We know for a cer

Moses, otherwise than by tradition. tainty that the revelation by Christ was preserved in the church for many years, only by the accounts of eye witnesses and the testimony of the Apostles. It was long before these accounts and this testimony were reduced to the form of written records. During all this period, revelation certainly depended for its integrity upon oral tradition; so that it does not appear to be absolutely necessary to the existence and knowledge of a revelation, that it should stand in the form of written documents. But it is, at the same time, equally evident, that a revelation depending solely upon tradition for its preservation could not long retain its character of infallibility. First, because it could not be referred with certainty to authentic records capable of being verified beyond all reasonable question; secondly, because oral tradition becomes, in process of time, an altogether unsafe mode of transmission. It is plainly necessary, therefore, that a revelation should be committed to writing in order to secure it against all uncertainty as to its origin, and against all danger of being altered and corrupted in its transmission from one place or one age to another. The question now presents itself: What constitutes the authentic and trustworthy report of a revelation? For although a revelation is of necessity infallible when given, being some express manifestation of God in his relation to man, yet so far as it has been exposed to any possibility of mistake in the reporting or the recording of it, its original infallibility can be of no avail to procure and preserve for it that character of absolute authority, with which it was invested at the first. What is necessary to perpetuate the authority of a revelation once given?- since we can conceive of no other purpose of its being committed to writing. The sacred writers themselves answer this question by saying: " All scripture is given by inspiration of God;""Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." It was not enough that the writers should be good and holy men, upon whose honest intentions and faithful care, in recording what was entrusted to them, all reliance could be placed; they must also be inspired and

moved by an influence from above — even that of the Holy Ghost. So we have it upon the authority of these writers themselves; and there they are content to leave the matter. We are not told precisely in what this influence consisted, nor how far it extended; whether it was an influence which superseded, or which only regulated and guided the natural powers of the soul; whether it was an influence of immediate dictation, or only of general supervision; whether it differed altogether in kind, or only in its special application, from those gifts of inspiration and illumination which characterized the first converts to Christianity; nor are we informed in what way or by what tokens they who were under such influence of the Holy Ghost, as qualified them for this special service, were assured of the fact. We are only given clearly to understand, that "no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation;" in other words, that no written record of a revelation has resulted from any private and subjective interpretation of divine truth, but everything has been presented precisely after that form in which it was designed to be presented by Infinite Wisdom. Thus far, and no further, does Scripture itself go, in declaring its title to our implicit confidence, its claim to be regarded as an infallible record of divine truth. Holy men spake - not however, to utter their own private or subjective opinions; they spake only as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

It is certain, that there are two ways in which this language, taken by itself, might be understood, without any great overstraining; since, in a written revelation, while the truths are divine, the words must be human, this language might be understood as referring mainly or exclusively to the words, which being human and therefore fallible, needed to be directly suggested, in order that the writer, in communicating the divine meaning, might be preserved from all possibility of mistake. Such, perhaps, would be the view of inspiration most likely to be entertained by almost any mind whose interest was chiefly directed to the single point of maintaining the absolute infallibility of the Scriptures. But since evidently there can be no revelation except where

the divine thoughts are transfused into human thought, and, for the time, constitute an integrant part of the human consciousness, when the words by which this consciousness is to be expressed, may be safely left, as in all other cases, to take care of themselves, so it might be supposed without any overstraining of the language, that, when it is said, holy men spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, this occupancy of the entire consciousness by the Holy Spirit, is all that was meant ; while the man was left to express the thoughts of which he was thus made conscious, freely in his own words, and according to his own individuality of character. And such, probably, would be the view of inspiration most likely to present itself to minds fully aware of the great difficulties attending the other view of the matter. We find, accordingly, both these views maintained with equal earnestness by the believers in a supernatural revelation, in all ages of the church. And, what is painful to add, we find also, very uniformly, a disposition in the advocates of the extreme views on one side, to misapprehend or to misrepresent those entertained on the other. There are difficulties indeed, on both sides difficulties which laid hold of and pushed hard by an adroit objector, could be answered by most persons no otherwise than by saying: yes, you make out a strong objection to my doctrine, and I cannot reply to you; only that I believe it notwithstanding. You point out to me certain discrepancies of statement in the Bible which, to be candid, I can neither deny nor explain. Still I hold them to be capable of explanation and that every word is inspired; for how else could Scripture be infallible? Or (on the other side) you accuse me of allowing to the sacred penmen a liberty in their choice of expressions and in their statement of facts, inconsistent with the idea of their infallibility. I do not deny the charge, nor can I fully explain the difficulty. But still I believe in the authority of Scripture as an absolute rule of doctrine and life, and I also believe that the inspired writers expressed their own convictions in their own way and in the full consciousness of their freedom; for there are all the marks of it on every page that I read.

