5, }$*. 23 
 
 iflrom % SItbrartr sxf 
 $roftBBnr Vtttfatttitt Smkinrtbg? Vhtrfitlb 
 
 '" . % iGtbrarg af 
 
 r 
 
 ^rittrrton Q%nlogtral ^Mttwarg 
 
 »H18 . ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
THE BREATH OF GOD 
 
 H Sfeetcb 
 
 HISTORICAL, CRITICAL AND LOGICAL OF. THE 
 DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. FRANK HALLAM 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE SUPREME RITE," "THE DEVIL'S MASTERPIECE," ETC. 
 
 "Thou sendest forth Thy breath." — Ps. civ. 30. 
 " Come from the four winds, O breath."— Ezek. xxxvii. 9. 
 
 h 
 
 NEW-YORK 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER 
 
 2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 
 1895 
 
 73- 
 
Copyright, 1895, 
 
 by 
 
 Rev. Frank Hallam. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE personal opinions of any man about questions of divine 
 truth are of little consequence to any but himself. It is 
 proper and fair to say, however, that in the chapters of this 
 little volume containing the " array " of the results of the 
 Higher Criticism it was not the author's intention to express 
 his own convictions upon each detail of criticism, but to set 
 forth with something of their own spirit and force the convic-/ 
 tions of the critics. It should be remembered that the Higher 
 Criticism is an immature and incomplete science. It is not 
 well nor wise for theologians or laymen to commit themselves 
 to every newly alleged fact or theory of scholars. The dis- 
 coveries and conclusions of one day are often reversed by those 
 of the succeeding period. It is eminently unwise for any one 
 to deliver himself body and soul, as it were, to the power of 
 a novel and specious criticism which he has no opportunity 
 of examining at first hand, but must accept, if he accept it 
 at all, upon the ipse dixit of another. Implicit faith in the in- 
 fallibility of the scientist, the philosopher, the scholar, and the 
 critic is one of the phases of modern madness unworthy of the 
 intellectual calibre of the age. Faith in the infallibility of 
 God, or even of the Bible, were infinitely preferable and more 
 rational. This author was not present at the Exodus, nor 
 did he follow, after the fashion of the immortal misery of the 
 Wandering Jew, the sad fortunes of Israel. He has not 
 deciphered the monuments nor unravelled the inscriptions of 
 Egyptian and Babylonian tablets. He does not, by the wit- 
 
 iii 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 ness.of the eye, "know the certainty of those things, wherein 
 thou hast been instructed," in all the particulars of criticism. 
 He merely states them for what they are worth, believing 
 that some of them are irresistible in point of fact, and others 
 of uncertain accuracy and import ; but believing also that if 
 every one of them were true, " the word of God is quick and 
 powerful ; " that it " liveth and abideth forever " ; that it is the 
 " blessed Lord who . . . caused all holy Scriptures to be writ- 
 ten for our learning " ; and that they are " written . . . with 
 the Spirit of the living God." F. H. 
 
 March 10, 1895. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 King Liber i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 His Courtiers 7 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 His Critics 27 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 His Blemishes 35 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 His Limitations 48 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 His Ministers 59 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 His Friends 66 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 His Divinity 77 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 His Exaltation 88 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 His Power 95 
 
 v 
 
THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 i. 
 
 KING LIBER. 
 
 " A Prince indeed, 
 Beyond all titles, and a household name, 
 Hereafter, thro' all times." 
 
 UNDER the mulberry-trees the pick fell and the city was 
 uncovered. Below it lay the sea, kissing its borders with 
 dimpled waves. Above it towered the mountain, to-day the 
 sleeping demon of a past devouring fire. Fierce and pitiless 
 Vesuvius had poured down her hail of burning cinders and 
 rolled upon the fated place her flood of flame. The terror of 
 that sudden hour to the people of Pompeii no voice hath ever 
 told : the fright and the attempted flight ; the frantic screams 
 and the despairing cries ; the overthrow of the fleeing multi- 
 tude and the burial in the tomb of fire. 
 
 The sea receded and the mountain slept, and the winds 
 swept dust upon the mighty grave. The grass sprang up and 
 grew, and the wandering herd fed there, and the mulberry- 
 trees arose and bore their fruit ; and seventeen hundred years 
 had passed away before the eye of man had looked beneath 
 the turf to see that the burial was there. But then the pick 
 flew, and moulded history came to light. Houses and thorough- 
 fares and temples and theatres were unveiled. The mural 
 pictures still adorned the walls. Statuary stood in the accus- 
 tomed places. The tradesman's and the housewife's tools 
 
 i 
 
2 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 were scattered here and there, to hand, as though the work- 
 man and the family had only put them by to take a daily 
 meal. Now and again the pick burst into a shallow hollow, 
 and careful lifting of the upper crust of hardened ashes re- 
 vealed the mould of human forms, as though the genius of the 
 great volcanic mount had fashioned them with an art that 
 strangely joined and intertwined both life and death. The 
 very passions of the human heart were petrified. The tragedy 
 of love was there in stony tableau. In one spot lay the fig- 
 ure of a woman with arms outstretched to clasp the figure of 
 a child — the image of a mother's imperishable love, wrought 
 by the burning of her body in the solid mould within the sep- 
 ulchre of the buried and forgotten city. 
 
 So modern enterprise, spurred by a zeal for antique learn- 
 ing, has been busy throwing up the dust of distant lands and 
 bringing buried wisdom into light. So ages that have slept 
 have been awakened. Despite the proverbs of the world the 
 grave has yielded up its secrets and the dead have told their 
 tales. Figures have come to view of men of whom the world 
 knew nothing. Heroes have stood again, as it were, upon 
 their feet, and walked forth to battle and to victory. Histories 
 have been made alive. Kings have been clothed in their 
 unknown or all-forgotten royalty. Myth has been changed 
 to fact, and Agamemnon's throne, unearthed, has told of Aga- 
 memnon's genuine life and heroism. 
 
 Among the figures of the past, standing Sphinx-like, partly 
 hidden in the sands of time, is one that overtowers and over- 
 shadows all. King Liber was the greatest of the kings — the 
 most distinguished of all history. It may appear impossible 
 to assign such rank. It may appear to be an extravagance of 
 rhetoric, a flight into the realm of myth or dreams or poetry. 
 In all the great procession of the royalties which have risen 
 successively through the vast stretch of centuries ; of men of 
 royal character and genius as well as royal birth, who have 
 flashed like meteors upon the skies of history, and swept around 
 their cycles as the stately comet sweeps across the heavens, it 
 
KING LIBER. 3 
 
 may seem difficult to nominate a king of kings. Yet this is 
 sober truth, not poetry : King Liber was the greatest of the 
 kings. Not Bacchus, god of the trailing and the fruitful vine, 
 whom Romans called by Liber's name. He lived before and 
 after Bacchus ; and so the two could never be confused, espe- 
 cially as men have defamed the deity of the rich, empurpled 
 grape, and made him seem the god of filthy drunkenness and 
 " bacchanalian " revels. And this one had a wider and a 
 loftier renown than all. His history and character have never 
 been unknown from the hour of his birth in that far-off oriental 
 land where he began his reign. But there have been clouded 
 periods and hidden passages in his career. And still the 
 clouds of time are partly hanging over him. But research has 
 pierced the darkness of the past and stripped away the hin- 
 drances to sight, and now his princely figure stands revealed 
 as it has never been before ; and men may trace the march of 
 his conquests, and see the features of his countenance, and 
 listen to his speech with understanding, and feel the throbbing 
 of his mighty heart, as immortal characters may be seen and 
 felt across the dying ages. And therefore it is to a calm, dis- 
 passionate judgment and to a sober, reasonable justice that 
 his superiority appeals. Visions may be summoned of the 
 splendors of the Pharaohs in their poetic land, rich in its his- 
 tory of culture and achievement. The monuments may tell 
 their stories of the mighty past. The Sphinx may half reveal 
 his ancient secret as he stands but half uncovered in the des- 
 ert, and half conceal it in his lips of stone. The pyramids 
 may linger like enduring time, the symbols of that immortality 
 which was the glory of Egyptian faith, and lock within their 
 cavernous breasts the royal mummies which in hardened silence 
 proclaim the resurrection of the body. Armies and thrones 
 and palaces and temples may stand in magnificent array, to 
 tell of splendor and power and wisdom, matchless in their age 
 and dazzling future ages. But King Liber had a wider realm, 
 a greater power, a statelier magnificence, a loftier wisdom and 
 enlightenment. 
 
4 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 Imagination may revel in the pictures of the empires of the 
 earth. It may picture Alexander in the flood of his youthful 
 brilliancy conquering nation after nation, until insatiate ambi- 
 tion had wrung tears, in curious paradox, from the flashing, 
 martial eyes. It may see the mighty Caesars shaking the na- 
 tions with their mailed hands, and treading them beneath their 
 feet with victorious armies, and building up the empire with 
 the vigor of the Roman arms, and with the wisdom of the 
 Roman sages, and with the symmetry and strength of Roman 
 law, and with the culture of their poets and orators and states- 
 men, until the " Eternal City " had become " the mistress of 
 the world." Imagination may portray the rising glories of 
 Charlemagne bedimming those of fallen Rome, consolidating 
 government, enriching justice, and spreading learning abroad 
 throughout his realms ; or Alfred of England, in his goodness 
 and greatness, laying the foundations, as a master builder 
 among kings, of the grandest of modern kingdoms ; or Cceur 
 de Lion, in his chivalry and faith, fighting for the sepulchre of 
 the Monarch of all life. But King Liber has blotted out the 
 boundary-lines of nations, and conquered all the worlds, and 
 built up the empire of all time. His laws have shaped the 
 legislation of all future history. His dominion has stretched 
 across the centuries. His wisdom is like the wisdom of the 
 Infinite. His culture is the culture of eternity. He has con- 
 quered souls, not territory. He has won for himself an ever- 
 lasting honor and renown. His reign will never end. 
 
 The poets said he was the child of God; and saints and 
 pilgrims have caught up the rhythm of their song and sung 
 it through the centuries. But he was not a god. Yet men 
 gave him an apotheosis. As the greatest of the emperors, 
 though he was never decorated with the title of Augustus, be- 
 cause he was essentially august they crowned him, not with 
 bay and olive, nor with gold and flashing jewels, but with the 
 crown of reverence and praise ; and they fell down and wor- 
 shipped him. And the imperial gods of ancient Rome never 
 looked so royal in imperial purple and resplendent diadems. 
 
KING LIBER. 5 
 
 They never won such worship in the pomp of their living 
 power or in the lavish magnificence of those royal sepulchres 
 which became their shrines. 
 
 King Liber saw the beginnings of his life in the land of 
 Moab or of Canaan, it is said, three thousand years ago. He 
 lives and reigns to-day. Let us look into his face and history. 
 
 King Liber, translated into English, is the Bible, or the 
 Book. And the Bible has been enthroned and worshipped ; 
 yes, worshipped. It is a curious piece of history, but it is 
 true ; the Bible has been practically worshipped, for centuries 
 past, in the gathered volume, and, before the gathering of the 
 volume, in the earlier books. There was never any shrine or 
 idol that had more superstitious homage. There was never 
 any charm or relic, blessed to avert disaster, which had, in 
 men's opinions, a greater power to swerve the bullet from the 
 heart or turn the edge of the sword. There was never any 
 oracle which men more blindly sought, or looked to more 
 submissively for judgment. Its power has been unparalleled 
 in its range of time and territory. Its worshippers have been 
 among the leading races of mankind ; among the most intelli- 
 gent and enlightened people ; among the disciples of the most 
 exalted religion in the world. It has been invested with su- 
 preme authority in every line and precept, in every metaphor 
 and illustration, in every word and syllable, in every jot and 
 tittle. It has stood, as Herod stood, "gorgeously arrayed," 
 resplendent and dazzling by its superb presence, until men 
 shouted, " It is the voice of a god, and not of " — a book. 
 
 In the highest Christian culture of to-day there is reverence 
 as high and honor as profound for the eternal truths of Scrip- 
 ture, and there is worship as devout for their divine Source, as 
 ever in the ages past. Let it not be thought that in speaking 
 of the superstitious folly of men there is a breath of irreverence 
 toward God or dishonor to his incomparable Word. There is 
 reverence to-day, wise and discriminating. But there is also 
 a blind fanaticism, lingering after the ages of darkness, which 
 converts the Bible into a fetish as absolute and awful, as pre- 
 
6 , THE BREATH OE GOD. 
 
 posterous and vain, as was ever made by heathen hands on 
 the banks of the Congo or the Nile. And all because the 
 Bible has been thought to be inspired, which seemed to mean 
 handed down, in part at least, from heaven ; written with the 
 hand of Deity ; written under the divine dictation, when men 
 became machines and lost their personality, when every human 
 element was snatched from the writers except the guiding of 
 the pen across the shining parchment, when human souls were 
 practically dumb and dead, and the Spirit of the Godhead 
 usurped their place and functions. 
 Let us trace the history of this cultus. 
 
II. 
 
 HIS COURTIERS. 
 
 " The shadow of his loss drew like eclipse, 
 Darkening the world." 
 
 " To us the imagined voice of God himself." 
 
 SIX hundred years before the coming of the Christ the 
 sound of war was in the land of Israel. The Babyloni- 
 ans had come, and King Zedekiah trembled in Jerusalem. 
 The sacred city was besieged and fell. The king was blinded 
 and carried off to Babylon, the people led into captivity. The 
 gorgeous temple, that masterpiece of ancient architecture, the 
 symbol and the dwelling-place of Israel's God, was rifled of 
 its treasures and destroyed. The sacred oracles were lost. 
 The books, which Israel held more dear, perhaps, than any 
 other treasure, were mingled with the wreck of storm and fire 
 and vandalism which followed in the track of conquest. 
 
 A century and a half had passed away, when out of the 
 land of captivity Ezra came to work a restoration. He was 
 clothed with authority from the foreign masters, and was a 
 priest of God. The temple might be built again and the 
 nation restored to its illustrious worship. But the sacred 
 books were gone — obliterated ! The nation was without a 
 law and without an oracle! What could be done? Moses 
 was dead, and his grave lay hidden " by Nebo's lonely moun- 
 tain." He could not write again with living hand the precious 
 laws, or trace the illustrious history. It was a dire extremity. 
 How could its pressing needs be met ? * 
 
 * The capture of Jerusalem and the burning of the temple are histor- 
 ical ; l the burning of the sacred books only traditional. It is natural to 
 suppose that the sacred writings kept in the temple may have been 
 
 1 II. Kings xxv. 8, 9. 
 7 
 
8 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 History is silent on the subject for almost all of six long 
 centuries. But near the end of the first century of the Chris- 
 tian era the second book of Esdras was written. We do not 
 know its author, nor the exact year of its completion. We do 
 not shut our eyes to the tremendous gulf of time that stretches 
 between the disastrous situation in Jerusalem and the time of 
 II. Esdras. But the author was bold to hazard a solution 
 of the difficulty — to write as sober history a brilliant story, 
 worthy of a prophetic power to pierce the darkness of the 
 hidden years, or illustrious as a daring feat of the imagina- 
 tion. It is a story of sublime faith in the omnipotent power 
 of God to meet all exigencies, and of an unparalleled gift, in 
 
 " burnt " ; but other copies probably survived, in the hands of scribes or 
 other individuals. Portions of the law, at least, were in the hands of lay 
 people. The king was to have a copy of such parts as related to him. 1 
 "Fathers" were to teach its precepts to "children." 2 Every seven 
 years, at the feast of Tabernacles, Deuteronomy was to be read to the 
 gathered people. And the later custom of reading the Scriptures in the 
 synagogues perhaps was foreshadowed by earlier public or quasi-public 
 readings. Copies of the Scriptures were certainly made, and must have 
 been either rescued from the burning temple, or preserved in royal 
 libraries or state custody, or in the hands of priests or other officers of 
 the church or state. 3 Otherwise we should be driven to believe that the 
 church and nation had committed the folly of maintaining a solitary vol- 
 ume of the law and Scripture, and to the acceptance of the fable of II. Es- 
 dras ; or else we should have to believe that the entire Scripture was 
 unwritten till after the captivity. But the tradition that the books were 
 burned, and that Ezra rewrote them, was believed by prominent Christian 
 fathers, and in early Christian writings, such as Clement of Alexandria, 4 
 Tertullian, 5 and Chrysostom, 6 and in an old writing attributed to Augus- 
 tine, 7 and in the Clementine homilies. 8 Irenaeus, 9 Theodoret, 10 and Basil n 
 thought that the Scriptures were corrupted during the captivity, and that 
 
 I Deut. xvii. 18-20. 2 Deut. vi. 7-9. 
 
 3 Deut. xxxi. 26; cf. I. Sam. x. 25. 4 Stromata, i., 22. 
 
 5 De Cultu fceminarum, c. 3. 
 
 6 Horn, viii., in Ep. Heb., Migne's ed., xvii., 74- 
 
 7 De Mirab. Sac. Scrip., ii., 33. 8 Horn, iii., c. 47. 
 
 9 Adv. Haereses, iii., 21, 22. 10 Praef. in Psalmos. 
 
 II Epis. ad Chilonem, Migne's ed., iv., 358. 
 
HIS COURTIERS. 9 
 
 all the history of miracle, to Ezra his servant, the priest and 
 scribe. It is important to be mentioned here, because this 
 story has spread its influence all down the after-centuries, and 
 lent its color to much subsequent thought about the origin of 
 the Bible. It tells of how Ezra pleaded before the everlasting 
 throne that the nation might be lifted out of its solemn diffi- 
 culty ; and how the answer came. God lit " a candle of un- 
 derstanding " in his heart. The light and flame were of the 
 Holy Ghost. The heart was warmed and the understanding 
 saw; and to the kindling vision of the scribe Moses and all 
 Israel sprang up again out of the hidden past. History and 
 the law were called back, and, word for word, as they had 
 stood before in the lost books, the sacred writings were restored.* 
 This is the beginning of King Liber's open history. This 
 was the period of his coronation. Ezra " slew idolatry " and 
 
 Ezra restored them. Jerome is " indifferent " to whether Moses or Ezra 
 was the author of the Pentateuch. 1 Bellarmine thought that the books 
 were not entirely lost, and that Ezra corrected and improved the copies he 
 restored. 2 
 
 * " For thy law is burnt, therefore no man knoweth the things that are 
 done of thee or the works that shall begin. But if I have found grace 
 before thee, send the Holy Ghost into me, and I shall write all that hath 
 been done in the world since the beginning, which were written in thy 
 law, that men may find thy path. And he answered me, saying, . . . 
 Come hither and I will light a candle of understanding in thine heart, 
 which shall not be put out till the things be performed which thou shalt 
 begin to write, and when thou hast done some things shalt thou publish, 
 and some shalt thou show secretly to the wise : to-morrow at this hour 
 shalt thou begin to write. . . . And the next day, behold, a voice called 
 me, saying, Esdras, open thy mouth, and drink what I give thee to drink! 
 Then opened I my mouth, and, behold, he reached me a full cup, which 
 was full as it were with water, but the color of it was like fire, and I took 
 it and drank : and when I had drunk of it, my heart uttered understand- 
 ing, and wisdom grew in my breast, for my spirit strengthened my mem- 
 ory." — II. Esdras xiv. 21-26, 38-40. In the power of this gift, the story 
 goes on to say, ninety-four books were written in forty days. Of these 
 Ezra was to " publish openly " the first twenty-four. The other seventy 
 
 1 Adv. Helvidiium. 2 jj e Verbo Dei, lib. 2. 
 
10 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 lifted a book above the dismantled altars to occupy the vacant 
 throne. This is the beginning of the history of Inspiration — 
 that mystic word which we would fain unveil within these 
 pages. This is the most brilliant instance of the highest the- 
 ory in human thought ; an illustration of the blowing of the 
 Breath of God. 
 
 What shall we think of it, and all its progeny of varying 
 opinion, as we trace their history through thirty centuries ? It 
 is not a definition, but the allegation of a fact. The books 
 beyond the reach of human recovery were copied through the 
 direct enlightenment of the Holy Ghost. God breathed his 
 breath, or Spirit, into the ardent scribe. Is it true ? Is it 
 true of all the sacred writers and of all the Scripture canon ? 
 Is the Bible inspired ? Did God breathe into it the breath of 
 spiritual life ? 
 
 i. The Talmud thought so, much as Esdras thought so, 
 without defining the nature of the fact — the Talmud, that 
 marvelous rival and outstripper of the books themselves : oral 
 at first, supplementary to the Law and explanatory of it, and 
 then growing superior to it in the Jewish estimation, and 
 written down with endless detail and refinement. In many 
 utterances it paid its tribute to the Law as " given by inspira- 
 tion of God." 
 
 And Philo thought so — the Jewish scholar, the Alexandrian 
 philosopher, the brilliant writer and exponent of Jewish 
 thought ; among the first of their authorities at the Christian 
 era, distinguished as one of their master minds in all the 
 centuries since. He speaks of " sacred Scriptures," " sacred 
 books," the " sacred Word," the " oracle," as the Talmud does. 
 He speaks of different degrees of inspiration, but says that 
 the prophets had the divine communications in an "ecstasy," 
 and were " passive " under them. " The prophet," he declares, 
 
 he was to show only " to such as be wise." The twenty-four were the 
 twenty-four books of the Old Testament, the number by the Jewish com- 
 putation. Yet at the time of Ezra many of those books had not been 
 written and their authors had not been born. 
 
HIS COURTIERS. II 
 
 "gives forth nothing of his own, but acts at the prompting 
 of another in all his utterances. As long as he is under 
 inspiration he is in ignorance, his reason departing from its 
 place and yielding up the citadel of his soul, the Divine Spirit 
 enters into it and dwells in it." 1 He insists that there is 
 " nothing superfluous in the law." 2 Every word is divine. 
 Even Hebraisms have a special significance, such as "blessing 
 I will bless," and "let him die the death." And the little 
 words as well, as in "brought him out," and "thou shalt not 
 plant thyself a vineyard." But Philo was enthusiastic on the 
 matter of inspiration. He ascribed it to the Septuagint;* to 
 the great philosophers ; to all good men ; and, in rapt mo- 
 ments, even to himself. Plato is the "most sacred," Hera- 
 
 1 De Special, Legg., iv., 8 (Mangey, ii., 343). 
 
 2 De Prof., 10 (Mang., i., 554). 
 
 * The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures — 
 apparently the earliest translation ever made. History tells us that it 
 was a growth. When it began, and how long it continued, and by whom 
 it was made, cannot be determined. The earliest mention of it is in a 
 forged letter signed by the name of Aristeas, an officer of Ptolemy Phila- 
 delphus. This Ptolemy reigned in Egypt thirty-eight years, beginning in 
 285 B.C. The next direct evidence of its existence is given by Aristobu- 
 lus, the Jewish-Alexandrian philosopher, who lived in the reign of Ptol- 
 emy Philometor, 180-145 B.C. ; and the next in the prologue to Ecclesias- 
 ticus, which shows that it was known in 130 B.C. By the time of Christ 
 it was current among the Jews — the popular version read in the syna- 
 gogues and used by the apostles. Afterward it was the version referred 
 to and quoted by the New Testament, and the version used by the Chris- 
 tian fathers and the Christian people of the early centuries. Its name 
 comes from a fable in the forged letter of Aristeas, which said that Deme- 
 trius Phalereus, keeper of the library at Alexandria, begged Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus to have a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures made. That 
 the king assented; sent commissioners to Eleazar, the high priest at Jeru- 
 salem, asking him to send six scholars from each of the twelve tribes to 
 Alexandria to make it ; and that this was clone. The fable continues to 
 the effect that the translators were confined in separate cells, and each 
 made his translation alone ; and that when the translations were completed 
 and compared they were found to be all literally alike. As there were 
 seventy-two translators — seventy in round numbers the version became 
 
12 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 clitus the "great and renowned," Parmenides, Empedocles, 
 Zeno, and Cleanthes, " godlike men, and as it were a true and 
 in the strict sense sacred band." * 
 
 A half-century after Philo, Josephus arises to give his testi- 
 mony — the great Jewish historian of the Christian era ; a " He- 
 brew of the Hebrews " ; of high political prominence among 
 his countrymen, and influential at the courts of Nero and 
 Vespasian. " He speaks of ' the Deity as being present with ' 
 a writer ; of ' holding converse with God ' ; of ' being possessed 
 or inspired by God ' ; of ' being filled with Deity ' ; of ' being 
 in a state of divine inspiration ' ; of ' the Spirit of God taking 
 hold of the prophets ' ; of ' the divine gift passing over ' from 
 one person to another." 2 He says that Balaam prophesied, 
 " not as master of himself, but moved to say what he did by 
 the divine Spirit." 3 He represents Balaam as though saying 
 to Balak, " Thinkest thou that it is in our power to speak or 
 be silent . . . when the Spirit of God takes possession of us ? 
 For he causes us to utter words such as he wills and speeches 
 without our knowledge ... for when he has entered into 
 us nothing that is in us is any longer our own." 4 He declares 
 that the Jews, from the hour of their birth, esteem the Scrip- 
 ture as the "decrees of God," and, as the evidence of their 
 fidelity and reverence toward the Bible, that " no one has ever 
 dared to add or subtract or alter anything in it." 5 
 
 2. The Rabbins — which is the same as rabbis, which -is the 
 same as teachers, masters, doctors — according to all acounts 
 of them, were believers in the highest literal and verbal in- 
 spiration. Organized in the Sanhedrin before and after the 
 time of Christ, and represented from century to century by 
 the learned scholars of later days, they have ever stood as 
 
 known as the translation of the Seventy, or the Septuagint. Philo be- 
 lieved this fable. Hence his belief in the inspiration of the Septuagint. 
 
