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 1 "And now,' he cried, 'I shall be pleased to get "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; 'I hate to hear it treated as a jest ; CRABBE, 1ale xxi., The Learned Boy. ITS WITNESS TO ITSELF. 51 But 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. 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 MODES OF INSPIRATION. 53 intimations as to the quality and authority of the Biblical writings as the oracles of God which, if words have meaning, put those writings-as to their total character-on a level different in kind from all other literature. I find nothing to forbid me to ask, with deep reverence, whether human personality and natural process were not factors to the product; and I assuredly find that they were. But I find it emphasized with vastly greater earnestness and fulness that so did the other factor of ultimate divine Authorship govern and manipulate the lower factor that the true Designer and Architect of the Book has had His way all along, in the total and in the details too. I find nothing to enable me to define, in any full or exhaustive way most certainly, the mode of the supreme Author's management of the subordinate authors. I find nothing to tell me "what it felt like to be inspired." In many and many a case, I can well believe, it "felt like "-nothing; nothing distinguishable from other things. I can well believe that when St Paul wrote to Philemon he "felt" nothing supernatural, any more than when Luther wrote to Melanchthon, or Newton to Cowper. I do not say that it was so; but it may have been so, for all that we are told. On the other hand I not only can believe, but am sure, that Daniel and St John received their revelations in a state manifestly and entirely abnormal, as Abraham and Moses on certain occasions had done before them; unless we are to put quietly aside the profoundly solemn assertions to this effect made in Scripture as if they were so much poetical and imaginative excrescence, or framework, because there is so little in human experience outside Scripture, outside this Record of the divine Redemption of fallen man, to verify them. Yes, it is impossible to define or describe Scriptural inspiration as a subjective experience. The mode, as to any general account of it, is unknown. “Qur theory is not to have a theory." But I do find abundant testimony on the historic surface of the New Testament Scriptures for the strong and unalterable conviction, sure as the historical reality of Jesus Christ our Lord, that a humanitarian, naturalistic view of Scripture is wholly and gravely inadequate to meet the mysterious facts. |