To all, except such as boldly deny the fact of a supernatural revelation, and who explain inspiration as being simply the genius for religion, which in Moses and the Hebrew prophets existed in an extraordinary degree and which dwelt in Jesus beyond measure; who see inspiration, therefore, alike in every instance where the sense of the divine has taken powerful hold of the imagination, directing it to teach men obedience to God, instead of science or the admiration of the beautiful - to all, in a word, except the naturalists in religion, the doctrine of inspiration, though clear to that faith which sees at a glance the infinite distance between the truth so suited to meet our deepest wants, which Scripture reveals, and all that has ever been found out by man's wisdom alone, must, no doubt, ever have its difficulties, lying as it does, like every other profoundest spiritual truth, quite beyond the grasp of our finite understanding.

We may venture, however, merely to suggest, that if the view above given of what constitutes a revelation be correct, if God's revelation of himself comprehends all the facts, connected with his direct and iniraculous interposition in the affairs of the world, investing the least of them with an importance which they could not have in any other connec tion, inasmuch as, like the smallest epithelial scale on the surface of the human body, they grow out of, and, each in its proper time and place, contribute their humble share to, the great organic whole to which they belong, then the objection which many feel to the plenary inspiration of Scripture, arising out of what seems to them the altogether tem

See the Tractatus theologico-politicus of Spinoza, in which this view of the matter was first clearly set forth. The pantheism and determinism, or rather necessitarianism, which characterize the whole school of the mere speculative theologians in Germany, plainly enough point back to the true origin of this school. Says Bouillier: "Si Spinoza est le père des systèmes pantheistes qui un siècle plus tard, ont règné et règnent encore en Allemagne, il est aussi le père de cette exègése biblique savante et hardie, qui, à la mème epoque, y a fait de si grand progrés. Le célèbre docteur Paulus, dans la prèface de son édition des oeuvres de Spinoza, dit que le Tractatus theologico-politicus non seulement en avait prédit, mais même déjà démontré la plupart des resultats. Hist. de la philosophie Cartesienne, Vol. I. p. 398.

porary and insignificant, or it may be, the partial and defective character of many of the statements to be found therein is disposed of at once.

But again, if the view we have taken of revelation be correct; if God reveals himself not only by abstract teachings of his will and of his truth infused into the minds of his chosen instruments in the form of thought, and thought moulded into truest expression; if he has revealed himself no less really, in a miraculous providence, by the leading of his chosen people, and last of all by the actual appearance of the Word made flesh and dwelling among us; if he has revealed himself in these great facts of history, and if the veracious statement of these facts makes up the great body, the bones, flesh, and sinew of his written word, then inspiration must surely consist, to a great extent, in simply that state of mind which constitutes the truthful historian. The facts are the revelation, just as they actually transpired; the inspiration is whatever secured the sufficiently exact report of these facts. We say sufficiently exact; for from the very nature of the case, facts are relative to the observer. No two witnesses can possibly look at them from the same point of view. No two reports, from different sources, can possibly be exactly the same. We cannot demand, in the case of sacred facts, a different kind of exactness from that which belongs to the true report of all historical facts. Variation, to a certain extent, is here the very test of truth. Inspiration, therefore, cannot consist in such a miraculous infusion of light as would lead each historian to report facts differently seen, and differently related by different witnesses, precisely alike. Each can draw up his report only from one point of view, and differences are unavoidable. The truth is what can be made out from the reports on all sides. This is what we who read are left to gather. A degree of uncertainty, therefore, necessarily attaches itself to the truest of historical records, to sacred as well as to profane. We are not called upon to believe blindly, but thoughtfully; ever remembering that the value of the history is to be measured, not so much by the minute accuracy of the details, as by