 1 Passages in Schiirer, Gesch. d. Jiid. Volkes, ii., 868. 
 
 2 Inspiration, Sanday, p. 77. 
 
 3 Josephus, Antiquities, iv., 6, 5. 
 
 4 Contra Apion, i., 8. 5 Ibid. 
 
HIS COURTIERS. 13 
 
 leading representatives of Jewish thought. They said that God 
 handed the Mosaic writings already written from heaven; 1 
 that Jehovah himself was so fascinated by their perfection 
 that he spent three hours a day in the study of them; 2 that 
 " the numbers of the letters, every single letter, the collocation 
 of every letter, the transposition, the substitution, had a spe- 
 cial, even a supernatural power." 3 The later Jews preserved a 
 tradition that when Moses went up into Mount Sinai "he 
 found Jehovah making the ornamental letters in the book of 
 the Law." " They were most scrupulous in recording every 
 little peculiarity of writing, every correction or variety of 
 reading ; they counted every word, every verse, every letter ; 
 recorded how many times each separate letter of the alphabet 
 occurs ; told how often the same word occurs at the begin- 
 ning, middle or end of a verse ; they gave the middle verse, 
 middle word, middle letter of each book of the Pentateuch ; 
 they would not dare to alter in the text even an evident mis- 
 take, but had an intricate method of indicating it on the mar- 
 gin. ' My son,' said Rabbi Ishmael, ' take great heed how 
 thou doest thy work — for thy work is the work of Heaven — 
 lest thou drop or add a letter of the manuscript, and so be- 
 come a destroyer of the world.' " 4 
 
 And yet the rabbins and the later Jews did not rank the 
 Scriptures on a single level of inspiration. Their Bible was 
 marked with three great divisions : the Law, the Prophets, and 
 the Hagiographa or Sacred Writings. These, in themselves, 
 imply a distinction. Maimonides, a learned Spanish rabbi of 
 the twelfth century, elaborates eleven degrees of inspiration. 5 
 The modern Jews, as represented by Abarbonel, have reduced 
 these to three* The Mosaic is first, the Prophetic second, 
 and that of the Holy Spirit, strange to say, the third and low- 
 
 1 How God Inspired the Bible, Smyth, p. 50. a Ibid. 
 
 3 Hist. Interp., Farrar, p. 97 (quoted). 
 
 4 Old Documents and New Bible, Smyth, p. 91. 
 
 5 The Inspiration of Holy Scripture, William Lee, D.D., p. 457. 
 
 6 Ibid. 
 
14 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 est. With all the Jews Moses, in this matter, is ever facile 
 princeps. Maimonides says: " All the other prophets saw the 
 prophecy in a dream or in a vision ; but our Rabbi Moses 
 while he was awake. 1 To all the other prophets it was re- 
 vealed through the medium of an angel . . . but to Moses 
 it is said, ' With him will I speak mouth to mouth,' 2 and ' face 
 to face ;' y and ' as a man speaketh unto his friend.' " 4 
 
 3. From the rabbins we look onward to the Christian 
 Fathers. They also rise out of the dim distance and bear 
 witness. It is not infallible. It is not the voice of authority. 
 They were not themselves inspired. They stand upon a level 
 with saints and doctors in all ages; and faith and learning 
 to-day may teach as much, or more, as in the days gone by. 
 But time and distance have invested the fathers with a mel- 
 low radiance, and mediaeval sentimentalism has crowned their 
 reverend heads with halos of glory. They stand far off from 
 us, and " distance lends enchantment to the view." They 
 stand comparatively near, in point of time, to the origin of 
 Christianity. In point of fact, they stood far off in many 
 instances. A hundred long and weary years from Christ — or 
 two centuries, or five — may as effectually close the door to 
 knowledge as twenty. Tradition revels in inaccuracies. But 
 in the lapse of time a century becomes a unit, and the long 
 perspective, which makes the horizon kiss the sea, makes the 
 units touch each other, until it seems as though the centuries 
 were linking hands, and the age of Constantine falls into the 
 embrace of that of Christ. But still the fathers are justly rich 
 in modern memory. They were among the pioneers and 
 heroes of the cross. They bear illustrious names, and belong 
 to an illustrious line. If human opinion in testimony to a fact 
 has any value, the opinions of the fathers have distinguished 
 merit. Clement of Rome says that the sacred writings are 
 " true words of the Holy Ghost." 5 Justin Martyr, that the 
 
 1 Yad Hachazakah, ch. vii., p. 116 (Bernard's translation). 
 
 2 Num. xii. 8. 3 Ex. xxxiii. II. 4 Ibid. 
 5 Quoted by Smyth, How God Inspired the Bible, p. 74. 
 
HIS COURTIERS. 15 
 
 Spirit acted on the writers as " the plectrum striking the 
 lyre." 1 Athenagoras says that "the Spirit uses the writers as 
 a flute-player might blow into his flute." 2 Irenseus : " We know 
 the Scriptures, as being spoken by the Word of God and his 
 Spirit." 3 Tertullian : " I adore the perfection of Scriptures. 
 ... If it is not written, let them fear the woe which is des- 
 tined for them who add to or take away." 4 Athanasius: 
 " The holy and divinely inspired Scriptures are of themselves 
 sufficient to the enunciation of the truth." 5 Basil : " Believe 
 those things which are written ; the things which are not 
 written seek not." 6 Tertullian speaks of the Scriptures as 
 " uttered by God and dictated by the Holy Ghost." " He 
 will not allow to Valentinian that there are any varying de- 
 grees of inspiration, nor to Marcion that Paul's insight was 
 any deeper than that of other apostles." 7 He thought that 
 the divine communications were given to the writers in an 
 "ecstasy" or "trance." 8 Clement of Alexandria believed in 
 " verbal inspiration and the complete infallibility of Scrip- 
 ture." 9 Augustine 10 " speaks of the Gospels as dictated by 
 the Head of the church, and generally asserts the infallible 
 accuracy of every word of Scripture." He calls the writers 
 " pens of the Holy Ghost." n Eusebius " is indignant that 
 one should assert the possibility of the psalmist making a mis- 
 take in a name." 12 He says that " the divine Scriptures were 
 spoken by the Holy Ghost." 13 Origen, the greatest scholar 
 among Christians of his day, says that " Christ, the Word of 
 God, was in Moses and the prophets . . . and by his Spirit 
 they spake and did all things." u He " believed in the inspira- 
 
 1 Quoted by Smyth, How God Inspired the Bible, p. 74. 
 
 2 Quoest. ad Autolyc., ii., 9. 
 
 3 Verbo Dei, etc., lib. 2., c. 47. 4 Adv. Hermogenem, c. 22. 
 5 Contra Gentes, torn, i., p. I. Basil, Horn. xxix. 
 
 7 Bamp. Lee., 1885, p. 177; Apol., 18; De Pudic., 17. 
 
 8 How God Inspired the Bible, Smyth, p. 75. 9 Ibid. 
 
 10 Ibid. 11 Bamp. Lee., 1885, p. 237. 
 
 12 How God Inspired the Bible, p. 75. 
 
 13 Westcott, Introduction, p. 417. 14 Ibid., p. 430. 
 
1 6 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 tion of the Septuagint 1 and saw hidden mysteries in its sole- 
 cisms and errors." 2 * 
 
 But the fathers were not always consistent. Great and 
 famous and full of faith and deeply reverential, the critical 
 faculty was not always dead in them. They sometimes picked 
 flaws in the sacred Word, and arraigned it before the bar of 
 reason, and found sentence against it, as we shall see. 
 
 4. In the " dark ages " f there was naturally no flood of 
 light cast upon the question of Inspiration. Christian opinion, 
 more blindly, remained the same as in the early centuries ; and 
 largely so throughout the scholastic period. % Commentaries 
 and treatises and volumes were but the echoes of the senti- 
 ments of the fathers. Questions springing out of the critical 
 faculty were answered by the allegorical interpretation § or by 
 the voice of the papacy. 
 
 By the allegorical method the letter was divine, but the 
 spirit was diviner still. There was a literal sense, of course ; 
 but there was also a mystical sense, more luminous and lofty. 
 The method was ■ begotten of Aristobulus, and matured by 
 
 1 Origen, Philokal, p. 33. 2 Bamp. Lee, 1885, p. 189. 
 
 * The opinions of the fathers here given are few in number, but they 
 are fair examples of the opinions of all. To quote them more freely is 
 only to multiply repetitions. 
 
 t From the seventh to the twelfth centuries. 
 
 t From the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. 
 
 § The use of allegory in interpreting Scripture arose among the Alex- 
 andrian Jews in the second century B.C. Aristobulus (160 B.C.), a Jew 
 of Alexandria, is the first known to have used it. Instances of it first 
 appear in some fragments of his and in the forged letter of Aristeas. 
 Aristobulus was a Peripatetic philosopher, and, charmed with the Platonic 
 thought, he sought a harmony between the beauty of Greek ideas and the 
 revelation of the Hebrew Scriptures. He would exalt Moses and Abra- 
 ham in the eyes of the cultured Greeks. He would lift the Law and the 
 history of the chosen people, even in trivial details of expression, to stand 
 upon a level with the high conceits of philosophy. So it came about that 
 the letter of Scripture was thought to be written only for the ignorant. 
 The learned and spiritual might pierce through the precincts of the letter 
 and stand within the boundaries of a new world of grand ideas. 
 
HIS COURTIERS. 17 
 
 Philo, and propelled far down into the Christian centuries. 
 To illustrate : Philo says, " It would be a sign of great sim- 
 plicity to think that the world was created in six days, or in- 
 deed at all in time." Six was a perfect number. Again, that 
 " God planted a garden in Eden ... let not such fabulous 
 nonsense ever enter your minds." 1 God plants virtue on 
 earth in human souls. Augustine says that the drunkenness 
 of Noah was " a figure of the death and passion of Christ." 2 
 Thomas Aquinas says that the words in Genesis known as the 
 fiat of creation, " Let there be light," mean " Let Christ be 
 love." 3 Pope Boniface VIII. declared that Christ's com- 
 mand to Peter, " Feed my lambs," because kings were not 
 excepted, gave him power to set aside their decrees ; that the 
 plural " keys " in the apostolic commission meant kingly as 
 well as papal power ; that Christ's injunction to the fishermen, 
 " Launch out into the deep," meant " Go to Rome ; betake 
 thyself to the city which hath dominion over all nations, and 
 there lay down thy net." 4 So, in the hands of rabbis, fathers, 
 popes, and schoolmen, the mystical sense became the solvent 
 of every difficulty of interpretation. History, science, facts, 
 chronology, uncertainties of text and renderings, had no place 
 where language was chiefly allegory. The traditional opinions 
 about the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible were the 
 only ones. What the rabbis and fathers had thought, what 
 the pope thought, was quite enough for the inquiring spirit. 
 Gregory the Great, in the latter half of the sixth century, 
 spoke of the writers of Scripture as "pens of the triune 
 God." 5 He was followed by many others. Bonaventura, in 
 the thirteenth century, 'in overpowering Latin eloquence, pays 
 tribute to the Bible thus : " Its altitude is unattainable because 
 of its inviolable authority ; its plenitude inexhaustible because 
 of its inscrutable profundity ; its certitude infallible because of 
 
 1 Bamp. Lee, 1885, p. 143 (quoted). 
 
 2 Horn, in Gen., 13, §3. 
 
 3 Bamp. Lee., 1885, p. 275. 
 
 4 Ibid., p. 298 (quoted). 5 Ibid., p. 287. 
 
1 8 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 its irrefutable progress ; its value inappreciable because of its 
 inestimable fruit ; its pulchritude incontaminable because of its 
 impermixtible purity." : Nicholas of Lyra, in the fourteenth 
 century, "repeats the phrase that God is the auctor principalis 
 of Scripture." 2 "The faculties of Louvain and Douai called 
 it ' an intolerable and great blasphemy ' to say that there was 
 an otiose word in Scripture. ' Every phrase, syllable, tittle, 
 and point is full of a divine sense.' " 3 
 
 The idea of all this period was clearly the traditional idea 
 of Inspiration. " It was confused with verbal dictation, and 
 the Bible was turned into an amulet or fetish with which ' the 
 church ' could do as it liked. The result was ' to nullify the 
 use of Scripture as a record of the divine dealings with the 
 successive generations of mankind. The voice of God was 
 no longer heard as it spoke at sundry times and in divers man- 
 ners to holy men of old, but simply as uttering the hallowed 
 symbols of an oracular wisdom., The whole of Scripture was 
 treated as one contemporaneous production, of which the 
 several parts might be expounded without reference to the 
 circumstances in which each was delivered.' And thus the 
 Bible was degraded to the level of the Koran, and the piety 
 of the schoolmen became a superstition, transubstantiating the 
 Word of God into the verbal elements by which it was signi- 
 fied." 4 
 
 5. But Scholasticism had taught men to think. It was a 
 light shining in a dark place. When Charlemagne decreed 
 that every abbey in his realm should have a school he kindled 
 the torches of knowledge throughout the land. And when 
 the years passed on, and out of the schools arose the scholars, 
 or schoolmen, learning and philosophy and the habit of 
 thought revived. Scholasticism was imperfect. It did not 
 strip away the night of the dark ages, but it penetrated its 
 gloom. It did not destroy superstition, but it kindled a flame 
 
 l Bamp. Lee, 1885, p. 273. 2 Hist. Interp., Farrar, p. 276. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 294. 
 
 4 Ibid., p. 283; Hampden, Bamp. Lee, pp. 88-92. 
 
II IS COURTIERS. ly 
 
 that grew into the Renaissance and the Reformation, until the 
 light was like the coming of the sun in its splendor. 
 
 Following scholasticism, and stirred into activity by its 
 leaven, came the mental and spiritual forces which overthrew 
 the despotism of church and empire. The feudal system was 
 weakened ; paper was invented, and the mariners' compass, 
 and gunpowder, and the art of printing ; the ocean was ex- 
 plored and continents discovered; and Copernicus, revelling 
 in the stars, emblazoned the world with the shining truth of 
 their systems. 
 
 And following the Renaissance came the Reformation; 
 another thing not perfect, even as there are spots on the sun ; 
 but the most brilliant achievement of modern history, the 
 pledge and guaranty of spiritual liberty for future generations. 
 The Reformation was not the final development of doctrine. 
 It was not a personality, invested with supreme authority in 
 matters of faith and worship. It has not closed the cycles of 
 Christian thought. But it broke the power of the great his- 
 toric superstition. It bound the papacy to a narrower do- 
 minion, and disabled it forever. For the tide of history does 
 not set again into the currents of the past. An effete heresy 
 can never be completely rehabilitated. An ancient peculiarity 
 can never anachronize the future and again become the prime 
 characteristic of organic Christianity. 
 
 The Reformation raised its illustrious revolt against the 
 authority of the Roman hierarchy. The voice of the pope 
 had been the final answer to questions controverted. The 
 people, craving certainty about eternal issues, had found it in 
 the papal decrees. But when they threw off their allegiance 
 to the pope certainty was gone, unless another infallible 
 authority was found. Where could it be but in the Bible ? 
 Hence the famous saying of an English theologian : " The 
 Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants." 
 That sentiment had sprung up in the hearts of many — in 
 France, Germany, Switzerland, England — before it was coined 
 into those famous words. Hitherto the Bible was thought to 
 
20 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 be inspired because such was the universal tradition. Jews 
 and Christians, rabbis and fathers, bishops and schoolmen, 
 had believed it to be inspired. Now there was an exigency 
 demanding inspiration. With past authority stripped away, 
 the Bible was the only refuge. It must be the voice of God. 
 It must have been delivered by the Holy Ghost. At this 
 time, also, the revival of learning had made it plain that the 
 allegorical interpretation was untenable. It could not explain 
 discrepancies and answer questions by lifting them above the 
 vulgar letter into the serene, ineffable heaven of the mystical 
 sense. And as allegory and the pope went hand in hand 
 down into the darkness of an innocent disuse, the inspired 
 Bible, in a more rational and human sense, simply answering 
 the bombardment of interrogation, became the supreme dic- 
 tator to the Protestant multitudes. 
 
 Luther, the most powerful personality among reformers, 
 the man who gave the German people the German Bible, re- 
 ferring to the composition of the Scriptures, says: "The Holy 
 Ghost is the all-simplest writer that is in heaven or earth." 1 
 Again, he says that " one letter, yea a single tittle of the Scrip- 
 tures, is of more or greater consequence than heaven or earth." 2 
 
 Calvin, the founder of modern Presbyterian theology, " like 
 all the Reformers, speaks incessantly of the supreme and final 
 authority of the Scriptures," and seems to have "held that 
 Scripture flowed from the very mouth of God." 3 "When 
 Rene, Duchess of Ferrara, daughter of Louis XII. , had in a 
 letter made the wise remark that David's example in hating 
 his enemies was not applicable to us, Calvin curtly and sternly 
 answered that ' such a gloss would upset all Scripture ' ; that 
 even in his hatred David is an example to us and a type of 
 Christ, and ' should we presume to set up ourselves as superior 
 to Christ in sweetness and humanity ? ' " 4 
 
 1 Answer to Emser (see Kostlin, Luther's Theol., ii., 284). 
 
 2 Luther on Heb. ii. 13 ; Gal. iv. 22. 
 
 3 Hist. Interp., Farrar, p. 349; Calvin, Instit., i., 7, §5. 
 
 4 Hist. Interp., p. 350. 
 
BIS COURTIERS. 2l 
 
 It came to be common for the writers of the sacred books 
 to be spoken of as "amanuenses of God," "hands of God," 
 "scribes and notaries of the Holy Spirit," "secretaries, pens, 
 reeds, harps, flutes, writing-tablets." The Bible was spoken of 
 as "a divine effluence," "a part of God." One writer se- 
 dately argued the question whether the Scripture could be 
 called a creature, and concluded that it could not. So com- 
 plete was the indwelling of the Spirit in the Scriptures that a 
 wicked person, if orthodox, was said to be illuminated by the 
 reading of them ex opere operato. Quenstedt, Hollaz, Calov, 
 and the Wittenberg faculty, in 1638, decreed that to speak of 
 barbarisms and solecisms in the Greek of the New Testament 
 would be a blasphemy against the writers and the Holy Ghost. 
 Hebraisms in the New Testament were the desire of the Holy 
 Spirit to make the style of the New Testament like that of the 
 Old. Hellenistic Greek was Holy Greek, a form of speech 
 peculiar to God. The Formula Consensus Helvetica declared 
 that the very vowel-points and accents of the Hebrew Bible 
 were all inspired. The Holy Spirit was said to have abdicated 
 his agency to the written Word. " It is impious and profane 
 audacity," said Calovius, " to change a single point in the 
 Word of God, and to substitute a smooth breathing for a 
 rough or a rough for a smooth." 1 
 
 That such ideas as these — the main sentiment of lofty rev- 
 erence for the Bible as of divine authority — found many an 
 echo in the subsequent theology of the Continent, and of 
 England and America, and have become the "popular" doc- 
 trine of the present day, is most certain. But that some of 
 the reformers, as well as some of the rabbis, fathers, and 
 schoolmen, expressed themselves at times in language that 
 seems the very contradiction of their language elsewhere, is 
 strangely true. 
 
 The height of doctrine on the subject of Inspiration is 
 reached in the belief that not only the Hebrew text, but also 
 the vowel-points and accents were inspired. The Hebrew 
 
 1 Hist. Interp., pp. 374, 375. 
 
22 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 language is one without vowels ; it has only consonants. 
 Vowel-points are inventions subsequent to the formation of 
 the language. They were invented as substitutes for vowels, 
 and used originally for the benefit of foreign students of that 
 tongue. They are composed of certain dots and dashes, and 
 combinations of them, and are placed, as the case may be, 
 above, within, or under the consonants, and are used for Jixing 
 the text, so that there can be no variation in the translation. 
 The letters kl, for example, might be written for kol, a voice, 
 or for kal, a runner ; klh for kahih, to collect, or kalah, to 
 burn. The vowel-points determine the word, establish the 
 text. The work of placing the vowel-points and accents was 
 done by a body of men known as the Masorites. The name 
 comes from the Hebrew masar, which means " to deliver," 
 and signifies the delivering or handing down of tradition. 
 Thus the traditional reading of the Hebrew text of the Bible, 
 the sound and meaning of the words, first transmitted from 
 mouth to mouth by rabbi after rabbi, was finally thrown into 
 lasting form by the placing of the vowel-points and accents ; 
 and the result is known as the Masora. But the vowel-points 
 were not of Hebrew origin. The system of pointing the 
 Shemitic languages is said to have begun in the Syrian school 
 of Edessa, and was first used in the Syriac text of the Scrip- 
 tures. From that it passed over first into the Arabic text and 
 then into the Hebrew. The system was not invented com- 
 plete, as we have it, but grew. It did not reach its present 
 condition till the seventh century a.d., at Babylon, and the 
 middle of the eighth century, in Palestine, and its full develop- 
 ment was reached by successive steps that we cannot trace. 
 It was invented a thousand years after the writing of the 
 Hebrew Bible, and was applied to a Hebrew text "hardly 
 later than the first Christian century." 1 Of this system it is a 
 common opinion among the Jews that it came by divine reve- 
 
 l Biblical Study, C. A. Briggs, D.D., p. 152; and Professor W. 
 Robertson Smith, Encyc. Brit., art. Hebrew, vol. xi., p. 600. 
 
HIS COURTIERS. 23 
 
 lation to the first member of the human family, " As to the 
 origin and development of the vowels," says Azzariah de 
 Rossi, a Jewish scholar, as quoted by Dr. Ginsberg, " their 
 force and virtue were invented by, or communicated to, Adam 
 in Paradise ; transmitted to and by M oses ; that they had been 
 partially forgotten, and their pronunciation vitiated during the 
 Babylonian captivity ; that they had been restored by Ezra, 
 but that they had been forgotten again in the wars and strug- 
 gles during and after the destruction of the second temple ; 
 and that the Masorites, after the close of the Talmud, revised 
 the system and permanently fixed the pronunciation by the 
 contrivance of the present signs." l The theory of the in- 
 spiration of these points was maintained by such scholars as 
 the Buxtorffs, Heidegger, Turretine, Voetius, and Owen, as 
 well as by the Zurich Consensus. 2 
 
 6. So far the stream of opinion was practically unbroken, 
 and of one tendency. There were slight divergencies here 
 and there in the nature of back-water and estuaries. Now 
 and again a gust of enthusiasm would strike the surface of the 
 stream in spots and lift the water in a spray as fine as the 
 vowel-points and accents, attenuated and dampening as the 
 mist that gathers in the shadows of the evening. And the 
 waters were generally muddy. Christian opinion thought 
 that somehow the book came from God, and struggled to 
 show the manner of its coming and the nature of its divinity. 
 It was not content to leave these matters where eternal Provi- 
 dence had left them. For man is vastly more particular than 
 God. The one thing for which he longs, in doctrine, is defini- 
 tion. He would drive the abounding and pervading truth of 
 God into an acute angle. He would trace it with a line of 
 geometric straightness, and indicate it with the point of a 
 needle, and settle it everlastingly upon a punctuation period. 
 So, by individuals, the historic opinions about Inspiration have 
 
 1 Biblical Study, Briggs, p. 141 ; De Rossi, The Light of the Eyes, iii., 
 59, 1574-75; Ginsberg, Life of Levita, in Levitas Massoreth, p. 53. 
 
 2 Biblical Study, Briggs, p. 156; Hist. Interp., Farrar, p. 388. 
 
24 THE BREATH OE GOD. 
 
 been reduced to definitions and adorned with technical names. 
 They have given us the mechanical theory, by which the 
 writers were mere machines — passive instruments ; " pens," 
 and God wrote; u lyres," and God touched the strings and 
 evoked the harmony. The verbal theory, by which the writers 
 were not authors, but " amanuenses." God dictated, and they 
 wrote ; and every word and syllable became divine. The dy- 
 namical r theory, which declares that the divine power wrought 
 in the soul of the sacred author. The human faculties were 
 all alive and energetic, but God lifted the soul into His own 
 atmosphere. It saw His thoughts, and gathered His feelings, 
 and made a record of them in the book. The plenary theory, 
 which makes the inspired person " incapable of uttering or 
 communicating any error with the inspired message." The 
 inductive or critical theory, or theory of selection, which are 
 practically one, and which affirm that the Scripture writers 
 were inspired at times, and on occasion, to teach the eternal 
 truths of God necessary to the soul's salvation and " instruc- 
 tion in righteousness." They have all had their advocates, 
 zealous and enthusiastic, and have all proved more or less 
 unsatisfactory to the remainder of Christendom. The voices 
 of men are evidently not superior to the voice of God, nor to 
 His silence. They cannot prevail, even with their fellows. 
 And so the definitions have been various, and changing opin- 
 ion has changed them and invented newer phraseology. -At 
 this particular point in history their number has been reduced 
 and the outlook simplified. Modern scholarship has fused 
 into one the definitions of the past, and given it the title of 
 the traditional theory, while holding to the term inductive for 
 its own. The traditional theory, broadly speaking, may be 
 said to be " that the Bible as a whole and in all its parts is the 
 Word of God, and as such endowed with all the perfections 
 of that Word." 1 It is that which has grown up, as it were, 
 out of the ages, until now. It never had a formal birth, and 
 its majority was never announced ; and yet it is here among 
 
 1 Inspiration, Sanday, p. 392. 
 
HIS COURTIERS. 25 
 
 us, and has been everywhere in Christendom. The inductive 
 theory has taken form within the last half-century, among the 
 representatives of the latest biblical study and criticism. It is 
 held by the leading scholars of the age. It has been spread- 
 ing rapidly in popular belief, and it threatens to become the 
 one great theory of the future. 
 
