that any 
further argument, based on this precarious suppo- 
sition, cannot have higher certainty than belongs to 
its foundation, and can be esteemed little better 
than a superstructure of shadow built upon a foun- 
dation of sand. 

Yet this argument has been freely used. It has 
been deemed necessary to establish the existence of 



ALLEGED INACCURACIES. 279 

contradictions in the scriptural narrative. What 
more easy than to assume that two varying accounts 
refer to one and the same transaction, and therefore 
must be contradictory to each other ? Of the ex- 
treme uncertainty of such identification at the best 
we have an illustration in what is the strongest of 
all the alleged cases, the sermon on the mount, as 
recorded in Matt. 5 to 8, and the discourse recorded 
by St. Luke in 6:20-49. A quotation from a pos- 
thumous publication by the Rev. Josiah Forshall, 
the merit of which suggests how great a loss the 
church of Christ has suffered by his removal, will 
serve to shoAV the bearing of the question. After 
pointing out the antecedent probability that no 
indefinite variation would be found in our Lord's 
teaching, Mr. Forshall continues : 

" Do the gospel narratives enable us to say 
positively whether our Lord did or did not repeat 
his lessons in the same manner and in like words ? 
Our Lord taught his disciples to pray on two dif- 
ferent occasions widely apart : did he think fit to 
command the use of the same or of different forms? 
They are nearly the same. Our Lord taught, 
on three different occasions, the true doctrine of 
marriage and the unlawfulness of divorce : did he 
do it in different or in the same terms? Nearly 
in the same. Our Lord twice wept over Jerusa- 
lem with touching lamentations : were they ex- 
pressed in different or in the same words? They 
were in the same. Our Lord, when he was ap- 
proaching Jerusalem, on his last journey from Gali- 
lee, delivered a parable, Luke 19 : 12. Within a few 



280 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

days, when lie quitted Jerusalem, he again delivered 
a parable, Matt. 25 : 14. How far do these parables 
differ. They agree literally in the greater part of 
each." 

He then illustrates the same fact from the ser- 
mon on the mount itself, in passages all of which 
have perversely been made the subject of skeptical 
objections. "We conclude this topic by asking, 
" Why, then, should he not have repeated a part of 
what he had said in the sermon upon the mount on 
another occasion recorded by St. Luke ?" He then 
proceeds to show that, so far are the two discourses 
from being identical, that of the whole matter con- 
tained in the two accounts, less than one fifth is com- 
mon, and more than four fifths peculiar, to one or the 
other. But if this strongest of all the instances be 
weak, what shall be said of the rest, or what 
weight be placed upon arguments which contradict 
in some cases the express declarations of the nar- 
rative itself? 

Yet the following passages have been called into 
question, solely on the authority of this speculative 
identity : 

Gen. 12 : 10, 20 : 1-18, 21: 22-31, 2G:6-11. 17-33 ; Matt. 20 : 20- 
34 ; Mark 10 : 4G-52 ; Luke 18 : 35-43 ; Matt, 18 : 15 ; Mark 
9 : 33-37 : Luke 9 : 46-48 ; Matt. 20:20. 29 ; Mark 10 : 35-10 ; 
Luke 22 : 21-30 ; Matt. 21 : 15. 1G ; Luke 19 : 38-40 ; Matt 
21 : 11 ; John 2:13; Matt. 23 : 1-39, 24 : L; Luke 11 : 37 5 1 : 
Matt. 4 : 18-22 with John 1 : 28-44. 

Rule 7. — .No private estimates of probability or 
improbability, cither as to/acts or doctrines, can be of 
f<>ree to neutralize the testimony of a positive record. 



ALLEGED INACCURACIES. 281 

As far as this proposition relates to historical facts 
the common proverb that "fact is stranger than fic- 
tion" expresses the ordinary experience and convic- 
tions of mankind. The course of human events is 
not represented by the even current of some smooth 
river, flowing upon its uninterrupted course through 
smiling plains into the sea. But it is represented 
by a river interrupted by rocks, and broken into 
rapids and cataracts. Sudden changes, startling 
vicissitudes, and strange calamities, form the com- 
mon features of history. Those who have lived but 
for a few years can recall repeated instances of 
events which excited common wonder and astonish- 
ment, from having taken place in a manner previ- 
ously deemed to be impossible. Who could have 
foreseen the past history of the world — who can 
predict its future history? But if we are wholly 
incapable of judging from antecedent considerations 
of the probability and improbability of events, still 
less are we capable of anticipating the fluctuating 
course of human action; still less of judging of 
Divine action. Doctrines, still more than facts, 
because they have their origin in the mind of God, 
lie wholly beyond and above the reach of the human 
mind. All objections, therefore, founded on per- 
sonal opinion on the part of the critic, and which 
find expression in such phrases as "I do not think 
it probable," "It does not appear to me likely," are 
devoid of all argumentative force, and, as evidences, 
are literally valueless. 

Yet no inconsiderable number of objections 
against the veracity of Scripture have no other 



282 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

foundation than this, as will be seen in the follow- 
ing instances : 

Gen. 12 : G, 13 : 7, 18, 14 : 14, 17 : 17, 18 : 11, 19, 23 : 2, 3G : 31 ; 

Exod. 30 : 11-16, 35 : 27, 38 : 25-28, with Numb. 1 : 1-46 ; 
Exod. G : 21. 22, 11 : 3. 12 : 3, 37, 13 : 18 ; Lev. 8 : 3. 13 : 43 ; Numb. 

2, 3 : 16. 26. with 26 : 43 ; 9 : 1-13, 10 : 11-14, 11: 1-35, 12 : 3-16, 

13:3-26, 14:13, 15, 25-34, 15:22, 18:20-26, 20:1-29, 21:4- 

13 : 16, 26 : 62, 32 : 1, 33 : 15-39, 34 : 5-12 ; Deut. 1 : 2-46, . 

2 : 1-14. 3:43, 5:1, 10 : 6, 7, 12 : 2-18, compared with Josh. 

18 : 1, 24 : 1-26 ; Judges 2 : 4, 5 ; Deut. 17 : 14-20, 28 : 36, 37 ; 

Josh 8 : 34, 35, 19 : 47 ; Judges 8 : 22, 23, 18 : 27, 28 ; 1 Sam. 

8 : 4-22, 10 : 24, 25. 

Under this rule falls another class of objections, 
where the judgment of the critic is set up as the 
standard of conclusive argument, or the test of con- 
clusive evidence. The very form of these objections 
involves the denial of that Divine inspiration, and 
consequent authority of Scripture, which are the 
questions for proof or disproof. The objection qui- 
etly ignores that Divine element whence Scripture 
derives its authority as the rule of faith. What is 
taught in the inspired Word as an express revela- 
tion from God is brought down to the measurement 
of human opinion, and accepted or rejected on the 
sole verdict of the critic. As example is afforded 
by the quotations made by St. Paul in Romans 
3:9-19; from Psalms 14:1-7, 5:1-12, 140:1-13, 
10 : 1-12, 59 : 12, 109 : 17, 18. The object of the 
critic is to show that the reasoning of the apostle 
is illogical and inconclusive. He first determines 
in his own judgment that the language of the 
psalmist could not bear that universal application 
which the inspired commentator gives to the in- 



ALLEGED INACCURACIES. 283 

spired declaration. Having thus settled beforehand 
that St. Paul must be wrong, his course is easy. 
Let him speak in his own words: "It is quite evi- 
dent that the whole of a nation, and still more so 
the whole of mankind, could not justly be described 
by all the epithets which have been quoted by St. 
Paul in the passage under consideration. But if 
this be so, if the writers of these Psalms, when they 
denounced the wicked in the language to which the 
apostle has appealed, had in view only a limited 
class of persons, the enemies, oppressors, and per- 
secutors of the 'righteous,' or of the 'people' of God, 
it results that these texts cannot be received as evi- 
dence of what St. Paul adduces them to demon- 
strate, viz., the universal depravity and guilt of the 
entire Jewish nation, or even of the whole human 
race." 

This mode of quietly begging the question, and 
then using this foregone conclusion as an evidence, 
has been freely applied to the writings of St. Paul. 
The following passages have been specially called 
into question, and are vindicated by the rule now 
under consideration : 

Rom. 3 : 9-19, 4:1-5; Gal. 3 : 1-10, 8-15, 29, 4 : 21-31, 5:1-9; 
Heb. 1 : 1-13, 2 : 5, 3 : 7-19 ; 4 : 1-11, 10 : 14-18, 36-39, 11 : 8- 
16 ; 1 Cor. 11 : 5-11, 15 : 12-20 ; also to 1 Pet. 1 : 23-25, and 
James 2 : 14-26. 

I have now enumerated three hundred and 
twenty-six passages of Scripture which have been 
called into question. I have taken them without 
any selection from recent works directed against 
the inspiration of the Bible, and have knowingly 



284 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

omitted none. They constitute the entire weapons 
of the skeptical armory; and if they fail, there are 
none others. Yet the seven simple rules enumera- 
ted above overthrow their very foundation. Kule 1 
is fatal to 4 of them, rule 2 to 12, rule, 3 to 144^m le 
4 to 47, rule 5 to 116, rule 6 to 23, rule 7 to 80. The 
whole area of skeptical objection is now swept, and 
what cases remain must be solved by the exercise 
of faith, and by the reasonable presumption estab- 
lished in the last chapter, that difficulties arise from 
erroneous and defective information, and would dis- 
appear in these cases as in others, could the infor- 
mation be corrected or supplied. Of the present list 
none remain. The whole army of difficulties arise 
from misapprehensions relative to the Divine and 
human elements. They are consequently removed, 
when we clearly see that all the characteristics of a 
human composition may exist in the Scripture to 
the full, and yet not detract in the least from its 
plenary inspiration and authority. 

It will be impossible, I think, to examine the 
instances enumerated without perceiving another 
fact. The difficulties suggested are so subtle that 
in many cases it requires an effort to understand 
them. Passages alleged to be contradictory may 
be put side by side without an ordinary reader 
being conscious even of discrepancy between them, 
much less of contradiction. It needs a commentary 
to elucidate the nature of the supposed difficulty, 
so trivial is it for the most part in itself, and so 
dependent for its force upon suppositions without 
proof, and suspicions without evidence. Such ob- 



ALLEGED INACCUEACIES. 285 

jections stand in singular contrast to the broad 
facts, the strong, clear lines of proof, and the inde- 
pendent sources of evidence by which the minute 
accuracy of the scriptural books is signally illus- 
trated. 

There is, however, one solitary instance where a 
contradiction does stand on the face of the narra- 
tive, and to this case our attention must briefly be 
directed. I allude to Acts 7 : 14-16. Supposing 
this instance to lie wholly beyond explanation, we 
should fall back on the belief that some ignorance 
or misconception of our own was really the cause 
of the difficulty. But the solution is to be found 
in the very simplicity and absoluteness of the con- 
tradiction involved, and the palpable manner in 
which it stands out upon the very surface of the nar- 
rative. 

The avowed inaccuracies are principally three : 
1. That the household of Jacob, who went down into 
Egypt, consisted of seventy-five persons, whereas 
seventy only are specified in Gen. 46:27. 2. That 
Jacob is stated to have been buried at Sjxhem, 
whereas we are told in Gen. 49 : 30 that he was 
buried in the cave of Machpelah at Hebron. 3. That 
Abraham bought the sepulchre of the sons of Ha- 
mor ; whereas, according to Gen. 23 : 19, the pur- 
chase was really made by Jacob. But of these 
three difficulties the latter only admits at present 
of no positive explanation. For Stephen's enumer- 
ation of Jacob's kindred as seventy -five persons may 
be explained in several ways, especially considering 
that the Septuagint version reads the number as 



286 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

seventy-five, not seventy, in Gen. 46 : 27, Exod. 1 : 5, 
and in some very ancient copies of Dent. 10 : 22 ; 
whereas the Hebrew has the round number seventy 
in all these cases. 1. Joseph may have " called 
for" seventy-five in ignorance of the death of three 
wives of Jacob and two sons of Judah, although 
seventy only survived to avail themselves of the 
invitation. 2. In addition to the sixty-six men- 
tioned in Gen. 46 : 26, Stephen reckoned the twelve 
wives of Jacob's sons, omitting Judah's, who was 
dead, and Joseph's, who was in Egypt, as well as 
Joseph himself, for the same reason. 3. The Sep- 
tuagint, quoted by Stephen, may have added the 
sons of Ephraim and Manasseh from 1 Chron. 7 : 14- 
21, while the Hebrew text omits them as not born 
till afterwards. 

As regards the second objection, it is not spe- 
cifically stated that Jacob was buried in Sychem. 
The words used are "were carried over and were 
laid," not "was carried over and was laid." Hence 
it is not Jacob who is intended, but "our fathers." 
Jewish tradition asserts that their bodies were car- 
ried over and buried in Sychem. Certainly there is 
not a word in Scripture to contradict the fact. 

Thus the only real difficulty is in the alleged 
fact of Abraham's purchase of the sepulchre. But 
if the principle asserted in rule 1 of this chapter be 
admitted to be correct, we are at liberty to suppose 
that the mistake has arisen in the transcription, the 
word Abraham being written for Jacob. To sup- 
pose that Stephen, speaking to an assembly famil- 
iar with every word of their ancient Scriptures, 



ALLEGED INACCURACIES. 287 

even counting the letters and cherishing every link 
of their genealogy with almost superstitious rever- 
ence, should make a palpable blunder, is incredi- 
ble. Equally incredible is it that St. Luke, familiar, 
like Stephen, with Jewish habits and information, 
should put into Stephen's mouth by any mistake of 
his own such a gross and patent blunder as this 
would be. The very greatness of the mistake takes 
from it any argumentative weight ; for either it is a 
mistake of the copyist, or else the expression of St. 
Stephen was founded on some familiar mode of 
speech recognized among the Jews, and only embar- 
rassing to us from want of the key to explain it ; 
or lastly, there is some unknown fact involved 
in the statement which it has not pleased God 
as yet to make known to us. It can scarcely be 
called a trial of faith to find in the whole range of 
Scripture one solitary contradiction which we can- 
not solve. 

It follows from all the foregoing that the evi- 
dence adduced in disproof of the truth of Scripture 
is both weak in its character and altogether devoid 
of proof; the alleged difficulties turn out to be no 
difficulties at all to those who are willing to accept 
man's part in the composition of the Bible on the 
one side, and God's part upon the other. The posi- 
tive evidences previously adduced in support of the 
absolute truth of Scripture stand therefore in all 
their strength, wholly unshaken by any evidence on 
the other side. We maintain not only that Scrip- 
ture clearly asserts by implication its own infalli- 
bility, but also that the claim is supported by the 



288 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

plain facts of the case. With what might have 
been we have nothing to do; we are only concerned 
with facts as they are. The case stands thus: that 
we have the most unanswerable evidence for the 
truth of Scripture, and not a tittle of evidence 
against it. 



VERBAL INSPIRATION. 289 

CHAPTER XYI. 

THE WORD OF GOD IS VERBALLY INSPIRED. 

Inspiration Coextensive with the Truth of Scripture — What is 
meant by Verbal Inspiration, and what is not meant by It — 
Other Theories shown to be Inconsistent with the Facts of the 
Case — Post-hoc Testimony of Scripture Itself — The Inspiration 
of the Old Testament as asserted by the Writers of the New — 
The Separate Words Authoritative, and therefore God-inspir- 
ed — Old Testament Quotations, and the Principles involved in 
Them — The Verbal Inspiration of the New Testament. 

The course of argument followed in this work 
has been to prove the inspiration of Scripture from 
its truth, and not its truth from its inspiration. 
(See chapter 8.) Having proved its truth by an 
accumulation of those minute instances by which 
alone it is possible that it should be proved, I am 
now entitled to deduce from it not alone the fact of 
an inspiration, but likewise its extent. In every 
one of the instances adduced the accuracy or inac- 
curacy of the scriptural account has turned upon 
single words. Had any other word been used than 
the one particular word actually employed, the 
sacred narrative would have been inaccurate. It 
has been already pointed out that the variety of 
these points of detail, the vast scope of history they 
cover, alike as regards periods of time and geo- 
graphical extent, and the minute acquaintance they 
involve with the particulars of place, person, order, 
and event, are only explicable on the supposition 

OntVs Word 13 ' 



290 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

of a Divine and cooperating superintendence exer- 
cised over and upon the minds of the writers. What- 
ever force attaches to this argument to prove the 
Divine authority of Scripture as a revelation from 
God is available equally to prove that it must be 
verbally inspired, since it is by the accurate use of 
words alone that its marvellous truth and conse- 
quent inspiration can be proved. 

