VI.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AS THE INTERPRETER OF SCRIPTURE.

PERHAPS there is no function assigned to the Holy Spirit more important for us to understand than that by which He assures to the church a profound and correct interpretation of Scripture. According to the teaching of the apostle Peter (than whom no man was more experimentally qualified to speak on the subject, seeing that he had often been rebuked for his impetuous treatment of divine utterances), “no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation;" and the reason which he gives for this is philosophically satisfactory, viz., as the prophecy did not come by the will of man it cannot be fully comprehended and explained by the intellectual power of man. In this case man was an instrument in receiving and pronouncing the word, and he must be an instrument also in the study and mastery of its meaning. As holy men of God were moved by the Holy Ghost to speak, so they must be moved by the Holy Ghost to feel and understand, the divine oracle. Yet above all other books the Bible calls for exposition; its very form sets at naught the laws of literary structure, whilst all its problems and questionings have about them the solemn yet fascinating weirdness of an unknown origin and purpose.

Its

preface is simply-"In the beginning GOD," and its epilogue is a curse on the man who takes away aught of its sacred store. Between these extremes, so appropriate yet so startling, is found the apostolic caution not to enclose for selfish uses any portion of the freehold meant for the whole world. The very fact that a protest is entered against the narrowness and insufficiency of "private interpretation" should beget a deeper confidence in the divinity and consequent pureness of the revelation. On the other hand what becomes of the right of private judgment? Can it be maintained without extorting from the holy word mistaken sanctions of personal crotchets or sectarian hobbies? Are unholy men to be turned promiscuously into the Book, and told to get out of it such advantages as they may suppose themselves to find? Is it so, or otherwise? This is a delicate inquiry, demanding treatment that shall in its human aspect be austerely reverent.

It is evident that the inevitable and most serious perils attending "private interpretation" constitute an unanswerable argument against it, as its exercise is commonly understood. Yes; the perils are inevitable as well as most serious, for in the first instance attention must of course be fixed on the letter, and the letter brings up instantly some of the most vexatious difficulties arising out of secondary interpretation, that is secondary in point of value and importance. There is, if one may so put it, a battle of grammars as well as a battle of doctrines, and by the very nature of the case it is but a small minority of

mankind that can take an enlightened and helpful part in such a controversy. Think of the intellectual training that is needful, the self-control, the patience, the thorough acquaintance with comparative philology, and the inexplicable sympathy which feels the meaning it cannot see. But turn untrained and spiritually incompetent men into a literature of which in its original form they are wholly ignorant, and who does not see that the results must be at once critically absurd and spiritually calamitous? Unfortunately the only man who does not see this is the man whose pride is wounded by the suggestion that there is some difference between a literal form and a spiritual meaning, and the consequence of his humiliation is that he repeats his errors with the greater emphasis, and proclaims that his most sacred rights are threatened or denied. Then there is the certain danger of fixing attention upon isolated passages, and so setting up denominations and schools upon texts, which being torn from the vital body of evidence, are perverted and exaggerated to the point of impiety,-the worst sort of impiety, too, namely the sort which sets aside common sense and literary rectitude under the pretence of superior sanctity and more humble faith. Is there a single monstrosity in the religious world that does not defend itself by some stray line of scripture, which if compared with other testimony, and read in the light of Jesus Christ's method of quotation-“ it is written again”—would assume another meaning, and probably tend in an opposite direction? Can we wonder that such partial interpretation is forbidden

in Scripture itself, and that the Bible prays to be protected from the ravages of bigoted and ignorant men? That the Bible exposes itself to such ravages is obviously in its favour, as suggesting that it is not cunningly fabricated and defended as a work of literary art, but that it comes upon the world as a living and generous revelation of spiritual truth addressed to the attention of the whole human family throughout all the ages of its progress, and so addressed (for there is a question of manner as well as of matter) as to challenge the most careful and unselfish thoughtfulness on the part of those who receive it. Given a God to find out what degree and quality of revelation He will grant, and no human mind would ever indicate such a book, as to structure and method, as the Bible. What dramatic action, rapidity of movement, brokenness of style, and apparent incoherence of plan! What little things are exaggerated, what obscure names are preserved, what trivial incidents are magnified! Stones enough, but where is the altar? Life in profusion, but how does it individualise itself into friendship, sympathy, and benediction ? In proportion to the life that is infused into any work would seem to be its exposure to variety and keenness of criticism. Insipid books soon find the way into oblivion, but books that have life compel the world to read them even though the reading lead to anger and hostility. A painted' portrait offers more points of attack than a photograph though the subject be the same; necessarily so; there is more life in the one than in the other; the sun is said to be a faithful

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painter, but that is not an unquestionable statement, --the sun cannot get at the soul; only soul can paint soul, only life can delineate life, man can see his shadow anywhere, but where can he see himself? As the portrait will excite more criticism than the photograph, so the living man will, by a glance or an attitude, a tone or a smile, elicit a thousand remarks which the most brilliant painting could never have suggested. So much for the subtle illimitableness of life! Is it just to determine the character of a man by a single feature of his personality, a feature detached and viewed apart? We should then have one estimate founded upon his stature, another upon his voice, a third upon his mien, a fourth upon his face, and so on according to the fancy of each observer, and yet we should, amidst all this variety, have little or no idea of the man himself: we should still require an estimate which recognised the relation of the parts to the whole and distinguished the incidental from the vital and inseparable. So in the work of Biblical interpretation, there must be an eye that can take in the whole landscape and a judgment which can allow for distance, light, and colour.

How, then, to realise these conditions and to bring them to bear? And especially how to do so as not to deprive any man of his Bible by shaming him into the consciousness of utter inability to read what he has hitherto prized as the plainest and wisest of books. He will not, as he ought not, give up the Bible easily ; and probably he will insist on the right of private judgment, and in a moment of jealous anger may