 And these are the two great contestants engaged in mortal 
 combat upon the field of modern controversy. On either side 
 the colors are flung to the breeze, the trumpets have sounded, 
 and the heralds cry aloud. 
 
 Professor Gaussen says : " The Scriptures are given and 
 guaranteed by God even in their very language. They con- 
 tain no error; they say all that they ought to say, and only 
 what they ought to say." Dean Burgon says : " The Bible is 
 none other than the voice of Him that sitteth on the throne. 
 Every book of it, every chapter of it, every verse of it, every 
 word of it, every syllable of it, every letter of it, is the direct 
 utterance of the Most High — supreme, absolute, faultless, un- 
 erring." l Dr. Charles Hodge says : " Protestants hold that 
 the Scriptures . . . are the Word of God, written under the 
 inspiration of God the Holy Ghost, and are therefore infalli- 
 ble, and consequently free from all error, whether of doctrine, 
 of fact, or of precept." 2 Again: "All the books of Scripture 
 are equally inspired. All alike are infallible in what they 
 teach." 3 But, on the other hand, Tholuck says that this doc- 
 trine of Scripture being infallible, not only in its religious, but 
 in its entire contents, and also in its form, arose not earlier 
 than the seventeenth century. 4 Professor Sanday speaks, in 
 effect, of how God " selected " one particular stock of man- 
 kind to receive a clearer revelation, and out of that stock 
 "selected" individuals, and then "selected" times in which 
 and subjects on which to move " their hearts and minds . . . 
 
 1 How God Inspired the Bible, Smyth, p. 108. 
 
 2 Theology, Hodge, vol. i., p. 152. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 163. 
 
 4 Doctrine of Inspiration, Tholuck, Jour. Sac. Lit., vi., 331-369. 
 
26 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 in a manner more penetrating and more effective than their 
 fellows, with the result that their written words convey to us 
 truth about the nature of God and his dealings with man 
 which other writings do not convey with equal fulness, power, 
 and purity. We say that this special moving is due to the action 
 upon those hearts and minds of the Holy Spirit. And we call 
 that action Inspiration." 1 Archdeacon Farrar says: 2 "In- 
 spiration . . . does not imply an exclusive theopneustia* for 
 the sacred writers," but " meant the influence of the Holy 
 Spirit of God revealing himself in every great thought and 
 utterance of the soul of man ; given in the bestowal of ' every 
 good and perfect gift.' " 
 
 Thirty centuries of opinion, and no conclusion ! Nineteen 
 centuries of Christian thought, and yet no dogma ! Jew and 
 Christian in all these ages uniting in the main idea, believing 
 in the fact of Inspiration, yet never agreeing on a definition of 
 its nature. Surely the individual of to-day may be pardoned 
 if he is not wise above the Universal Church of God in the 
 whole period of its life. 
 
 1 Inspiration, Sanday, p. 127 (italics mine). 
 
 2 Hist. Interp., p. 370. 
 
 * This Greek word means an in-breathing-of-God. 
 
III. 
 
 HIS CRITICS. 
 
 " For what am I ? 
 What profits me my name 
 Of greatest knight ? " 
 
 BUT out of the natural human faculty ; out of the reason 
 which is divine ; out of the toil and patience and skill and 
 learning of centuries ; out of scholasticism and the Renaissance 
 and the Reformation ; under the benign providence of God, 
 the great search-light of investigation has been turned upon 
 the question of Inspiration. Near to the city of God, in the 
 great harbor of rising and ebbing tides, among the shifting 
 currents and the whirling eddies of speculation, stands the 
 colossal figure of the Higher Criticism, as " Liberty, enlight- 
 ening the world." 
 
 The Bartholdi Statue in New York harbor is not, of course, 
 the source of the universal light, nor is liberty itself the one 
 light of the world. But the colossus sends forth a flood of 
 illumination over the dark waters of the bay, and criticism 
 sheds its penetrating rays into the realms of biblical study. 
 
 Criticism means judgment, discrimination. In a literary 
 sense it is an estimate of the complete value of a book. In 
 dealing with the Bible it has two planes of action clearly 
 marked. The lower plane, intellectually speaking, is that of 
 the Hebrew and Greek text. The Lower Criticism, therefore, 
 deals with that. It compares manuscripts, traces their his- 
 tory, seeks to ascertain what is the very language, what are 
 the very words, originally written in the Scriptures. It strives 
 after the absolute purity of the text. The higher plane of 
 
 27 
 
28 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 judgment or discrimination is that of the origin, literary forms, 
 and contents of the Bible. The Higher Criticism, therefore, 
 deals with the individual writings and groups of writings. It 
 seeks to ascertain the authorship of the various books or parts 
 of books, the times when they were written, the historical set- 
 tings or circumstances, and the purpose of the writings, their 
 relation to other writings of their groups, and to the whole 
 collection. The Higher Criticism investigates the Bible as 
 any other book might be investigated, and seeks to discover 
 the value of each and all its utterances. It inquires whether 
 the Bible is true in its history, science, geography, chronol- 
 ogy. It takes all attainable testimony, external and internal 
 — the testimony of profane history and that of the writings 
 themselves. It studies their language, literary style and form, 
 drift of thought,, and handling of matters of secular learning 
 and observation. 
 
 It is popularly supposed that the Higher Criticism is a 
 "new thing under the sun." And while this is true as to its 
 recent prominence and power, it is true only so far. Critical 
 thought has had its representatives from time to time, at least 
 since the second century before the Christian era. Acute 
 thinkers and scholars have ever found food for question about 
 the infallibility of the Bible in all its contents. 
 
 i. Aristobulus, the Alexandrian philosopher, the inventor of 
 the allegorical method of interpretation, was the first to take 
 away from the divinity of the letter. He was the first to start 
 " the great religious problem — the discovery, if possible, of a 
 test by which we may discern what are the eternal and irre- 
 pealable truths of the Bible, what the imaginative vesture, the 
 framework, in which those truths are set forth in the Hebrew 
 and even in the Christian Scriptures." 1 
 
 2. The rabbins, without critical intent, followed in his foot- 
 steps. With all their worship of words and letters, they fre- 
 quently set them aside for the sake of the mystical sense. 
 They practised evasions of the law. For example, the law 
 
 Milman's Annals of St. Paul's, p. 467. 
 
HIS CRITICS. 29 
 
 said : " At the end of every seventh year . . . every creditor 
 that lendeth unto his neighbor shall release it." l Hillel nulli- 
 fied it by allowing the creditor a written contract by which he 
 might claim the debt at any future time. Hillel " did it," says 
 the Talmud, "for the good order of the world." 2 
 
 3. Very strangely, but very clearly, the Septuagint bears 
 testimony in the same line. It was to the Jewish people 
 largely, and to the Christian fathers altogether, what King 
 James's version is to us — a translation of the Bible in the 
 popular tongue, in constant and general use. Yet it differs 
 immensely, in words, passages, and entire books, from the 
 Hebrew Bible. If, in the general estimation, the text of the 
 Hebrew was literally divine, this tremendous divergence could 
 never have been allowed. 
 
 And the New Testament adds a weightier testimony. It 
 quotes the Old Testament repeatedly, but often in a marvel- 
 lously liberal way. Not words, but sentiments, seem to be its 
 object. If the words were inspired they only could have 
 given the sentiment. It seems to say that while the thought 
 was divine the language was human. 
 
 Moreover, the Messianic idea is the most conspicuous fea- 
 ture of the Hebrew Scriptures, and yet Hillel, one of the very 
 greatest of Jewish doctors, "declared that no such Messiah 
 would ever come ;" 3 and Joseph Albo, a mediaeval theologian, 
 denies that the doctrine of the Messiah is a Jewish dogma. 4 
 They could not have valued the very text. 
 
 Besides this, the Talmud was made practically greater than 
 the Bible, the rabbins higher authority than Moses, as Christ 
 testified : " Ye made the commandment of God of none effect 
 by your tradition," 5 " teaching for doctrines the command- 
 ments of men ;" 6 " and many such like things do ye." 7 " The 
 voice of the Rabbi is as the voice of God," said the Scribes. 
 " He who only studies the Scriptures is but an empty cistern." 
 
 1 Dent. xv. 1, 2. 2 Hist. Interp., Farrar, p. 64. 
 
 3 Sanhedrin, f. 96, 2. 4 Hist. Interp., p. 67. 
 
 5 Matt. xv. 6. 6 Mark vii. 7. 1 Mark vii. 13. 
 
30 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 " Words of Scribes," said Rabbi Johanan, " are akin to words 
 of the Law, and more beloved." x How could it have been 
 so if Moses and the Bible were thought to be inspired above 
 all others ? 
 
 4. The Christian fathers, with all their lustre of piety and 
 fame, were often highly critical, in spite of their burning words 
 of homage for the Scriptures. Canon Farrar says, of verbal 
 dictation, that few if any of them "had any clear and fixed 
 conception of the subject." Tholuck says that the ancient 
 church held the language of the Bible to be human, and as- 
 cribed to it "contradictions in words and facts." 2 Farrar 
 says that in Justin Martyr, Irenseus, Tertullian, Origen, Je- 
 rome, Chrysostom, and Augustine many passages " freely 
 admit the human element," and " even attribute immorality 
 and impropriety to many passages taken literally." 3 Justin, 
 while believing in verbal dictation, "quotes the Sibyl and 
 Hystaspes as genuine books." Tertullian thought that the 
 apostles sometimes spoke only for themselves, as St. Paul, who 
 said, "To the rest speak I, not the Lord." Origen thought 
 the drunkenness of Noah, the incest of Lot, the rape of Tamar 
 repulsively unprofitable reading; the law against eating vul- 
 tures absurd. He said that there were enough discrepancies in 
 the Gospels "to make one dizzy." Jerome thinks St. Mark, 
 in chapter ii., verse 26, wrote Abiathar in mistake for Abime- 
 lech ; the chronology of the Bible hopeless ; St. Paul guilty of 
 barbarisms, trivialities, poor proofs, bad taste, emotional pas- 
 sion. Chrysostom says : " Do not ask how these Old Testa- 
 ment precepts can be good now, when the need for them is 
 past. . . . Their highest praise is that we now see them to 
 be defective." Basil, speaking of the precepts of the law, 
 says: "We pass from these to wisdom hidden in mystery." 4 
 
 1 Quoted by Farrar, pp. 62, 63. 
 
 2 Bamp. Lee, Farrar, p. 264. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 230, 172. 
 
 4 See How God Inspired the Bible, pp. 75 ff. ; and Hist. Interp., pp. 
 230 ff. 
 
HIS CRITICS. 31 
 
 5. Among the schoolmen the difficulties that confronted 
 the critical judgment were met by a theory of direct and in- 
 direct Inspiration. The direct was ascribed to those parts of 
 the Bible which deal with doctrine. The passages which deal 
 with history, chronology, or any matter of profane learning, 
 were considered as indirectly inspired. Abelard said : " It is 
 acknowledged that even prophets and apostles were not wholly 
 free from error," 1 and pointed out various discrepancies in the 
 Gospels. Erigena said : " Let no authority terrify you from 
 conclusions which the reasonable persuasion of right contem- 
 plation teaches." 2 Nicholas of Lyra insists upon the value of 
 grammar, and care for the purity of manuscripts. 3 
 
 Erasmus, in the early part of the sixteenth century, is said 
 to be the chief founder of modern textual and biblical criti- 
 cism. He denied the inspiration of the Book of Revelation. 
 He was one of the first to declare the spuriousness of the pas- 
 sage in I. John v. 7, about the three heavenly witnesses. He 
 denied infallibility anywhere but in Christ, saying : " Christ 
 alone is called the Truth. He alone was free from all error." 
 Luther, the apostle of the German Reformation, was abun- 
 dantly free in criticisms. He rejected the Epistle of James, 
 and denied the inspiration of the Epistle of Jude and the 
 Book of Revelation. He said that the contents of the Bible 
 had in them " wood, hay, stubble " ; distinguished between 
 the " Scriptures " and the " Word of God " ; denied that Solo- 
 mon wrote the Song of Songs or Ecclesiastes ; showed the 
 arrangement of the Book of Jeremiah to be unchronological ; 
 and made a variety of other criticisms. Denck said : " I es- 
 teem the Holy Scriptures above all human treasures ; but not 
 s<» highly as the Word of God, . . . written without pen or 
 paper." Calvin points out the quotation in Matthew xxvii. 9, 
 as from Jeremiah, as a mistake, and calls attention to other 
 inaccuracies; says that the "seed of the woman," in Genesis 
 iii. 15, meant originally "posterity," not Christ. He antici- 
 
 1 Sic ct N011, Prol. 2 De Div. Nat., i., 66. 
 
 3 Bamp. Lee., 1-SS5, pp. 274, 275. 
 
32 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 pated modern criticism by interpreting the Messianic prophe- 
 cies as referring primarily to events of their own days, and 
 says that the idea that God made a throne of the mercy-seat 
 was a " crass figment," deceiving even David and Hezekiah. 
 Richard Hooker pleads against " attributing to Scripture more 
 than it can have." Richard Baxter, on the same subject, 
 says : " It is the devil's last method to undo by overdoing, and 
 so to destroy the authority of the apostles by overmagnifying." 
 
 6. In 1679 Spinoza, the philosopher, published his "Trac- 
 tatus Theologico-Politicus," in which he attacked the Mosaic 
 authorship of the Pentateuch. It showed, he said, marks of a 
 later date than Moses. As to names of places, Dan, so called 
 in Genesis, was not then called Dan, but Laish. 1 The his- 
 tory was continued beyond the days of Moses. Mention is 
 made in Exodus of stoppage of manna, which in Joshua is 
 said to have stopped after the entrance into Canaan. 2 The 
 expression in Genesis xxxvi. 31, " before there reigned any 
 king over the children of Israel," implies that the writer lived 
 after the establishment of the monarchy. Spinoza thought 
 that Moses taught the elders, and that they wrote the com- 
 mandments ; that later they were collected and ascribed to 
 suitable periods in Moses' life ; that the present form of the 
 Pentateuch was due to Ezra. Richard Simon, a Roman Cath- 
 olic, a contemporary of Spinoza, thought that the laws of the 
 Pentateuch were by Moses, and the history by the public 
 scribe ; and that Genesis was composed of earlier documents. 
 
 A deeper study and a keener critical insight were shown, in 
 1 753, by Jean Astruc, a Roman Catholic layman, doctor and 
 professor of medicine in the Royal College at Paris, and court 
 physician to Louis XIV. He discovered marked traces of 
 two separate documents in the Book of Genesis. Two ac- 
 counts of the creation and two of the flood were among the 
 indications. The documents were clearly stamped with the 
 literary signs of different authorship ; as, for example, one 
 
 1 Gen. xiv. 14; Judg. xviii. 29. 
 
 2 Ex. xvi. 35; Josh. v. 12. 
 
HIS CRITICS. 33 
 
 speaks of God as Elohim, the other calls him Jehovah. Astruc 
 supposed that Moses, in his composition, used the earlier 
 documents. This theory, adopted by others, was called the 
 " documentary hypothesis." Eichhorn, in 1780, combined the 
 various results of previous critical effort into one common 
 method, and first labelled it with the title of " Higher Criti- 
 cism." 
 
 Vater and Hartmann, in 1 8 1 5 and 1 8 1 8, went further, and 
 supposed the Pentateuch composed of a number of fragments 
 " loosely strung together." Laws made in the time of David 
 and Solomon were scattered through Deuteronomy. The 
 other parts, written at various times, were collected into the 
 present form sometime between the reign of Josiah and the 
 Babylonish exile. This was called the " fragmentary hypothe- 
 sis." 
 
 These, it is said, were both superseded by the " supple- 
 mentary hypothesis," which sees two documents in the Penta- 
 teuch — the Elohist being the older, and the Jehovist, the later, 
 using the Elohist document by adding to, commenting upon, 
 and sometimes incorporating in his own work. It was adopted, 
 with various modifications, by De Wette, Bleek, Stahelin, Tuch, 
 Lengerke, Hupfeld, Knobel, Bunsen, Kurtz, Delitzsch, Schultz, 
 Vaihinger, and others. 1 
 
 De Wette sees marks of the two documents not only in 
 Genesis, but in the first four books. Lengerke puts the Elo- 
 hist in the period of Solomon and the Jehovist in that of 
 Hezekiah. Tuch puts the first under Saul and the other 
 under Solomon. Stahelin gives the Jehovist to the time of 
 Saul and the Elohist to that of Judges. Hupfeld finds three 
 authors — an earlier and later Elohist, and the Jehovist. De- 
 litzsch thinks that Moses wrote the Book of the Covenant 
 (Ex. xix.-xxiv.) and Deuteronomy, and the remainder was 
 written by Eleazar the priest, Joshua, and the elders. 
 
 Ewald discovers seven different authors in the Pentateuch 
 
 1 See Bishop Perowne's article, Pentateuch, in Smith's Bible Diction- 
 ary. 
 
34 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 and Book of Joshua. In his view the oldest of the parts con- 
 sists of a few fragments from the Book of the Wars of Jeho- 
 vah ; next, parts of a biography of Moses ; then the Book of 
 the Covenant, written in the time of Samson ; the Book of 
 Origines, by a priest in Solomon's time ; the work of the third 
 historian, or first prophetic narrator of primitive days, a person 
 in the northern kingdom in the time of Elijah or Joel; the 
 work of the fourth historian, or second prophetic narrator, 
 about 800 or 750 b.c. ; the work of the fifth historian, or third 
 prophetic narrator, who lived shortly after Joel, and who col- 
 lected the writings of his predecessors into one body of Scrip- 
 ture. 
 
 In 18 1 8 Home, in England, issued his "Introduction to 
 the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures," 
 which embraced a study of the results of foreign criticism. 
 In 1840 Coleridge's " Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit" ap- 
 peared, with scriptural instances against the traditional doc- 
 trine of Inspiration. In 1862 Colenso, the English Bishop of 
 Natal, startled the world by publishing an attack on the histor- 
 ical character of the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua, endea- 
 voring to show that the parts which gave the most numerous 
 details were the parts most difficult to believe. About the 
 same time there was published a series of papers by " Eminent 
 Englishmen," under the title of " Essays and Reviews," which 
 breathed the spirit of the Higher Criticism. 
 
 Since that time the study of critical problems has immensely 
 spread in the continental countries of Europe, in England and 
 America. The exponents and adherents of the Higher Criti- 
 cism are constantly growing more numerous. They claim 
 the brotherhood of Tillotson, Warburton, Whately, Thirlwall, 
 Heber, Alford, Arnold, and Kingsley, of Stanley and Maurice. 
 And some of the most striking results out of all ages of inves- 
 tigation and of more than two centuries of criticism are to be 
 found in the works of Kuenen among the Dutch, Wellhausen 
 in Germany, and Canon Driver, of the University of Oxford. 
 
IV. 
 
 HIS BLEMISHES. 
 
 " Out with it boldly : truth loves open dealing." 
 " And, where the offence is, let the great axe fall." 
 
 THE critics would say that the Higher Criticism has come 
 forth " as a giant refreshed with wine," and put the tradi- 
 tional doctrine of Inspiration in bonds. Under the similitude 
 of a man, the head is high above all bondage in the everlasting 
 sunlight, and the heart is throbbing with the boundless liberty 
 of God. But some of the insignificant portions of the body 
 feel restraint. The critics would say that the Bible stands, 
 like man, made, as it were, "in the image of God;" but it is 
 a " broken image." They would say that it stands, again, in 
 the likeness of that colossal figure in the prophet's vision 
 whose head and body were of gold and silver, but the feet 
 were made of clay. 
 
 The Higher Criticism has really dispelled something of the 
 obscurity of past ages, and taken away somewhat of the veil 
 to human sight, and made men see the Bible largely as it is, in 
 plain and patent fact ; and made them tremble, as Eli trem- 
 bled, for the safety of the ark of God. But the Higher Criti- 
 cism is not the synonym of infidelity. It has not overthrown 
 the citadel of the faith. It has figured as the champion of 
 clear knowledge and clear thought in the realms of fact and 
 theology. It has been, indeed, a discriminating power. It 
 has pointed out and emphasized the difference between in- 
 spiration and revelation and inspiration and infallibility. A 
 revelation is the teaching of a truth beyond the reach of un- 
 
 35 
 
36 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 assisted human reason — a truth unknown before. It may be 
 made to the uninspired, as Christ revealed the essential spirit- 
 uality of God to the adulterous woman of Samaria. Infalli- 
 bility is the flawless accuracy, say, of a man or book. But 
 inspiration, in a Christian sense, is the impulse and animation 
 of a soul to speak or write as God would have it do. In 
 human theology it has special reference to uttering prophecy 
 and writing Scripture. It may come without the accompani- 
 ment of a revelation, while the prophet speaks or writes, in 
 passionate enthusiasm, of the eternal truth which hath ever 
 spoken to the common heart of man. It may come in com- 
 pany with fallibility, because it may not embrace the whole 
 man, or the whole life, or the entire book, or every field of 
 knowledge, divine and human. It is the confounding of these 
 three which has confused the thought of Christendom for all 
 these centuries, and turned King Liber into an idol. It is in 
 the clarifying of the three that the Higher Criticism has won 
 our gratitude. If, in the process, we have been robbed of 
 cherished superstitions and fond errors, Ave need not, therefore, 
 tremble for the faith : the edifice is not destroyed by the 
 blotting out of inartistic frescoes. And then the Higher 
 Criticism is not a god — or devil. We need not be transported 
 with consuming fear. The Higher Criticism is a poor, im- 
 perfect creature, as all things human and mundane are. It 
 has its own spots and blemishes, and it has made its own mis- 
 takes. It has stumbled upon truth ; and then, again, with 
 serene and open eyes, it has accepted falsehood and pro- 
 claimed it as invincible. The circle of its vision is incomplete, 
 and so it has shifted its positions, and changed conclusions, and 
 revised its articles of fact again and again. But still it is in 
 large measure the fruit of that divine intelligence which is a 
 part of the inheritance of the sons of God. And so it has 
 brought " hidden mysteries " of human knowledge to light ; it 
 has laid bare much of the truth of history ; and it has mar- 
 shalled an array of arguments which stand in bristling opposi- 
 tion to that infallibility which Scripture never claimed for all 
 
HIS BLEMISHES. 37 
 
 its parts, and which never was a genuine element of inspira- 
 tion. Let us look at something of the array : 
 
 i. The Bible contains statements which scarcely call for 
 so tremendous an endowment as infallibility. St. Paul says to 
 Philemon : x " But withal prepare me also a lodging ;" to Tim- 
 othy: 2 "The cloak which I left at Troas with Carpus, when 
 thou comest, bring with thee." Such sayings do not even call 
 for inspiration. 
 
 2. The writers claim to sfeak, at times, for themselves alone, 
 distinguishing God's sayings. St. Paul says : " Unto the mar- 
 ried I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife 
 depart from her husband. . . . But to the rest speak I, not 
 the Lord." 3 One of the prophets 4 laments and exhorts be- 
 cause " a man's enemies are they of his own household," and 
 adds, "Therefore I will look unto the Lord;" and then he 
 turns and speaks to the Lord, saying, " Thou wilt perform the 
 truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham." So the prophets, 
 in all their dialogues with God, mark the difference between 
 God's speech and their own. They distinguish, also, between 
 times when God was with them and when He was not. " The 
 Word of the Lord came to Ezekiel " implies a time when He 
 had not come. Elisha says, " The Lord hid it from me," 5 
 signifying that God had not inspired him at that time. And 
 St. Paul describes a like condition : " And now, behold, I go 
 bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things 
 that shall befall me there." 6 So it would appear that the 
 writers were not always inspired, and that the divine Being 
 did not dictate everything they wrote. 
 
