process are largely present as factors in the production of Scripture, many an able theorist declines, or however fails, to see that nevertheless the resultant of the factors of production is not humanitarian, nor naturalistic, but the divine Word, the supernatural Oracle. All this failure is the effect far less of a patient and inductive study of the phenomena than of the general influence of the modern tendency to simplify and unify phenomena under laws as general as possible. It comes not a little of an instinctive wish to see a likeness, a homogeneity, and ultimately a oneness, under all spiritual operations and experiences. And so the "inspiration" of Prophet and Apostle is classified as the same in genus, and even in species, as the "inspiration" of the Christian believer of our day in his walk of faith and obedience; as a development-in some respects very high, no doubt, but still only a development of the general "consciousness" of the Church and its members. Isaiah, or the Isaiahs, and St Paul, were inspired undoubtedly; but so, and in essentially the same way, were Augustine and Anselm, Tauler and IS THE BIBLE "AS ANOTHER BOOK" 49 Savonarola, Luther and Bunyan, Oberlin and Elizabeth Fry, nay Plato and Virgil, Shakespeare and Wordsworth, nay the earnest explorer of the structure and processes of material nature, or of the human spirit, or of the written products of that spirit, in whatever region, "secular or "sacred," human or divine. To all Christian minds and lives, indeed to all grave and elevated minds and lives, Christian or not, some fragments of eternal verities have been somehow disclosed. These they have rendered into word, or act, or both, not always exactly, not always truly, perhaps not always even truthfully, but still so as to give some hints and "broken lights" of the eternal archetype and original. To the devout men who produced the Biblical Literature such disclosures were made in a very remarkable degree, and Scripture accordingly gives us hints of archetypal and eternal truths in a very remarkable way. But to them, as to others, those hints were conveyed only naturally, through their moral nature, through experience and reflexion. And so in order to gather up these hints given in the Bible we have to "look Wisely upon it, as another book.” 1 We have to get the gold of eternal Truth out of the rock of an indefinite amount of human prejudice, mistake, and partial points of view on the part of the human reporters of the truth We are to expect more gold, no doubt, from quarrying the Psalms, and the Gospels, and the Epistles than from quarrying the Phado, or the Divina Commedia, or the Pilgrim's Progress. But we dig our shaft and sift our diggings in precisely the same way in all the cases. I am very well aware with what mental energy and skill, and along with what a range and depth of various knowledge, such theories "And now,' he cried, 'I shall be pleased to get Beyond the Bible-there I puzzle yet.' "He spoke abash'd—' Nay, nay!' the friend replied, 'Antique and curious, I myself indeed 'Read it at times, but as a man should read; 'A fine old work it is, and I protest 'I hate to hear it treated as a jest ; 'The book has wisdom in it, if you look 'Wisely upon it, as another book.' CRABBE, 7ale xxi., The Learned Boy. ITS WITNESS TO ITSELF. 51 in many instances have been constructed and propagated-I hardly need say now "defended," so vast a currency have they obtained. Comparatively few and far between are the modern literary theologians who quite definitely and unmistakably hold that the Holy Scriptures are truly and properly sui generis among books as being (as well as containing) the Word of God,1 and as carrying in a way quite of their own that precious thing, DIVINE AUTHORITY. But I also recollect that in many a past period and crisis the deep tide of intellectual consciousness has taken directions which, on the whole, needed afterwards to be reversed, on a fuller discovery or more calm and reverent review of great facts which had remained all the while unaltered. And I humbly believe that the day will come when the intellectual consciousness of Biblical scientific students as a class will be vastly more alive than it is now to the superhuman and authoritative aspect of the Holy Bible and to the immense significance of that aspect. And such a change of general mental 1 Some weighty words on this subject will be found in Bp Ellicott's recent little volume, Salutary Doctrine. attitude will vastly modify many present theories about the construction of the Bible, theories built much less than is sometimes thought upon the whole facts. What I attempt to do here is simply to recall my reader's attention earnestly, gravely, and with deep conviction to the witness which the Holy Scripture bears to its own unique character among books as the Book whose Author is none other than the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. And need I say that this is no argument in a circle? I ask the Bible to witness to the Bible; but I ask the Bible as literature, as history, to witness to the Bible as revelation, oracular, authoritative, divine. As history, capable of verification, it shows me Jesus Christ, God and Man, living, dying, rising, proving Himself to be profoundly, ultimately, trustworthy. But this Jesus Christ, as presented in the same historical mirror, is seen laying one hand upon the Prophets and the other upon the Apostles, and bidding His followers regard with an altogether unique attention their uttered messages. And I attend accordingly to those messages. And in them I find disclosures and |