is no longer the simple and honest love which is the secret of spiritual sympathy and interpretation. How to recover the idea of God was the problem. The Bible distinctly undertakes its solution, and in so doing claims authoritatively to be known, not as a volume of history, a code of morals, a treatise on philosophy, but as the one written Book of God.

Inspiration had at the very outset to encounter the difficulty of language, inasmuch as there was no speech common to the whole world.* The world

*"And while thus the characteristic excellences of the Greek language invite us to the investigation of the likenesses and differences between words, to the study of the words of the New Testament there are reasons additional inviting us. If by such investigations as these we become aware of delicate variations in an author's meaning, which otherwise we might have missed, where is it so desirable that we should miss nothing, that we should lose no finer intention of the writer, as in those words which are the vehicles of the very mind of God Himself? If thus the intellectual riches of the student are increased, can this anywhere be of so great importance as there, where the intellectual may, if rightly used, prove spiritual riches as well? If it encourage thoughtful meditation on the exact forces of words, both as they are in themselves, and in their relation to other words, or in any way unveil to us their marvel and their mystery, this can nowhere else have a worth in the least approaching that which it acquires when the words with which we have to do are, to those who receive them aright, words of eternal life; while in the dead carcases of the same, if men suffer the spirit of life to depart from them, all manner of corruptions and heresies may be, as they have been, bred. The words of the New Testament are eminently the σroxea of Christian theology, and he who will not begin with a patient study of those, shall never make any considerable, least of all any secure, advances in this; for here, as everywhere else, sure disappointment awaits him who thinks to possess the whole without first possessing the parts of which that whole is composed."—ARCHBISHOP TRENCH on New Testament Synonyms.

has a common heart, a common nature, a common instinct, but not a common tongue. Even in the same language words constantly vary in expressiveness and value: not only does time change their application and their limits, but they actually convey different meanings to different minds; and there is not always an interpreter at hand to draw the line. of exact signification and prevent confusion and controversy. A word may not mean precisely the same thing to any two men, though it may be well known to both of them in a rough sense, which may suffice for ordinary purposes. How to express an eternal quantity through a mutable language! This is in another form the precise difficulty of the Incarnation; for what flesh is to spirit speech is to thought. The difficulty has never been wholly overcome,certainly not in the Incarnation, for Jesus Christ was despised and rejected of men; and certainly not in the Bible, for it has provoked more controversy, fiercer and bitterer too, than any other book in all literature. It should be noted, too, that the very objections which from the beginning have been urged against Christ, have also been pressed against the Bible; objections relating to form, to structure, to origin, to apparent contradiction, and to manifest insufficiency to meet the demands of the situation. In both cases human expectation was set at naught, and something was offered which could not but mortify the pride of the receiver. We must, then, go beyond forms, symbols, and measurable quantities, and find the meaning of inspiration in elevation

and purity of thought, in the scrupulousness and magnanimity of moral instinct, in the ennobling and all-hoping charity by which our best life is distinguished; and ceasing all pedantic strife about mere words, must cast ourselves with reverence and holy joy upon the eternal Word,

IV.

INSPIRATION AS A FACT.

So far we have looked at Inspiration as a doctrine; if we are to estimate its value as a fact, we must get at least a general notion of the principal characteristics of the particular book on behalf of which inspiration is claimed. In this and the succeeding chapter we shall move within what may be called extra-theological limits; for a purpose which will be disclosed as we proceed. At the outset, we must strongly deny that any man could a priori have told the proper scope and tone of a book divinely inspired. It is one thing to have the book, and to reason backwards; it is another to be called upon, in its absence, to say exactly what an inspired revelation should be. We have to found an opinion upon a particular book; and it will be entirely for the book itself to prove its own inspiration. The Bible must do, what every other book must do, that is to say, it must make its own place in the world; let it prove its inspiration by inspiring its readers ; let it show its heavenliness by the amount of heaven which it sets up on earth; if it fail by these tests, any attempt to uphold it by organised authority is absurd and hopeless. The object of this chapter is to gather into one view three or four marked charac

teristics of the book, simply regarded as a literary composition, and to ask the reader to assign them some value in the argument. At first, we open the Bible for critical, and not for theological purposes, and at once we encounter the difficulty arising from a profusion of peculiar and startling characteristics,

1. The Bible is undoubtedly marked by a wonderful reserve of power. Its writers nowhere betray any sign of exhaustion, nor do they display the slightest wish to make the most of their materials in a literary point of view. There are single chapters which any writer could easily have elaborated into a volume. The rule seems to have been to say everything in the fewest possible words. The Bible abounds in indications, brief, vivid, and multitudinous, and is, hence, pre-eminently a text-book. We wonder that the writers do not say more, yet we feel that even in their brevity they have said more than any other men have ever said. They have marvellous skill in perspective. They excite the greatest expectations, and then teach the readers whom they have thus almost frenzied, that such expectations are to be held as a discipline, and not to be pushed to a premature fulfilment. The great ambition of other sacred books seems to be to do everything they put a key into every lock; under every enigma they write at least a conjectural answer; they determine the attitudes and services proper to every hour of the day; and whatever intellectual energy they have is apparently expres