 3. There are human elements in the Bible: Observation : 
 Ezekiel chooses for symbols the man and lion and bull and 
 eagle which he saw on the Assyrian monuments and buildings. 
 John, in the Apocalypse, uses figures familiar in his day as sig- 
 nifying political overturnings : " The sun shall be darkened, 
 
 1 Philem. 22. 2 n. Tim. iv. 13. 
 
 3 I. Cor. vii. 10, 12. 4 Micah vii. 6, 7, 20. 
 
 5 II. Kings iv. 27. 6 Acts xx. 22. 
 
38 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall 
 from heaven." The burning of Rome was before his mental 
 vision, the persecution of Nero, the confusions and errors of 
 "the decade past." He saw in Nero or the Roman empire 
 the beast ; in the ten chief provinces the ten horns ; in the seven 
 emperors, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Gaiba, 
 and Otho, the seven heads of the beast. Style: The person- 
 ality of the author is stamped upon the various books. The 
 literary manner is peculiar to the writer. The Fourth Gospel 
 bears the impress of John ; shows the profound insight of one 
 who "leaned on Jesus' breast." The Epistles of Paul exhibit 
 his own fiery zeal and tortuous logic, his digressions from one 
 thought to another, led off by the suggestions of a word. 
 Matthew is different from Mark, and Hebrews from Revela- 
 tion ; Jeremiah is far from Moses, and Ezra from Isaiah. 
 Imagination ; Which wings its flight from earth to heaven, 
 and clothes the unseen in the brilliant earthly metaphors of 
 jewels; stars; seas; fountains and rivers ; mountains and hills ; 
 armies and their array ; the battle and the siege ; the dragon 
 and beast, lion and eagle ; the rainbow and the morning star. 
 Passion : The psalmist says : " Break their teeth, O God, in 
 their mouths;" "Blessed be he that taketh thy children and 
 dasheth them against the stones ;" " Let his children be father- 
 less, and his wife a widow. Let his children be vagabonds, 
 and beg their bread." St. Paul turned upon the high priest 
 with a burst of wrath, exclaiming, " God shall smite thee, thou 
 whited wall." The same apostle " dubbed the whole race " of 
 Cretans " evil beasts and liars " ; and he passionately tells the 
 Galatians, of certain who troubled them, " For I would they 
 were cut off," which means the most cruel and barbarous of 
 all mutilations. The process of composition seems to be 
 perfectly natural, with the use of the common faculties of the 
 mind. 
 
 4. There are mistakes in the Bible, literal, verbal, and nu- 
 merical. If not mistakes, they would be contradictions. They 
 are due, doubtless, to the carelessness or inaptitude of copy- 
 
HIS BLEMISHES. 39 
 
 ists.* Of the famine sent upon David we read in one place 
 "three years' famine," 1 in another "seven," 2 the Hebrew 
 letter Gimel (G) standing for three, and Zayin (Z) standing 
 for seven. The letters are very much alike. The Septuagint 
 in both places has three. The number of " Solomon's officers 
 that bare rule over the people " is given in one place 3 as 250, 
 in another 4 as 550. This is owing to the mistake of changing 
 the letters Resh Nun (R N) to Daleth Nun (D N). In one 
 passage 5 the age of Ahaziah when he began to reign is given 
 as 22 — Kaph Kaph (K K) ; in another as 42 — Mem Kaph 
 (M K). There are various other errors of this kind. 
 
 Of the various " readings " — which are differences of letters, 
 words, phrases, texts — one writer 7 estimates 800,000 ; another 
 writer 8 gives about 160,000. Robert Stephens says that he 
 discovered 2384 in the oldest manuscripts of the New Testa- 
 ment alone. Of the three oldest manuscripts of the Greek 
 Bible in existence, the Vatican, Sinai, and Alexandrian, Pro- 
 fessor Westcott says of the differences : " There cannot be less 
 than 120,000." Many of these, however, are mere matters of 
 spelling and isolated aberrations of scribes. " Probably there 
 
 * The Bible was written on manuscripts. These were multiplied by 
 copying. The copyists were clerks or scribes. They would sometimes 
 mistake one letter for another very much like it. Seeing a word at the 
 end of a sentence, it might chance that the same word ended a subsequent 
 sentence, and turning the eye back to the manuscript the writer would go 
 on from the latter of the two sentences, thus making an omission. In 
 the early manuscripts all the words on a line were written without any 
 space between them, and copyists made mistakes in dividing the words. 
 Perhaps there were mistakes of memory, the scribe taking a sentence into 
 his mind and in putting it down on the copy slightly changing the order 
 of the words, or substituting some word of his own, as clerks frequently 
 do to-day. Sometimes brief explanatory notes, or paraphrases, were put 
 on the margin, and future copyists would put them into the text. 
 
 1 I. Chron. xxi. 12. - IT. Sam. xxiv. 13. 
 
 3 II. Chron. viii. 10. 4 I. Kings ix. 23. 
 
 5 IT. Kings viii. 26. 6 II. Chron. xxii. 2. 
 
 7 Old Test. Canon, Dr. Moses Stuart, p. 169. 
 
 8 Who Wrote the Bible? Dr. W. Gladden, p. 333. 
 
40 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 are not more than from 1600 to 2000 places in which the true 
 reading is a matter of uncertainty. The doubtful readings, by 
 which the sense is affected, are very much fewer, and those of 
 dogmatic importance can be easily numbered." 1 * 
 
 5. The Bible misquotes itself. St. Mark 2 quotes, as "writ- 
 ten in Isaiah the prophet," 3 the words, " Behold, I send my 
 messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before 
 thee." The passage is not in Isaiah — though immediately fol- 
 lowing is a quotation from him — but in Malachi. 4 St. Mat- 
 thew says : " Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by 
 Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces 
 of silver, the price of Him that was valued, whom they of the 
 children of Israel did value ; and gave them for the potter's 
 field, as the Lord appointed me." 5 This is not in Jeremiah 
 at all ; it is, substantially, in Zechariah, but with very different 
 wording. Jerome said that he had heard of and seen an 
 apocryphal writing of Jeremiah in which the words quoted 
 occur. 6 Such lapses are not consistent with the verbal in- 
 spiration of quotation. 
 
 6. The apostles of Christ differed among themselves about the 
 bearing of the Jewish law upon Christians. At that time one 
 
 1 Quoted by Dr. Gladden, pp. 345, 346. 
 
 * There are wide differences of a more serious nature in the various 
 manuscripts — differences in whole collections of manuscripts. The Sep- 
 tuagint contains several entire books which are not in the Hebrew Bible 
 at all. They form the bulk of what we now call the Apocrypha : such as 
 Tobit and Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach, Baruch and Su- 
 sanna, and Bel and the Dragon. And the apocryphal books are not sepa- 
 rated to themselves, but are mingled indiscriminately among the other 
 books. In the Septuagint the Books of Daniel, Esther, and Jeremiah 
 have additional matter not found in the Hebrew text. And there are 
 considerable differences between the two texts in the Books of Samuel 
 and Kings. 
 
 2 Mark i. 2. 
 
 3 The words " in Isaiah" are not in King James's version, but are in 
 the Greek. 
 
 4 Mai. iii. 1. 5 Matt, xxvii. 9, 10; Zech. xi. 12, 13. 
 6 Com. in Ev. Matt, ad loc, ed. Migne, vii., 213. 
 
HIS BLEMISHES. \\ 
 
 of them, at least, could not have been infallible. St. Paul says 
 that Peter and James and John were in error, and that Peter 
 and others were guilty of " dissimulation " : " But when Peter 
 was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he 
 was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, 
 he did eat with the Gentiles : but when they were come, he 
 withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of 
 the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise 
 with him ; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with 
 their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not 
 uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto 
 Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the 
 manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest 
 thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews ? " 1 This is a power- 
 ful attack upon the inspiration of St. Peter at that time. 
 
 7. One — or more — of the apostles was mistaken about the sec- 
 ond advent. St. Paul thought that Christ would come again in 
 his day. -He even thought that in this conviction he spoke by 
 direct counsel of Christ : " For this we say unto you by the 
 word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto 
 the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are 
 asleep." 2 * St. John writes, in the name of his Master, " Surely 
 I come quickly," and answers, in devout anticipation and 
 prayer, "Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." 3 St. James 
 says, "The coming of the Lord draweth nigh." 4 St. Peter 
 says, "The end of all things is at hand." 5 
 
 8. There are errors 0/ chronology in the Bible. The Bible 
 limits the reign of King Ahab to 918-897 B.C. ; the Assyrian 
 
 1 Gal. ii. 11-14. 2 j # Thess. iv. 15. 
 
 * Of this Bishop Ellicott says : "It does not seem improper to admit 
 that in their ignorance of the day of the Lord the apostles might have 
 imagined that lie who was coming would come speedily." 1 Conybeare 
 and Howson say: " The early church, and even the apostles themselves, 
 expected their Lord to come again in that very generation." 2 
 
 3 Rev. xxii. 20. * James v. 8. 5 t. p ct- ; v y_ 
 
 1 Com. in loc. '* Life and Ep. of St. Paul, i., 401. 
 
42 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 monuments affirm that Ahab was engaged in a battle at Qar- 
 qara B.C. 853, forty-four years after his supposed death. In 
 the Bible Jehu's reign ends in 856 ; by the monuments he 
 pays tribute to Assyria in 841 — a difference of fifteen years. 
 In the Bible the reign of Azariah of Judah ends in 751 ; by 
 the monuments he is defeated by Tigiath-Pileser in 737. In 
 the one Menahem pays tribute to Pul about 770 ; by the other 
 in 737. In the one Damascus fell in 740 ; by the other in 
 732. Pekah is said to have reigned twenty years; by the 
 Assyrian inscriptions it could have been no more than seven 
 years. The Bible gives the campaign of Sennacherib in Judah 
 as in the fourteenth year of the reign of Hezekiah ; the monu- 
 ments put it in the twenty-fourth. The Jewish historian seems 
 to have confounded the invasion of Sennacherib with that of 
 Sargon, ten years earlier. 1 
 
 9. There are historical mistakes hi the Bible. The second 
 book of Kings 2 implies that Sennacherib conquered Hamath, 
 Arpad, Sepharvaim, and Samaria, whereas the monuments re- 
 cord that this was done by Sargon. So is called in the Bible 
 " king of Egypt," whereas he was only the commander of the 
 Egyptian army. Pul and " Tiglath-Pilneser " are described in 
 Chronicles 3 as two different persons, whereas they were one 
 and the same. 
 
 In the Book of Daniel Belshazzar is called the "last king 
 of the Chaldeans " ; there is an account of the siege of Baby- 
 lon ; the king is said to have been slain ; and Belshazzar is 
 said to be the son of Nebuchadrezzar. The monuments tes- 
 tify that Nabonidos was the last king, and that Belshazzar 
 never reigned at all ; that Nabonidos, the last king, was not 
 slain ; that there was no siege of Babylon, but that Cyrus 
 entered the city in peace ; and that Belshazzar was the son of 
 Nabonidos, and not of Nebuchadrezzar. 
 
 In the same Book of Daniel Darius is called the son of 
 Ahasuerus, who in profane history is known as Xerxes, whereas 
 
 1 See The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, Sayce, pp. 408 ff. 
 
 2 II. Kings xviii. 34. 3 I. Chron. v. 26. 
 
HIS BLEMISHES. 43 
 
 the Assyrian inscriptions state that Darins Hystaspis was the 
 father of Xerxes. The name Belteshazzar, resembling one 
 which means, in Babylonian, "O Beltis, defend the king," is cor- 
 rupted in Daniel, the first syllable being changed so that it means 
 " he caused to live," making the combination, " He caused to live 
 — defend the king," which is a meaningless compound, and 
 unknown in Babylonian. 1 Abed-Nego is a similar corruption, 
 probably substituted for Abed-Nebo, " servant of Nebo." 
 
 10. The Bible contradicts itself. The account of the crea- 
 tion given in the first chapter of Genesis has the following 
 order : vegetation, animals, man ; that in the second chapter 
 is : man, vegetation, animals, woman. In the accounts of the 
 flood, in the sixth chapter it is said : " Of every living thing 
 of all flesh, two of every kind shalt thou bring into the ark;" 
 in the seventh chapter : " Of every clean beast thou shalt take 
 to thee seven and seven." In Genesis xxi. 31 it is said that 
 Abraham called a well Beer-sheba because of a covenant be- 
 tween him and Abimelech ; but in Genesis xxvi. 33 the name 
 Beer-sheba is said to have originated with Isaac, nearly a 
 century later than the other incident, and on account of an 
 oath between Abimelech and him. In chapter xx. Abraham 
 passes off Sarah as his sister, lest Abimelech should kill him to 
 take her ; but in chapter xxvi. it is Isaac that has passed off 
 Rebecca as his sister before Abimelech. Leviticus 2 directs 
 the release of the Hebrew slave in the year of jubilee, the 
 fiftieth ; Deuteronomy 3 in the seventh year. In Numbers 4 
 the firstlings of oxen and sheep are given to the priest ; in 
 Deuteronomy 5 to the owner, who should eat them at the 
 sanctuary. The law of Moses forbids the offering of sacrifices 
 anywhere but at the main sanctuary — the tabernacle or the tem- 
 ple ; but " Samuel sacrifices on many high places, Saul builds 
 altars, David and his son Solomon permit the worship at the 
 high places to continue, and the historian recognizes this as 
 
 1 See High. Crit. and Mon., p. 532. 
 
 2 Lev. xxv. 40. 3 Deut. xv. 12. 
 4 Num. xviii. 18. 5 Dcut. xii. 7. 
 
44 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 legitimate because the temple was not yet built. 1 In north- 
 ern Israel this state of things was never changed. The high 
 places were an established feature in the kingdom of Ephraim, 
 and Elijah himself declares that the destruction of the altars 
 of Jehovah — all illegitimate according to the Pentateuch — is a 
 breach of Jehovah's covenant." 2 The Levitical law forbade 
 any one but the high priest entering the " holy of holies " ; yet 
 Samuel slept "in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of the 
 Lord was." 
 
 In the second book of Samuel 3 it is said that Absalom re- 
 belled against his father " forty years," after his return to Jeru- 
 salem, though the history of David's reign shows that it could 
 not have been for more than one or two years. 
 
 In the Book of Judges 4 the taking of Debir by Caleb is 
 said to have been " after the death of Joshua " ; in the Book 
 of Joshua 5 it is described as occurring during Joshua's life. 
 
 In the second book of Kings 6 Hoshea is said to have 
 begun to reign in Israel "in the twentieth year of Jotham," 
 king of Judah ; three verses later it is said that Jotham reigned 
 only "sixteen years." 
 
 The second book of Samuel 7 says that David took from 
 Hadadezer, king of Zobah, " a thousand and seven hundred 
 horsemen;" in I. Chronicles 8 , we are told that he took "a 
 thousand chariots, and seven thousand horsemen." In Sam- 
 uel 9 David's census shows 800,000 warriors of Israel and 
 500,000 of Judah; in Chronicles 10 1,100,000 of Israel and 
 470,000 of Judah. In Samuel 11 David pays Araunah for his 
 threshing-floor " fifty shekels of silver," about thirty dollars ; in 
 Chronicles 12 " six hundred shekels of gold," about thirty-four 
 hundred dollars. In the second book of Chronicles 13 it is said 
 
 1 I. Kings iii. 2-4. 
 
 2 Old Test, in Jew. Ch., Professor W. R. Smith, pp. 220, 221. 
 
 3 II. Sam. xv. 7. 4 Judg. i. I, II, 12. 5 Josh. xv. 15-19. 
 
 6 II. Kings xv. 30, 23- 7 II. Sam. viii. 4. 8 I. Chron. xviii. 4. 
 
 9 II. Sam. xxiv. 9. 10 I. Chron. xxi. 5. n II. Sam. xxiv. 24. 
 
 12 I. Chron. xxi. 25. 13 II. Chron. xv. 19. 
 
HIS BLEMISHES. 45 
 
 that from the fifteenth to the thirty-fifth year of Asa's reign 
 " there was no war " ; in the first book of Kings l that " there 
 was war between Asa and Baasha king of Israel all their 
 days." In the second book of Samuel 2 it is said : "The anger 
 of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and He moved David 
 against them, saying, Go, number Israel and Judah;" in 
 Chronicles: 3 "And Satan stood up against Israel, and moved 
 David to number Israel ; " and it is added that because of this 
 numbering " the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel : and there 
 fell of Israel seventy thousand men." 4 
 
 St. Matthew 5 says that Judas " brought again the thirty 
 pieces of silver to the chief priests and scribes," and " cast 
 down the pieces of silver in the temple," and " went and 
 hanged himself"; and "the chief priests took the silver 
 pieces " and " bought with them the potter's field." St. Luke, 
 in the Book of Acts, 6 says that " this man " — Judas, not the 
 chief priests — " purchased a field with the reward of iniquity " 
 — the silver pieces ; and, not that he hanged himself, but that, 
 " falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his 
 bowels gushed out." 
 
 1 1 . There are seeming discrepancies in the Bible. The gene- 
 alogy in St. Matthew from David to Christ gives twenty-eight 
 generations, and makes Jacob appear as the father of Joseph ; 
 the one in St. Luke gives thirty-eight generations, and names 
 Heli as the father of Joseph. SS. Matthew and Mark tell of 
 the healing of the blind near Jericho. They say it was as 
 Jesus left the city ; St. Luke tells of such an incident as he 
 was going to the city. St. Matthew says that there were 
 two blind men healed ; SS. Mark and Luke mention only one. 
 SS. Matthew and Mark record the healing of Peter's wife's mother 
 before the calling of the apostles, St. Luke after the calling. 
 SS. Matthew and Mark tell of one angel at the sepulchre of 
 Jesus ; SS. Luke and John tell of two. St. Matthew says that 
 Jesus was crucified at nine o'clock, " the sixth hour; " St. John 
 
 1 I. Kings xv. 32. 8 II. Sam. xxiv. I. 3 I. Chron. xxi. I. 
 
 4 I. Chron. xxi. 14. 5 Matt, xxvii. 3-8. 6 Acts i. 16-19. 
 
46 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 says at twelve, " the ninth hour." The inscription on the 
 cross is given by the four Evangelists in four different forms : 
 "This is Jesus the King of the Jews;" "The King of the 
 Jews;" "This is the King of the Jews;" "Jesus of Nazareth 
 the King of the Jews." 
 
 With some scholars these discrepancies are reconciled, upon 
 various theories ; to others they appear irreconcilable. 
 
 The scientific difficulties about the Bible have not been 
 given in this account, because to this writer the great difficul- 
 ties do not seem to exist. It is inconceivable that any writer 
 of the literary capacity displayed by the author, or authors, 
 of the Book of Genesis, should design or attempt to make a 
 scientific statement on such stupendous subjects as the origin 
 of the universe, of man, or of evil, in such microscopic space. 
 On these subjects the language is sufficiently broad and rhetor- 
 ical to permit its application to almost any scientific theory. 
 It cannot, therefore, be in conflict with, say, a " nebular the- 
 ory " or ascertained " evolution." Any philosophy may open 
 its statements with the preface that " the earth was without 
 form, and void " ; and any science which sees the human body 
 mouldered into dust may say that man was formed from " the 
 dust of the ground." In the account of the flood, also, the 
 language is not technical, but epic, and the phrases which set 
 forth the idea that all flesh and all mankind were destroyed, 
 and that the waters covered the whole earth, are like those 
 which say that David's kingdom or Solomon's shall be estab- 
 lished " forever," or that there were in Jerusalem, at Pentecost, 
 men " from every nation under heaven." The language is 
 rhetorical, popular, and thus interpreted by those who spoke and 
 heard it. Like it is the famous poetical quotation in Joshua : 
 
 " Sun stand still in Gibeon, 
 And moon in the valley of Ajalon ; 
 And the sun stood still, 
 And the moon stood, 
 Until the people avenged themselves on their enemies." 
 
 The poets do not write for the "schools," 
 
HIS BLEMISHES. 
 
 Perhaps the most deeply serious hindrance to belief in the 
 traditional idea of the Bible is in the fact that God is not seen 
 and does not speak. All representations to the contrary are 
 born of the poverty of human thought and the feebleness of 
 human language. They are metaphors, figures of speech, 
 clothing the divine Being in the likeness of feeble men. 
 Echoing the universal testimony of the Scriptures, the first 
 of the Thirty-nine Articles states that God is " without body, 
 parts, or passions." Jesus Christ said, " God is spirit." To 
 say that He spake to Moses " face to face " is to use a piece 
 of rhetoric. It is recorded that Moses specially pleaded for a 
 glimpse of the august Countenance, and was denied it. 1 It is 
 also stated in that connection that Moses did catch a glimpse 
 of His " back parts," whatever that may mean. But St. John, 
 in his Gospel, declares that " no man hath seen God at any 
 time"; 2 and St. Paul speaks of Him as "the King eternal, 
 immortal, invisible," 3 " dwelling in the light which no man can 
 approach unto ; whom no man hath seen, nor can see." 4 
 
 l Ex. xxxiii. 23. 2 John i. 18. 
 
 3 I. Tim. i. 17. 4 I. Tim. vi. 16. 
 
V. 
 
 HIS LIMITATIONS. 
 " They that stand high have many blasts to shake them." 
 
 THERE are further difficulties in the way of the infallibility 
 of the Bible, growing out of its methods of composition, 
 custody, and authorship. 
 
 The word " Bible " is not to be found in the book itself ; it 
 does not so call itself. The Jews called the writings of pro- 
 phets and historians the " Scriptures " or " Sacred Scriptures " 
 — that is, "writings" or "sacred writings." The early Chris- 
 tians called them "The Books." This was the habit among 
 Christians till the eighth century. In the thirteenth century 
 the whole collection was generally called " The Book." 
 
 Greek Christians, in the early days, used the terms " Old 
 Covenant " and " New Covenant " to describe the books 
 respectively of the old and new dispensations. The word 
 " testament " is derived from one of the words used by the 
 Saviour at the institution of the Supper : " This is my blood of 
 the new testament." In Hebrew the word is Frith; in Greek, 
 diatheke; in Latin, testamentum. It is from this last that our 
 word " testament " comes. The word was used by some of 
 the fathers, and its use was fixed, for modern times, by Luther 
 when he put upon his German translation of the Bible the 
 titles " Old Testament " and " New Testament." 
 
 Among the early Jews the Bible was divided into lessons 
 from the Law and from the Prophets. Among Christians 
 Ammonius of Alexandria divided the Gospels into short chap- 
 ters. In the fifth century other divisions were made — the chap- 
 
 48 
 
HIS LIMITATIONS, 49 
 
 ters in the Book of Acts and the Catholic Epistles by Eutha- 
 lius of Alexandria. The present chapters were arranged by 
 Cardinal Hugo, of St. Cams, in the thirteenth century. The 
 present arrangement of verses was made by Robert Stephens, 
 in an edition issued in 1 55 1. 
 
 The Hebrew Scriptures were written with iron pens, with 
 ink made of lampblack dissolved in gall-juice, and on skins 
 from animals. The skins were cut in strips, which were joined 
 end to end and rolled from opposite extremities on two sticks, 
 making a scroll. Scrolls of the ancient pattern may be seen 
 in modern Jewish synagogues. The skins, of course, were 
 highly durable, but in the lapse of centuries the original man- 
 uscripts of all the Scripture books have disappeared. The 
 manuscript from which our English Bible descended seems 
 to have been cut or torn, at the end of the second book of 
 Chronicles, right in the middle of a sentence, where there 
 should have been no pause at all, not even enough to be 
 punctuated with a comma. The first part of the sentence is 
 repeated, and the conclusion added, in the third verse of the 
 first chapter of the Book of Ezra ; in fact, Ezra begins with 
 the twenty-second verse of the last chapter of II. Chronicles. 
 
 It is said that we have no Hebrew manuscript of the Old 
 Testament older than a.d. iioo, and that the oldest are full 
 of clerical mistakes. 1 
 
 The books of the New Testament were doubtless written 
 originally on papyrus — a common writing-material of that day 
 — composed of the fibre of the papyrus plant, with some 
 glutinous substance, subjected to pressure. 
 
 There are versions of the Old Testament which antedate 
 all manuscripts in existence — the Septuagint, the Chaldee and 
 Samaritan Targums, the Syriac Peshitto, and the Vulgate. 
 The three oldest manuscripts in existence are known as the 
 Vatican, Sinai, and Alexandrian MSS. These Bibles are writ- 
 ten in Greek, with only uncial, which are capital, letters. Of 
 other uncial manuscripts there are, if we include fragments, 
 
 1 Bamp. Lee, 1885, p. 3S8, note 4. 
 
5° THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 fifty-six of the Gospels, fourteen of the Acts, six of the Cath- 
 olic Epistles, fifteen of the Pauline Epistles, and five of the 
 Apocalypse. Of the cursive manuscripts — cursive means " run- 
 ning hand," in which letters were joined as we join them now, 
 written not in capitals, but small letters — there are about two 
 thousand of the books and various parts of the New Testa- 
 ment. The uncial letters show a more ancient custom of 
 writing than the cursive. 
 