The state of the case must be considered. It is 
not that now and then, and here and there, men 
have existed claiming to speak in God's name, and 
attesting their claim by a more than human knowl- 
edge of events, past, present, and future ; but it is 
that this claim with its accompanying evidence has 
been advanced by one definite succession of sacred 
writers, and by them alone. The claim, indeed, 
has been very frequently made by others. This is 
natural, for when has the counterfeit ever failed to 
follow the true coin? But the evidence has not 
accompanied the claim. In this one succession of 
writers the evidence has not only been afforded to 
the generations contemporary with them, but it has 
survived in their writings to the present day. I call 
them a succession of writers, not alone because they 
have sprung from one race, as if it were a race rich 
in God-inspired men, but because they themselves 
and their writings have formed the successive links 
of an uDbroken chain. Each one has not only 
taught the same doctrinal truth as his predecessor, 
but each one has taken up the line of teaching just 
where his predecessor laid it down. All the books 
of this series of writers taken together constitute a 



VERBAL INSPIRATION. 291 

complete history and a complete system of truth, to 
which nothing can be added, from which nothing- 
can be taken away. But they have grown into this 
completeness by the successive contributions of men 
identified by unity of race and similarity of faith, 
but separated from each other by long periods of 
time — sometimes by hundreds of years — as between 
Malachi and Matthew, and by every imaginable 
diversity of personal circumstance, position, educa- 
tion, fortune, and character. 

No other connected series of sacred writings, 
constituting one whole system, exists in the world 
except this one. No such continuous descent of 
office is to be found in the history of the world but 
here. No other line of men authenticatiner a Divine 

o 

commission by prophecy and miracle can be found. 
No literature survives comparable in the antiquity 
of its date to some portion of these books; while 
its later portions reach down into the epoch of 
authentic history, like a great mountain whose solid 
base lies within reach of sight and touch, while its 
cloud-capped peaks are above the clouds, inacces- 
sible to human foot. The writers and the writings 
are therefore an orderly series, without a parallel. 
This literature is marked throughout by the most 
marvellous accuracy of historical detail; and this 
accuracy is expressed, as it could only be expressed, 
in words, and simple words. Surely, whatever is 
the authorship of the accuracy must be the author- 
ship of the words which express it. 

By ascribing the words of Scripture to a Divine 
inspiration, I only carry to its inevitable conclu- 



292 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

sion the principle stated in another chapter, (chap- 
ter 8,) namely, that every part of Scripture is 
equally human, and every part equally Divine. 
Thus the words were human. Verbal inspiration 
does not imply that a supernatural influence made 
the words, or communicated the knowledge of them, 
for the first time, to the writers. Nor does it involve 
that the peculiar habits and familiar mode of lan- 
guage of the writer did not mould the sentences and 
the place of the individual words, perhaps their very 
form. Nor does it exclude the possibility that the 
fact affirmed by the use of some particular word — 
as, for instance, that the sons of Esarhaddon found 
refuge in Armenia — might have been known to the 
writer, where such knowledge was possible, by the 
ordinary channels of human information. In short, 
it does not involve any denial that the man wrote 
it to whose authorship the particular book is impu- 
ted. Verbal inspiration admits all this, but goes on 
to assert that there was a concurrence of the act of 
God with the act of man. First He endowed the 
man with those particular gifts, and chose him to 
be his instrument. Secondly, He guided his mind 
in the selection of what he should say, and of the* 
revelation of the material of his writing, where such 
revelation was made necessary, through the defect 
of human knowledge. Thirdly, He acted in and on 
the intellect and heart of the writer in the act of 
committing the words to writing, not only bestow- 
ing a more than human elevation, but securing the 
truthfulness of the thing written, and moulding the 
language into the form accordant to his own will. 



VEKBAL INSPIRATION, 293 

To sum up the whole, verbal inspiration simply 
amounts to this, that while the words of Scripture 
are truly and characteristically the words of men, 
they are at the same time fully and concurrently 
the words of God. 

Many excellent persons are unable to accept 
this doctrine of a verbal inspiration. Two explana- 
tions have accordingly been suggested to avoid the 
necessity of adopting it. The first is, that God 
communicated the matter of the revelation to the 
minds of the writers, but having done so, left it to 
the action of their oavii human faculties to put it 
into words. The other is, that the sacred writers 
were inspired in all matters lying beyond the range 
of human discovery, such as doctrinal teaching rel- 
ative to the nature of God himself and the mode of 
man's salvation ; but that on all matters falling 
within the natural range of human knowledge, such 
as historical and biographical details, they were left 
to the unassisted use of their own faculties. Both 
of these explanations will be found to be insuffi- 
cient, and to involve insuperable difficulties which 
are avoided by the simple belief that, in the pro- 
duction of the Scripture, the superior mind of God 
concurred with the mind of man throughout. 

' It has already been noted (chapter 10) that, on 
the supposition that the Divine action ceased with 
the communication of the matter of the revelation 
to the minds of the writers, we do not possess a rev- 
elation from God at all, but only the human account 
of it. The sacred writers possessed it, but we have 
only the impression produced by it on the minds of 



294 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

men no longer inspired. For the suggestion is, that 
inspiration ceased with the communication of the 
matter ; and as soon as that was accomplished, the 
men became uninspired men. As writers, and in 
the act of writing what had been communicated, 
they were, therefore, ordinary men, with no special 
advantage above others. All that we have, there- 
fore, on this theory, is the uninspired account of an 
inspired revelation. 

Now, when this theory is placed in contrast with 
the marvellous accuracy of Scripture on minute 
points such as are illustrated in the preceding chap- 
ters, it is found to be full of difficulties. For such 
an inspiration must have acted in one of two ways. 
It must have acted once for all, revealing the sub- 
stance of a given message or given book all at once, 
and then ceasing; or it must have acted continu- 
ously, supplying the matter as the author wrote it 
down, verse by verse and line by line. 

Let us suppose that the action was complete at 
one time, and not revealed during the process of the 
writing. Then the retentiveness and accuracy of 
memory involved in the faithful transcription of the 
matter becomes itself a miracle of no ordinary kind. 
The separate communications made by God at one 
time were of considerable length, and this in cases 
where no use of some old long-existing document 
can have been possible. For instance, five chap- 
ters and rather more in the Book of Exodus — viz., 
25, 26, 27, 28, 29, and part of 30— stand as one con- 
secutive and undivided communication. The twen- 
ty-fifth chapter begins with the w r ords, "The Lord 



VEKBAL INSPIRATION. 295 

spake unto Moses, saying," expressions clearly de- 
noting that what followed were God's actual words. 
These chapters contain a great variety of minute 
details relative to the construction of the taberna- 
cle, comprising numbers, and measurements, and 
varieties of material, which must have been retained 
by Moses, on the present theory of inspiration, as a 
mere act of human memory. Isa. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 
contain a continuous message of the same kind. 
Hosea 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, is another instance. 

Or let the case of the historical books be con- 
sidered — the storehouse of evidences to the marvel- 
lous accuracy of the sacred Scriptures; the Book 
of Numbers, of Deuteronomy, or the Acts of the 
Apostles. It would be itself a wonder that any 
human memory could retain so great a variety of 
facts with such minute truthfulness. Yet if the 
inspiration which communicated the knowledge 
operated at wide intervals and in completed acts, 
the accurate transcription of these details must be 
imputed altogether to the human faculties of the 
writers. Great efforts of memory have, indeed, 
been accomplished in the world, and men have 
been known to repeat what they have once heard 
without a mistake. But in this case not one man, 
but a succession of men, must have been thus 
extraordinarily endowed. If this be so, then the 
credit due to the veracity of Scripture must be 
divided between the God who communicated the 
knowledge and the men who so wonderfully remem- 
bered and so accurately transcribed it. Half the 
honor must belong to God, and half to man. If, 



296 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

to avoid this conclusion, it be said that God gave 
extraordinary help to the memories of the sacred 
writers, this is the same as saying that he inspired 
them, not alone by communicating truth to them, 
but in assisting them to communicate it to others. 
If inspiration be admitted to have acted in both 
directions of receiving and conveying, then the the- 
ory under discussion is confessed to be untenable. 

But let us suppose that the action of the Divine 
mind, in communicating to the sacred writers the 
matter of their books, did not consist of perfect acts 
done and then ended, but of a continuous influence 
acting on the memory all through, then another 
kind of difficulty arises. It involves the idea that 
God was acting on the mind of man throughout, 
and yet only on one part of his mind ; strengthen- 
ing the memory, but leaving all the other faculties 
untouched. Such a thing would be as wonderful 
as it was that the dew fell upon Gideon's fleece and 
not on the floor around it, and again fell on the 
floor and left the fleece dry. It would be as if a 
breath from heaven could touch one note of a harp, 
and set it thrilling with music, and yet not draw 
from the other strings a single harmonious note. 
If we are driven by the facts of the case to admit 
that there must have been a continuous action of 
the mind of God on the mind of the writer during 
the act of the writing, surely it is better to admit 
still more, and believe that it concurred witli the 
writer's whole mind, and strengthened every faculty 
that was called into exercise by the act of convey- 
ing in writing the revealed will of God to man. 



VERBAL INSPIRATION. 297 

But difficulties not less will be seen to exist in 
the second of the two explanations now under con- 
sideration, when placed side by side with the de- 
tailed proofs of the characteristic truthfulness of 
Scripture. This explanation is to the effect that 
the scriptural writers were inspired in delivering 
the great doctrines of revelation relative to the 
nature of God and the salvation of man, but were 
not inspired in recording historical and biograph- 
ical facts ; that the jewel of Divine truth, in short, 
is of God, but that its historical setting is of man. 
But the effect of this theory is, to deprive of their 
heaven-given authority those very portions of Scrip- 
ture which constitute the evidence for the veracity 
of the whole, and in which alone such evidence 
could conceivably be afforded. 

That God, in giving a revelation, should supply 
at the same time some internal means of verifying it, 
will be admitted to be congruous not only with the 
gracious character of God, but with the mode of ac- 
tion he has actually adopted. It would be strange 
if God had provided in miracles and prophecy an 
attestation to the authority of Scripture, and yet 
had afforded no means of ascertaining its truth. 
No Christian will doubt that the whole fabric of 
evidence possessed by us to prove the Bible to be 
a revelation from God has been intelligently pro- 
vided. It has not grown by chance, but has been 
schemed by the mind of God, ordered by his good- 
ness, and framed by his wisdom. But of this scheme, 
the confirmation of its truth by the testimony of sec- 
ular history and archaeological discovery constitutes 

13* 



298 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

an important portion. But this proof lies altogether 
in the historical details of Scripture, not in its doc- 
trines. We have no possible means of putting to 
any practical tests its doctrines, such as the trinity 
of persons in the Godhead, the union of two natures 
in Christ, the justification of the sinner by faith, or 
the person and operation of the Holy Ghost. We 
cannot climb up into heaven, and see the eternal 
realities to which the revealed doctrines correspond. 
We accept them, because we find them contained 
in a revelation we believe to have come from God. 
But we have no possible means of proving them. 
We have means of testing the accuracy of historical 
facts ; and in these facts, therefore, it is natural 
that God should supply the means of verifying his 
own words. 

This reference to things intelligible to man in 
proof of things lying beyond the reach of his knowl- 
edge, is illustrated by an incident in the life of our 
Lord. When he had declared to the paralytic man 
at Capernaum, as he was let down on his couch in 
the assembled throng, the forgiveness of his sins, 
" Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee," 
the scribes and Pharisees murmured at him, " Who 
can forgive sins but God alone ?" The thought in 
their minds was probably some such thing as this : 
"It is very well for this man to say, ' Thy sins be 
forgiven thee,' for who can tell whether they are 
forgiven or not? But if he had cured the man's 
bodily illness, we could have judged of the reality 
of that, and so known whether his words are true." 
To this thought our Lord replied alike by his words 



VERBAL INSPIRATION. 299 

and by his act : " Whether is easier, to say, Thy 
sins be forgiven thee ; or to say, Arise and walk?" 
that is, they were both equally easy to his Divine 
power. But as they doubted what they could not 
prove, he would give them an evidence they could 
prove : " that ye may know that the Son of man 
hath power to forgive sins;" then he turned round 
to the sufferer with the words, " Arise, take up thy 
bed, and walk." Mark 2:1-11. The lower exer- 
cise of power which lay within the human sphere 
was the evidence of the higher exercise of power 
which lay within the Divine. 

It is on the same principle that He supplies in 
historical facts, lying within human proof or dis- 
proof, the verification of a revelation whose highest 
object is to reveal doctrines altogether belonging to 
another sphere. The simple and self-evident fact, 
that in this way alone could a verification be possi- 
bly afforded, is enough to prove what has already 
been insisted upon from several points of view in 
the preceding chapters ; viz., that the historical por- 
tions of Scripture are inseparably identified with 
the doctrinal, and form component parts of one and 
the same revelation, invested with one and the same 
authority. 

But if the explanation be accepted that the doc- 
trinal portions of the Bible are inspired, but not the 
historical, the whole of this falls to the ground. The 
argument for the Divine authenticity of Scripture 
derived from historical evidences can no longer be 
sustained, because, according to the theory, the his- 
torical portions are human, while the doctrinal are 



300 GODS WORD WRITTEN. 

acknowledged to be Divine. If the one are to be 
accepted as evidences for the other, they must both 
proceed from the same origin and authority. The 
accuracy of uninspired writers in narrating history 
can be no proof that they are inspired when they 
teach doctrine. It may be argued, indeed, that if 
these writers are worthy of credit in that which 
proceeds from themselves, they must be much more 
worthy of credit in that which they profess to have 
received from God. But the argument, however 
apparently plausible, does not hold good; for his- 
tory supplies many instances of writers, sensible 
and trustworthy on secular subjects, but fanatical 
to the extreme and utterly untrustworthy on reli- 
gious. I may mention the instance of Baron Swe- 
denborg, an able and learned man on matters of 
science, but on matters of religion, the author of 
one of the wildest systems known to modern times. 
Because the sacred writers wrote sensibly and accu- 
rately upon secular matters, it would not follow that 
they are to be accepted as authoritative teachers in 
religion. The credibility of the historical portions 
of Scrijoture can only be a proof of the credibility of 
the doctrinal portions, so long as both have pro- 
ceeded from one authority, and have been written 
under one and the same influence. 

A twofold answer is supplied by these consider- 
ations in disproof of the theory which would limit 
inspiration to the doctrinal portions of the Word 
only. (1.) The wonderful accuracy of Scripture in 
these minute details can onhv be explained by the 
exercise of a Divine omniscience. (2.) If inspira- 



VERBAL INSPIRATION. 301 

tion be confined to subjects beyond the scope of 
human knowledge, we neither have nor can we 
possibly have any means whatever of verifying the 
whole revelation. 

Hence the natural conclusion arising from the 
proofs already adduced is confirmed, not weakened, 
by the explanations advanced with the view of get- 
ting rid of it. The proofs are verbal, and turn upon 
single words. Therefore inspiration must be ver- 
bal, and deal with single words likewise. 

It must be remembered that this conclusion 
rests on scriptural evidence. This will be made 
clear by a recapitulation of the argument. I have 
shown that Scripture advances the highest conceiv- 
able claims relative to its own source and authority. 
These claims necessarily involve the truth of Scrip- 
ture. This truth has been tested by an appeal to 
the facts, both to the facts existing in support of 
the claim, and the facts alleged in disproof of it. 
The result of the appeal has confirmed by inde- 
pendent evidence the character of perfect truthful- 
ness ascribed by Scripture to itself. The conclu- 
sion that inspiration must be verbal because the 
truthfulness is verbal, is but the sequel of this line 
of argument, and partakes of the scriptural charac- 
ter of the premises on which it is founded. 