 The Vatican and Sinai Bibles are supposed by scholars to 
 have been written in the fourth century, the Alexandrian in 
 the fifth. The Vatican seems to be the oldest of the three. 
 It is so named because it was found in the Vatican Library at 
 Rome in the year 1475. It contains the Septuagint transla- 
 tion of the Old Testament and the books of the New Testa- 
 ment — except the last five chapters of Hebrews — the two 
 Epistles to Timothy, those to Titus and Philemon, and the 
 Apocalypse. It contains also the Apocrypha. The Sinai 
 Bible was found by Constantine Tischendorf in a convent at 
 the foot of Mount Sinai: a few leaves in 1844; nothing in 
 1853, when he returned to find that the monks had hidden 
 them from him; and the entire book as it now is in 1859, 
 when he returned armed with a letter from the Czar of Russia, 
 the head of the Greek Church. It is now in St. Petersburg. 
 It contains twenty-two books of the Old Testament, the New 
 Testament, the " Epistle of Barnabas," and a part of the " Shep- 
 herd of Hermas." The Alexandrian Bible was brought by 
 Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople, from Alexandria in 
 Egypt, and by him presented to Charles I. of England, who 
 kept it in his private library. In 1753 it was taken to the 
 British Museum, in London, where it remains. It contains 
 the following books, in the following order : Vol. I. : Penta- 
 teuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, the two books of Samuel, Kings, 
 Chronicles ; Vol. II. : the twelve minor prophets, Isaiah, Jere- 
 miah, Baruch, Lamentations, the Epistle of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 
 Daniel, Esther, Tobit, Judith, I. Esdras, II. Esdras (which 
 includes Nehemiah and part of Ezra), and the four books of 
 
HIS LIMITATIONS. 5 1 
 
 the Maccabees; Vol. III.: an Epistle of Athanasius to Mar- 
 cellenus on the Psalms, the Hypothesis of Eusebius on the 
 Psalms, the Book of Psalms (containing one hundred and fifty- 
 one psalms and fifteen hymns), Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, 
 Canticles, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus ; Vol. IV. : the 
 four Gospels, Acts, Epistle of James, First and Second of 
 Peter, three of John, Jude, fourteen of Paul (including He- 
 brews), Revelation, two Epistles of Clement to the Corinthians, 
 and eight psalms of Solomon. 
 
 i . Manuscripts were few in number, and exposed to a thou- 
 sand and one mischances, from ignorance, carelessness, contro- 
 versies, political dissensions, fire, earthquake, confusions inci- 
 dent upon epidemics, war, captivity, the destruction of cities 
 and kingdoms. 
 
 During the reign of Josiah in Judah, six or seven centuries 
 after Moses, "a book of the law of the Lord by Moses" 
 was found by Hilkiah the priest. Whatever that book was it 
 was clearly lost, or unknown, at least for some considerable 
 period before that time. In another instance King Jehoiakim 
 seizes a manuscript of Jeremiah's prophecy, cuts it in strips 
 with a penknife, and burns it in the fire. 
 
 2. Hebrew writings were generally anonymous. The names 
 of the authors were not affixed ; authorship of books was a 
 matter of tradition. Look into your English Bible, into the 
 various books ; not at the titles, which are modern, but into 
 the text itself. It does not say who wrote the books. " The 
 vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz," begins one. " The words 
 of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah," reads another. It is not said 
 that either Isaiah or Jeremiah wrote these books. The pro- 
 phets were the clergy of their time — the great preachers. The 
 scribes were another class. There is nothing to prove the 
 authorship of the books of the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, 
 Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, 
 Jonah, Ruth, many psalms, Lamentations, and Hebrews. It 
 has been argued by many eminent scholars of high Christian 
 faith that Daniel could not have written the book called by 
 
52 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 his name, because the book is not in the Hebrew collection of 
 the prophets. Neither he nor his book is mentioned in the 
 contemporaneous histories of the Exile. Jesus, the son of 
 Sirach, B.C. 200, gives a list of the prophets and other great 
 men of Israel, but Daniel's name is not among them. Daniel 
 is in Babylon, yet he says nothing of the return from exile and 
 the rebuilding of the temple, so soon to follow — matters that 
 absorbed Jewish thought and longing. Persian words and 
 Greek words in the prophecy strongly argue for a later author- 
 ship than the day of Daniel. The author seems to have lived 
 in the days of the Maccabees, and to have put his words in 
 Daniel's mouth. Modern scholars are generally agreed that 
 chapters xl.-lxvi. of Isaiah are by some "great unknown." 
 Tradition has assigned these books to persons popularly sup- 
 posed to have written them ; but only tradition. If the in- 
 finite and eternal Being had designed that their authorship 
 should be a matter of grave consequence to the world surely 
 He would have taken some precaution to assure us of it. 
 
 3. The titles of many books were not given by the writers. It 
 is not known that any of them were. With Jews and Chris- 
 tians the titles have been different. The Jews frequently 
 called books by the first word or two in them. So it was in 
 the Pentateuch : Genesis was called B'reshith, " In the begin- 
 ning;" Exodus was Y'elleh Sh'moth, "Now these are the 
 names;" Leviticus was Vayyikra, "And he called." They 
 called the Book of Psalms Th'hillim, which means, literally, 
 praise-songs, or, liberally, praise-book or hymnal. The titles 
 to many of the single psalms were given by editors or com- 
 pilers. Jerome gave the Books of Chronicles their present 
 name. The Jews called them " Events of the Times " ; the 
 Septuagint names them " Paraleipomena," which means "things 
 left over," or supplements. The present title of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews is not in some of the earliest manuscripts. We 
 have it, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews;" 
 the original title was, " To the Hebrews." In the title to the 
 Epistle to the Ephesians the word " Ephesians " is not in the 
 
II IS LIMITATIONS, 53 
 
 Sinai or Vatican manuscripts. The place is left blank, as 
 though several copies had been intended, and the space was 
 to have been filled with the name of the particular church to 
 which the copy should be sent. 
 
 4. Methods used for stirring to inspiration were sometimes 
 hi/man and carnal. Natural instruments were used to stimu- 
 late natural excitement and credulity. Music was made a 
 prominent and potent factor. Saul meets "a company of 
 prophets . . . with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe, and 
 a harp," " and the Spirit of God came upon him, and he 
 prophesied." 1 Again, when he was seeking David, and had 
 sent messengers after him to Raman, and afterward followed 
 them himself, both the messengers and Saul caught the en- 
 thusiasm of the " company of the prophets," and " the Spirit 
 of God was upon them" also, and they also " prophesied." 2 
 When Elisha was called upon by the kings of Israel, Judah, 
 and Edom, to deliver them in their war with Mesha, king of 
 Moab, before he would deign to notice his supplicants he 
 cried, "Bring me now a minstrel." 3 "And it came to pass, 
 when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came 
 upon him." 
 
 Dreams also were favorite instruments for laying open the 
 hearts of men to receive the divine knowledge ; as in the 
 cases of Abimelech and Jacob, Joseph, Gideon, and Samuel. 
 Then there were trance and ecstasy, as in the case of Balaam, 
 " falling into a trance, but having his eyes open." 
 
 Oracles also were consulted, that men might see, by the 
 oracular aid, hidden truth. The children of Dan consulted 
 Micah with his " ephod " and " teraphim," that they might 
 find a territory for a possession, and Micah said, " Go in 
 peace: before the Lord is your way wherein ye go." 4 And 
 David, seeking knowledge whether Saul would pursue him to 
 Keilah, and the men of Keilah deliver him to Saul, calls to 
 Abiathar the priest, " Bring hither the ephod." 
 
 1 I. Sam. x. 5, 10. 2 I. Sam. xix. 20-24. 
 
 3 II. Kings iii. 15. 4 Judg. xviii. 3-6. 
 
54 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 The methods of attaining to prophecy even became matters 
 of training and education, as witness the " schools of the 
 prophets," where, also, companionship and sympathy might 
 kindle prophetic enthusiasm. 
 
 5. The divine communications were ?wt recorded until long 
 after they were given, and then often not by the prophets them- 
 selves. The divine promises to Abraham, the dreams of 
 Jacob and Joseph, the dreams of Joseph the reputed father of 
 Jesus, the message of the angel of the Annunciation to the 
 Virgin Mother, are instances. The first group of these were 
 popularly supposed to have been written by Moses, generations 
 after Abraham, when his family had become a nation ; the 
 others were written down, not by Joseph and Mary, but by 
 Matthew and Luke years afterward. "The narrative of the 
 events which happened at Sinai is some centuries later than 
 those events." 1 And the records we have of the sayings of 
 the Lord Jesus Himself were not written by apostles and evan- 
 gelists till long after " a cloud received Him out of their sight." 
 
 6. Prophecy uses the tenses of verbs with marvellous freedom. 
 It sweeps from century to century and back again, intermin- 
 gling the ages with strange facility, if God put every word into 
 every prophet's mouth. Isaiah, centuries before, says of Christ, 
 centuries after, " Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is 
 given." Zechariah, in a single chapter — the ninth — gazes 
 upon the martial figure of Alexander the Great, then upon the 
 gentle form of Jesus Christ, and then " suddenly reverts to the 
 age of the Maccabees," three hundred years before. Jere- 
 miah 2 pictures the capture of Babylon by Cyrus and its final 
 destruction as one event, although they were centuries apart. 
 
 7. The Bible writers dreiv from other sources. They gath- 
 ered materials as other authors do. If Moses wrote the Penta- 
 teuch he incorporated in it some things of which there were pre- 
 vious accounts. The archaeologists tell us that Ramses II. was 
 the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and that he died in 1281 B.C. ; 3 
 
 1 Sanday, Bamp. Lee, 1893, p. 234. 2 Jer. 1. li. 
 
 3 High. Crit. and Mon., Sayce, pp. 241, 242. 
 
HIS LIMITATIONS. 55 
 
 that the Exodus took place in the reign of his son and suc- 
 cessor, Meneptah II. 1 This would bring the time of Moses 
 not later than the latter half of the thirteenth century B.C. 
 The Tel-el- Amarna tablets, discovered in Egypt in 1887, date 
 from the century before the Exodus. They show that Baby- 
 lonian culture had spread through Palestine and Syria into 
 Egypt. They are written in the Babylonian language, and 
 show that that language was familiar to the cultured classes 
 of those countries, just as French has been familiar in the 
 countries of modern Europe. Poems of the creation, stories 
 of the Garden of Eden, of the fall of man, of the flood, of the 
 tower of Babel, which the archaeologists tell us date from over 
 two thousand years before Christ, and which were current in 
 Babylonia and Assyria, as the monuments show, were there- 
 fore familiar, it is said, to cultured people in Moses' time. 
 Moses was, the Bible tells us, "learned in all the wisdom of 
 the Egyptians." The Egyptians were " wise " in the language 
 of the Babylonians, and, it seems fair to infer, knew their cos- 
 mology and religion. If, therefore, Moses wrote the first chap- 
 ters of Genesis, it seems fair to infer that he drew something 
 of his story from the traditions, beliefs, and historical accounts 
 current in his day. 
 
 The almost universal conviction of modern scholars is that 
 Genesis is composed, in part, of earlier documents. Indeed, 
 the biblical authors refer to other documents by name, in some 
 instances quote from them, and at least show that they were 
 consulted. There are : the " Book of the Wars of Jehovah ;" 2 
 the " Book of Jasher," 3 in which is the " Song of the Bow " ; 
 the "History of Samuel the Seer," 4 the " History of Nathan 
 the Prophet," and the "History of Gad the Seer"; the 
 " Prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite," and the " Visions of 
 Iddo the Seer " ; 5 the " Book of Shemaiah the Prophet " ; G the 
 " Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel " 7 and the 
 
 1 High. Crit. and Mon., Sayce, p. 240. - Nam. xxi. 14. 
 
 3 II. Sam. i. 18. 4 I. Chron. xxix. 29. 5 II. Chron. ix. 29. 
 
 fi II. Chron. xii. 15. 7 I. Kings xiv. 19. 
 
56 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 " Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah," 1 which are 
 not our " Kings " and " Chronicles " ; the " Acts of Uzziah " ; 2 
 and the "Book of Jehu the Son of Hanani." 3 
 
 8. Some laws and institutions are prior to Moses, although 
 he has been thought the first of the sacred writers. Sacrifice 
 was common among all nations. Circumcision, the Bible 
 itself shows, was practised by the Arabs, Moabites, Ammon- 
 ites, and Edomites. Herodotos says that it was used by the 
 Phenicians, Colchians, and Ethiopians. From earliest history 
 it was practised by the Egyptians, and still is ; and inscriptions 
 indicate it in Babylonia. 4 The word " Sabbath " is of Baby- 
 lonian origin, from Saoattu, 5 which is described on the Baby- 
 lonian tablets as " a day of rest for the soul." The Assyrians 
 derived the word " from two Sumerian or pre-Semitic words, sa 
 and bat, which meant, respectively, ' heart ' and ' ceasing.' " 
 In Babylonia even the king " must not eat flesh cooked over 
 the coals or in smoke, . . . change the garments of his 
 body," offer " sacrifices," wear "white robes," or ride in a 
 " chariot." 
 
 9. There are successive authorships in the Old Testament. Of 
 this the great majority of the books bare traces. That God 
 should inspire one man to write one infallible book is more 
 comprehensible than that He should inspire many men to write 
 many fragments, which somehow should be gotten together 
 and thus constitute an infallible volume. It is generally 
 regarded 6 as scarcely doubtful by the higher critics — among 
 them the professors of Hebrew in the universities of Oxford, 
 Cambridge, and Edinburgh — that the Pentateuch embraces 
 four separate documents by four distinct authors, of marked 
 individualities of literary style. Before them all, in point of 
 antiquity, is the Song of Deborah, in the Book of Judges, 
 which is regarded as the oldest piece of Hebrew literature in 
 existence. The four documents of the Pentateuch are known 
 
 1 I. Chron. ix. I. 2 II. Chron. xxvi. 22. 3 II. Chron. xx. 34. 
 
 4 High. Crit. and Mon., pp. 280, 281. 5 Ibid., p. 74. 
 
 6 Old Test. Criticism, Quarterly Rev., April, 1894. 
 
HIS LIMITATIONS. 
 
 57 
 
 as the Jehovist, which is reckoned to have been written at the 
 end of the ninth or beginning of the eighth century B.C. ; the 
 Second Elohist, about fifty years later ; the Deuteronomist, not 
 later than 621 b.c. ; the First Elohist, or Priest's Code, in the 
 first quarter of the fifth century b.c. These four are generally 
 admitted among scholars. Each existed as an independent 
 code before incorporation into the Pentateuch. Each can 
 be, in its main features, distinctly traced, and while there are 
 some differences among critics as to details, there is practical 
 unanimity as to the main outlines. In these documents there 
 are three distinct codes of laws: (1) the Book of the Cove- 
 nant, embracing chapters xx.-xxiv., xxxiv. of the Book of 
 Exodus; (2) Deuteronomy, the popular and prophetic code; 
 (3) the Priest's Code, of which Leviticus is the centre, with 
 Exodus xxv.-xxxii., xxxv.-xl., and Numbers i.-x., xv.-xix., 
 xxv.-xxxvi. The laws of the three codes, as we now have 
 them, gathered in and scattered through the Pentateuch, 
 "probably date from every period in the history of Israel;" 
 some of them, like circumcision and the Sabbath, going back 
 before Moses, and others belonging to the period between 
 Ezekiel and Ezra, or perhaps later. 
 
 The oldest Pentateuchal document, be it observed, is cred- 
 ited to the eighth or ninth century b.c, whereas it is estimated 
 that Moses flourished in the thirteenth. 
 
 Besides the four authors referred to, many of the critics 
 have become convinced that each document received contri- 
 butions from several other authors, and that there were various 
 modifications by various editors, the entire combination and 
 arrangement of the Pentateuch having been most probably 
 made by Ezra about the year 444 b.c. 
 
 Evidences of the separate documents may be seen in the 
 two accounts in Genesis of the creation and the flood, those 
 of the creation giving in the first chapter one order and in 
 the second chapter another order in which the universe was 
 made. In the accounts of the flood, intermingled as they are 
 in the sixth chapter, let us see one or two examples : 
 
58 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 Jehovist : "And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man 
 was great in the earth." 
 
 Elohist : "And Elohim looked upon the earth, and, behold, 
 it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the 
 earth." 
 
 Jehovist: "And Jehovah said, I will destroy man whom I 
 have created from the face of the earth." 
 
 Elohist: "And Elohim said, . . . The end of all flesh is 
 come before me ; . . . and, behold, I will destroy them with 
 the earth." 
 
 Jehovist : " But Noah found grace in the eyes of Jehovah." 
 
 Elohist: "And Noah walked with Elohim." 
 
 And so with words, phrases, style peculiar to the writer, 
 names, allusions to customs and events that are not such as 
 the traditional author could refer to, through many books the 
 impress of other authors and editors may be traced. " Even 
 Deuteronomy," says one writer, is probably the work of a 
 " school or succession of writers, who have left their impress 
 deeply traced upon the Books of Joshua, Judges, Kings, and 
 . . . Samuel." Isaiah is not all Isaiah, say others ; Jeremiah 
 has had other words mingled with his own ; and neither is 
 methodically or chronologically arranged. Jonah appears to 
 have been written three or four centuries after his day, and 
 contains "reminiscences" of the Psalms. Micah and Zecha- 
 riah have other prophecies mingled with their own. Malachi 
 may not be even a name, and is wholly unknown in person. 
 The Psalms and Proverbs were touched by many hands. In 
 Job the speeches of Elihu are interpolated, and mar the sym- 
 metry of the drama. Chronicles is a compilation from many 
 sources ; and Ezra and Nehemiah another compilation, by the 
 same hands, long after their heroes had "fallen asleep." 
 
VI. 
 
 HIS MINISTERS. 
 " Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know." 
 
 WHAT, then, did Moses write ? It is very difficult to 
 answer, say the critics. " The older historical writing 
 was all of it the work of prophets." There is " a double 
 stream of narrative " in the Pentateuch, written during the 
 periods of the Monarchy and the Exile, " variously dated be- 
 tween 900 and 750 B.C." 
 
 1. It is thought that the law grew up originally out of the de- 
 cisions of Moses, for " Moses sat to judge the people." x He 
 said, 2 " Because the people come unto me to inquire of God : 
 when they have a matter, they come unto me ; and I judge 
 between one and another." But Jethro, his father-in-law, 
 thought this too heavy a tax and strain upon him, and pro- 
 posed that he should appoint others to relieve him of this 
 labor and responsibility. " And Moses chose able men out of 
 all Israel. . . . And they judged the people at all seasons." 3 
 And so, perhaps, a fuller law grew up out of their decisions 
 and those of Deborah and Samuel. 4 
 
 2. The Bible claims directly that Moses wrote some things ; 
 the Book of the Covenant ; 5 and, on the second pair of tables, 
 
 " the ten commandments " ; and the story of the defeat of 
 Amalek ; 6 and " the words of the law " in a book. 7 
 
 3. It does not seem probable, however, that Moses wrote the 
 
 1 Ex. xviii. 13. 2 Ex. xviii. 15, 16. 3 Ex. xviii. 25, 26. 
 4 Jurlg. iv. 4, 5 ; I. Sam. vii. 16, 17. 5 Ex. xxiv. 4, 7. 
 
 6 Ex. xvii. 14. 7 Deut. xxxi. 24-26. 
 
 59 
 
60 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 account of his own death in Deuteronomy ; or that he wrote, 
 " Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of 
 Egypt, in the sight of all the people;" 1 or, "Now the man 
 Moses was very meek above all the men which were on the 
 face of the earth;" 2 or, "There arose not a prophet since in 
 Israel like unto Moses." 3 
 
 The expression " the Canaanite was then in the land " 4 
 looks as though it were written by some one at a time when 
 the Canaanite was not in the land, a period long after the 
 death of Moses. The expression " while the children of Israel 
 were in the wilderness " 5 looks like the writing of one who 
 had got out of the wilderness, which Moses never did but by 
 death. "These are the kings that reigned over the land of 
 Edom before there reigned any king over the children of 
 Israel." 6 Moses knew of no king. Saul was the first king, at 
 least three hundred years after Moses. In the twentieth chap- 
 ter of Numbers, in the first verse, it is recorded that the children 
 of Israel reached Kadesh. This was in the first month of the 
 third year of the wandering. Yet in the twenty-second verse 
 of the same chapter there is a record of Aaron's death at 
 Mount Hor, which was in the fortieth year of the wandering. 
 Here is a chasm in the history of thirty-eight years. It does 
 not look like a continuous history written by one hand, and 
 that the hand of the central figure in the history. In Exodus, 
 twenty-third and thirty-sixth chapters, there are two records 
 of the same set of laws, repeated almost word for word ; in 
 Leviticus, eighteenth and twentieth chapters, a similar instance. 
 One writer would scarcely have given the repetitions. 
 
 4. 77 is important to observe that neither the Pentateuch nor 
 any of its separate books state that Moses was the author of 
 them ; that none of the later books of the Old Testament state 
 it. They refer to Moses not as an author or writer, but as a 
 leader, an intercessor, a prophet. 7 They also refer to the law 
 
 1 Ex. xi. 3. 2 Num. xii. 3. 3 Deut. xxxiv. 10. 
 
 4 Gen. xii. 6. 5 Num. xv. 32. 6 Gen. xxxvi. 31. 
 
 ? Jer. xv. 1 ; Micah vi. 4; Hos. xii. 13. 
 
His MINISTERS. 6i 
 
 of Moses, but never say that it was written by him. The 
 apocryphal books of the Old Testament do not state it; nor 
 the teachings of Christ ; nor any apostolic or sub-apostolic 
 writer ; nor any council — ecumenical, national, or provincial ; 
 nor does any consensus of the Christian fathers, nor any one 
 father, speaking with authority. 
 
 On the other hand, it is claimed in the Pentateuch that cer- 
 tain parts of it were written by Moses. This is recognized by 
 the later books of the Old Testament. It became customary 
 to speak of the whole as written by him. In the three cen- 
 turies before Christ there grew up a widespread belief that he 
 wrote the whole ; l and this popular belief has been handed 
 down to our own day. 
 
 5. The gathering together of the books of the Old Testa- 
 ment into what is known as the canon marked the estimate 
 put upon them as of divine origin, and stamped them as 
 " Scripture." How each separate document or book was re- 
 garded when written we have no means of knowing ; at least 
 some of them were not regarded as sacred from the begin- 
 ning. It is generally agreed among scholars that the canon 
 of the law was settled by Ezra in the year 444 B.C.* It is 
 largely agreed, also, that the canon of the prophets was set- 
 
 1 See Old Test. Crit., Quarterly Rev., April, 1894. 
 
 * Others of the present books were written before that time, and others 
 afterward. The dates assigned to them by Professor Sanday in his Bamp- 
 ton Lectures, and Professor Driver in his Introduction, are as follows : 
 Psalms, from David, 977, downward to the second century B.C. ; Song of 
 Songs, after .Solomon, 937; Obadiah, perhaps 844; Joel, perhaps 817; 
 Amos, 760; Hosea, 740; Isaiah, 737-700; Micah, 700, chapters vi., vii., 
 686; Zechariah, ix.-xiv., eighth century (Driver); Nahum, 624; Zepha- 
 niah, 621 ; Habakkuk, 608 ; Ruth, period of Exile, sixth century (Driver) ; 
 Jeremiah, 627-580; Lamentations, perhaps 627-580; Job, not earlier 
 than 627, perhaps in sixth century (Driver) ; substantial completion of 
 Books of Kings, 600; Ezekiel, 592-572; Isaiah, xl.-lxvi., 546-538; 
 Haggai, 520; Zechariah, i.-viii., 520-518; Malachi, shortly before 432 
 (Driver); Ecclesiastes and Esther, not earlier, perhaps later, than 332 
 (Driver); Ezra and Nehemiah, about 300; many psalms, final arrange- 
 ment of the Book of Proverbs, perhaps Jonah, about this time ; Chron- 
 icles, 300; Daniel, 164. 
 
62 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 tied in the course of the third century B.C. 1 Nehemiah had 
 gathered together the Books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and 
 Kings, and about his time began the third collection, of such 
 bouks as made up the Hagiographa. The process of mak- 
 ing this collection extended through several centuries, and 
 the sacred authority of some of the books was disputed till 
 a late date. The fact that the Chronicles stand at the end of 
 the Hebrew Bible indicates that they were admitted to the 
 canon at a late date. The Books of Canticles and Ecclesi- 
 astes were long disputed among the Jews, and the question 
 of their admission was not settled by any authority until the 
 Jewish Synod of Jamnia, in a.d. 90, about sixty years after 
 the death of Christ, when the canon of the Old Testament 
 was finally closed ; although even after this some devout Jews 
 continued to be doubtful about the Book of Esther. 
 
 6. Of the history of the New Testament books much the 
 same may be said as has been said of the Old Testament. 
 The gospel was first oral, transmitted from mouth to mouth 
 for years after it was first spoken by the Master. The titles 
 of the books as we have them are not always correct, as in the 
 Epistles to the Ephesians and Hebrews, before mentioned. 
 The earliest of the books, the First Epistle to the Thessalo- 
 nians, was not written till a.d. 52, some twenty years after the 
 death of Christ. The Gospel of Luke was a little earlier than 
 the Acts, which was written in 63. The Gospels of Matthew 
 and Mark came a little later, apparently before 70. The 
 Book of Revelation dates from 68 or 69, and the Gospel and 
 Epistles of St. John somewhere in the nineties. Some of 
 these books also appear to be anonymous. The authorship of 
 Hebrews has never been settled; that of Jude and II. Peter 
 has been questioned. Even so distinguished a theologian as 
 Calvin denied that Peter had written the second epistle of his 
 name, and so great a man as Luther denied that John had 
 written the Apocalypse. 
 
 The New Testament does not consist of the first writings 
 1 Bamp. Lee, 1893, p. 101. 
 
HIS MIXISTERS. 63 
 
 ever made on the subject of Christ and the gospel. St. Luke 
 says : " Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth 
 in order a declaration of those things which are most surely 
 believed among us ... it seemed good to me also ... to 
 write." 1 From this it appears that there were "many" ac- 
 counts, notes, memoranda, from which the New Testament 
 writers drew. They also compiled, as did the Old Testament 
 writers. They also gathered materials, as historians have done 
 before and since. They quote also from books not in the 
 canon, although the quotations are of a liberal kind. St. James 
 quotes from Sirach ; 2 Romans and Hebrews from Wisdom ; 3 
 Corinthians from Judith ; 4 and Jude from Enoch. 5 
 
 The original manuscripts of these books, written on papy- 
 rus, soon perished. Copies were multiplied, and marginal 
 notes crept into the text, some of which we can easily distin- 
 guish by comparing King James's version with the Revised 
 Version. Readings varied, and discrepancies arose. 
 
 The New Testament books were written in the Greek lan- 
 guage, while the language spoken by Christ was Aramaic, so 
 that we have only a very few of the actual words of Christ. 
 In one instance He said, Ephphatha 6 — " Be opened ; " in an- 
 other, Taliiha cumi 7 — " Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise ; " in a 
 third, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ? 8 — " My God, my God, why 
 hast thou forsaken me ? " And these are all. 
 
 7. Some of the Old Testament books are quoted in the 
 New, and as sacred Scriptures, which is thought to imply an 
 indorsement of them as of divine authority. But, as we have 
 seen, other books are also quoted. If quotation stamps Isaiah 
 as divine it also stamps Enoch as divine. And non-quotation 
 leaves the books not quoted without indorsement, which would 
 mark invidiously Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Esther, Ezra, and 
 
 1 Luke i. 1, 3. 2 James i. 19; Sirach v. 11, iv. 29. 
 
 3 Ileb. i. 3; Wis. vii. 26; Rom. ix. 21; Wis. xv. 7. 
 
 4 I. Cor. ii. 10, 11 ; Judith viii. 14. 
 
 5 Jude 14, 15; Enoch, ch. ii. 6 Mark vii. 34. 
 Mark v. 41. 8 Matt, xxvii. 46. 
 
64 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 Nehemiah, which are not so much as in any way referred to 
 in the New Testament. 
 
 It is true that Christ himself refers to the Old Testament, as 
 in the case of Jonah : " As Jonah was three days and three 
 nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three 
 days and three nights in the heart of the earth." 1 And it is 
 thought that this stamps the narrative of Jonah as literal fact 
 and indorses the inspiration of the book. But Christ also 
 speaks of the rising and setting of the sun, which by parity of 
 reason would set the divine seal to a false fact. The sun 
 does not rise and set, but the current metaphors may well 
 have been taken upon the divine lips ; and the current esti- 
 mate of Jonah may well have been used by the divine Teacher 
 for purposes of illustration. If the story of Jonah was not 
 true why did He not denounce it ? It may as well be asked 
 why, in speaking of the story of creation, He did not declare 
 that the six days were not natural days of twenty-four hours. 
 It is not profane to say that perhaps He did not know. He 
 had submitted to limitations when He " emptied himself " of 
 His glory and became man. There were things which He de- 
 clared He did not know : " But of that day and that hour 
 knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, 
 neither the Son, but the Father." 2 And St. Luke says : 3 
 " And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor 
 with God and man." 
 
 8. The canon of the New Testament was formed gradually, 
 as was that of the Old. It was a process, not an act. The 
 apostolic writings were read with respect. It does not appear 
 that they were at first regarded as Scripture. As time passed 
 they grew in value. They were nearer the origin of Christian- 
 ity than others. They were written by men who knew the 
 Lord Jesus. In the latter half of the second century they 
 were gathered together for the first time. The first part was 
 called " The Gospel," and contained the four Gospels ; the 
 second part was called "The Apostle," and contained the 
 
 1 Matt. xii. 40. 2 Mark xiii. 32. 3 Luke ii. 52. 
 
HIS MINISTERS. 65 
 
 Acts, thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, one of St. Peter, one of 
 St. John, and Revelation. 
 
 Numerous other Christian writings sprang up, and Chris- 
 tians began a process of sifting, to determine which should be 
 regarded as Scripture. Fathers and churches were not at first 
 agreed ; they had various lists of books, which each regarded 
 as sacred — some more so, some less so. The value of them 
 was not equal in the eyes of fathers and churches. Origen 
 (a.d. 185-253) seems to be the first to furnish a list of the 
 books as we have them now, though he expresses doubts of 
 II. Peter and II. and III. John. Athanasius (a.d. 363) is the 
 next to give the complete canon. And the question of what 
 should constitute the New Testament seems to have been 
 finally settled at the Councils of Carthage, in 397 and 419. 
 
VII. 
 
 HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 "As on a mountain-top the cedar shows, 
 That keeps his leaves in spite of any storm." 
 
 IS all this vague, irrelevant, inconclusive on the question of 
 Inspiration ? Is it ad rem as to the subject of Introduc- 
 tion, and de aliis as to Inspiration ? It might seem so. If 
 so it would be nothing worse than an imitation of the modern 
 fashion in writing books. They deal profusely and exclusively 
 with some other subject than the one to which their pages are 
 dedicated. In this instance, however, there would be the 
 generous excuse of necessity. For there is not a phase in the 
 history of biblical opinion which is not of interest in the inves- 
 tigation ; and there is not an item in the history of criticism 
 which is not of consequence in the settlement of the issue. 
 If the books are divine, why all the natural processes in their 
 origin and history ? If God had settled their status, why the 
 slow judgment of men and churches to pass upon it ? Do 
 they contradict themselves ? Then they are not, so far, of 
 God. Does Inspiration cover the book, or does it only here 
 and there inflame its pages ? Are there verbal mistakes ? 
 Then it cannot be verbally inspired. Is the history false in 
 certain details ? Then that portion cannot be inspired. Are 
 the writers passionate and contentious ? Then in such moods 
 the divine afflatus was wanting. Are they not always inspired? 
 Then there must be discrimination about their sayings. Are 
 the original manuscripts lost ? Then we cannot tell, amid the 
 sea of differences, the original words in every text. Was 
 
 66 
 
HIS l-KIEXDS. 07 
 
 there an " apostolical succession " of writers in a single book? 
 Were there innumerable copies ? Were there compilations, 
 extracts from profane history, editors and redactors? Then to 
 make it all infallible there must have been infallibility all along 
 the line. Is Inspiration of such a nature as to bridge over 
 all such difficulties, or of such a nature as to stand supreme 
 among them ? 
 
 As to the quantity of " Inspiration " in these pages, there is 
 so little to be had, in any work, on the direct question that the 
 massing of that alone would scarcely make more than a gen- 
 erous leaflet. The entire literature about it is busily and volu- 
 minously occupied with something else. If the foregoing 
 sketch is vague it is so because the whole original picture is 
 vague, the outlines dim, the features blurred. The only thing 
 sharply drawn and positive about it is here and there a sharp 
 and very positive squint. The vagueness is historical. It 
 stretches all along the line. It is the leading characteristic of 
 the subject. The study of Inspiration is like a pursuit of the 
 will-o'-the-wisp, a flickering and wandering light in the dank 
 and swampy regions of controversy. The effort to grasp it is 
 like an effort to grasp the subtle and universal ether. There 
 is no authoritative theory about it in Catholic Christendom. 
 The language that defines it is, and has ever been, purely 
 personal and private. The definitions, like the persons who 
 define, are all irresponsible to history and the universal con- 
 science. The earlier ones are obsolete in the presence of 
 modern learning. They have passed from the scientific view. 
 The verbal, mechanical, plenary, and dynamical have been 
 melted into one, which is called traditional, perhaps because 
 it is such a deliciously indefinite term to apply to such a deli- 
 cious cluster of confusions. The latest theory, the inductive, is 
 only the speculation and the term of a coterie of theologians. 
 However popular it may be, or may become, the gentlemen 
 who conceived it have never received divine authority or eccle- 
 siastical commission to fix it everlastingly upon the Church of 
 God. 
 
68 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 The word " inspiration " is itself vague, mystical, elusive. 
 The great body of believers do not know its meaning, and 
 cannot tell, exactly. The numerous theologians explain it in 
 so great a variety of ways that the common mind is puzzled 
 and mystified, and becomes guilty of the suspicion that even 
 the theologians cannot tell, exactly. Moreover, the word is 
 not adjudicated. Therefore no man is bound by the definition 
 of another. And every man has a certain liberty to define it 
 for himself, if he is hungry and thirsty for a definition. Stand 
 
 I solidly upon the word, and no human soul, or congregation of 
 souls, has the right to force you from your strong foundation, 
 or wring another syllable of confession from your lips. In- 
 
 \ dulge in wide, circuitous excursions of the mental faculties, or 
 wander amid a wilderness of tangled romances, about its infinite 
 suggestion, but all the while cling resolutely to the wo?'d, and 
 you can never be convicted of heresy. Literally speaking, it 
 means an inbreathing, from the Latin in and spiro, to breathe 
 into. T/ieopietistos, the Greek adjective which St. Paul, in the 
 famous passage in one of his Epistles to Timothy, 1 applied to 
 Scripture, means inbreathed-of-God. It is from T/ieos, God, 
 and pneo, to blow or breathe. To say " inspiration " in the 
 Christian sense is an abbreviated way of saying inspiration-of- 
 God. Inspiration in the Christian sense, therefore, is the 
 blowing of the breath of God. And the man or the book 
 which is inspired is the man or the book into which God has 
 blown His breath. But God is not corporeal. He has no 
 breath. He does not blow. The expressions are anthropo- 
 morphic and metaphorical. The word "inspiration" is a 
 metaphor. And viewing its sober and its sombre history, one 
 might echo the apposite irony of the farcical wit which said 
 that " figures of speech are the pillars of the Church." Sagely 
 and solemnly, without the flicker of a smile upon their be- 
 clouded faces, which might reveal some faint suspicion of the 
 poor humor of their undertaking, for nineteen centuries, sum- 
 moning all ancient and modern wisdom to aid them in their 
 
 1 II. Tim. iii. 16. 
 
HIS FRIEXDS. 69 
 
 task, men have been struggling to convert a metaphor into an 
 exact theological term. If they have failed, is not the nature 
 of their undertaking the clear and irresistible explanation of 
 the failure ? A sketch of the history of Inspiration is incon- 
 clusive ! Yes, in the nature of the case, it must be so. The 
 history itself is inconclusive. The facts are inconclusive. The 
 striking and utter difficulty of conclusions, the widespread and 
 radical differences in the long catalogue of opinions, the utter 
 absence of any conclusion on the part of the Catholic Church 
 of all ages, the deep silence of the Book of God itself, are the 
 insuperable facts which stand in unbroken array along the 
 whole vista of the centuries. 
 
 But the lack of definitions does not blind us to the essential 
 truth. Behind, and overtowering and overshadowing the his- 
 tory of doctrine, the failures of human wisdom, the confusions 
 of controversy, and the inaccuracies of a book, there is a 
 power greater than all metaphor, which wins the wonder and 
 allegiance of the soul. That was a happy faith, in ancient 
 times, which made men feel that signal talents were the direct 
 gift of God. That was a reverent belief among the heathen 
 that the poet was inspired, the sculptor, the painter, the dash- 
 ing general, the brilliant and victorious king. The genius 
 came not by the slow course of nature, but by the swift su- 
 premacy and interposition of the Deity. In this faith the Jew 
 and Gentile were united. But the Jew was ever "peculiar." 
 In his belief it was not the secular, but the sacred faculty 
 which came from God. Inspiration was religious. It was 
 not the poet per se, nor the artist, who was inspired, but the 
 prophet, or the priest, or the psalmist. When the prophet was 
 seized with powerful religious feeling he believed he was in- 
 spired. When the feeling burst forth into words he believed 
 that the inspiration had passed into his speech. When his soul 
 was visited with a high thought he believed it came from God. 
 Where else could it come from ? God spoke to him. Who 
 else could have spoken thus divinely ? The prophet could not 
 see that the lofty, spiritual visions of his soul sprang out of 
 
70 THE BREATH OF G0D t 
 
 the dusty soil. He could not see that they were born of man 
 in his degradation and sin. They must have come from God. 
 There was no other source for such sublime ideas. God must 
 have spoken, because the thoughts were turned to words, and 
 such words were never human. And as the prophet warned 
 and pleaded with the people, he poured forth the torrent of 
 his own powerful conviction that God had spoken when he 
 said, " Thus saith the Lord of hosts." There was within him 
 a force not terrestrial. It came from the ineffable heights. 
 It was a power for truth and righteousness with which God 
 invested the prophets and The Book. 
 
 So, in the high simplicity of this thought, to turn to the evi- 
 dences of Inspiration is a more grateful task than sketching 
 the history of criticism. 
 
 i . The universal conviction of prophets and writers that they 
 were inspired is one of the most striking and impressive lines 
 of evidence. From Moses to John there is the same note, 
 gathering strength along the centuries, until at last it has 
 burst into a unison that fills the ages. Too often to be enu- 
 merated here are the cries, "Thus saith the Lord of hosts," 
 " The word of the Lord came," " Hear ye the word of the 
 Lord." And often it is apparently against the prophets' 
 wills. They feel themselves impelled by a divine constraint. 
 Moses urges that he is "slow of speech and of tongue." 
 Isaiah cries, " Woe is me ! for I am undone ; because I am a 
 man of unclean lips." Jeremiah exclaims, " Ah, Lord God ! 
 behold, I cannot speak ; for I am a child." Ezekiel is warned 
 that " briers and thorns " will be with him, and that he will 
 "dwell among scorpions." Amos declares that he was "no 
 prophet," neither " a prophet's son," but " a herdman, and a 
 gatherer of sycamore fruit " ; yet " the Lord took " him, and 
 said, " Go, prophesy." They all have a consciousness that 
 the " Spirit " is upon them, and that consciousness is accorded 
 them by others : " The Lord said unto Moses, Write this for 
 a memorial in a book;" "And Moses wrote their goings out 
 according to their journeys by the commandment of the 
 
HIS FRIENDS. 71 
 
 Lord;" "This word came unto Jeremiah from the Lord, say- 
 ing, Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words 
 that I have spoken unto thee." David says : " The Spirit of the 
 Lord spake by me, and His word was in my tongue;" Micah 
 says: "I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord;" John 
 says : " He saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God." 
 And t|ie. in.-spir.-it ion of the prophets is abundantly granted 
 Jfi ^f Ne w Testament ^ Says St. Paul : " Well spake the Holy 
 Ghost by Esaias the prophet." " Every Scripture inspired of 
 God is profitable." Says the Epistle to the Hebrews : " God, 
 who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past 
 unto the fathers by the prophets." Again : " Wherefore as the 
 Holy Ghost saith, . . . They shall not enter into my rest;" 
 "The Holy Ghost this signifying;" "The Holy Ghost also is 
 a witness to us." Christ himself said : " David himself said by 
 the Holy Ghost." And thus is the New Testament replete 
 with testimony to the Old, and the New Testament writers 
 continually express the same consciousness of the Spirit in 
 themselves and the Church as those of the Old. St. Luke, 
 in Acts, says of Stephen : " They were not able to resist the 
 wisdom and the spirit by which he spake." Agabus begins his 
 prophecy with " Thus saith the Holy Ghost." The Apostolic 
 Council says : " It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us." 
 St. Peter says : " We are witnesses of these things, and so is also 
 the Holy Ghost." Again : " Holy men of God spake as they 
 were moved by the Holy Ghost." St. Paul says : " I have 
 received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you;" 
 "Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's 
 wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth;" 
 "Unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord;" 
 "I think also that I have the Spirit of God;" "If any man 
 think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge 
 that the things that I write unto you are the commandments 
 of the Lord." St. John says that he was " in the Spirit." But 
 supreme in their testimony arc the promises and assurances of 
 Jesus Christ : " It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your 
 
\. 
 
 72 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 Father which speaketh in you;" " I will pray the Father, and 
 He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with 
 you forever; even the Spirit of truth;" "When He, the Spirit 
 of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth : . . . He 
 will show you things to come. ... He shall take of mine, 
 and shall show it unto you ;" " Lo, I am with you alway, even 
 unto the end of the world." 
 
 2. The New Testament refers to the Old as though its pro- 
 phecies could not fail, and points to their fulfilment. It refers to 
 the Old as having the highest authority. St. Matthew says : 
 " Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was 
 spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin 
 shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son." St. Luke 
 says : " All the prophets from Samuel and them that followed 
 after, as many as have spoken, they also told of these days." 
 In like terms the prophets are mentioned in a multitude of 
 instances. St. Luke in the Gospel 1 and in Acts, 2 St. Paul in 
 II. Corinthians, 3 the apostles in council, 4 speak of Moses and 
 the law as though the law was final ; and Christ also speaks of 
 the law 5 of Moses and the book 6 of Moses as of divine 
 authority. SS. Philip, 7 Peter, 8 Stephen, 9 and Paul, 10 as also 
 Christ n Himself, speak of Moses as a prophet who wrote of 
 Christ. The divine Teacher repeatedly emphasizes the power 
 and divinity of the Scriptures : " Ye do err, not knowing the 
 Scriptures, nor the power of God ;" " They are they which tes- 
 tify of Me;" " All things which are written in the law of Moses, 
 and the prophets, and the psalms, concerning Me ;" " This that 
 is written must yet be accomplished in Me ;" " Beginning from 
 Moses and from all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all 
 the Scriptures the things concerning Himself ;" " Did ye never 
 read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, 
 the same is become the head of the corner ; " " This is he of 
 
 1 Luke xxiv. 27. 2 Acts xxviii. 23. 3 II. Cor. iii. 15. 
 
 4 Acts xv. 21. 5 John vii. 23. 6 Mark xii. 26. 
 
 7 John i. 45. 8 Acts iii. 22-24. 9 Acts vii. 37. 
 
 10 Acts xxvi. 22. n John v. 46, 47. 
 
II IS FRIENDS. 73 
 
 whom it is written, Behold, I send My messenger before thy 
 face, which shall prepare thy way before thee;" "The Scrip- 
 ture cannot be broken;" "Verily I say unto you, Till heaven 
 and earth pass one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from 
 the law, till all be fulfilled." [/ 
 
 3. The Scriptures prophesy, and the prophecies are fulfilled. 
 Long before there was any danger to the northern and south- 
 ern kingdoms Isaiah prophesied their downfall. He tells how 
 at first Jerusalem shall be threatened with an army, and the 
 threat shall be removed : " Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city 
 where David dwelt ! . . . I will camp against thee round 
 about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will 
 raise forts against thee. And thou shalt be brought down, 
 and shalt speak out of the ground. . . . Moreover the multi- 
 tude of thy strangers shall be like small dust, and the multi- 
 tude of the terrible ones as chaff that passeth away : yea, it shall 
 be at an instant suddenly. . . . And the multitude of all the 
 nations that fight against Ariel, even all that fight against her 
 and her munition, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of 
 a night vision." 1 The sequel, the fulfilment, is found in the 
 history of Sennacherib : " Then the angel of the Lord went 
 forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and 
 fourscore and five thousand. ... So Sennacherib king of As- 
 syria departed." 2 Again, the prophet predicts the captivity a 
 hundred and fifty years, before it occurred : " Behold, the days 
 come, that all . . . shall be carried to Babylon : nothing shall 
 be left. . . . And . . . thy sons . . . shall they take away ; and 
 they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon." 3 
 Micah predicts the same disaster. 4 Nahum 5 foretold the de- 
 struction of Nineveh a hundred and fifteen years before the 
 event. And of Tyre 6 it was foretold that she should be " a 
 rock for the spreading of nets"; and that Israel 7 should be 
 " scattered among the nations," and Jerusalem 8 " trodden 
 
 1 Isa. xxix. 1-7. 2 Isa. xxxvii. 36, 37. 3 Isa. xxxix. 6, 7. 
 
 4 Micah ii. 10. 5 Nahum, ii., iii. 6 Ezek. xxvi. 5. 
 
 7 Zech. vii. 14. 8 Luke xxi. 24. 
 
74 THE BREATH OF GOD, 
 
 down by the Gentiles." "Who as I," saith the Lord, " de- 
 clareth the thing that shall be? " 
 
 f\\The Scriptures contain most solemn warnings against the 
 mutilation of their message. It is true that such expressions 
 were not framed after the entire body of the Scriptures were 
 written and bound up together, but they seem to voice a senti- 
 ment which is applicable to the Scriptures as a whole : " What 
 thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt 
 not add thereto, nor diminish from it;" 1 "Every word of 
 God is pure. . . . Add thou not unto His words, lest He reprove 
 thee, and thou be found a liar;" 2 " I testify unto every man 
 that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, 3 If any 
 man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues 
 which are written in this book: and if any man shall take 
 away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall 
 take aw r ay his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy 
 city, which are written in this book. He which testineth these 
 things saith, Yea : I come quickly." 
 
 And thus suddenly we are at the end of the evidence of In- 
 spiration just as we enter its threshold. That Israel and 
 Christendom have ever believed the Bible to be the Book of 
 God, and that the Bible so thinks of itself, is the only direct 
 \ testimony that we have of the fact of Inspiration. Whatever 
 ''the miracles of past ages sealing the dealings and sayings of 
 God with men ; whatever of Burning Bush, or Dewy Fleece, 
 or Pillar of Fire, or Shechinah of Glory, or Voice of Thunder, 
 in the centuries gone ; whatever pitiful yet august Power in 
 the Redeemer's healing of the sick and raising of the dead ; 
 whatever the unspeakable might and transcendent mastery of 
 the resurrection of Jesus the Most High God, the tide of time 
 has left them in the region of distant history. The bar of 
 temporal limitations has been stretched across them. The 
 Book has come since. They never spoke directly of the Book. 
 They stood in the realm of incident and event, and there they 
 linger even for ever and ever. The Book is in the realm of 
 
 1 Deut. xii. 32. 2 Prov. xxx. 5, 6. 8 Rev. xxii. 18-20. 
 
HIS FRIEXDS. 75 
 
 literature. Jesus never said that the Old and New Testa- 
 ments complete were inspired, dictated of God throughout 
 their borders from leaf to cover. The skies were never opened 
 and the proclamation issued. We cannot step back into the 
 presence of the brilliant visions of the ancient saints; we 
 cannot see them in their divine frenzies, and watch the move- 
 ment of the heavenly pens, and trace the dumb vicissitudes of 
 manuscripts. And therefore Inspiration is nowhere made an 
 article of the faith. That such a thing exists and has existed 
 through the stream of centuries is evident. But let us never 
 blink at the truth. Let no fondness for phraseology ever 
 intoxicate our reason and blind us to the verities. Let no 
 fanatical fidelity make us insist on terms and definitions which 
 are not explicitly revealed. Let us not, as theologians or as 
 Christians, confuse or lead astray the millions of mankind, or 
 impose upon their consciences a word of man. It were better 
 to blot the word " inspiration " from theology and the diction- 
 ary. It has come, alas ! to stand too often and too long for 
 temporary or local or personal definitions. Every fanatic or 
 zealot would foist his own opinions on the public and fain 
 make them believe that they are Inspiration. The wisest de- 
 fine not. The greatest define not. So the divine Being Him- 
 self, which is enough. So the divine body — the Church — 
 which overshadows while it embraces the individuals of the 
 Catholic universe, "angels and living saints and dead." The 
 Catholic creeds have never given us a definition — neither the 
 decrees of the Council of Trent, nor the Articles of the An- 
 glican Church, nor the formularies of the Lutheran commu- 
 nion. Inspiration is an atmosphere, not a technicalism. It is 
 assumed, not stated ; assumed because a patent fundamental 
 to divine truth, and because of the awful and irresistible expe- 
 rience and witness of the spiritual faculties of man in every 
 age of human history. Thus undefined, the Prayer-book 
 mentions it: "The inspiration of His Spirit;" 1 "Come, Holy 
 Ghost, our souls inspire j " 2 " Grant . . . that by Thy holy in- 
 
 i Art. XIII. 2 Veni Creator. 
 
76 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 spiration we may think those things that are good ;" * " Cleanse 
 the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiratio?i of Thy Holy 
 Spirit;" 2 "Beseeching Thee to inspire continually the uni- 
 versal church." 3 
 
 " I was in no wise called upon to attempt any definition of 
 Inspiration," says Archbishop Tait, in his pastoral letter, " see- 
 ing that the church has not thought fit to prescribe one." 
 
 " The church has laid down," says the Archbishop of York, 
 in his pastoral letter, "no theory of Inspiration; she has 
 always had in her bosom teachers of at least two different 
 theories." 
 
 " We heartily concur with the majority of our opponents," 
 says the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, "in rejecting all 
 theories of Inspiration." 4 
 
 " Let us beware," says Dean Burgon, " how we commit 
 ourselves to any theories of Inspiration whatever." 5 
 
 " Our church," says Bishop Thirlwall, " has never attempted 
 to determine the nature of the Inspiration of Holy Scrip- 
 ture." 6 
 
 " If you ask me," says Dr. Cotton, Bishop of Calcutta, " for 
 a precise theory of Inspiration, I confess that I can only urge 
 you to repudiate all theories, to apply to theology the maxim 
 which guided Newton in philosophy, hypotheses non Jingo, and 
 to rest your teaching upon the facts which God has made 
 known to us." 7 
 
 " It must be borne in mind," says the Quarterly Review, 
 " that the Church Universal has never given any definition of 
 Inspiration." 8 
 
 " It seems pretty generally agreed," says the Bishop of 
 Winchester, " that definite theories of Inspiration are doubtful 
 and dangerous." 9 
 
 1 Col. 5th Sunday after Easter. 2 Col. Communion Service. 
 
 3 Prayer for the Church Militant. 4 Aids to Faith, p. 404. 
 
 5 Pastoral Office, p. 58. 6 Charge, 1863, p. 107. 
 
 7 Charge, 1863, p. 69. 8 April, 1864, p. 560. 
 
 9 Aids to Faith, p. 303. 
 
VIII. 
 