I now desire to carry this scriptural evidence a 
step farther. I have shown that the inspiration of 
the words of Scripture necessarily follows from its 
own general teaching relative to itself; I now add 
that this conclusion is asserted by the immediate 
and direct testimonies of the inspired writers. 



302 GODS WORD WRITTEN. 

Now, the contents of Scripture are of two kinds. 
1. We have direct messages from God. These por- 
tions I venture to call "ministerial," in reference to 
the writers. And 2. "We have historical and bio- 
graphical narratives, and the description of visions 
presented to the eyes of the prophet. These por- 
tions I venture to call "personal." The direct 
messages from God constitute a very considerable 
proportion of the whole. It includes the latter 
portion of the Book of Exodus, the entire Book of 
Leviticus, many chapters in Deuteronomy and Num- 
bers, the greater part of the prophecy of Isaiah — 
the later chapters, from chapter 41 to chapter 63, 
expressly and in form bearing this character ; thirty 
chapters out of the fifty-two comprising the proph- 
ecy of Jeremiah, thirty-five chapters out of the for- 
ty-eight of the prophet Ezekiel, with some slight 
occasional exceptions, where the words of the 
prophet are professedly intermingled with the im- 
mediate words of God ; twelve out of the fourteen 
chapters of Hosea, almost the whole of the proph- 
ecy of Joel, six chapters of Amos out of nine, six 
chapters of Micah, the whole of the prophecies of 
Zephaniah and of Haggai, nine chapters of Zecha- 
riah, and the entire Book of Habakkuk. 

In all these cases we find direct communications 
ascribed immediately to God himself. They are 
introduced with the words "said" or "saying," 
" Thus saith the Lord." What God said must have 
been said in words. It could not have been that a 
certain impression of truth was made by the Spirit 
upon the mind of the prophet, and that he was then 



VERBAL INSPIRATION. 303 

left to convey it iu his own language. The word is 
expressed and reiterated over and over again, as if 
on purpose to shut out the possibility of mistake. 
God " said." Throughout all these passages God is 
presented as the speaker. The message is couched 
in the first person, so that the messenger almost 
disappears, and God is all in all. "I" will save, 
defend, or punish. So far as concerns these passa- 
ges of Scripture, no assertion of the existence of 
inspired words, that is, of words which carry with 
them a Divine authority, can be stronger than this. 
The positive expression, " Thus saith the Lord," 
must imply a verbal message if it implies any thing. 

To the same class belongs the personal teaching 
of our blessed Master. Surety his words were in- 
spired. Not only did he speak as one to whom was 
given without measure the Spirit of wisdom and 
understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, but 
as one who was himself Divine, and within whom 
dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily. In his 
teaching, the supposition that a Divine mind only 
provided the matter, and that a human mind framed 
it into words, can have no place. The speaker was 
himself Divine, one wdth the Father and the Holy 
Spirit, God blessed for evermore. 

The existence of a verbal inspiration throughout 
these portions of Scripture does not prove the ex- 
tension of the same character to all its other por- 
tions. I have already said that in addition to those 
parts where God is himself ostensibly the speaker, 
there exists a further portion where the writer is 
ostensibly the speaker ; parts which are either the 



304 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

record of what other people did, or of what the wri- 
ter himself saw or did. The relation between these 
two parts is analogous to the relation between the 
recorded words of some great personage of ancient 
times and the words of the historian who records 
them. We can no more argue that because the 
Scriptures contain the express words of God they 
are therefore the express words of God through- 
out, than we can argue that the historian of Plato 
possesses the genius of Plato because the words of 
that philosopher are contained in his pages. 

This is true. Yet these acknowledged instances 
of a verbal inspiration are none the less instructive ; 
for they serve to illustrate how human words can 
be the words of God, and they thus clear our wa} r 
of imaginary difficulties in advancing to the evi- 
dence of verbal inspiration in the other parts of 
Scripture likewise. 

That these specified portions contain the very 
words of God is expressly asserted in the word 
" said," and no consistent believer in the authority 
of Scripture can call it into question. Yet even 
these very words are the words of man while they 
are the words of God. The language is human lan- 
guage, and is employed according to human usage 
and custom. There is the same kind of difference 
between the language of God in the Pentateuch and 
the language of God in the Book of Isaiah, as there 
is in our own English language at two different 
periods of our history. This is perfectly natural. 
It arises out of the human element in Scripture, on 
that side of it where the human element itself arises 



VERBAL INSPIRATION. 305 

from the two parties involved in the very idea of a 
revelation, the party receiving it as well as the party 
giving it. God spoke in order that his words might 
be clearly understood and faithfully conveyed, and 
he therefore employed such words and such a usage 
of them as were intelligible to the generation to 
whom he spoke. 

But this variation in the language is not all. 
The distinctive style of the several prophets exists 
in these portions as in other portions of their 
prophecies. The words of God recorded by Isaiah 
are not identical in style with his words by Jere- 
miah and Ezekiel ; for in each case the prophet had 
to speak the words as well as write them. God 
used the human instrument ; and as he used him 
not as a dead mechanism, but as the living being he 
was, so he permitted his words to be colored by the 
personal peculiarities of the instrument. To use 
the familiar but much-perverted illustration of the 
ancient fathers, the prophets were like instruments 
of music, and God's was the hand that touched 
them. A master's hand may display the same con- 
summate skill and exhibit the same peculiarities of 
stjde, whatever be the instrument he uses, whether 
harp, or flute, or violin. But the several instru- 
ments will not, therefore, lose their own peculiari- 
ties, or cease to be distinguishable from each other. 
So it was with the prophets. The same God spoke 
through Moses and Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, 
and the words were his. The style impressed on 
them by the prophet was much the same as the dif- 
ference of accent and emphasis, of tone and man- 



306 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

ner, with which four separate speakers might deliver 
one and the same message. 

It is as if God had left his Word in this form in 
order, among other gracious purposes, to illustrate 
in these acknowledged instances the concurrence of 
the human and the Divine elements in one result. 
As on the one side in these portions of Scripture 
the words are immediately God's, and yet the trace 
of the human instrument remains, so in other por- 
tions of the Bible the words are immediately man's ; 
and yet the Divine power and authority survive in 
them all the same. An inspiration of the Word is as 
consistent in the one case as it is undeniable in the 
other. In the words already employed in a former 
chapter, all the parts of Scripture are equally human, 
and all the parts are equally Divine. 

It is, therefore, certain that a verbal inspiration 
is as possible in the historical, biographical, and 
narrative portions of Scripture as in the rest. But 
the possibility is not enough. What is the evidence 
for the fact? 

Here we must deal with the Old and New Tes- 
taments separately. The writers of each Testament 
constitute a class of themselves, identified by unity 
of subject and fellowship of the Spirit, but separa- 
ted by a lapse of four hundred years in time, and 
also by the circumstances that the one belonged to 
the period of the preparatory, the other to the 
period of a completed and perfect dispensation. 
The writers of the Old Testament consequently had 
inspired successors ; but the writers of the New had 
none, since with the completion of the New Testa- 



VEEBAL INSPIRATION. 307 

ment canon the Book of Revelation was finally 
sealed up. 

It is natural, therefore, that in the books of the 
New Testament we should find reiterated testimonies 
to the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures such as we do not equally possess to the ver- 
bal inspiration of the New. Some evidence there 
is, but it is necessarily supplied by the New Testa- 
ment itself. Such testimony is, however, the less 
necessary, because if the verbal inspiration of the 
Old Testament be once proved, there can be neither 
motive nor interest to withhold the same amount of 
inspiration from the New. 

Now the question to be decided is this: Did the 
office of the inspiring Spirit cease with communica- 
ting to the minds of the writers of Scripture the 
truths they were chosen to convey, and were they 
then left to their own unassisted human faculties to 
express them in words ? or, did the Holy Ghost con- 
cur with the minds of the writers throughout, not 
only making truth known to them, but preserving 
them likewise from all error in communicating truth 
to others ? 

If inspiration be in the matter only, not in 
the words, then we might expect that whenever 
the New Testament writers appealed to the Divine 
authority of the Old, they would do so by quoting 
the matter only, and not the words. If inspiration 
extends to the words, then we might expect that they 
would quote the words as well as the matter. Ref- 
erence to the authority of the words will, therefore, 
constitute in every case evidence to the inspiration 



308 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

of the words. This evidence will be proportionally 
strengthened by the use of single sentences or sin- 
gle words, and by the amount of weight and author- 
ity ascribed to these single sentences and single 
words. 

That it is possible to quote the sense without 
quoting the words is proved by the occasional adop- 
tion of this method by the writers of the New Tes- 
tament. Forgetfulness of this, and the mistake of 
supposing that they profess to quote the words 
when they really do no more than refer to the sense 
of the more ancient writers, has been one among 
others of prolific causes of misapprehension relative 
to the New Testament quotations of the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures. Some instances will make this 
clearer. Thus St. Matthew wrote of our Lord : "He 
came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it 
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the proph- 
ets, He shall be called a Nazarene." Matt. 2 : 23. 
The attempt to find some definite passage where 
this title is applied to the Messiah is rebuked by 
the use of the plural number by the evangelist, 
"the prophets:" and the word translated "by" is 
"through" or "throughout" the prophets (&a with 
the genitive); where the phrase makes it certain 
that the evangelist referred to the general scope of 
the prophetic teaching, and not to any specific pas- 
sages. Thus St. John records the words of our 
Lord : " It is written in the prophets, They shall all 
be taught of God." John 6: 45. Again, "He that be- 
lieveth in me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his 
belly shall flow rivers of living water." John 7 : 38. 



VERBAL INSPIRATION. 309 

Our Lord gives his own authoritative explanation 
of the language- of the prophets, but does not quote 
any particular words. In the narrative of our Lord's 
trial and crucifixion the same general phrase occurs 
repeatedly, "that the Scriptures might be fulfilled," 
John 19 : 28. Yet neither is any definite passage 
quoted, nor is the particular point of the fulfilment 
explained. Further instances of general reference 
to the sense, and not the words of the Old Testa- 
ment, will be found in John 8:17; Acts 10:43 ; Ro- 
mans 1:2, 7:1, 9:4, 10 : 11, 12 : 9 ; 1 Cor. 1 : 31 ; 
2 Cor. 7 : 18 ; and in many other passages. 

If, therefore, another method is adopted in the 
vast majority of instances; if the quotations are ver- 
bal quotations; if elaborate arguments are founded 
on single phrases, or even on single words — this 
method was not followed because no other was 
practicable. It might not be easy for us to sepa- 
rate the sense from the words; indeed I believe it is 
not possible for us to do so. But it was possible to 
inspired apostles whose minds were guided to inter- 
pret by the same Holy Ghost by whom the ancient 
writers were guided to write. With this teaching 
they could pass infallibly through the words to the 
the sense. If, on the contrary, it was their ordi- 
nary method to use the words, there must have 
been reason and intention in it. What could the 
reason be, but that the words had God's authority 
upon them, and were themselves sacred? What 
could the intention be, but to witness to the church 
of all ages the verbal inspiration and therefore ver- 
bal authority of the Scriptures? 



/ 



310 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

Thus our Lord himself quotes the words of Mo- 
ses in Deut. 8 : 3, that " Man doth not live by bread 
alone;" where the stress is laid on the last word, 
" alone." Yet more strikingly, in the narrative of 
the same temptation, he refuted the tempter by 
words taken from 1 Samuel 7:3, " Him only shalfc 
thou serve ;" where the force of the answer depends 
upon the emphatic word "only," "him only." Satan 
would have been content if our Lord had rendered 
him worship, even though it had been divided with 
Jehovah. His offer was not, "If thou wilt fall down 
and worship me alone," but, " If thou wilt fall down 
and worship me." He would have been ready to 
go halves in the Divine honor due to God. But 
God will have none of such divided allegiance: 
" Him only shalt thou serve." It was by a phrase 
consisting of two words, " my Lord," that our Sav- 
iour retorted upon the Jews with the question how 
Christ could be the Son of David, and yet be ad- 
dressed by the psalmist with the title, " The Lord 
said unto my Lord." Psalm 110:1; Matt. 22:44. 
To the memorable quotation from Psalm 82, re- 
corded in John 10:34, our Lord adds the further 
and most emphatic declaration, " The Scripture 
cannot be broken." In the personal teaching of 
our Master, further instances of the same character 
occur, in Matthew 3:3; 19 :5 ; 21 : 13, 16 ; and Luke 
4:21. 

The narrative of our Lord's trial and crucifixion 
supplies several notable cases of similar verbal ref- 
erences on the part of the evangelist. Thus he 
marks the fulfilment of Zechariah's prophecy of the 



VERBAL INSPIRATION. 311 

" thirty pieces of silver," and " the potter's field ;" 
of the "parting 5 ' of the outward garment by the 
soldiers, and the "casting lots" for the inner woven 
vesture, as exactly predicted in Psalm 22 : 18 ; of 
the piercing of our Lord's side, foretold in the same 
psalm ; and the not breaking a bone of his blessed 
body, as expressed in Psalm 34. In all these cases, 
the correspondence between the prophecy and the 
fulfilment is wholly dependent upon single words 
and upon their mutual combinations. 

In the Acts of the Apostles the same method of 
verbal quotation is continued. St. Peter, in his 
sermon on the day of Pentecost, declares the resur- 
rection of our Lord to be the accomplishment of 
David's language in Psalm 16:10 and Psalm 111. 
At the first persecution, the assembled apostles not 
only quote the words of the second psalm, but they 
expressly state them to be the words of God : "Lord, 
thou art God, who by the mouth of thy servant 
David hast said." Acts 4:25. A more striking 
declaration of verbal inspiration — and what I have 
ventured to call the concurrence of the human and 
Divine elements — than these words can scarcely be 
conceived. God spoke them, but he spoke them 
by the mouth of David. Two other references of 
the same general character will be found in Acts 
2:34; 13:46. 

It is, however, in the argumentative portions of 
the epistles that we find these illustrations most 
abundantly ; and the more frequent the quotations, 
the more prominently we find them. Thus St. Paul 
rests his proof that the Jews as well as the Gentiles 



312 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

were concluded under sin on two little words occur- 
ring in the fourteenth psalm — on the word " none," 
in the first verse, and on the word " all," in the third. 
Let these two little words be changed, and the apos- 

v tie's argument fails at once. Eoni. 3 : 10-20. In 
the fourth chapter of the same epistle, he declares 
justification by faith only to be the immutable coun- 
sel of God, on the sole strength of two phrases — the 
phrase " counted for righteousness," in Gen. 15 : 6, 
and the phrase "not impute sin," in Psa. 32 :2. He 
teaches the equality of all men before God, and the 
freedom of this Divine mode of saving, on the author- 
ity of a single emphatic word used by the prophet 
Joel — " whosoever." On this word he elaborately 
argues, Eom. 10 : 12, " There is no difference be- 
tween the Jew and the Greek; for the same Lord 
over all is rich unto all that call upon him." Then 
comes the authority for the assertion : " For ichoso- 
ever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be 

_ saved." In Eom. 14 : 11 he rests the solemn asser- 
tion, "TVe shall all stand before the judgment- 
seat of Christ," on the word " every :" " As I live, 
saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me." The 
doctrine of faith is illustrated in 2 Cor. 4 : 13 by the 
single expression of David, " I believed." In argu- 
ing, in Gal. 3 : 16, that the promise of eternal life is 
annexed to faith, and not to human merit, he argues, 
not alone from a single word, but from a single let- 
ter, from the fact that a word is used in the singular, 
not in the plural : " He saith not, And to seeds, as 
of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is 
Christ." The word " all," in Psa. 8 : 6, is the apos- 






VERBAL INSPIRATION. 313 

tie's proof of the universal triumph of Christ, in 
Heb. 2 : 8. In Heb. 3 : 7-15, he enlarges, during 
nine consecutive verses, on the force of the word 
" To-day," as quoted from Psa. 95 : 7. 