 HIS DIVINITY. 
 
 " My crown is in my heart, not on my head." 
 
 AND so, it may be repeated, we stand upon the threshold 
 JTx. of evidence just as we have reached its conclusion — as 
 the mocking-bird stands upon the threshold of melody when 
 it has sung its first song in the night, and the song is done ; 
 as the lover is only beginning a life of devoted proof when 
 he has burst into the rapturous declaration, " Behold, thou art 
 fair, my love ; there is no spot in thee." It is in its super- 
 natural, superhuman, divine ideas that the Scripture shows 
 itself to be from God. It is as a piece of literature so far sur- 
 passing all other fruits of letters that everything else is driven 
 out of comparison. It dwarfs all other books. It makes 
 them dwindle into insignificance. It contains the most en- 
 during laws, the most dramatic and vivid pictures of human 
 character, the most graphic narrative, the sublimest poetry, the 
 most powerful oratory. We call some men immortal because 
 they live in the honor of posterity. But where are Justinian 
 and Solon in comparison with Moses ? Where are Homer and 
 Virgil in comparison with Isaiah ? And how shall Tennyson 
 venture into the presence of David ? The mighty Shakespeare, 
 we are poetically told, " kissed all the shores of thought." 
 But how shall all his sayings stand the flashing genius and 
 profound wisdom of Solomon and all the prophets ? Was 
 ever human nature so pictured and portrayed in every motive 
 of the heart and every movement of the life as in the Book 
 of Psalms ? The secrets of the soul are there laid bare. The 
 
 77 
 
7 8 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 springs of human thought and feeling are there uncovered. 
 Let any man of any condition at any time pick up at random 
 that marvellous collection of songs, and there he will find the 
 echo of his transitory thought and there the image of his 
 deepest feeling. Was drama ever so loftily conceived and so 
 masterly sketched, and written, as it were, " with an iron pen 
 in the rock forever," as the drama of the Book of Job ? Of 
 all the books that have ever been written, says Carlyle the 
 seer, the Book of Job shall become, as time goes on, and 
 history is unfolded, and men grow into more vivid intellectual 
 life and spiritual apprehension, "all men's book." Its stage is 
 the universe ; its setting is the spheres ; its passion is of the 
 heart of all humanity ; its philosophy is from eternity ; its spirit 
 is from the four great winds ; its inspiration is of God. And 
 as for pictures, neither Raphael nor Correggio nor Vandyke 
 nor Titian ever painted with so swift or sure a hand as did 
 those artists of the olden time, those masters of their craft, 
 who drew the pictures of prophets and of kings to hang in 
 the world's gallery forever. The delineators of human char- 
 acter, whose names have been enrolled in the great academy 
 of the hearts of millions, are happy in their fame and love. 
 So we honor for their genius, and we love for the stories they 
 have told, the great dramatist of Stratford, the new creator of 
 " Vanity Fair," the father of Copperfield and Pickwick, the 
 " Wizard " of Rebecca and Meg Merrilies, the men across 
 the stormy Channel who have given us " Les Miserables," the 
 " Comedie Humaine," and "The Downfall." But the men 
 who have given us Abraham and Joseph and Moses and 
 David ; the men who have drawn Elijah and Isaiah ; who 
 have delineated Peter and John and Paul ; who have sketched 
 with exquisite touch the gentle figures of Ruth and Mary ; 
 who have told us the pitiful vet precious story of the Magda- 
 len — these are the Immortals of immortals. With few and 
 telling strokes the living figures have risen under the divinely 
 guided pen. Saul is there — in their peopled pages — in his 
 majesty and madness ; and Esther in her beauty and her pas- 
 
HIS DIVINITY. 79 
 
 sion. Judas is there in his treachery and despair. Jonathan 
 is there in his gentle love and unfailing loyalty ; and Cornelius 
 the centurion, whose prayers and alms had made an incense 
 before the Jehovah of all nations. And " time would fail me 
 to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jeph- 
 thah ; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets." 
 Above them all, and overshadowing all, rises the gentle, lus- 
 trous, towering, kingly figure of the " Messiah the Prince," 
 "cut off" "in the midst of His days." In His eyes is the 
 love-light for the penitent sinner — " Go, and sin no more." 
 In His flashing gaze is the burning of judgment — "Woe unto 
 you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! " And yet " His visage 
 is marred more than any man," as He is "wounded for our 
 transgressions " and " bruised for our iniquities " ; and yet He is 
 " fairer than the children of men " — the " King in His beauty." 
 
 Did ever one look into such a land of giants and of heroes! 
 The knights of Arthur are but a pale reflection of attenuated 
 myth to these men of flesh and blood. The gods of the 
 " Iliad " and " Odyssey " are but ghostly phantoms. Go 
 anywhere, in any civilized clime, and ask any man, prince or 
 pauper, priest or publican, author, statesman, soldier, scientist, 
 What is the greatest book that was ever written ? There is 
 but one answer, echoing through the visionless boundaries of 
 time : the Bible, the Book of God. 
 
 " Wha t a Book ! " says Heine the poet. " Vast and wide 
 as the world, rooted in the abysses of creation, and towering 
 up beyond the blue secrets of heaven. Sunrise and sunset, 
 promise and fulfilment, life and death, the whole drama of 
 humanity, are all in this book! Its light is like the body of 
 the heavens in its clearness ; its vastness like the bosom of the 
 sea ; its variety like scenes of nature." 
 
 Says Professor Conant: "The gnomic poetry of the most 
 enlightened of other nations will not bear comparison with it 
 in the depth and certainty of its foundation principles, or in 
 the comprehensiveness and moral grandeur of its conceptions 
 of human duty and responsibility." 
 
8o THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 Ewald : " In this Book, in this Book is contained all the wis- 
 dom of the world." 
 
 Andrew Jackson : " That Book is the rock on which our 
 Republic rests." 
 
 " I fear you are ill," said Dr. Latham to Faraday, whom he 
 found in tears, with his hand resting on an open book. " It 
 is not that," said Faraday, with a sob, " but why will people 
 go astray when they have this blessed Book to guide them ? " 
 
 Theodore Parker : " This collection of books has taken such 
 a hold on the world as no other. The literature of Greece, 
 which goes up like incense from that land of temples and 
 heroic deeds, has not half the influence of this book. It goes 
 equally to the cottage of the plain man and the palace of the 
 king. It is woven into the literature of the scholar and colors 
 the talk of the streets." 
 
 Professor Huxley : " How is the religious feeling, which is 
 the essential basis of conduct, to be kept up in the present 
 utterly chaotic state of opinion . . . without the use of the 
 Bible ? The pagan moralists lack life and color, and even 
 the noble Stoic, Marcus Antoninus, is too high and refined for 
 an ordinary child. By the study of what other book could 
 children be so much humanized and made to feel that each 
 figure in the vast historical procession fills, like themselves, but 
 a momentary space in the interval between two eternities, and 
 earns the blessings or the curses of all time according to- its 
 efforts to do good and hate evil ? " 
 
 Hooker: "There is scarcely any noble part of knowledge 
 worthy the mind of man but from Scripture it may have some 
 direction and light." 
 
 Translators of 161 1 : " If we be ignorant, the Scriptures will 
 instruct us ; if out of the way, they will bring us home ; if out 
 of order, they will reform us ; if in heaviness, comfort us ; if 
 dull, quicken us ; if cold, inflame us. Tolle, lege. Tolle, lege." 
 
 Why is it so ? Why this unapproachable superiority ? 
 Why has this book become, as it has, the one great book of 
 humanity for all the ages of human life — for the millions 
 
HIS DIVINITY. 8 1 
 
 dead and the countless millions yet to come? This genius of 
 these writers — is it hereditary ? God pity us, then, that we 
 have not its pedigree ! Is it the evolution of literary power, 
 bursting forth at the consummation of the ages as the crown 
 of intellect, the perfect flower of the blossoming vine that hath 
 its roots in the primal fountain of life ? God pity, then, the 
 degeneracy of these days ! Then is " The Rape of the Lock " 
 but the lisp of numbers. The story of " Childe Harold " is 
 only the prattling of an infant. "Lear" and "Hamlet" are 
 but the ravings of one " who hath no speculation in his eye," 
 or the drivellings of "a mind diseased." "The Idyls of the 
 King " are only idle vaporings of a pitiful dreamer who hath 
 not sense to see in his thin verse the slow decay of poesy. 
 Galileo and Newton are wrecks of Joshua and Moses, for 
 neither could Galileo conceive that the sun should stand still 
 on Gibeon, nor Newton originate the idea of the awful Power 
 that would throw back the gravity of worlds, and brush aside 
 the waters of the deep Red Sea. Oxford and Heidelberg are 
 but the grammar-schools of Jericho and Jerusalem, and the 
 belles-lettres of Elizabeth and Victoria are primer compositions 
 to those of Ezra, Herod, and the early Caesars. But the ages 
 are not consummated. Learning is increased. Literature is 
 developing to its triumphs while the world is multiplying its 
 authors and constantly raising the magnitude of its stars of 
 genius. Egypt and Babylonia were more cultivated than 
 Judah ; yet nowhere outside of Israel in the ages that 
 brought to light the sacred books was there a parallel author- 
 ship. The Bible is unique in human composition. It strikes 
 the law of mental evolution to the heart. It stands forever 
 as a divine anachronism in literature. Did it come from 
 man ? Then the men were not men, but demigods — and 
 more. For they wrought chaos in the laws of human thought. 
 They pulled down every principle of human composition, 
 overthrew the edifice of natural learning, blotted out the con- 
 stellations in the literary skies, crushed the world of learning 
 into fragments, and launched into the dim abysses of space 
 
82 
 
 THE BREATH OE GOD. 
 
 "new heavens and a new earth." They "spake, and it was 
 done"; they "commanded, and it stood fast." Or else the 
 Bible is a miracle of sacred thought and passion. For its 
 thought is above all human thought, " higher than the heaven 
 is above the earth;" and its passion of love "passeth know- 
 ledge." 
 
 It hath in it elements that pierce the soul. It is full of God 
 and righteousness. To the soul of man in his ignorance, his 
 speculation and doubt and infidelity ; to the soul in its sor- 
 row, its wretchedness and sin ; to the soul in its longings and 
 thirstings and tremulous aspirations ; to the intellect and ge- 
 nius of mankind ; to the mind in its wealth or its poverty ; to 
 every man— there is none left out— to his deepest, strongest, 
 highest nature, in his weakest, hopeless, and expiring moments, 
 it speaks of God. Before his frail and failing body, his loss 
 of power as years and ailment lay their awful weight upon 
 him ; before the endless progression of change which he wit- 
 nesses in himself and in the world, as youth and manhood 
 deaden into decay, as friends are shifting and passing away, 
 and dropping out of life and into silence ; before the wrecks of 
 fortunes and the overthrow of governments ; before the sweep 
 of fashions and the sway of new-born theories, amid the pass- 
 ing panorama of the whole world's restless and ever-changing 
 history ; before the fall of hopes into the abyss of night, and 
 the fall of the heart's beloved into the fathomless grave ; be- 
 fore the blotting out of worlds which thus become the awful . 
 prophecies of the final "crash of matter and the wreck of 
 worlds," it tells of God. 
 
 ' Thou, Lord, in the beginning hath laid the foundation of the earth, 
 And the heavens are the works of thy hands : 
 They shall perish ; but thou continuest : 
 And they all shall wax old as doth a garment ; 
 And as a mantle shalt thou roll them up, 
 As a garment, and they shall be changed : 
 But thou art the same, 
 And thy years shall not fail." 
 
HIS DIVINITY. 83 
 
 Among all the theologies of man, with their definitions and 
 formulas, with men plunged in mysterious longing to know 
 God, was there eve" sublimer and more comforting idea of 
 Him than this: 
 
 "Jehovah, Jehovah, a God full of compassion and gracious, 
 slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth ; keeping mercy 
 for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin ; and 
 that will by no means clear the guilty." 
 
 " Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, 
 whose name is Holy : I dwell in the high and lofty place, with 
 him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the 
 spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite one." 
 
 " For thou art our Father, though Abraham knoweth us not, 
 and Israel doth not acknowledge us : thou, O Jehovah, art our 
 Father; our Redeemer from everlasting is thy name." 
 
 " Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: 
 yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 
 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for 
 our iniquities : the chastisement of our peace was upon him ; 
 and with his stripes we are healed." 
 
 Was there ever any gentler, juster, more divine law than 
 this, in the Book of the Covenant : "Ye shall not afflict any 
 widow, or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise, 
 and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry." If 
 a neighbor's garment is taken in pledge it must be returned 
 before sundown, "for it is his only covering: . . . wherein 
 shall he sleep ? and it shall come to pass, when he crieth 
 unto me, that I will hear ; for I am gracious." Thus it is, to 
 the weak and helpless, the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the 
 poor, the slave, God's law is ever strong and tender. So says 
 Professor Huxley: "The Bible has been the Magna Charta 
 of the poor and of the oppressed ; down to modern times no 
 state has ever had a constitution in which the interests of the 
 people are so largely taken into account, in which the duties 
 so much more than the privileges of rulers are insisted on, as 
 in Deuteronomy and Leviticus ; nowhere is the fundamental 
 
84 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 truth that the welfare of the state depends on the uprightness 
 of the citizen so strongly laid down." * 
 
 God's warnings are clear and true and strong, and His anger 
 is terrible, but His judgments are tempered with mercy. "His 
 wrath endureth but the twinkling of an eye ; but in His plea- 
 sure is life." " Mercy and truth are met together; righteous- 
 ness and peace have kissed each other." 
 
 " Ye that put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of vio- 
 lence to come near; that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch 
 themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the 
 flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall ; that sing idle 
 songs to the sound of the viol; that devise for themselves in- 
 struments of music, like David ; that drink wine in bowls, and 
 anoint themselves with the chief ointments : but they are not 
 grieved for the affliction of Joseph." 
 
 " Forasmuch therefore as ye trample upon the poor, and take 
 exactions from him of wheat : ye have built houses of hewn 
 stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant 
 vineyards, but ye shall not drink the wine thereof. For I know 
 how manifold are your transgressions and how mighty are your 
 sins ; ye that afflict the just, that take a bribe, and that turn 
 aside the needy in the gate from their right." 
 
 " O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and 
 there eat bread, and prophesy there ; but prophesy not again any 
 more in Bethel." 
 
 " Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel: for the 
 Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because 
 there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. 
 There is naught but swearing and breaking faith, and killing, 
 and stealing, and committing adultery; they break out, and 
 blood toucheth blood." 
 
 " They feed on the sin of my people, and set their heart on 
 their iniquity. And it shall be, like people, like priest : and I 
 will punish them for their ways, and will reward them their 
 doings." 
 
 "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for 
 mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto 
 Israel : he shall blossom as the lily, and cast forth his roots as 
 Lebanon." 
 
 1 Essays on Cont. Ques., p. 52. 
 
II IS DIVINITY. 85 
 
 " Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man 
 his thoughts : and let him return to the Lord, and he will have 
 mercy upon him ; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 
 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways 
 my ways, saith the Lord." 
 
 The ceremonial law was of infinite detail. Times came 
 when it overshadowed the homage and devoutness of the soul, 
 times when it was formal and empty. But never was there 
 truer and loftier spirit of worship than that which was fostered 
 by this very code of the priests. Listen while the harp is 
 struck and the strains come to us from the sweet singers of 
 Israel : 
 
 " How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My 
 soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord : my 
 heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God." 
 
 " Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, so longeth my 
 soul»after thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, yea, even 
 for the living God : when shall I come to appear before the 
 presence of God ? . . . I pour out my heart by myself ; for I went 
 with the multitude, and brought them forth into the house of 
 God; in the voice of praise and thanksgiving, among such as 
 keep holy-day. . . . O send out thy light and thy truth, that they 
 may lead me, and bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy dwell- 
 ing. And that I may go unto the altar of God, even unto the 
 God of my joy and gladness ; and upon the harp will I give 
 thanks unto thee, O God my God." 
 
 "What is there," says one 1 whose name is a watchword 
 among Christian thinkers, "... which the Psalms are not 
 able to teach ? Heroical magnanimity, exquisite justice, 
 grave moderation, exact wisdom, repentance unfeigned, un- 
 wearied patience, the mysteries of God, the sufferings of 
 Christ, the terrors of wrath, the comforts of grace, . . . 
 Providence over this world, and the promised joys of that 
 world which is to come ; all good . . . to be either known, or 
 done, or had, this one celestial fountain yieldeth." Another, 2 
 one of the greatest geniuses in English history, says of David's 
 
 1 Hooker, E. P., vol. ii., p. 159. 
 
 2 Hero- Worship, Carlyle, p. 75. 
 
86 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 history in the Psalms: "The truest emblem eve. given of a 
 man's moral progress and warfare here below . . . the faith- 
 ful struggle of an earnest human soul toward that which is 
 good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as 
 into wreck ; yet a struggle never ended ; ever with tears, re- 
 pentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. ... Is 
 not man's walking in truth always that : a ' succession of 
 falls '? In this wild element of life he has to struggle onward ; 
 now fallen, deep abased ; and ever with tears, repentance, with 
 bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still on- 
 ward." 
 
 While the nations round about Israel were steeped in idol- 
 atry and superstition; while they were engraving perishable 
 thoughts on imperishable stone and clay ; while culture was 
 lavish among them, and Israel was a new kingdom, with a 
 shepherd lad upon the throne, such as these were the immor- 
 tal songs of her people : 
 
 " Have mercy on me, O God, after thy great goodness; ac- 
 cording to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences. 
 Wash me throughly from my wickedness, and cleanse me from 
 my sin. For I acknowledge my faults, and my sin is ever be- 
 fore me. Against thee only have I sinned, and done this evil 
 in thy sight ; that thou mightest be justified in thy saying, and 
 clear when thou art judged. . . . Turn thy face from my sins, 
 and put out all my misdeeds. Make me a clean heart, O God, 
 and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy 
 presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. . . . The sac- 
 rifice of God is a troubled spirit : a broken and contrite heart, O 
 God, shalt thou not despise." 
 
 " Praise the Lord, O my soul : and all that is within me praise 
 his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul ; and forget not all 
 his benefits. Who forgiveth all thy sin, and healeth all thine 
 infirmities : who saveth thy life from destruction, and crowneth 
 thee with mercy and loving-kindness. . . . The Lord is full of 
 compassion and mercy, long-suffering, and of great goodness. 
 He will not always be chicling; neither keepeth he his anger 
 forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins : nor rewarded 
 us according to our wickedness. For look how high the heaven 
 is in comparison to the earth : so great is his mercy also toward 
 
HIS DIVINITY. 87 
 
 them that fear him. Look how wide the east is from the west : 
 so far hath he set our sins from us. Yea, like as a father pitieth 
 his own children, even so is the Lord merciful unto them that 
 fear him. For he knoweth whereof we are made : he remem- 
 bereth that we are but dust." 
 
 "The Lord is my Shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing. 
 He shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth beside 
 the waters of comfort. He shall convert my soul, and bring 
 me forth in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, 
 though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
 fear no evil : for thou art with me ; thy rod and thy staff comfort 
 me. . . . Thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the 
 days of my life : and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for- 
 ever." 
 
 Rome became the empire of law and of statesmanship ; 
 Greece the land of art, of culture, of philosophy; but Israel 
 was the nation of the highest letters, because it was the nation 
 inspired with the genius of righteousness. Even her worldly 
 wisdom, her sages and wise men, were clothed with God : 
 " Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom ; and to depart 
 from evil is understanding." 
 
 " The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, 
 Before his works of old. 
 
 I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, 
 Or ever the earth was. 
 
 When there were no depths, I was brought forth, 
 When there were no fountains abounding with water. 
 
 There was I by him, as a master workman : 
 
 And I was daily his delight, 
 
 Rejoicing always before him ; 
 
 Rejoicing in his habitable earth ; 
 
 And my delight was with the sons of men." 
 
 And from this sublime idea there grew the still sublimer 
 words : " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was 
 with God, and the Word was God. ... All things were 
 made by Him ; and without Him was not anything made that 
 hath been made. In Him was life ; and the life was the light 
 of men," 
 
IX. 
 
 HIS EXALTATION. 
 " The purest treasure mortal times afford.' ' 
 
 THE Bible tells us of God as the Living God. He is a 
 Father, a Providence, a Deliverer; He is the Prince of 
 Peace, the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Saviour and 
 Redeemer. It gives us laws that are as enduring as time. 
 It furnishes the eternal principles of righteousness, showing 
 that right is right and wrong is wrong, and that these prin- 
 ciples are older than any systems or any laws "written and 
 engraven in stones." It shows that back of priests and cere- 
 monials, back of Moses and the Mosaic code, back of Sinai 
 and the two tables, there is law stamped upon the constitution 
 of the earth, written among the blazing constellations of the 
 sky, investing the heaving waters of the sea and the trackless 
 sands of the desert and the towering mountain-ranges ; spread- 
 ing through, the fair blue canopy of space and embracing the 
 worlds and ages ; penetrating and filling all human life and all 
 other life from the first monad in the dim beginnings of matter 
 to the Crown and living Prince of creation ; a law springing 
 out of the fountain of the Godhead, written among the eterni- 
 ties — a law of life and death, of hope and despair, of sin and 
 of righteousness : "The wages of sin is death;" "The just 
 shall live by faith." This law is not a Hebrew enactment. It 
 is not a conceit of man. It is not a miraculous creation. All 
 that the Bible tells us of it is merely the expression, the an- 
 nouncement to bewildered men, of the verities of the living 
 
HIS EXALTATIOX. 89 
 
 universe. While men groped and stumbled and fell the light 
 sinned, and then men saw and stood trect and "walked and 
 leaped, praising God." 
 
 2. There is evil in the world. Yes, the Bible sees it, and 
 puts it down upon its pages ; and it doth " naught extenuate." 
 There is good in the world, yes, infinite good, measureless, 
 unfathomable good in earth and sky, and the Bible crystallizes 
 it, stereotypes it, builds it into its eternal pages, that it may 
 stand a towering edifice forever. It is " longer than the earth, 
 and broader than the sea." Its domes and pinnacles stretch 
 above the sky and are hidden to man's failing vision beyond 
 the clouds. The good and evil are forever contending, wres- 
 tling, struggling. Now virtue is triumphant, and now vice. In 
 the whole universe of souls there is " a law " of the " mem- 
 bers," " warring against " and sometimes "leading into captiv- 
 ity" the "better" and "higher" law of the "mind." There 
 is moral disappointment and bitterness, and failure and dis- 
 aster and catastrophe, from without and from within. What 
 does it mean ? How shall it all end ? It is the great prob- 
 lem of problems. It faces men from the cradle to the grave. 
 The master minds of all centuries have wrestled with it, and 
 failed, and stood dumb and blind before it. It has defied 
 analysis ; it has wrecked reason. There is but one possible 
 solution ; one only that does not annihilate the principles of 
 life and crush to atoms the foundations of the worlds : Good 
 shall triumph finally. Death and hell shall be cast into the 
 lake of fire. The dead shall burst above and trample under- 
 foot the grave. God " shall wipe away all tears from out all 
 eyes." "The living, the living" — they shall stand before 
 God. And "the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." 
 
 Thus the Bible answers the " riddle of the ages," while Job 
 bows himself over the ash-heap and curses the day that he 
 was born ; and finally surrenders speculation, and launches 
 out once more into the boundless ocean of thought and life, 
 secure in the ark of safety, ribbed about with the divine 
 words, " I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He will 
 
90 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 rise over the dust at the last. And after they have thus de- 
 stroyed my skin, yet out of my flesh shall I see God : whom 
 I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not 
 another." 
 
 3. There may be blemishes in the Bible. But they are 
 history, not revelation. They do not besmear the volume 
 from leaf to cover. There are blemishes in men, but we do 
 not cast them all into the pit. They are still the crown of ter- 
 restrial life, the princes of the earth. They have by divine 
 right "dominion over the beasts of the field, and over the 
 fowls of the air, and over the fishes of the sea." The Canaan- 
 ites are slaughtered ; but " the soul that sinneth, it shall die." 
 David stole away his neighbor's wife and slew her husband in 
 the " forefront of the battle " ; but high above the iniquities 
 of the sinning poet sound the rolling voices of Sinai : " Thou 
 shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery." 
 
 Ecclesiastes may be cynical at times, but out of his cynicism 
 grows the deep conviction of another life where right is tri- 
 umphant. Out of it comes the tender warning, full of beauty 
 and of power : " Remember now thy Creator in the days of 
 thy youth." Out of it comes the sublime and simple rule of 
 life for skeptics and believers together : " Fear God, and 
 keep His commandments : for this is the whole duty of man." 
 
 The Psalms may now and then defile, as it were, their lips 
 by muttering imprecations ; but, as another has so beautifully 
 said, they have become " the classic to all time of prayer and 
 praise." 
 
 To reckless and evil-minded critics the Song of Songs may 
 seem a voluptuous composition of a human hand, without a 
 trace of God ; but to the reverent scholar it is " the exquisite 
 celebration of a pure love in humble life ; of a love which no 
 splendor can dazzle and no flattery seduce." 
 