The fourth chapter of this epistle contains an 
elaborate and profound argument relative to the 
" sabbath-keeping " remaining " for the people of 
God." In verses 4 and 5 he argues from the use 
of a tense of the future in Psa. 95 : 11, as contrasted 
with a tense of the past in Gen. 2:2. " He (God) 
spake in a certain place of the seventh day in this 
wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his 
works ;" and in this place again, " If they shall 
enter into my rest." In his exposition of the great 
high-priesthood of our Master, he points out its 
superiority over the Levitical priesthood, in virtue 
of its perpetuity : " They truly were many priests, 
because they were not suffered to continue by rea- 
son of death ; but this man, because he continueth 
ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood." Hebrews 
7 : 23, 24. But how is it proved that he continueth 
ever? By the use of the two words "for ever," in 
Psa. 110 : 4 : " Thou art a Priest for ever." He de- 
duces the purpose of God, that the Mosaic covenant 
should pass away, from the word " new" employed 
by Jeremiah (31:31): " In that he saith, A new 
covenant, he hath made the first old." Heb. 8 :13. 
He supports his explanation of the same truth by 
the relative order of two sentences in Psa. 40 : 6, 7. 

"Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering 

Then saith he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." 
Heb. 10:8, 9. He illustrates the superiority of the 

Qn.ri.Word. 14 



314 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

good things of the latter covenant over the prom- 
ises of the first covenant, by the full remission of 
sin contrasted with the constant repetition of the 
Mosaic sacrifices. This final remission of sin is 
proved by the two words, " no more," in Jer. 31 :34: 
" Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no. 
more." Heb. 10:17. And lastly, he teaches the 
immutability of the gospel kingdom, the " kingdom 
that cannot be moved," in comparison with the 
transitory nature of all earthly glory, from the single 
word, " once," employed by Haggai : " And this 
word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of 
those things that are shaken." Heb. 12:27. 

The great majority of the preceding instances 
are taken from the personal rather than the minis- 
terial portions of the word, four only belonging to 
the latter class. Additional illustrations will be 
found in the following passages : 

Matt. 3 : 3 compared with Isa. 40 : 3 ; 

Matt, 4 : 4 with Deut. 8:3; 

Matt, 19:5 with Gen. 2 : 21 ; 

Matt, 21 : 13 with Isa. 5G : 7 ; 

Matt, 21 : 16 withPsa.8: 2; 

Luke 4 : 21 with Isa. Gl : 1, 2 ; 

Luke 12 : 40 with Isa. 6:1; 

Rom. 9 : 7 with Gen. 20 : 12 ; 

Rom. 9 : 12 with Gen. 25 : 23 ; 

Rom. 9 : 15 with Exod. 23 : 19 ; 

Rom. 9 : 17 with Exod. 9 : 16 ; 

Rom. 9 : 17 with Hos. 2 : 23 : 

Rom. 9 : 21 with Isa. 10 : 22 ; 

Rom. 10 : 15 with Isa. 52 : 7, and 53 : 1 ; 

Rom. 10 : 19-21 with Deut, 32 : 21, and Isa. 65 : 1 ; 

Rom. 10 : 5.. 6 with Deut. 30 : 11 ; 

Rom. 11 : 4 with 1 Kings 19 : 18 ; 



YEEBAL INSPIKATION. 315 

Eom. 11 : 8-10 with Psa. 69 : 22, and Isa. 29 : 10 ; 

Rom. 15 : 9-12 with Psa. 118 : 1. and Isa. 21 : 15, 16 ; 

1 Cor. 2 : 9 with Isa, 44 : 4 ; 

1 Cor. 15 : 54 with Isa. 25 : 8 ; 

Gal. 3:11 with Hab. 2:4; 

Gal. 4: 27 with Isa. 54: 1-5; 

Gal. 4 : 9 with Psa. 68 : 18 ; 

Gal. 5 : 14 with Isa. 60 : 1 ; 

Gal. 6 : 2 with Exod. 20 : 12 ; 

Heb. 1 : 5-13 with Psa. 2 : 7, 2 Sam. 7 : 14, Psa. 97 : 7, 65 : 6, 

7, and 33 : 6 ; 
Heb. 2 : 12-14 with Psa. 22 : 22, 18 : 2, and Isa. 8:18; 
Heb. 4 : 14 with Gen. 22 : 16 ; 
Heb. 12 : 5 with Prov. 3 : 11. 

In all these cases it will be found, on a careful 
comparison of the two passages, that the inspired 
writers of the New Testament rest positive doc- 
trines and frame elaborate arguments on the author- 
ity of single sentences and single words of the Old 
Testament Scriptures. 

If any person will take the trouble of examining 
these evidences he will find them marked bj two 
peculiarities. 

I. He will find the quotations, when the whole 
sentence is taken together, frequently incomplete, 
and not exactly corresponding with the original. 
The explanation of this circumstance corroborates 
in the strongest manner the fact of a verbal inspi- 
ration. For, although the quotation of the whole 
sentence be inaccurate, the quotation of the partic- 
ular phrase or particular word, on which the stress 
of authority is laid is invariably accurate. The 
comparative indifference displayed as to the rest of 
the quotation only serves to fix attention the more, 



316 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

and to lay the more emphatic weight on the special 
phrase or word. The remainder of the sentence did 
not enter into the purpose and argument of the 
writer, and is therefore quoted generally to show 
that it is unimportant. Thus in Heb. 10 :17, " Their 
sins and iniquities will I remember no more.'" The 
last two words are the emphatic and authoritative 
words, and the rest of the sentence differs from the 
words of Jeremiah by the addition from other pas- 
sages of the same prophet of the words " and ini- 
quities." It has been shown in a previous chapter 
(chapter 12) that an evidence must be as extensive 
as the thing to be evidenced, but need be no wider. 
In all these quotations accordingly the phrase or 
word alleged in proof of the doctrine is there, and 
there accurately ; and the context is added generally 
in order to identify the passage, but for no further 
reason. The exclusive attention thus fixed on par- 
ticular words can only have arisen from the belief 
that these single words are God's words, selected 
bj- his intention, and therefore clothed with his 
authorit^v. 

II. It will be observed that passages and parts 
of passages from different writers are grouped 
together as the harmonious evidence of some com- 
mon truth. For instance, the Divine nature and 
glory of the Son of God are proved in the first 
chapter of the Hebrews, by parts of sentences 
selected for the sake of their emphatic words from 
three different Psalms, and from the first Book of 
Samuel. The Divine fitness of the incarnation of 
the Son of God is proved in the second chapter by 



VERBAL INSPIRATION. 317 

passages from two different Psalms, and from the 
prophecy of Isaiah. Justification by faith is proved 
by passages from Moses and David, writers sepa- 
rated from each other by a period of between four 
and five hundred years, and whose productions be- 
long to different classes altogether. In the argu- 
ment of St. Paul, in illustration of the eternal 
sovereignty of the Divine will, in Pvom. 9 : 7, 21, a 
yet stronger instance is given ; for here two pas- 
sages from different chapters in the book of Gene- 
sis, two from different chapters of Exodus, one from 
Isaiah, and one from Hosea, are all brought side by 
side in attestation of the common truth. A refer- 
ence to the passages already enumerated will fur- 
nish additional illustrations of the same thing. 

Now, on the supposition that inspiration belongs 
only to the truths the prophets were commissioned 
to convey, and that their words are simply human 
words aud no more, this mode of quotation is 
utterly inexplicable. Not only is there no appeal 
to the general sense of the passages in which the 
quotations are found, but the words are, as it might 
appear to some, violently separated from the con- 
text, and are employed as authoritative without 
the slightest reference to the general object of the 
whole passage. Thus, for instance, there is no 
apparent allusion to any such mysterious doctrine 
as the electing sovereignty of God in the simple 
and unadorned narration by Moses of the fact that 
Isaac was preferred over Ishmael, and Jacob over 
Esau. Still less would any one not possessed of a 
Divine key trace airv bearing on the doctrine of the 



318 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

incarnation in the sentiments of David in Psa. 18 : 2, 
and 22 : 22. In repeated instances it will be found 
that no appeal whatever is made to the general 
sense of quoted passages ; but that single expres- 
sions and single words are sharply separated from 
the context, and used in a sense which the sen- 
timent of the context would not of itself have 
suggested. 

If there be a verbal inspiration, this mode of 
quotation is as consistent and reasonable as it is 
utterly inexplicable without it. For if the words 
were selected under the guidance of the perfect wis- 
dom of the Omniscient Being to whose infinite grasp 
all times, all persons, all events, are present at one 
and the same time in the eternal "now" of his own 
existence, then they are full of God, and must have 
a depth and reach of meaning, a profound force 
and significance, a faultless and unerring appropri- 
ateness investing each single word with the full 
authority of the Deity. The question to be asked in 
such a case is not what the human writers meant 
to say, but what " the Spirit which was in them did 
signify." AYho shall interpret the words but He 
who first inspired them ? 

I do not forget that these facts are treated by 
many persons in a widely different manner. The 
mode of quotation adopted by the New Testament 
writers appears to them loose, wild, and inaccurate. 
These passages are therefore adduced as affording, 
in the balances of a human criticism, undeniable 
proof of the human infirmities and ignorance of the 
writers. And I believe these critics are right so far 



VERBAL INSPIRATION. 319 

that the}' present the only possible alternative to 
the conclusion of the preceding paragraph. If the 
words of the Old Testament are solely the words of 
men, it is impossible to justify the New Testament 
use of them. I use the word "justify" with the 
deepest reverence, remembering that our blessed 
Master himself quoted them in the same verbal 
manner as his apostles. But if our Lord and his 
apostles were right in so .quoting them, and I can- 
not conceive how any believer in revelation can 
doubt it, then the words must have been divinely 
inspired words. In this proof of a verbal inspira- 
tion we find the authority for our own employment 
of them in the same way, interpreting them ever 
with reference to their context, but with a devout 
confidence that they are the very words of God, 
faultless as his absolute Avisdom, unalterable as his 
own eternal will. 

When we pass to the New Testament, the exist- 
ence of the same positive and independent evidence 
is in the nature of things impossible, as has been 
already shown. But our Lord promised such a 
plenary assistance to his apostles in their time of 
special difficulty that it would "not be ye that speak, 
but the Holy Ghost," Matt. 10 : 20. This inspira- 
tion must have been verbal, and we can scarcely 
conceive that a lower amount of Divine help would 
be afforded them in the composition of the books 
through whose pages they were to speak even to 
the end of the world. St. Paul positively asserts 
this verbal inspiration : " Which things also we 
speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teach- 



320 GOD'S WOED WRITTEN. 

eth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." 1 Cor. 
2 : 13. No less than this can be the meaning of St. 
Peter when he first traces the life of the soul in the 
believing people of God to an "incorruptible seed;" 
then identifies this word with the actual preaching 
of himself and his co-apostles : " This is the word 
which by the gospel is preached unto you." 1 Pet. 
1:25. 

This evidence appears to be incomplete com- 
pared to the accumulated proof furnished to the 
verbal inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures. 
But, in truth, the inspiration of the one Testament 
includes equally the inspiration of the other. The 
case of the earlier books is, in the scales of criti- 
cism, weaker than that of the later. The objections 
urged are not against the verbal inspiration of this 
particular book or that, but against verbal inspira- 
tion at all, and especially in those historical details 
which constitute so prominent a feature of the Old 
Testament. Yet here we have a redundancy of 
proof that the words of the human writers are at 
the same time the words of God, as truly his as if 
from amid the parted clouds of his glory our out- 
ward ears could catch his own awful voice pro- 
claiming in the ears of mankind his infallible and 
unnlterable will. 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 321 



CHAPTER XVII. 

OBJECTIONS AGAINST VERBAL INSPIRATION 
CONSIDERED. 

General Character of the Objections — Special Difficulties : 1. The 
Minor Details of Scripture alleged to be Incongruous with the 
Inspiration of God ; the Relation in which They stand to the 
Other Parts of the Word ; Their Connection with Doctrine ; 
Their Evidential Value ; AVhat is Knowable is not Always 
Known ; Practically Inseparable from the Doctrinal Teaching ; 
2. Variations of the Text ; Their Supposed Talent, and What 
It would prove ; Their Real Talent examined and stated. 

The argument for the verbal inspiration of Holy 
Scripture proffered in the preceding chapters has 
been founded throughout upon an induction from 
facts. The position and influence of Christianity, 
its identity with definite Christian doctrine, the 
dependence of this doctrine upon the Christian 
Scriptures, the grounds on which we receive the 
Scriptures as a revelation from God, the internal 
evidence for their unity of authorship and author- 
ity, the claims they advance relative to their own 
authority, the character of truth involved in these 
claims, and the proof of veracity gained by an 
examination of individual passages on both sides 
of the controversy, have formed the successive 
stages of the argument. In each stage the appeal 
has been made to the facts of the case, and reason- 
ing has only been employed to follow out the mean- 
ing of the facts, and to clear them from misappre- 
1 1 



32-2 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

hension. The entire range of known facts relative 
to the Scriptures, when fairly combined and col- 
lated with each other, bears consentient testimony 
in one direction — a chorus of many voices swelling 
into one song of praise. An act of the Divine mind 
concurring, as a superior may concur with an infe- 
rior, with the minds of the human writers, through- 
out every step of the composition of the sacred 
works, from the communication or verification of 
the truth to be conveyed down to the form of its 
verbal expression, explains, and is alone adequate 
to explain, the case as it is. 

Against such an argument no merely speculative 
reasoning can have any force. Arbitrary human 
conjectures of what might have been, or should 
have been, God's mode of making known his will, 
are out of place altogether. This is generally ad- 
mitted, either directly or by implication. The effort 
has therefore been made to marshal an opposing 
array of facts on the other side, and to prove a ple- 
nary or verbal inspiration to be inconsistent with 
them. It has been shown (chapter 15) that these 
alleged proofs rest on a misapprehension relative 
to the two sides of Scripture, the human and the 
Divine. By some, the. mistake is made of supposing 
the human element to be altogether irreconcilable 
with the Divine. I venture boldly to call it a mis- 
take, because, if the union of the two be in its own 
nature impossible, then the great mystery of the 
incarnation, God manifest in the flesh, must be 
denied on the same ground. Others admit the pos- 
sibility of the two being united, but are afraid to 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 323 

give fair scope to the action of the human element 
on the one side and the action of the Divine on the 
other. They timidly limit the variety of form im- 
pressed on the human revelation by the agency of 
man, and the absolute infallibility bestowed upon 
it by the agency of God. In short, they find it dif- 
ficult to understand that what is characteristically 
human and what is characteristically Divine may 
exist side by side without either limitation or confu- 
sion. Let both be maintained, and the very ground- 
work of objection will be found to have been swept 
away. 

There remain, however, two classes of objection 
against a verbal inspiration of Holy Scripture, of 
which a brief examination appears to be desirable. 

I. The first class depends upon the distinction 
of the subject-matter of Scripture, and arises from 
the theory that the doctrines of Scripture are Di- 
vinely inspired, but not its historical or biograph- 
ical details. The objection may take different forms. 
Sometimes it is said that it would be unworthy of 
the majesty and omniscience of God to suppose his 
Spirit to have inspired the details of genealogy or 
the particulars of ordinary earthly events. At other 
times it is urged that, as these events lie within the 
range of ordinary human knowledge, their Divine 
revelation would contradict the rigid economy of 
the Divine dealings, since God would be making 
known to man what man is capable of finding out 
for himself. It is further added, that such an inspi- 
ration would remove the stimulus and motive for 
human labor supplied by the intentional imper- 



324 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

lection of human knowledge, and the search after 
truth latent enough to require search, and yet open 
enough to discovery to reward it. 

The groundwork of this class of objection has 
already been removed in a great degree by the dis- 
cussions of the preceding chapters. For the sake 
of clearness, I venture to recapitulate in a con- 
nected form the conclusions we have reached bear- 
ing upon this question. 

a. It has been shown that the detailed facts of 
Scripture, alike in the Old and the New Testament, 
form the outward setting to the supernatural truths 
of the word. They constitute essential links in the 
historical unity of the entire revelation, and unite 
it inseparably with the actual development of the 
Divine plan of redemption in the calling, education, 
and history, of the ancient people of God. They 
bear the same relation to the whole revelation as 
the particles of human language do to its whole 
structure. They are necessary to the mutual con- 
nection, and therefore to the meaning of the whole. 
As in human language, if all words of conjunc- 
tion and grammatical dependence were omitted, the 
intelligent sentences of human language would be- 
come mere strings of isolated words without a mean- 
ing, unstrung gems forming no whole ; so, were all 
the human details of the scriptural narratives taken 
away, the unity of the plan now pervading the entire 
revelation would be absolutely lost, and the scheme 
of the Divine plan would be interrupted in the same 
degree. At present we see it to be as consecutive 
as the rise of a natural day, from the first dawning 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 325 

light iu the horizon up to its meridian. But were 
these details removed, it would be no more than a 
series of abrupt and broken manifestations, without 
any apparent common design or mutual dependence. 
And further, the sacred history of God's dealings 
with the world would lose, by the omission of these 
details, its foothold upon the actual world of human 
experience. It would move altogether in the heav- 
enly sphere, and not at all in the earthly. From 
these considerations it follows, that these human 
details are comprised in the structural unity of the 
whole revelation, and are essential to it. Hence it 
would be as unreasonable to allege these details to 
be unwortlry of the majesty of a Divine Author as 
it would be to object to the particles employed in 
human composition, and allege the absurdity of 
ascribing to the genius of Milton the little words 
(and, if, but, for, etc.) which connect together the 
sublime diction of the " Paradise Lost." See chap- 
ters 4 and 14. 

b. It has also been shown that minute detail is 
inseparable from all human action. It is therefore 
inseparable also from doctrines touching human 
life and action. This is especially illustrated by 
the grand central doctrine of the incarnation, life, 
and death, of the Second Person of the Deity. At 
the point where Godhead came in contact with man- 
hood, there the little details of human life inevitably 
began, alike in the facts of the work and in the nar- 
ratives recording it. If it was necessary for the 
grand doctrine of the atonement that the Son of 
God should become man, all that was involved in 



326 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

his becoming man was necessary also. The human 
mother, and the human body, and the human life, 
and the human experience, and the human wants 
and weaknesses, and the human home and human 
relationships, and the journeyings to and fro, and 
the incidents of hunger and thirst, and cold and 
weariness, must all have been there, or else the 
reality of a true human nature could not have been 
there. Will any one deny that these details were 
present to our Lord in fact ? Or will any one say 
that it was unworthy of the Son of God to come 
into connection with them, which would be tanta- 
mount to saying that it was unworthy of him to 
become incarnate ? But if these details were pres- 
ent in the fact and present suitably to the Divine 
glory, why ma}* they not also be present in the rec- 
ord of the fact, and present consistently with the 
Divine inspiration? To deny it would be to deny 
the consistency of a revelation with the majesty of 
God. 

But not only would the record of our Lord's 
work have failed to correspond with the facts — that 
is, have failed to be true, if these details had been 
absent from it — but it must be further observed, 
that the doctrine is so dependent upon the matter 
of fact that it could not have existed without it. 
Christ could not have atoned for human sin either 
without the details of his life or without the partic- 
ulars involved in his trial, and sufferings, and death. 
In the close connection of human events with each 
other, every little circumstance of the marvellous 
events has its proper place and significance. But 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 327 

if the facts were necessary for the doctrine, our 
knowledge of the facts must be necessary to our 
knowledge of the doctrine. We could not have 
known the oue without knowing the other. 

Hence has arisen the peculiar form of the an- 
cient creeds, such as the Apostle and Nicene creeds. 
The want of the full doctrinal statement has been 
alleged as a fault against them. They are mainly 
statements of facts. Take, for instance, the lan- 
guage of the Apostles' Creed, " Who suffereth under 
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried ; he 
descended into hell ; the third day he rose again from 
the dead." In form, the creed is a bare enumeration 
of facts. But in substance it is much more than 
this, for the facts are the framework of the doctrine. 
As we could not have been "justified by faith only," 
unless the Son of God had thus suffered, died, and 
risen again ; so, on the other hand, it is possible to 
argue back from the facts to the doctrine, and be- 
cause "he thus lived, suffered, and died," to con- 
clude that we must be "justified by faith alone." 
Hence, if the doctrine be consistent with the majes- 
ty, wisdom, and goodness of God, the facts, and 
record of the facts, must be consistent with them 
likewise. See chapters 4 and 14. 

c. It has also been shown that the only possible 
means afforded to man of verifying the truth of 
Scripture is supplied by these details. It is evi- 
dent that we can only test the accuracy of a narra- 
tion, where the things narrated fall in some way 
within our knowledge, either by personal experi- 
ence or by analogy. What lies beyond this sphere 



328 GODS WORD WRITTEN. 

can admit of no human test. If we suppose it to 
be the will of God to afford to mankind some means 
of verifying the accuracy of his inspired word, and 
thus enabling them to distinguish it from the false 
impostures of man, it is by the narration of histor- 
ical facts alone, and these of a minute and special 
kind, that such an object could possibly be accom- 
plished. In proportion, therefore, as such a pur- 
pose is consistent with the benevolent character of 
the Divine being, must the means whereby alone it 
can be accomplished be consistent with it likewise. 
Hence the addition of these little details, whether 
on points of topography or of history, is so far 
from being inconsistent with the majesty of God, 
and therefore with its inspiration, that they are 
only what an adequate conception of God's attri- 
butes and purposes would lead us to expect. As a 
matter of fact, the whole immense range of corrob- 
orative testimony afforded from profane sources to 
the truth of Scripture depends entirely upon these 
details, and would be entirely swept away by their 
absence. See chapters 14 and 16. 

To these considerations, conclusive as the}- ap- 
pear to be, I would add the following remarks : 

There is a great distinction to be made between 
things which may be known by man — things know- 
able, as they are philosophically called — and things 
actually known. It appears that a certain knowl- 
edge of many of the historical facts of Scripture is 
of essential importance to us, since they form the 
foundations of the most momentous doctrines of 
the faith. We need, therefore, to possess an abso- 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 329 

lute certitude that they have really taken place. 
But this certitude can in no degree whatever be 
supplied by the fact that the events requiring to be 
known fall within the natural range of human infor- 
mation. For this may be the case, and actually is 
the case, with a very large number of particulars 
belonging to human history, and yet we who live 
after the time may be absolutely devoid of any 
means of ascertaining the truth in regard to them. 
For instance, a great deal of ancient Roman history 
has been conjecturally reconstructed by modern 
historical criticism, and the reconstruction has been 
made the subject of endless dispute. However 
probable the modern account may be, that prob- 
ability must ever fall very far short of certainty; 
and to make such facts the subject of religious 
belief would be an outrage upon the human con- 
science. 

Xow it may be doubted whether the denial of 
inspired authority to the books of the New Testa- 
ment, for instance, would not leave us in nearly as 
much difficulty in determining the real facts of our 
Lord's life as Ave are in determining the events of 
ancient Pioman history. The periods of the two 
sets of events are not very far distant. There is, it 
is true, this immense difference, that in the case of 
our Lord's life we have four independent histories 
congruous with each other, and bearing on their 
front every conceivable evidence of authenticity and 
credibility. But this will not avail us in the pres- 
ent case. For if they were persons so superstitious 
as to believe in an inspiration which had no real 



330 GOD'S WOED WBITTEJT. 

existence, then they were ignorant fanatics. If they 
ted what they did not themselves believe, then 
they were impostors. But men convicted either of 
fanaticism or of imposture cannot be accepted as 
worthy witnesses. If. therefore, we take away 
the inspired character of the scriptural narrative, 
we really shall possess little more certainty in regard 
to the facts of our Lord's life than we do to the 
facts of ancient Eoman history. That this is not 
too strong a statement of the case is shown in the 
results of denying the inspired authority of the 
evangelists, as illustrated in the romances which 
Strauss, Kenan, and Miehelet, have proposed to 
substitute for the sacred history. A fact may be 
knowable by man, and yet may not be known nev- 
theless. 

What can, therefore, be more consistent that the 
erection of an inspired superstructure of doctrine on 
an inspired foundation of facts ? What more strange 
and incongruous than that we should have a Divine 
authority for the doctrine, and yet for the facts on 
which the doctrine is absolutely dependent should 
be relegated to the uncertainties and possible mis- 
takes of a simply human evidence ? 

This consideration becomes the stronger when 
we bear in mind that the theory which represents 
matters of historical facts to be unworthy subjects 
of a revelation from God, does not simply deny a 
1 inspiration to all these parts of Scripture, 
but it denies to them any inspiration at all. For if 
it be incongruous for the Divine Being to concern 
himself with the record of such facts, it must be 






OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 331 

equally incongruous to concern himself with their 
revelation. Not only did he no: the writ-: a 

in communicating them to others, but he did not 
convey or verify the knowledge of them to the wri- 

- themselves. Consequently, these portions of 
Scripture cannot be a Divine revelation at all. but 
must be simply, barely, nakedly human, and noth- 
ing more. Hence Scripture must consist of two 
parts ; the one treating of doctrine, and divinely 
inspired : the other treating of the facts on which 
the doctrine - .nd having no authority what- 

ever beyond what may arise from the honesty of 
the human writer. 

Xow let us see in what position this would p] 
us. In bringing it to a practical test. I find a diffi- 
culty in drawing the fine between the doctrinal and 
the historical portions of Scripture, unless the dis- 
tinction be broadly and unreservedly maintained. 
If it be once said that some portions of the more 
important facts, such as those relating to our Lord's 
sufferings and death, may have been recorded under 
a Divine authority, but not the less important : fcs 
it will be found that the whole distinction must be 
given up. It is practically impossible to draw the 
line where the facts are related to each other by - 
gradual a sequence as are all the facts of the Bible, 
without exception. See chapter 4. 

The distinction must therefore be broadly main- 
tained, if maintained at all. All the facts, without 
ion, accomplished on the earth, and within 
the knowledge of man, must be put on one side, as 
recorded only and exclusively by man ; while the 



332 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

doctrines are placed on the other side, as recorded 
equally and authoritatively by God. 

The truth is, that the two classes of passages are 
so inextricably blended together that any attempt to 
separate and distribute them to other respective 
sources reduces to an absurdity the theory which 
requires such an attempt. I do not speak now of 
the dependence of the sense, but of the mere collo- 
cation of the words, and the blending together of 
what is historical and what is doctrinal in the same 
passages, and even in the same sentences. 

First, I select as an instance the memorable ac- 
count of the raising of Lazarus, in John 11. The 
whole is narrative, and in one sense historical. On 
the theory under discussion, the facts cognizable by 
man are narrated in human words, but our Lord's 
doctrinal teaching, as it exists in this chapter in the 
most sublime form, and especially all references to 
our Lord's secret thoughts, feelings, and purposes, 
are narrated in inspired words. The result will 
stand thus : the first four verses are human : the 
fifth and sixth are inspired, for they record Christ's 
secret feelings and purposes. The six next verses 
are human. Then comes an inspired verse, the 
thirteenth, which gives the real meaning of our 
Lord's words. The nine next verses are human, 
and so is the twenty-fourth verse ; but one inspired 
verse, the twent} T -third, intervenes ; then follow two 
more inspired verses ; then seven human verses ; 
then an inspired verse, followed by three uninspired ; 
then another inspired verse, followed by six unin- 
spired; then two inspired verses, and four unin- 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 333 

spired ; then again two inspired, and the rest of 
the chapter uninspired. Is it possible that a the- 
ory that so blends up in inextricable confusion the 
two elements of Scripture can be considered to 
be reasonable and accordant with the teaching of 
Scripture itself? 

But in the doctrinal portions of the word there 
are yet more singular instances. Moreover, as they 
deal not with narrative, but argument, the separa- 
tion of the two supposed classes of passages, the 
inspired and the uninspired, can be made with the 
greater ease and certainty. In the following eleven 
verses of 1 Cor. 10, 1 have marked in italics the pas- 
sages which must be considered to be inspired, that 
it may be seen in what an inseparable connection 
they stand towards the parts asserted to be unin- 
spired : 

1. Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, 
how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all 
passed through the sea ; 

2 And were all baptized unto Jloses in tlte cloud and in the sea. 

3. And did all eat tlte same spiritual meat. 

4. And did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of 

that spiritual rock that followed them; and that Bock was 
Christ. 

5. But with many of them God icas not well pleased ; for they 

were overthrown in the wilderness. 
G. Xow these things were our ensamples. to the intent we should not 
lust after evil tilings, as they also lusted. 

7. Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them ; as it is writ- 

ten, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to 
play. 

8. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, 

and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. 

9. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and 

were destroyed of serpents. 



334 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

10. XeWier murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and 

were destroyed of the destroyer. 

11. Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples ; and 

they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of 
the world are come. 

Another remarkable instance of the same admix- 
ture of the doctrinal and the historical occurs in the 
eleventh chapter of the Hebrews. I extract a few 
verses by way of illustration, and mark them with 
italics the same as before : 

7. By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as 

yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark for the saving of 
his house, l>y the icliich he condemned the icorld, and became 
heir of the righteousness ichich is by faith. 

8. By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place 

which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed, 
and he went out, not knowing whither he went. 

9. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange 

country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, 
the heirs with him of the same promise. 
10. For he looked for a city ichich hatli foundations, ichose builder 
and maker is God. 

The next six verses may all be considered to be 
inspired. Then the apostle proceeds : 

17. By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and 

he that had received the promises offered up his only 
begotted son ; 

18. Of whom it was said. That in Isaac shall thy seed be called ; 

19. Accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the 

dead ; from whence also he received him in a figure. 

The same peculiarity marks the whole chapter ; 
but the illustration has probably been carried far 
enough. I fully admit that these are strong cases; 
but a theory cannot be true unless it can be applied 
to all cases alike. 

I earnestly trust that I shall not be suspected of 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 335 

any wish to turn the subject into burlesque. I only 
contend that one harmonious principle must be ap- 
plied to the whole of such passages — that they can- 
not be broken up into heterogeneous fragments, but 
must be invested with the same authority through- 
out. It is perfectly consistent to contend that there 
is no verbal inspiration in any part of Scripture ; 
although I believe such a belief to be wholly incon- 
sistent with the facts of the case. On such a the- 
ory, an inspiration would exist in the subject-mat- 
ter everywhere, but in the words nowhere. This, I 
repeat, is consistent. But it is not consistent with 
the facts to break the unity of scriptural composi- 
tion into two classes of passages, where the two 
exist together so inextricably that it is absolutely 
impossible to separate them. Inspiration cannot 
be at once present and absent. Hence the objec- 
tion against verbal inspiration on the ground that 
it attributes to God a subject-matter unworthy of 
him, and inconsistent w T ith his ordinary modes of 
dealing, falls to the ground. For Scripture itself 
being the witness, the historical and doctrinal por- 
tions of Scripture form parts of the same revela- 
tion, and must, therefore, have the same authorship. 
A single remark will suffice in answer to the 
objection that a verbal inspiration removes the 
stimulus to human inquiry on all matters w T ithin 
its sphere. The whole form into which it has pleased 
God to throw his revelation is one grand appeal to 
the human reason and conscience. And so long as 
its sublime doctrines continue to exercise the lofti- 
est faculties of the human intellect, and touch the 



336 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

profoundest emotions of the human heart, as they 
have done from the beginning till now, there is no 
fear that the disciplinary purposes of GocVs works 
should be less effectually accomplished in the reve- 
lation of his word. 

II. Another class of objection weighs much on 
some men's minds. This is founded on the varia- 
tions of reading existing in our manuscript copies 
of the Scriptures. It is said by some, that if God 
had verbally inspired Scripture, he would miracu- 
lously have preserved the manuscripts without error 
or variation during every age of the church. The 
objection is purely speculative, and rests on a human 
conception of what God should consistently have 
done under certain circumstances. I have repeat- 
edly protested against such a mode of argument. 
All speculations of our own on such a subject ap- 
pear to me too utterly valueless to require serious 
refutation, even if their arbitrary and capricious 
nature made it possible. 