 The Book of Jonah may or may not be history ; it may be 
 a divine fiction, like the parables of Christ ; it is none the less 
 a poem of divine beauty, teaching of the sin and repentance of 
 men and prophet, and the tender mercy of the Father. 
 
HIS EXALTATION. 91 
 
 The Book of Daniel may or may not have been written by 
 Daniel or in Daniel's time ; but it shows us the figure of a 
 godly hero, who, when he knew " that the writing was signed " 
 decreeing death to any but idolaters, " kneeled upon his knees 
 three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks to God, as he 
 did aforetime." It shows yet a brighter and diviner figure of 
 " one like unto the Son of man," " like unto the Son of God ;" 
 of a kingdom " not of this world," a kingdom that is " for ever 
 and ever," " wherein dwelleth righteousness." 
 
 The Apocalypse of John may be full of mystical and strange 
 figures, lurid, ominous, blazing with a sulphurous light ; but 
 the Christian scholar may see in it "an inspired outline of 
 contemporary history ; . . . the tremendous manifesto of a 
 Christian seer against the blood-stained triumph of imperial 
 heathenism ; a paean and a prophecy over the ashes of the 
 martyrs ; the thundering reverberations of a mighty spirit 
 struck by the fierce plectrum of the Neronian persecution, and 
 answering in impassioned music which, like many of David's 
 psalms, dies away into the language of rapturous hope." The 
 soul of man, in any spot and in any time, may see therein the 
 figure of Him on the white horse, going forth " conquering 
 and to conquer." The souls of men everywhere, panting " as 
 the stag panteth after the water-brooks," may hear the music 
 of the voices of the skies saying, " The Spirit and the bride 
 say, Come. . . . And let him that is athirst come. And 
 whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." 
 
 4. Whence come these mighty thoughts, these lofty, mov- 
 ing sentiments, these trumpetings of irresistible and redeem- 
 ing truth ? In the sacred history and narrative, in laws and 
 prophecies, in poems and parables, in the cold calculation of 
 premeditated proverb and the bursting flame of impetuous 
 and exultant song. They are only there — in The Book. They 
 are not elsewhere. Take the choice sayings and productions 
 of any other set of writers in any age, gather together the 
 devoutest and most brilliant compositions of the choice 
 preachers of the world to-day, and see if any of them would 
 
92 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 dare to venture to take rank with, could ever hope to enter 
 into, the leaves of The Book. Reason as one will, it seems a 
 folly and a blasphemy to entertain the thought. Are they in- 
 spired ? If not inspired whence are they ? Are they inspired ? 
 Let the word perish. They are of God ! 
 
 5. Mark how these writings have come down to us; and 
 how they have been bound together, not by the flimsy and 
 materialistic elements of paper and of paste, not by the strong 
 artistic skill of binders, with their implements of skin and 
 clasp ; bound by a unity of thought and sentiment and brilliant 
 purposes that defies all criticism, that answers every doubt. 
 How got the Bible here ? How came it here as one ? — a 
 thousand bits of writing, the first and last perhaps two thou- 
 sand years apart ; written by historian and poet, king and priest, 
 narrator, scribe, governor, prophet, publican, Pharisee, physi- 
 cian, and fisherman ; high and low, prince and peasant, skilled 
 and unskilled, learned and unlettered. Hath it come through 
 the " fortuitous concurrence " of circumstances ? Is it the 
 " natural selection " of literature, completing its work two 
 thousand years ago, and then forever vanishing among the 
 lost forces of forgotten time ? Has this sublimest and most 
 potent power in all the mental and spiritual forces of the lit- 
 erary universe been annihilated ? How doth the tree still 
 stand, "all clothed in living green," with its umbrageous 
 branches stretching over the continents, and its leaves "for 
 the healing of the nations," while its roots are withered into 
 dust, and its soil struck out of space down into the dark abyss 
 of nothingness? Surely if we are men and not idiots, if reason 
 hath not "fled to brutish beasts," there is a meaning super- 
 customary, extra-historical, more than any other human cir- 
 cumstance that we have ever known, in the marvellous gather- 
 ing and preservation of these books throughout the ages. 
 There is a divine philosophy in their affiliation ; there is a 
 chemistry of heaven in their cohesion. That a divine Intelli- 
 gence and Will and Purpose hath brought them into one, and 
 held them there, is a reasonable conclusion. Otherwise they 
 
II1S EXALTATIOX. 93 
 
 are a prodigy of the divinest fairy-land, defying fleshly han- 
 dling, and legally consistent only with the nature of dreams. 
 That God exalted men to make them; that God filled men 
 with surpassing intellectual and spiritual power to write them ; 
 that God marshalled the nations and ordered their inarch in 
 time, and moulded history and controlled events, and shaped 
 the course of time, and so with His omnipotent hand hath 
 pushed these books together down the centuries, and holds 
 them firm within His grasp before the millions of living men 
 to-day, is comprehensible. But otherwise they are as the phan- 
 tom pranks of the phantom deities about Olympus, or the one 
 monstrosity of intellectual nature. 
 
 6. And then their unity of thought and structure. There 
 is no alien book within the binding. The same foundation 
 underlies each superstructure. Genesis and Revelation are as 
 the opposing fragments of a broken ring — a ring of pure, fine 
 gold, describing the eternal circle of the love and power of 
 God. Psalms and Leviticus are the poem and its theme. 
 Everywhere throughout the Bible sin is painted black, insidi- 
 ous, and damning. And everywhere is righteousness " a shin- 
 ing light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." 
 Everywhere there is hope for the despondent, comfort for the 
 sorrowing, strength for the weak, courage for the fearful, light 
 to them that sit in darkness, consolation for the suffering, rest 
 for the weary, life for those that are in the shadow of death. 
 There is no temporizing ; there are no false lights ; there is 
 no veiling of the truth. The city of God is built foursquare, 
 as the cherubim of God came from the four quarters of the 
 heavens. Right is ever right, and wrong is ever wrong. Sin 
 is ever pain, and righteousness is joy and peace. False learn- 
 ing, fanatical and theological prejudice, dull ignorance, tech- 
 nical interpretation and misinterpretation may pit text against 
 text and passage against passage, and wrest and wrangle lan- 
 guage out of place, but the unity of God's book is indestructi- 
 ble and beyond assail. Its main idea is ever the same. Its 
 main thought is ever consistent. It speaks forever for God 
 
94 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 and suffering and wandering humanity, of truth and immor- 
 tality and honor. 
 
 And the " river of water of life " flows out of this Eden of 
 divine ideas "to water the garden." The stream of the Mes- 
 sianic prophecy runs through it all. In the first hour of guilt 
 and pain the promise is made : " The seed of the woman shall 
 bruise the serpent's head." We care not how critics and inter- 
 preters may strip away the verbal significance of those words. 
 The underlying sentiment is one with the cry of the Redeemer 
 from the throne : " Surely I come quickly." In the light of 
 the divine history of the Christ the words have become a 
 prophecy of Him if they were never meant to be. And so 
 through all the book the living waters run. He is a prophet 
 like unto Moses ; a child born, and a son given ; " The mighty 
 God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace ;" the right- 
 eous Servant, the Man of Sorrows, on whom should be laid 
 the iniquities of us all ; " Messiah the Prince," " cut off, but 
 not for himself;" " one like unto the Son of man," to whom is 
 given an " everlasting kingdom " ; the " Glory " of the second 
 temple ; the "Sun of righteousness" ; the Son of God, the great 
 I AM ; the living, resurrected Jesus, who is " alive forever- 
 more " ; who " came to seek and save the lost " ; who gave us 
 the matchless, loving story of the prodigal ; who in His match- 
 less personality hath made men know how " Blessed are the 
 poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed 
 are they that mourn : for they shall be comforted. Blessed 
 are the meek : for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are 
 they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they 
 shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain 
 mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God. 
 Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be called the 
 children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for 
 righteousness' sake : for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 
 
X. 
 
 HIS POWER. 
 
 "This is thy work, Almighty Providence! 
 Whose Power, beyond the stretch of human thought." 
 
 THE moral power of the Bible in the world is another por- 
 tentous fact. In this nineteenth century of light and 
 learning and science and sneering skepticism, in this nineteenth 
 century of pride and disbelief and criticism, two hundred mil- 
 lion copies of the Bible have issued from the printing-press. 
 Voltaire had said that in a century from his day it would 
 cease to be printed at all. Why this unprecedented issue ? 
 By what " selection " has the Bible been chosen, out of the 
 ages, out of the countless myriads of books that are crowding 
 the millions of the world's printing-presses, thus to be multi- 
 plied beyond the outermost limits of competition ? The Bible 
 has been translated into almost every tongue over the earth's 
 surface. Written originally in Hebrew and Greek, it has 
 passed over into Egyptian, Coptic, Arabic, Persian, Indian, 
 Chinese, Japanese, Latin, Italian, Swiss, Dutch, German, 
 Russian, Norwegian, Eskimo, French, English, Spanish, Por- 
 tuguese, and a multitude of dialects and separate languages 
 among the North American Indians, the numerous tribes of 
 Africa, and the Polynesian and other islanders. Men from 
 " every nation under heaven " may say of these writers, as the 
 strangers at Jerusalem exclaimed under the pentecostal show- 
 er: "We do hear them speak in our tongue the wonderful 
 
 95 
 
96 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 works of God." And wherever it has been, wherever it is — in 
 distant or present time, in torrid or frozen zone, on the moun- 
 tain-tops or in the plains, on land or sea, in the palace of 
 Victoria or in the mud-hut of her meanest subjects in the 
 boundless forests of the Dark Continent, with the intellectual 
 and the feeble-minded, with the great and strong, and with 
 the poor and weak — it is a new force, a superior power, a 
 power embracing and limiting within itself its own genera and 
 species, a power that stands alone in reach and majesty in all 
 the literature of the earth. It is a power that not only speaks 
 of, but "makes for righteousness." It is a power that stirs 
 men out of the stagnant pool of slimy wickedness, and leads 
 them to a sparkling fountain of a living virtue. If it were 
 not inspired the veriest infidel could not deny that it hath 
 ever been inspiring. Men have perverted it in this day and 
 in past centuries, and made it the excuse of passion and of 
 crime. They have persecuted and tortured and assassinated 
 in its name. They have distorted its commands into instru- 
 ments of heinous cruelty and hypocrisy. So men did make 
 Jesus Christ, the innocent and lofty, the pretext for their 
 bloody thirst. But the Bible has ever been the greatest of all 
 instrumental powers for good. It has inspired men to nobler 
 and grander lives. It has made the greatest heroes in history. 
 It has blessed and punned the soil and atmosphere of human 
 life in every civilized land. It has disbanded armies and pre- 
 vented war. It has taken away the bloody, brutish appetites 
 of men who fed on men. It has stopped the Roman patrician 
 when he would have exposed his suffering infant to the eagle 
 and the fox. It has stayed the hand of the Fiji savage when 
 she would crush her children's heads against the jagged rock. 
 It has made the world pitiful and tender to the maimed and 
 halt and blind, to innocents and imbeciles, to the aged and 
 infirm, to men so loathsomely diseased that they became a 
 walking pestilence. It has lifted the drunkard out of the fiery 
 lake in which would perish his imperishable soul. It has led 
 the robber and the murderer out of the midnight of their crimes 
 
HIS POWER. 97 
 
 into the pure light of pardon and reform. It has made men 
 chain the devils which infested them. It has washed away 
 the foulness of the ancient and the modern Magdalen, and 
 clothed her in the white robe of righteousness. It has built 
 up character until it has become a towering monument of 
 purity and shining strength. The greatest intellects have 
 bowed before it in grateful homage ; the humblest slave has 
 looked up to it and found liberty and dignity of soul. It has 
 blessed and elevated society, and wrought its power in civili- 
 zation, governments, and thrones. It has given to men the 
 courage and the grandeur of the gods ; nay, it hath given them 
 the courage and the grandeur of redeemed humanity ; be- 
 cause it has given them the inspiration of an unearthly faith, 
 through which they have " subdued kingdoms, wrought right- 
 eousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 
 quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, 
 out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, 
 turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their 
 dead raised to life again : and others were tortured, not ac- 
 cepting deliverance ; that they might obtain a better resurrec- 
 tion : and others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, 
 yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment : they were stoned, 
 they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the 
 sword : they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins ; 
 being destitute, afflicted, tormented ; of whom the world was 
 not worthy." 
 
 Are these the signs of Inspiration ? Put the word aside, 
 and ask another question : Are these the signs that these high 
 thoughts of sacred penning, that this unearthly, spiritual force 
 of sentiment came from God ? Here is the summing up of 
 evidence : men believed that they wrote by the special power 
 of God ; the Jewish nation and the Christian world believed 
 it ; the writing constitutes the most marvellous literature that 
 the world has known ; its gathering together and preservation 
 seem a miracle of heavenly purpose ; the noble thought, the 
 lofty grandeur of the books are incomparable ; the unity of 
 
98 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 the Bible is the wonder of all ages; its spiritual and moral 
 power are unique, tremendous, boundless. 
 
 Is this the evidence of Inspiration ? It is majestic and 
 convincing evidence of something. We need not care for 
 technicalities and definitions — the Bible is greater than them 
 all. We need not care for biblical mistakes and inaccuracies 
 — they are not so much as the wart on Cromwell's nose ; the 
 giant Protector was still there, and the wart was on his outer- 
 most projection. The Bible writers never claimed infallibility 
 of ink and pen-point. They never claimed infallibility against 
 infinitesimal kinks in the thread of Hebrew history, or dust- 
 flecks on the Jewish statistics. 
 
 The Bible is, however, an infallible guide to life and right- 
 eousness, to immortality and eternal joy. 
 
 It is inspired — if theologians will insist upon the word — 
 because it is made of God. The breath of God is in it — 
 supernaturally, not contra-naturally. How men wrote, when 
 they wrote, what they wrote with, what were their physical 
 attitudes and their mental analyses at the time, are neither 
 here nor there. These are but trifles — fringings on the outer 
 skirts of investigation. The Bible finds men and controls 
 them. It rescues them and glorifies them. It teaches truth, 
 transcendent and eternal. 
 
 This is the Bible's own unique, exclusive power ! 
 
 It makes no difference if it be natural or supernatural, if it 
 be developed in history or flashed forth from the skies. It is 
 an awful and sublime power, here in human life, come down 
 to us, seen, felt, exalted, enthroned. 
 
 Now where do the great powers here present in the world 
 come from ? " God spake once ; and twice I have also heard 
 the same ; that power belongeth unto God." 
 
 Pick up a stone, a "smooth" stone out of the "brook," if 
 you will. It is hard. It is enduring. Hurl it against the 
 Sevres vase upon the antique stand, and nothing will be left 
 but the broken fragments and the "scent of the roses." Sling 
 it against the Philistine's forehead, and it sinks into the springs 
 
HIS POWER. 99 
 
 of life and chokes them. This is the stone's power. Or the 
 great stone from the quarry has power to uphold a temple or 
 a palace. Or it supports the " everlasting hills." 
 
 Go out amid the golden grain in harvest-time, and see it 
 sported as the plaything of the winds, and watch the harvester 
 as he builds it into pyramids of treasure, and see it threshed 
 and fanned and gathered into barns. It is the "staff of life." 
 It feeds the prince and the beggar ; it strengthens man and 
 beast. This is the power of wheat. It has its kindred grains. 
 It is a petty king in the great vegetable kingdom. And the 
 power of all the kingdom is the power of giving fleshly life. 
 
 Go into the sculptor's studio while he points the magic 
 chisel against the solid stone, and the hammer falls, and the 
 fragments fly as they will. Little by little, and inch by inch, 
 through the sightless grain the iron is driven, w r hile the statue 
 grows. This is the power of human skill and genius. 
 
 In the springs and rivers, in the clouds and air, in the hills 
 and valleys, in the land and sea, in the climate and soil, in the 
 birds that fly and the fish that swim, in the insect that crawls 
 and in the beasts that spring and leap, in different lands and 
 different times, in all animate and inanimate nature, in the vari- 
 ous endowments of mankind of skill and intellect, of reason, 
 imagination, conscience, science, philosophy, oratory, art, and 
 letters, there are different, varying, and specific powers. And 
 surely they were all born of God. They did not originate of 
 themselves ; they were not the inventions or creations of man. 
 They came from the eternal and all-reaching Power beyond 
 the realm of vision and of intellectual chemistry, the Power 
 that underlies and overshadows the spheres. So said the 
 father of Greek philosophy : " God is in everything." It is 
 not pantheism ; it is the devout recognition of the divine om- 
 nipresence, and that " every good and every perfect gift Com- 
 eth down from the Father of lights." It is the acknowledg- 
 ment of the divine influence. 
 
 Now Inspiration, stripped of technicalities and definitions 
 and theologisms, and of the prejudices and fanaticisms that 
 
IOO THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 have surrounded it, is nothing more nor less than the divine 
 influence. In theology it has been crushed and bound into 
 extremely narrow limits, and confined to very narrow func- 
 tions. In very fact and truth it is expanded through the uni- 
 verse of God. It is the influence of God which has been 
 many times expressed within the sacred books by words that 
 signify to us a wind, or breath, or spirit. It is this that in the 
 dim beginnings " moved upon the face of the waters." It is 
 this that seized upon the wayward will of Saul. It is this that 
 Job declared was in his " nostrils." It is the same word that 
 describes a " perverse spirit," a "spirit of jealousy," an "evil 
 spirit," a " spirit of all flesh," a " spirit of the beast that goeth 
 downward to the earth," the "four spirits of the heavens." 
 Even the lowest and malign spirits are proclaimed to have 
 their original power from God. It is the word ruach in the 
 Hebrew. It has a high sense. It means the Spirit of God. 
 It means the power of God in the divine nature. But it also 
 means the power of God in man and beast, and in the winds 
 of heaven. The power varies, of course, in the various crea- 
 tures. It hath endless and countless manifestations. It can- 
 not be the same in the beasts and in the bushes, in the flower 
 and in the family, in the rocky heights and in the soul of 
 man. But the breath of God is in all nature as well as in the 
 prophets and The Book : " By the word of the Lord were the 
 heavens made ; and all the host of them by the breath * of his 
 mouth; " "There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." 
 All things are inspired because they have in them the breath, 
 or power, of God. All men are inspired because the Spirit of 
 God quickens and wooes the soul of every one : " There is a 
 spirit in man : and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them 
 understanding." It is not enough to say that the word which 
 describes the " Spirit " of God is not the same as that which 
 describes the " breath " of life — that ruach means a living 
 spirit, and n'shamah an animal breath ; because the former is 
 used in the same sense as the latter, and sometimes in a lower 
 
 * Ruach. 
 
HIS POWER. 101 
 
 sense. It was ruach that Job had in his nostrils, and rfshamah 
 that God breathed into Adam's nostrils ; and ruac/i, again, 
 that Job describes as " the breath of all mankind," and ruach 
 that the Preacher calls " the spirit of the beast." It is not 
 amiss, therefore, to use the gift to Adam of a living soul as a 
 parallel to the inspiration of the prophets. It is not amiss, 
 amid the " differences of administrations " and " diversities of 
 operations," to say that " it is the same God that worketh all 
 in all." 
 
 " Inspiration " is a metaphor. But metaphors stand for 
 something. Inspiration stands for the eternal power and in- 
 fluence of God. It has a universal application. But in the 
 distributions of the power it has its special applications. And 
 so, in Christian thought, it stands especially for the righteous, 
 spiritual influence of God upon the prophets and The Book. 
 The man is nothing and the book is nothing apart from the 
 power of God. But God touched them, He spoke to them, He 
 blew upon them, He breathed into them — all metaphors be- 
 come aflame at the radiance of the divine Presence — and they 
 were invested with God's unique religious power over the souls 
 of men. This is the meaning of Inspiration, in its divine sim- 
 plicity, un trammeled and unclouded by systems and defini- 
 tions. This is the meaning bursting through the metaphor and 
 abounding. It is a meaning in which Judea and Christendom 
 have been united while they knew it not. It is a meaning 
 ever accepted by the conscience of God's people, though their 
 consciousness may not have been awake to it. It is a mean- 
 ing that no science nor criticism nor infidelity can ever chal- 
 lenge successfully, whatever they may add to it, because it is 
 witnessed by all history and observation and experience. The 
 dumb, dead, natural thing is swept by the breath of God, 
 and it becomes instinct with a supernatural life and a divine 
 potency. 
 
 In the stately Cathedral of St. Paul, in London, English 
 gratitude placed a monument to the memory of the great 
 Duke of Wellington. It has been called " the triumph of 
 
102 THE BREATH OF GOD. 
 
 English sculpture." The warrior was dead, and therefore his 
 effigy, in bronze, reposes, on a massive sarcophagus. Above it 
 is supported a marble canopy, with a bronze group at either 
 end. In one Truth tears out the tongue of Falsehood. In 
 the other Valor tramples Cowardice underfoot. The pure, 
 exalted vigor with which these fair, draped women overcome 
 these foul, nude men, the bitter anguish and the cringing 
 meanness which the Vices suffer, are vivid and alive. Yet 
 they are only bronze — a dumb and lifeless metal. The sculp- 
 tor breathed his spirit into them, and they are clothed with 
 life and power. 
 
 History tells us that another Sculptor worked, in some far- 
 distant age, perhaps upon a plain of fragrant verdure in the 
 land of Babylonia. There were no models there. There was 
 no form in earth or sky to image forth the figure to be made. 
 But the skilful hands dipped into the rich red clay and shaped 
 its plastic substance in the twinkling of an eye. The limbs 
 were straight and roundly molded ; the trunk was raised upon 
 them in graceful, massive strength ; the head was set aloft, a 
 paragon of manly beauty. Beneath the outer surface of the 
 figure lay, in easy attitude, skein upon skein of sinewy muscles, 
 and a fairy network of deep-blue veins showed through. No 
 statue of Apollo Belvedere, or Moses after Michelangelo, could 
 ever rank with this. It was at once the beginning and the 
 mastery of the sculptor's art. It seemed as though it were 
 the likeness of a god — so firm and strong and full of grace, 
 the mouth ; so shapely, delicately molded, fair, and ready for 
 the awakening of a king, the eyes ; so high, majestic, full of 
 power, the brow, rising as a montain-peak of intellectual 
 excellence. But it was only clay. It was not dead, for it 
 had never lived. The masterpiece of ages, yet wasted in the 
 wilderness. At once the glory and the pity of creation. But 
 then a subtle influence spread over the clay. A thrill shot 
 through the matchless form. It trembled. And the godlike 
 eyes were opened. The lord of earth was living ! " And 
 the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and 
 
HIS POWER. 103 
 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became 
 a living soul." 
 
 So all the stars and skies and all the breathing multitudes 
 are by the inspiration of the Spirit of the great Creator. 
 
 So, in those pages so divine and beautiful, so full of all the 
 best and holiest power, there is, profoundly and preeminently, 
 the Breath of God. 
 
THE SUPREME RITE: 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. FRANK HALLAM. 
 
 CONTAINS 
 
 doctrines ot Hll prominent Christian JBofcies 
 on tbe t>ol£ Communion, 
 
 TAKEN FROM THEIR OWN STANDARDS. 
 
 COMMENTS. 
 
 " I write to thank you for having written and published ' The Supreme 
 Rite.' I have enjoyed thoroughly the reading of it. I consider it one of 
 the very strongest and most valuable presentations of the subject I have 
 ever read, and I earnestly hope that it may have the widest circulation." 
 — Bishop Dudley. 
 
 " I desire cordially to express my very great satisfaction and delight 
 in the reading of ' The Supreme Rite.' There is breadth and depth in 
 the treatment, and a wide but orthodox freedom. The style is lucidity 
 itself, and at times rises to a very lofty eloquence." — Bishop Thompson. 
 
 " Throughout I kept in mind the question, What is there here that I 
 must disagree with, in fact, statement, doctrine, or sentiment? I find 
 nothing that I can point to. In the writing there is much to admire. A 
 graphic and reverent discussion." — Bishop Huntington. 
 
 " A glance shows that the handling of the subject is fresh, vigorous, 
 and thoughtful." — Bishop Littlejohn. 
 
 " With the teaching of the paper I am in complete accord, and it is 
 my firm conviction that unless Christian people can be persuaded to take 
 this catholic view of sacramental doctrine anything like church unity is 
 a sheer impossibility." — The Rev. W. R. Huntington, D.D. 
 
 "'The Supreme Rite' is strong, original, timely, and most interest- 
 ing."— The Rev. T. A. Tidball, D.D. 
 
 " That is a splendid article of Hallam's on the Eucharist. I cannot 
 recall any recent article in any periodical, English or American, that is as 
 strong, broad, and deep in its treatment of this great theme. It is high 
 enough, too, to satisfy any High-Churchman who will ask himself what 
 his words really mean." — The Rev. Hall Harrison, D.D. 
 
 " I cannot find words strong enough to express my admiration for the 
 beauty and eloquence of style and thought. It is exceedingly able and 
 interesting. I am delighted with it." — The Rev. Reverdy Estill, D.D. 
 
 " I have never seen so much information on the subject of the Holy 
 Communion given in so small a compass and in so readable a form." — 
 The Rev. E. If. Ward, D.D. 
 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER, 
 
 2 and 3 BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.