So far, however, as the objection is urged by 
believers in the Divine authority of the Christian 
Scriptures, one remark may be made upon it. It 
is, that the objection would create quite as much 
difficulty on the theory of a general inspiration as 
on the belief of a verbal one. Those who believe 
that inspiration ended with communicating the sub- 
stance of revelation, and did not extend to the mode 
of its embodiment in words, believe the Bible to be 
just as necessary to make men wise unto salvation, 
and its communications to be just as binding on the 
belief and on the conscience, as does the believer 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED, 337 

in verbal inspiration. It is held to be given for the 
same purpose, and to be effectual to the same end, 
by them both. If the variations in the text are suf- 
ficient to awaken any misgivings as to the authority 
of the Scriptures Ave possess, these misgivings would 
affect the one case just as much as the other. A 
miraculously preserved autograph would be as ne- 
cessary to quiet the scruples of a believer in the one 
as of a believer in the other. If, therefore, its ab- 
sence has any argumentative weight, it lies against 
the authority of Scripture altogether ; since, if the 
existing text does not correspond with the original 
autographs, it is not God's word at all. No appre- 
ciable difference is made to those who accept the 
Scriptures as a revelation from God, by believing 
its inspiration to be in the substance, or in the sub- 
stance and in the words. The absence of a mirac- 
ulously preserved autograph causes no special diffi- 
culty whatever to a man who accepts verbal inspi- 
ration, and is only the speculative embarrassment of 
the man who rejects it. If the fact had any weight, 
it would weigh equally against both parties ; but, 
in fact, it has no weight whatever. 

That inspiration can only have been in the ori- 
ginal will be generally admitted. But we have not 
got the original, is the bold assertion of the ob- 
jector. He means that the existing text cannot be 
considered to be identical with the original auto- 
graphs, because of the various readings. The ori- 
ginal can only have been one. Consequently, where 
there are several readings of the same passage, one 
only can possibly agree with the autograph. 

God's Wo .1. 15 



338 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

Now, it has been already seen that the absence 
of the original autograph is no proof that this auto- 
graph was not verbally inspired. 1. Because the 
supposition that if it had been verbally inspired 
God would miraculously have preserved it, is a mere 
human speculation, and cannot have the slightest 
weight against a conclusion drawn from facts. 2. Be- 
cause the objection, if valid at all, goes too far, and 
would destroy not only the verbal inspiration of the 
existing text, but its authority altogether. It must 
now be added, that the variations in the text are no 
proof against the existence of one original auto- 
graph, because variations of the same kind are 
found to exist in profane compositions as well as 
sacred. The only question affected by them is, To 
what extent are our existing copies identical with 
this autograph? Are the variations such as to 
shake our confidence in the authority of the text as 
it exists? If they are not sufficient to shake our 
belief in its authority, neither can they shake our 
belief in its verbal inspiration. Its authority depends 
upon its being the very revelation that God gave ; 
and if it be that very revelation, then the words 
must be the same, for the revelation cannot be sep- 
arated from the words that convey it. When it is 
objected that we have not got copies of the original, 
I reply by asking what it is the objector thinks we 
have got. If it is something else, its verbal inspi- 
ration must undoubtedly be given up, but its Divine 
authority in faith and conscience must be given up 
likewise. 

What, then, is the state of the case, and what is 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 339 

the extent and character of these variations ; in 
other words, how far do they affect the text ? That 
they are very numerous has been often repeated, 
and it has been as often replied that they are as 
trivial as they are numerous. This does not, how- 
ever, convey a sufficiently accurate idea of the facts. 
No one can adequately appreciate the character of 
these variations who has not taken the trouble to 
examine them one by one, as they are to be found 
in any modern edition of the Scriptures. In the 
absence of this personal examination, a general 
impression only can be conveyed ; but this impres- 
sion will suffice to show, in some measure, what sort 
of variations they are which are supposed to destroy 
the integrity, and therefore the authority of the 
sacred text. 

I take an illustration of four chapters of the 
New Testament : the first chapter of St. Matthew's 
gospel, the first chapter of St. Mark, the first of St. 
Luke, and the first of St. John. The variations of 
reading in the text of these four chapters amount to 
the apparently formidable number of five hundred 
and fifteen. But directly, as we look at them closely, 
they begin to lose their substance, and become, for 
all practical purposes, as intangible as ghosts. I 
divide them into eight classes. The first class con- 
sists of variations in the case, person, gender, or 
number of words, of such a kind that either of the 
readings falls into the grammatical construction of 
the sentence, and is equally suitable to the sense. 
For instance, in Matt. 1 : 21 the authorized version 
renders the passage, "Thou shalt call his name 



310 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

Jesus." The variation gives it thus : " She shall 
bring forth a son, and shall call his name Jesus." 
Here the Divine authority of the name is equally 
maintained in either case. In Mark 1 : 7 the author- 
ized renders it " The latchet of whose shoes I am 
not worthy to stoop down and unloose." The vari- 
ation reads it, " The latchet of whose shoe." The 
number of variations of this kind occurring in the 
four specified chapters is thirty-eight. 

The second class consists of amplifications or 
contractions of the sense. Thus, in Matt. 1 : 21, 
the words " She brought forth her first-born son," 
are elsewhere written, " She brought forth her son." 
In Mark 1 : 6, the words descriptive of John the 
Baptist's dress, " And with a girdle of skin about 
his loins," are omitted in some manuscripts. In 
the thirty-fourth verse, " He healed many that were 
sick of divers diseases," the words "of divers dis- 
eases" are sometimes absent, but are plainly in- 
volved in the diversity of persons healed. Fifty-two 
variations of this kind occur in the four chapters. 

The third class is made up of differences of 
spelling and the mere form of words, and arises 
wholly from varieties of usage and dialect. The 
first chapter of St. Matthew supplies eighteen ; 
the first of St. Mark thirty ; of St. Luke thirty-six ; 
and of St. John fifteen ; in all ninety-nine varia- 
tions. 

The fourth class consists of the change of con- 
junctions, sometimes differing from each other by a 
single letter, as in John 1 : 16. The difference is so 
delicate as to be beyond the appreciation of any but 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 341 

a practised Greek scholar, and to defy translation. 
Seven variations occur of tins kind. 

The fifth class consists of variations in the order 
of the words, in affixing single words to one branch 
of a common sentence rather than to another, or in 
reversing their mutual position in the same way in 
which poetry reverses the usual order of the sen- 
tence in prose. Thirty-eight variations arise from 
this cause. 

The sixth class consists of variations of tense ; 
as, for instance, in Matt. 1 : 20, " The angel of the 
Lord appeared to Joseph," where some manu- 
scripts use the graphic and dramatic present in- 
stead of the past tense, " The angel of the Lord 
appears." Twenty variations are added to the list 
from this source. 

The seventh class consists of the insertion or 
omission of secondary and implied words, such as 
the pronouns "he," "his," etc., or such as the 
repetition of the nominative case: "Jesus" did 
so and so, instead of the third person understood 
and the verb ; or as the use or the absence of the 
article, the use or the absence of the preposition, 
and others of the same kind. No less than one 
hundred and thirty-six variations of reading are of 
this character. 

The eighth class consists of the interchange of 
synonymous forms of expression, as, for instance, in 
the substitution of the word "Lord" for the word 
"God," the word "Peter" for the word "Simon," 
and other changes of expression so minute as to 
baffle description. In one case only is a matter of 



342 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

fact touched. This is Luke 1 : 46, where the words 
imputed to Mary are, in some manuscripts, imputed 
to Elizabeth. 

I give these instances only as illustrations of what 
are called variations of the text. They are not only 
utterly unimportant, but they are inappreciable. 
Their existence is just sufficient to show that God 
has exercised no miracle for the preservation of the 
copies of the Scripture. They are so singularly 
slight and trivial as to make the substantial integrity 
of the text a proof of providential protection, so 
exact and wonderful as only not to be miraculous. 
It is not enough to say that in no case do they affect 
the sense. The truth is far beyond this. In no case 
do they affect a single important word, still less a 
single phrase. Let every word affected by these 
variations be put on one side, not as certainly unin- 
spired, but as not being certainly inspired, because 
it is not certainly identical with the original auto- 
graph. It will be quite enough if the verbal inspi- 
ration of all the rest be admitted. For this inspired 
portion, on which variation of reading has not thrown 
the shadow of a question, contains so entirely every 
expressive and emphatic word, that the denial of 
inspiration to the remainder becomes simply nuga- 
tory, if it be not ridiculous. 



RECAPITULATION. 343 

CHAPTEE XVIII. 

KECAPITULATION AND SUMMAEY. 

The Argument founded throughout on Facts, not Theories — Its 
Progressive Character reviewed — Formal Propositions — The 
Character of the Scriptures — Mode of their Composition — Their 
Characteristics — Their Authority — The Divine Agency Uniform 
— Verbally inspired — Plenary and Verbal Inspiration — Their 
Infallibility and Sovereign Authority over Faith and Practice. 

A rapid review of the argument stated in the 
preceding chapters will constitute the best intro- 
duction to its definite conclusions. I will recapitu- 
late, step by step, the ground it has traversed, in 
order to present its general scope and object. 

Chapter I. The first step was to define the ob- 
ject of inquiry, and ascertain what Christianity is. 
This is rendered necessary by the peculiarities of 
modern controversy, which professes to handle with 
the utmost freedom the doctrines of Christianity 
without destroying Christianity itself. But Chris- 
tianity has an historical existence, and its name can- 
not fairly be divorced from itself. We mean by it 
the system of religious truth preached in its com- 
pleted form in the first century of our era, centred 
round Jesus Christ the Prophet of Galilee and the 
incarnate Son of God, described by the four evan- 
gelists, incorporated in the visible society specified 
in the Acts of the Apostles, explained in the apos- 
tolic epistle, and prophetically depicted in the great 
outlines of its outward fortunes in the book of the 



344 GOD T S WORD WRITTEN. 

Apocalypse. This definite system lias continued 
by unbroken descent, botli of an external society 
and an internal system of belief, down to our own 
day. It is the great civilizing and quickening force 
of the world, the moral spring of national progress 
and of individual happiness. If we inquire into the 
sources of its power, Ave find them to be twofold — 
distinct, and yet inseparably related. A superhu- 
man energy, the influence of God the Holy Ghost — 
constitutes its efficient agency; but this agency 
works through a definite body of truth, in which his- 
torical facts furnish the basis of sublime doctrines. 
This body of truth constitutes an harmonious sys- 
tem of belief, and is incorporated in the creeds of 
the Christian church. As its superhuman agency 
admits of no human investigation, being inward and 
spiritual, this harmonious body of truth constitutes 
the substance of Christianity in its outward aspect. 
Christianity is identified with Christian doctrine. 

Chapter II. This Christian doctrine is itself 
identified with the Christian Scriptures. We must 
discard all speculations as to what might have 
been, and must take the facts as we find them to 
be. As the case stands, we are absolutely depend- 
ent for our knowledge, alike of Christian facts and 
Christian doctrines, upon these records. We have 
no other source of information Avithin the Church of 
Christ ; for the Christian writings remaining to us 
from the first century in addition to the inspired 
Scriptures are exceedingly limited in extent, and of 
very doubtful authenticity. But being such as they 



RECAPITULATION. 345 

are, they claim to have no authority of their own, 
but refer to the canonical Scriptures as the Church's 
rule of faith. All the other Christian writings of a 
later date follow the same rule, and are but the suc- 
cessive links of a chain, of which the beginning is 
in the sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
ments. We possess, therefore, no source of informa- 
tion whatever within the church, relative to Chris- 
tian facts and doctrines, beyond the written Word. 
Nor does any source of information exist outside 
the church. Profane history attests in the clearest 
way the wide extension and extraordinary influence 
of Christianity in the earliest ages, but supplies no 
facts regarding its details which are not of the most 
meager description. Nor could human philosophy 
supply from its own independent discovery any of 
the distinctive truths relative to God and man 
which constitute the sublime doctrines of the Chris- 
tian faith. On every side, therefore, we are shut up 
into dependence on the Christian Scriptures. It is 
not more certain that Christianity is identified with 
Christian doctrine than it is that Christian doctrine 
is identified with the Christian Scriptures. 

Chaetee III. What is, then, the authority of 
these Scriptures ? They have ever been received 
by the church as a revelation from God, and as, 
therefore, binding on human faith and conscience. 
The grounds of this acceptance are threefold. In 
the first place, they are the compositions, and the 
only compositions extant, of men claiming to have 
received a commission to teach mankind direct 

15* 



346 GODS WORD WRITTEN. 

from God himself, and -who exhibited the creden- 
tials of this commission in their possession of mirac- 
ulous powers. The nature of the signs they wrought, 
the astonishing extension of their influence, and the 
known prevalence of their authority and teaching 
at the very dates and places of their occurrence, 
place the reality of these miracles beyond a doubt, 
and equally identify the workers of them with the 
authors of the sacred books. Secondly, the books 
thus composed at very different periods, and b} T men 
of widely varying character, position, and circum- 
stances, are yet found to constitute one whole and 
single work, united throughout by as clear a unity 
of thought and purposes as the work of any one 
ordinary author. Hence it is concluded, that as 
collusion or mutual agreement among the separate 
writers was clearly impossible, this unity can only 
have been impressed on the work by Divine intelli- 
gence, and constitutes the stamp of Divine author- 
ity. Thirdly, the character thus attributed to the 
book is found wonderfully accordant with the gran- 
deur and sublimity of its contents. It reveals truths 
lying beyond the utmost reach of human inquiry, 
and so profound in themselves that, when revealed, 
the loftiest human intellect is lost in their height 
and depth. Hence the book is believed to be a 
Divine book, and to constitute a revelation of God 
to man, claiming human belief, and binding upon 
the human conscience. 

Chapter IV. Hence follows the natural conclu- 
sion, that a book so wonderfully constituted does 



RECAPITULATION. 347 

not only contain the word of God, but that it is itself 
the word of God. If it only contained the word of 
God, then part of it must be accepted as a message 
from God to man, while the other parts might be 
rejected as carrying with them the ordinary author- 
ity of fallible human authors, and no more. Many 
persons have argued for such a division of its author- 
ity, on the ground of the historical and biograph- 
ical details intermixed with its grand revelation of 
Divine things. But the facts of the case contradict 
such a mode of conceiving of the Scrij)tures, with a 
force which nothing but some practical disproof of 
the most urgent kind can contradict ; for the inspired 
authorship of the Bible extends equally to all the 
contents of the canonical Scriptures, without any 
distinction whatever, and the identity of authorship 
necessarily carries with it an identity of authority. 
Moreover, the historical details of Scripture have 
their place in the structural unity of the whole books 
as evidently as have its sublimest doctrines. There 
is not a detail without its appropriate place and 
object. Whatever proof of a Divine inspiration is 
derived from the wonderful unity of compositions 
so widely separated from each other in all their 
human circumstances, extends to every part that 
goes to make up the unity, whether it be a detail 
of man's history or a manifestation of God's wis- 
dom. Nor is there any incongruity between the 
minuteness of the facts and the sublimity of the 
doctrines. The little details arise from man's side 
of the scheme of redemption, and are inseparably 
associated with that scheme of redemption through 



348 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

the incarnation, sufferings, and death, of the incar- 
nate Son of God. It follows, therefore, that an 
equal authority, whatever the exact amount of it 
may be, pervades the whole body of the Scriptures. 
They are the word of God. 

Chapter Y. The authority of the Scriptures is 
thus generally established ; but its exact nature 
and its relation to the human conscience still need 
to be ascertained. Has it been given as a subordi- 
nate help to the intellect and conscience of man in 
finding out truth, or as an authoritative and infalli- 
ble guide ? Scripture itself can alone give the an- 
swer ; and to those who accept it as the word of 
God, its answer must be conclusive. But does 
Scripture contain any positive assertions of abso- 
lute authority and infallibility? Some say that it 
does not. Undoubtedly, direct and reiterated affir- 
mations of its own inspiration and truth are not 
appended to each particular chapter or particular 
book. But why should evidence be limited to direct 
assertion, and necessary inference be excluded? A 
little consideration shows that ostentatious asser- 
tions would alike be utterly devoid of all weight, 
and would be incongruous with the dignity and the 
self-consciousness of a Divine Author. We do not 
believe an earthly witness on the strength of his 
own assertions of credibility, but on the strength of 
his known character and of the evidence he adduces. 
Thus we may expect that it will be with God ; and 
thus we find that it is. The scriptural writers are 
not always talking of their own credibility, but they 



RECAPITULATION. 349 

speak freely of their commission, and of the author- 
ity attached to it. By necessary inference, they 
assert in the strongest manner their inspiration by 
God, and this inference demands and deserves the 
same implicit acceptance as a direct statement. It 
is equally God's teaching, whatever may be the 
exact form of the communication. 

Chapter VI. These statements of Scripture rel- 
ative to itself may be arranged under six heads : 
1. They claim to be a communication from God ; 
not only a revelation of him, bat a revelation from 
him, in the truest and most exact sense in which 
the authority of a message depends not upon the 
messenger who brings it, but on the character of 
the person who sends it. 2. They declare them- 
selves to be accredited with the authority of God as 
of a Creator, claiming by right the reverence and 
obedience of his creatures. 3. They affirm them- 
selves to have been given for the specific purpose 
of making men wise unto salvation. The writers 
must, therefore, be believed to have received an 
inspiration suitable to and adequate for their spe- 
cial work, just as Bezaleel and Aholiab received the 
manufacturing skill needed for their special duty, 
and Samson the bodily strength requisite for his. 
They are also the only provision specially made by 
God for the communication of saving knowledge to 
his creatures. 4. They affirm themselves to have 
been given to supplement the light of nature, and 
to supply that knowledge of God which neither the 
outward creation nor the light of conscience were 



350 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

competent to afford to a fallen and guilty creature. 
5. They affirm implicit credence to be due to their 
contents, alike by virtue of their Divine Author and 
of the evidences furnished in authentication of them. 
This belief they claim for matters of fact as well as 
for matters of doctrine; for events transpiring on 
the earth as for the deep mysteries of heavenly and 
Divine things. 6. They assert their claims upon 
believing acceptance to be so authoritative that the 
denial of them is a sin, and will be punished as a 
sin at the great judgment-day by the righteous 
Judge of all. 

Chapter VII. These claims, viewed in relation 
to each other, involve the infallible truth of Scrip- 
ture, since it is repugnant to all reason to believe 
that the righteous God would assert such claims for 
what was untrue. This truth involves the reality 
of the things recorded, the earnestness and gravity 
of the narration, the absence of unintentional errors, 
and the freedom from intentional fraud. It follows, 
therefore, that Scripture does assert its own abso- 
lute veracit}^, and asserts it in the mode most con- 
sistent with the self-consciousness of an inspiring 
Deity. All its contents are true according to the 
nature of their truth — its deep mysteries, its grand 
promises, its records of the past, its unveiling of the 
future, its majestic history, its graphic narratives, 
its ethnological and genealogical details. In the 
face of its tremendous claims, the supposition that 
the Bible is partly true and partly untrue, and that 
a process of elaborate criticism is required to sep- 



RECAPITULATION. 351 

arate the true from the untrue, becomes utterly 
incredible. For then, according to the positive 
statements of Scripture itself, life and death, heaven 
and hell, would be dependent on a process of selec- 
tion impossible to the majority of mankind, and 
even to the most educated precarious and uncertain 
in the extreme. The simple conclusion that the 
Bible is all true supplies the only solution of the 
facts. The Scriptures are not only truly the word 
of God, but they are the true word of God. 

Chapter VIII. This assertion is met by skep- 
tical criticism with a direct negative. It asserts 
that Scripture is not true, and therefore cannot be 
Divine. The question must therefore be referred 
to the evidence of facts. But before we enter upon 
this inquiry,, it is necessary to ascertain the exact 
nature of the question at issue, and the standard 
by which it is to be decided. When two parties 
advance contradictory assertions with reference to 
one and the same thing, there is reason to suspect 
a misapprehension of the point in dispute. To 
remove these mistakes, and lay a recognized basis 
for common argument, must be the first step. In 
the controversy relative to the authority and inspi- 
ration of Scripture, these misapprehensions refer 
to two points : first, the character asserted for 
Scripture as the word of God ; and secondly, what 
is meant by its truth. Now the character of Scrip- 
ture as the word of God is so far from excluding 
human agency, and therefore human characteris- 
tics, in its composition, that it necessarily includes 



352 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

them. There must be two sides to a revelation, cor- 
responding to the party who gives it and the party 
who receives it. Hence Scripture must necessarily 
possess a human side or element and a Divine side 
or element. They are neither to be confused to- 
gether, nor are they to be separated from each 
other. They are to be regarded as existing side 
by side, exactly in the same manner as the God- 
head and the manhood exist together in the per- 
sonal word. The Scriptures are not less human 
because they are Divine, nor less Divine because 
they are human. Whatever is essential to either 
element is to be retained in union, and only what 
is non-essential to be modified by the combination. 
Every part of Scripture is human, and every part 
of Scripture is Divine, and the two characters to- 
gether constitute " God's Word written." 

Chapter IX. The application of this simple prin- 
ciple explains all the facts of the case. On the one 
hand, the human element — that is, the part which 
man instrumentally had in the composition of the 
sacred books — is to be maintained intact. It in- 
cludes (1) the personal peculiarities of the respect- 
ive writers, alike of time, place, circumstance, char- 
acter, and intellectual gifts. Hence it involves (2) 
the human point of view and the human mode of 
conceiving Divine things. The object being the 
instruction of mankind, it was needful that truth 
should be conveyed in such a manner as to be un- 
derstood. The instruction so communicated is real, 
and the notions presented are true to the utmost 



RECAPITULATION. 353 

capacity of human language to express and human 
ideas to comprehend them. The revelation is 
incomplete, solely because of the limits of human 
powers, but the knowledge communicated is true 
and real. (3) The human side of Scripture involves 
the use of all the peculiarities of human language 
as freely as they would be used in uninspired com- 
positions. The force of words, the construction of 
sentences, the mode of stating an argument, the 
emplo3'ment of imagery and illustration, and the 
free adoption of all the recognized figures of speech 
employed by secular writers, are naturally to be 
expected in Scripture. If these peculiarities were 
absent, the human element would be absent. To 
object against the existence of these human pecu- 
liarities in the sacred books is simply to object 
against the possibility of the human and the Divine 
existing together, as they do in the person of the 
God incarnate. 

Chapter X. On the other hand, the Divine ele- 
ment, or the part belonging to God in the compo- 
sition of sacred Scripture, is to be maintained with 
equal distinctness. This Divine element includes 
(1) the selection of the writers, with their special 
peculiarities of circumstance and character for their 
given work, and their education for it ; (2) their 
instruction is the subject-matter of their writings, 
alike by the revelation of what was previously un- 
known to them, by the verification of knowledge 
possessed by them through ordinary human chan- 
nels, and by the selection of the things to be writ- 



354 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

ten and the tilings to be omitted from the writings. 
Asa general rule, the sacred writers were conscious 
and intelligent agents, understanding, more or less 
perfectly, the meaning of their own message; but 
cases have been specifically excepted, in order to 
prevent our limiting the sense of the words written 
by the intention of human writers. These two in- 
stances are found in John 11 : 15 and 1 Peter 1 : 11. 
Hence it follows that the Divine element includes 
(3) the guidance of the Spirit in the selection of the 
words employed by the sacred writers. If the Divine 
inspiration acted only in communicating truth to 
the sacred writers, and did not extend to their com- 
munication of this divinely given truth to others, it 
is certain that we possess only a human account of 
a Divine revelation, and not the very revelation 
itself. The veracity of the truth transmitted must 
be equivalent, neither more nor less, to the accu- 
racy of the words which convey it. (4) It involves 
the absolute truth of all the things written. Man 
is always fallible, and liable to mistakes ; but actu- 
ally to make mistakes is as unnecessary to the com- 
pleteness of the human element as not to make mis- 
takes is absolutely essential to the Divine. The 
Bible may be truly the work of man, and yet be 
true ; but if it be not certainly true, it cannot also 
be the work of God. The concurrence of the human 
part of Scripture and the Divine part of Scripture 
is thus perfect throughout. It is not, however, the 
concurrence of two equals, but of a superior and an 
inferior. Man is necessarily the subordinate in- 
strument, and God necessarily the originating and 



KECAPITULATION. 355 

controlling agent. Hence it follows that, as the 
existence of what is Divine in Scripture is no sound 
argument against its being human, so the existence 
of what is human in Scripture is no sound argument 
against its also being Divine. 

Chapter XI. The character of the word of God 
being ascertained, we have yet to secure a clear 
understanding of what believers mean when they 
assert its truth, and what skeptics mean when they 
assert its untruth. Two classes of expression re- 
quire to be explained. The one consists of adjec- 
tives of intensity and force, as in the phrases, 
"strictly true," "absolutely true," " literally true." 
The other of adjectives of quality, such as "logi- 
cally true," " scientifically true," " historically true," 
Now we mean by truth, the correspondence of a 
statement with the reality of the thing stated. If 
they correspond, the statement is true ; if they do 
not correspond, it is not true. There is, therefore, 
only one kind of truth, and it can admit of no de- 
grees. One part of a statement may be true, and 
another part untrue ; but the same part cannot 
be both true and untrue. Phrases consisting of 
adjectives of intensity only imply that every part 
of the whole is true without exception. Adjectives 
of quality imply different modes of stating truth, 
not different degrees of truth. Whether a fact is 
stated in popular language or in scientific language, 
the fact itself is just the same in either case, and 
the truth of its occurrence is the same. The fact 
stated in any modern almanac, that the sun will 



35G GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

rise at a certain time on a certain day, is scientif- 
ically true, although it is not expressed in scien- 
tific language. In the same way an argument may 
be perfectly logical, although it is not stated logi- 
cally. The Bible is neither a book of science nor a 
book of logic ; nor is it exclusively a poem, or a 
history, or a biography, or a book of devotion. It 
is a revelation bestowed to make men wise unto 
salvation, and is therefore adapted, in all the truth 
it conveys, whether scientific, or logical, or histor- 
ical, or biographical, or devotional, to the compre- 
hension of those for whom it is intended. Its truth 
is one, its modes of statement various. 

Chapter XII. The prominent objections urged 
against the historical truth rendered it necessary 
to examine the phrase historically true still more 
closely. Historical truth differs in no respect from 
any other truth, but only expresses that branch of 
human certitude which has reference to the past 
events of the world. These events have been so 
many and various that no one history can possibly 
embrace the whole, even of those included in any 
one branch of investigation. Particular histories 
can only deal with some one portion of human 
events, and can narrate those facts, and those facts 
alone, which are appropriate to their special purpose 
and particular principles. The idea of a universal 
history to sweep over the entire range of the past, 
trace every link without exception, and record every 
fact, is no more than a dream. Historical truth con- 
sequently does not require that no facts should be 



BECAPITULATION. 357 

omitted, since such a condition would be impracti- 
cable ; nor that in several narratives of the same 
events the facts recorded should be absolutely iden- 
tical. It only requires that the facts should have 
taken place as they are recorded to have taken 
place, and that they should correspond with the 
statement they are adduced to prove. These condi- 
tions of historical truth are illustrated by the two 
accounts of the genealogy of our Lord, given by St. 
Matthew and St. Luke. These lists are recorded in 
proof of our Lord's descent from Abraham and 
David, according to the Scriptures. As no evidence 
exists to impugn any one link of the descent, the 
historical truth of the genealogies is neither affected 
by the artificial form adopted by St. Matthew, nor 
by our inability to explain the mode in which the 
two lines of St. Matthew and St. Luke met in the 
one person of Jesus of Nazareth. Varieties of ex- 
pression affect the mode of conveying truth, but not 
the truth conveyed. Of this truth there are neither 
degrees nor varieties of kind. Truth is but one, 
and the written Word of God is its Divine imper- 
sonation. 

Chaptee XIII. These misapprehensions being 
removed, we are in a position to bring the question 
at issue to the test of facts. Are the contents of 
Scripture true, or are they not ? An immense mass 
of evidence exists to prove the minute accuracy of 
the scriptural narratives on circumstantial points, 
where independent information is at hand to verify 
them. The number of facts specified in the sacred 



358 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

Scripture is large beyond enumeration. On no one 
point lias criticism discovered a single contradiction 
to known facts, while it lias brought to light an 
astonishing accordance with them. Exactly in pro- 
portion as our knowledge of the countries, circum- 
stances, and nations, alluded to in Scripture has 
become more precise and minute, in that propor- 
tion have all the statements of Scripture been more 
and more verified. This has been shown to be the 
case, for instance, with the geography of Scripture, 
and perhaps yet more wonderfully with its refer- 
ences to the governing nations of the ancient world, 
and the characteristic manners and customs attrib- 
uted to them. Thus ancient Egypt has become 
known to us through its monuments, and the 
graphic details furnished by its still existing paint- 
ings and sculptures. But in every point the sacred 
narrative is so signally confirmed by these silent 
witnesses of the past as actually to fill up the sacred 
outlines with a vivid coloring not possessed before. 
Striking, however, as these and other similar in- 
stances are, more minute testimony is at hand. 
Ten specific instances have been adduced from the 
Old Testament as illustrations of other existing 
cases of historical accuracy, so discriminating and 
exact, that nothing short of Divine inspiration can 
account for them. In the New Testament similar 
instances are so numerous that only by grouping 
them under some common heads can a general con- 
ception be formed of their number and variety. The 
notable persons described in the New Testament 
Scriptures, and the most memorable places made 



RECAPITULATION. 359 

illustrious by the events of the New Testament his- 
tory, have been used in illustration, and been found 
to supply proofs of accurate truth equally astonish- 
ing and indisputable. . 

Chapter XIV. The case is, however, much 
strengthened by another class of instances. These 
are passages at one time alleged as arguments 
against the truth, and therefore against the inspi- 
ration of the Scriptures, but converted by fuller 
information into proofs of the very truth they were 
once alleged to contradict. Such cases prove the 
supposed difficulty of explanation to have wholly 
arisen from erroneous and defective information on 
the part of man, not from any thing really inex- 
plicable on the part of the Word. The natural 
conclusion is, that the cause proved to operate in 
these cases now explained is still operating in cases 
yet unexplained, and that the difficulty experienced 
in reconciling different parts of Scripture with each 
other, or with known facts, is simply the product of 
human ignorance, and would wholly be removed by 
fuller or more accurate information. The strength 
of this conclusion is exactly proportioned to the ap- 
parent reasonableness of the objection once urged, 
but now removed. Nine instances of tjiis kind 
have been given. A review of the facts adduced 
in this and the previous chapter exhibits the follow- 
ing characteristics : (1) the minute accuracy illus- 
trated by them is not confined to a single book, 
or a single writer, or a single section of the in- 
spired writings, but is the characteristic of them 



360 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

all ; (2) it exists in particulars more or less obvi- 
ously incidental to the main object of the narra- 
tive ; (3) many of these details are such as could 
not possibly have fallen within the personal knowl- 
edge of the writer, and for which no effort of mem- 
ory or extent of human information can account ; 
(4) the instances are, without exception," drawn from 
matters of detail, and in such matters alone is it 
possible for human knowledge either to confirm or 
contradict the Word of God. We have no means of 
ascertaining the credibility of doctrinal truths be- 
yond the character of the Being who proclaims them. 

Chapter XY. From the positive evidence of the 
accuracy of Scripture it is necessary to pass to an 
examination of the passages alleged by skeptical 
criticism in disproof of it. Skeptical evidence is 
found to be evidently of a different and of a lower 
character ; whereas the argument in proof of the 
truth of Scripture is based upon positive and indis- 
putable facts proved b}~ independent and impar- 
tial testimony. The argument against the truth of 
Scripture has no fact of the same kind to allege, 
but is founded on arbitrary assumption and specu- 
lative opinion. In proof of this assertion nearly 
four hundred passages quoted in recent works 
against the inspiration of Scripture have been 
passed under review. The objections founded upon 
them are found to be removed, without exception, 
by some one or more of the following rules, all of 
which are corollaries of the principle that the Divine 
and human elements of Scripture are equally to be 



EECAPITULATIOX. 361 

maintained in their integrity. 1. Passages inter- 
polated into Hie original autographs, or errors made 
in transcription, are no parts of Scripture, and fur- 
nish, therefore, no argument against its truth. 2. The 
employment of figures of speech, and of artificial or 
conventional forms of statement, constitute no vio- 
lation of literal truth. 3. Varieties of statement 
are not contradictions, whether they arise from 
recording different parts of some common event, or 
from assigning a different emphasis and impor- 
tance to the same parts. 4. Omissions of parts of 
a series of facts, or of particulars making up facts, 
are consistent with the truth of the narrative in 
which they occur. 5. Differences of style in the 
composition, of personal character in the mode of 
thinking, or of standpoint in looking at common 
truths, are neither inconsistent with truth, nor with 
the action of a Divine inspiration. 6. Separate 
transactions are not to be identified with each other 
because of a parallelism between some circumstances 
of an event, or some portions of a discourse. 7. No 
private estimates of probability or improbability, 
either as to facts or doctrines, can be of force 
against the testimony of a positive record. In one 
passage alone a plain contradiction stands on the sur- 
face of the narrative, viz., Acts* 7 : 14-16 ; and here the 
patent character of the difficulty at once removes any 
argumentative value it might otherwise have pos- 
sessed, and at once suggests the mode of its solution. 

Chapter XYI. The truth of the veracity of Holy 
Scripture, supplied by the instances under consider- 

God'a Wor.i. 1 



3G2 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

ation in the previous chapters, illustrates the extent 
as well as the fact of inspiration. For the accu- 
racy is traced, as alone it could be conceivably 
traced, in words, and in single words. If God sup- 
plied the truth, God must equally have guided the 
words conveying it. This verbal inspiration in no 
degree limits the human element. It only involves 
that, while the words of Scripture are truly the 
words of man, they are at the same time fully and 
concurrently the words of God. The theories that 
God revealed to the sacred writers the subject-mat- 
ter of the revelation, but left them to themselves to 
imbody it in written words, or that the doctrinal 
portions of Scripture are inspired, but the historical 
uninspired, have been shown not to agree with the 
facts of the case, but to involve insuperable difficul- 
ties. The only natural conclusion is, that the words 
of Scripture are inspired. When we turn to Scrip- 
ture itself, we find this verbal inspiration to be 
clearly taught. In the case of the Old Testament 
especially, the writers of the New, including our 
Lord himself, testify to its verbal inspiration, since 
they quote it in a manner inexplicable on any other 
principle. In a vast majority of instances they 
quote not its sense, but its words, and rest the 
authority of great doctrines on single phrases and 
even on single words, taken from different parts 
of the Old Testament, and so separated from their 
context as to show that the words themselves are 
considered to be authoritative. In the case of the 
New Testament, no evidence of the same kind can 
possibly exist, because there has been no later sue- 



RECAPITULATION. 363 

cession of inspired writers to bear an analogous 
testimony. But both the language of our Lord 
himself and that of the apostles assert for the New- 
Testament the same inspiration asserted by them 
for the Old. The inspiration is, therefore, in both 
cases verbal. 

Chapter XVII. The great mass of the objec- 
tions entertained against the verbal inspiration of 
Scripture proceed from a misapprehension of the 
meaning of verbal inspiration, and are removed, 
almost without exception, by the simple rule of 
maintaining the perfect human element on the one 
side, and the perfect Divine element upon the other. 
Two classes of objection alone require further con- 
sideration. I. Objections founded on the variety 
of subject-matter, and the supposed incongruity of 
imputing to an immediate revelation of God details 
apparently trivial and relative to matters knowable 
by man himself. It has, however, been previously 
shown (1) that the minute details of history enter 
necessarily into the structural unity of the entire 
revelation ; (2) that the doctrines of Scripture are, 
in many unquestionable particulars, dependent upon 
its historical details; (3) that in these elements alone 
could the means of verifying the truth of Scripture 
possibly be opposed to us. It must be farther added, 
that what is knowable by man is not always and of 
necessity known, and, as a matter of fact, is frequently 
unknown, and beyond the reach of any human re- 
search and discovery. If, therefore, it be consistent 
that the doctrines should be revealed under Divine 



364 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

inspiration, it must be equally consistent that the 
facts inseparably connected with them should be 
under the same influence. Accordingly, when the 
attempt is made to separate the doctrinal and the 
historical portions of Scripture from each other, it 
is found to be practically impossible, since they are 
so blended together in the same passages, and even 
in the same verses, and so mutually dependent upon 
each other as to reduce the attempt to separate 
them to an absurdity. II. The other class of ob- 
jections is founded on the allegation that our exist- 
ing text is proved not to be identical with the 
original autographs, since, of the existing varia- 
tions, one only can be true ; whereas it is assumed 
that if the words of Scripture had been inspired, 
God would have provided, even at the cost of a 
miracle, for its exact preservation. But, in answer, 
it must be remembered that all speculative conjec- 
tures respecting what we think God would have 
done under certain circumstances have no weight 
whatever against the evidence of positive facts. 
Moreover, it goes too far. For if the existing text 
be not the text of the original autographs, the fact 
not only destroys the verbal inspiration of Scrip- 
ture, but its authority likewise. Moreover, an exam- 
ination of these variations proves that they not only 
occur in unimportant matters, but that their own 
character is so utterly unimportant as not to affect 
even a crucial word, much less touch a distinctive 
meaning ; still less modify a doctrine. Not only 
practically, but substantively, the existing text of 
the Scriptures is identical with the original auto- 



RECAPITULATION. 365 

graphs. Not only, therefore, is the conclusion 
founded on the fact unsound, but the fact itself is 
misapprehended. 

From these data I draw the following conclu- 
sions : 

1. That the canonical Scriptures, as at present 
existing, are in the strictest sense of the terms 
God's Word written. 

2. That in the composition of Scripture two ele- 
ments or two parties necessarily concurred, and in 
no one part of the Scripture can they be separated — 
the part which man had in their composition being 
what is called the human element, and the part 
which God had being what is called the Divine 
element. 

3. That the characteristics of each party remain 
intact, all that is peculiar to man on the one side, 
and all that is peculiar to God on the other side ; 
so that the books resulting from the concurrence 
of the two are not less human because they are 
Divine, and not less Divine because they are human. 

4. That the relation between these two concur- 
ring parties is the relation of an inferior and a supe- 
rior, the part which man had in the composition of 
Scripture being throughout subordinate and instru- 
mental, and the part which God had in their com- 
position primary and authoritative. 

5. That while the Divine agency in the produc- 
tion of Scripture was wider than the human, inas- 
much as the origination of the plan and the selec- 
tion of the agents preceded the action of the human 

16* 



366 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

instruments, in no particular did it fall short of it, 
or leave the human instrumentality to itself. 

6. That the action of the Holy Spirit upon the 
minds of the sacred writers did not cease with the 
revelation to them of the matters they were em- 
ployed to write, but extended also to their convey- 
ance of this divinely revealed truth to others. 

7. That this action of the Holy Spirit is conve- 
niently expressed by the word "inspiration," which 
expresses the part taken by God in the composition 
of the sacred Scriptures, and the authority with 
which they are invested by virtue of this Divine 
action. 

8. That inspiration is both plenary and verbal : 
plenary, inasmuch as God's attributes of infinite 
wisdom and perfect truth have found expression 
through it ; verbal, because the vehicle of its expres- 
sioa is — as it could only be in a communication to 
mankind — the vehicle of words. 

9. That, because the Scriptures are God's "Word 
written, they therefore contain infallible truth, and 
nothing but truth, and are invested with sovereign 
authority in all matters of belief and practice. 



CONCLUSION. 8G7 

CHAPTER XIX. 

CONCLUSION. 

Testimony of Christian Experience — Value and Influence of the 
Words of Scripture — Christian Hymns and the Christian Bible — 
The Instrument of Conversion and Sanctification through the 
Spirit — Particular Texts — The Indefinable Power and Tone of 
the Word — Fanaticism or Faith — Practical Comforts of God's 
Word Written. 

I haye endeavored, in the preceding pages, to 
rest my argument entirely upon facts. I have also 
selected such facts as lie within the knowledge of 
all men, and are generally admitted to be true ; so 
that those who dissent from my account of inspira- 
tion must direct their opposition not against the 
facts, but only against my conclusions from them. 
I have therefore omitted all reference to the facts 
of Christian experience, lest some who are devoid 
of this experience should deny them as facts or 
demur to their validity as arguments. But I can- 
not do so much violence to my own convictions as 
to close the subject without a brief reference to 
them. 

The doctrine of the verbal inspiration of Holy 
Scripture is singularly accordant with the results 
of Christian experience. There is a natural, and I 
believe inevitable tendency to cling to the very 
words of the Bible with an affectionate reverence 
entertained towards no other book. The feeling 
entertained towards some familiar hymn supplies 



368 GOD'S WOKD WEITTEN. 

the nearest parallel ; and jet it differs alike in de- 
gree and in kind from the loving solemnity gathered 
round the word of God. Our fondness for hymns 
is a more familiar feeling, and arises from their 
adaptation to thoughts and emotions working within 
our own minds, and perhaps vainly seeking expres- 
sion in our own words. But our love to the word 
of God arises from what it brings to the soul, not 
from the emotions it evokes from it, and is deeply 
colored by our sense of its power and majesty. 
With the hymn, we feel that the utterance is of 
man ; with the Bible, we feel that the utterance is 
of God. The one touches the chords of a human 
sympathy ; the other is clothed with the authority 
of a Divine wisdom and the infinite tenderness of a 
Divine love. The language of the psalmist expresses, 
now as ever, the utterance of Christian experience : 
" O how I love thy law." " The law of thy mouth 
is better unto me than thousands of gold and sil- 
ver." Psa. 119:97, 72. 

Thus, not the hymn, but the word of God, is the 
ordinary instrument of conversion. There may be 
exceptions, but in the vast majority of instances a 
text of the Bible constitutes the weapon of the op- 
erating Spirit of God. The Bible itself would lead 
us to expect this ; for St. Peter describes the saints 
as " born again ... by the word of God, which liv- 
eth and abideth for ever." 1 Peter 1:23. 

But the affectionate reverence thus formed for 
the word is deepened by the various experiences of 
life. It is from this that we have drawn comfort 
in time of sorrow, encouragement and strength in 



CONCLUSION. 369 

times of despondent weakness. At periods of per- 
plexity, we have gone to this source for direction, 
and have found some guiding principle to solve the 
present difficult}', and point out the path of duty as 
with a ray of heavenly light. Our enlarging affec- 
tions have drunk deeply of this spring. Here we 
have learned our deeper lessons both of ourselves 
and God — broad promises, so free and large that a 
child could understand them — mysteries so pro- 
found that the loftiest intellect is lost in their heights 
and depths. 

In the course of such an experience, our inward 
life becomes bound up more and more with partic- 
ular texts. Not that we rest exclusively on these, 
but, from their sweetness, are led on to drink the 
more deeply of the fountains whence they flow. 
One particular text was the means of conversion ; 
another was brought to the mind at the moment of 
some peculiar temptation ; a third was specially 
fixed upon the memory by circumstances of place, 
or time, or person ; a fourth flashed upon the soul 
at some time of meditation, or it may be, in the 
midst of life's activities, with the vividness and 
intensity of a message from heaven. The lights 
and shadows of our inward life have been reflected 
in these special portions of the word ; but in each 
case particular texts, and perhaps particular words 
of texts, have supplied the soul's nutriment. Not 
the word at large, in its grand perfection, but por- 
tions of the word, have blended themselves up inti- 
mately with the varying experiences of the Chris- 
tian life and the events of the soul's history. 



370 GOD'S WORD WRITTEN. 

This association of our affections with the Bible 
at large through its separate words in particular is 
inevitable. Many precious truths lie as it were 
imbedded in other passages without themselves 
forming any inseparable portion of their general 
scope and sense. They may therefore be taken, so 
to speak, out of the material in which they are 
imbedded, and treated as of themselves utterances 
from the tongue of God. In so treating many texts, 
we only use them as the inspired writers used them ; 
as, for instance, when St. Paul adopts the promise 
of God to Abraham as a ground of confidence to all 
Christians : " For he hath said, I will never leave 
thee nor forsake thee." Heb. 13:5. Not only do 
Ave, in all cases, gather the sense from the words* 
but we cannot separate the sense from the words 
without losiDg their depth of meaning and singular 
richness of comfort. Try to take the sense and to 
fling the words away, and we shall find that we have 
flung away in the effort their beauty and signifi- 
cance. We hang, as it were, over every word, and 
ponder it again and again ; and yet find that we 
never exhaust its power and meaning. Let us take, 
for instance, such an expression as the wonderful 
words of St. John, "God is love." 1 John 4:8. 
Very few and simple are the words, but what mind 
can measure all their depths and blessedness ? 

I believe, moreover, that experience teaches us 
still more than this. It is possible for us to gather 
the sense out of the words of a text, and yet find, 
nevertheless, that the words have a power of their 
own, like the fragrance of some sweet flower that 



CONCLUSION. 371 

we lay next our hearts. The soul seems to imbibe, 
from contact with the very words, a certain inde- 
scribable tone and spirit, as if the mind, in its pray- 
erful meditation, grew into the text, and through the 
text came into contact with the mind of the inspi- 
ring Deity. What Christian man has not repeated 
the words of a text over and over and over again, 
as if they were a strain of sweet music — a breath 
fresh from the other and the better world ? 

Certain it is that, whether we will or not, the 
very words of Scripture become consecrated to us, 
not as husks which we dismiss, after winnowing 
from them the precious seed they contained, but 
as jewels ; or rather, we enshrine them in our 
hearts as a thousand times more precious than 
jewels. The soul lives upon them and feeds upon 
them, as being instinct with that living Spirit of 
God, who speaks and works in them with all the 
power of the infinite mind of a living Creator upon 
the receptive mind of the living creature. Thus we 
do not worship the word, however much our inner 
life is bound up with it, but the living God from 
whom it comes. 

This experience must be a kind of fanaticism, a 
mere reflection of our own emotions, if the Scrip- 
tures be not verbally inspired. If they are, it is in 
accordance with the soundest dictates of the rea- 
son, as well as with the truest instincts of the affec- 
tions. In the one case it is a thing to be ashamed 
of and to avoid. In the other case, it is a thing to 
be thankful for, and to cherish with all our hearts. 
This necessity of the soul, which compels it to cling 



372 GOD'S WOED WRITTEN. 

to the very words of Scripture, appears to roe to be 
an inward witness to its verbal inspiration. For 
thus the judgment of the head and the emotions of 
the heart go hand in hand, like two instruments 
touched by the same gracious Spirit of God, and 
emitting beneath his touch the same sweet song of 
love and praise. It would be strange if the head 
condemned what the heart felt to be a necessity ; 
or if the heart failed to place its seal of experience 
on what the head believed ; strangest of all would 
it be, if a doctrine thus accordant with head and 
heart should be visionary and superstitious. Let 
us believe that God is consistent in grace as he is 
in nature, and quickens the heart to feel what he 
enables the judgment to apprehend. The words of 
Scripture are of God, and the soul rightly clings to 
them. 

I rejoice to believe that towards this doctrine of 
verbal inspiration the common mind of the Chris- 
tian church is more and more decidedly tending, as 
affording the only consistent explanation of the 
plain facts of the case. TVhatever may be the issue 
o£ existing controversies, he alone can stand in calm 
security who places his feet on this " word of God, 
which liveth and abideth for ever." 1 Peter 1:23. 
To him alone the past can be clear, the present 
blessed, the future hopeful, who believes that no 
human fraud has sullied the purity, and no human 
ignorance clouded the infallible truth, of " God's 
Word written." 



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