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1910

EEYELATION AND INSPIRATION

REVELATION
AND INSPIRATION

BY

JAMES ORR, M.A., D.D.
PROFESSOR OF APOLOGETICS AND SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
IN THE UNITED FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1910

GENEEAL INTRODUCTION
TO THE SERIES
Man has no deeper or wider interest than theology ;
none deeper, for however much he may change, he
never loses his love of the many questions it covers ;
and none wider, for under whatever law he may live
he never escapes from its spacious shade ; nor does
he ever find that it speaks to him in vain or uses a
voice that fails to reach him. Once the present
writer was talking with a friend who has equal fame
as a statesman and a man of letters, and he said,
"Every day I live, Politics, which are affairs of
Man and Time, interest me less, while Theology,
which is an affair of God and Eternity, interests me
more." As with him, so with many, though the many
feel that their interest is in theology and not in dogma.
Dogma, they know, is but a series of resolutions
framed by a council or parliament, which they do
not respect any the more because the parliament was
composed of ecclesiastically -minded persons ; while the
theology which so interests them is a discourse touching
God, though the Being so named is the God man con
ceived as not only related to himself and his world but
also as rising ever higher with the notions of the self and
the world. Wise books, not in dogma but in theology,
may therefore be described as the supreme need of our

vi GENERAL INTRODUCTION
day, for only such can save us from much fanaticism
and secure us in the full possession of a sober and
sane reason.
Theology is less a single science than an ency
clopaedia of sciences ; indeed all the sciences which
have to do with man have a better right to be called
theological than anthropological, though the man it
studies is not simply an individual but a race. Its
way of viewing man is indeed characteristic; from
this have come some of its brighter ideals and some of
its darkest dreams. The ideals are all either ethical
or social, and would make of earth a heaven, creating
fraternity amongst men and forming all states into a
goodly sisterhood ; the dreams may be represented by
doctrines which concern sin on the one side and the
will of God on the other. But even this will cannot
make sin luminous, for were it made radiant with
grace, it would cease to be sin.
These books then, — which have all to be written by
men who have lived in the full blaze of modern light,
— though without having either their eyes burned
out or their souls scorched into insensibility, — are in
tended to present God in relation to Man and Man
in relation to God. It is intended that they begin, not
in date of publication, but in order of thought, with a
Theological Encyclopaedia which shall show the circle
of sciences co-ordinated under the term Theology,
though all will be viewed as related to its central or
main idea. This relation of God to human know
ledge will then be looked at through mind as a com
munion of Deity with humanity, or God in fellowship
with concrete man. On this basis the idea of Revela-

GENERAL INTRODUCTION vii
tion will be dealt with. Then, so far as history and
philology are concerned, the two Sacred Books, which
are here most significant, will be viewed as the scholar,
who is also a divine, views them; in other words,
the Old and New Testaments, regarded as human
documents, will be criticised as a literature which
expresses relations to both the present and the future ;
that is, to the men and races who made the books,
as well as to the races and men the books made.
The Bible will thus be studied in the Semitic family
which gave it being, and also in the Indo-European
families which gave to it the quality of the life to
which they have attained. But Theology has to do
with more than sacred literature; it has also to do
with the thoughts and life its history occasioned.
Therefore the Church has to be studied and 'presented
as an institution which God founded and man ad
ministers. But it is possible to know this Church
only through the thoughts it thinks, the doctrines
it holds, the characters and the persons it forms, the
people who are its saints and embody its ideals of
sanctity, the acts it does, which are its sacraments, and
the laws it follows and enforces which are its polity,
and the young it educates and the nations it directs
and controls. These are the points to be presented in
the volumes which follow, which are all to be occupied
with theology or the knowledge of God and His
ways.
A. M. P.
"0"

PREFACE
This volume is written under the conviction that
revelation and inspiration, in connection with the
Bible, can only be defended in conjunction with a
more positive view of the structure of the Bible itself
than is at present prevalent. The three things imply
each other — a positive view of the structure of the
Bible, the recognition of a true supernatural revela
tion in its history, and a belief, in accordance with
the teaching of Christ and His apostles, in the in
spiration of the record. The evidence for each of
these three things yields support to faith in the
other two. The critical appreciation of the Bible is
helped by the recognition of the revelation contained
in it, and of the character of inspiration attaching
to the book which is the vehicle of the revelation.
The revelation sustains faith in inspiration, and vice
versa. From the unity of the three aspects results
the conception of a Holy Scripture.

CONTENTS CHAPTER I

PAGE

RF.VELATION AND INSPIRATION IN CURRENT THOUGHT —
MODERN STANDPOINTS,  1
CHAPTER II
NATURALISTIC SCHEMES OP REVELATION — SCOPE AND
LIMITS OF NATURAL REVELATION, ... 26
CHAPTER III
NEED OP SPECIAL REVELATION — BIBLICAL AND ETHNIC
REVELATION,  46
CHAPTER IV
REVELATION AND HISTORY— FORMS OF SPECIAL REVELA
TION,  67
CHAPTER V
FORMS OF REVELATION (CONTINUED) : PROPHECY — DIFFI
CULTIES OF REVELATION,  88
CHAPTER VI
THE ELEMENT OF MIRACLE IN REVELATION, . . 109

xii REVELATION AND INSPIRATION PAOB
CHAPTER VII
JESUS CHRIST — THE SUPREME REVEALER AND SUPREME
MIRACLE,  131
CHAPTER VIII
REVELATION AND ITS RECORD — INSPIRATION, . . 155
CHAPTER IX
INSPIRATION — THE SCRIPTURAL CLAIMS, . . . 175
CHAPTER X
INSPIRATION — RESULTS FOR DOCTRINE OF HOLY
SCRIPTURE,  197
BIBLIOGRAPHY,  219
INDEX,  221

REVELATION AND INSPIRATION

CHAPTER I
REVELATION AND INSPIRATION IN CURRENT
THOUGHT — MODERN STANDPOINTS
There is perhaps no subject at the present moment
more difficult to write upon, and above all to write
upon wisely, than this of Revelation and Inspiration.
Have we an authoritative divine revelation in the
Bible ? Is the Bible itself, in a unique and special
sense, an inspired book ? What are the limits of
this inspiration, and how does it differ from the
inspiration we ascribe to poets and other men of
genius ? Or is there a difference of kind at all ?
The many able books which have recently been
written on this subject probably help more to
reveal the difficulties connected with it than to
furnish a practical and satisfactory solution of these
difficulties. Where others have come short, it is not
easy to hope that the present writer will succeed.
It may be a useful opening of the inquiry to
investigate at the outset some of the various senses
in which the terms Revelation and Inspiration,
with which we are to be occupied, are employed,
and the relations in which the ideas they represent
stand to the general thought of the age.

2 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
I. Revelation and Religion.
It is customary to speak of the decay of faith in
divine revelation, and in the sense intended, such a
weakening of faith must be acknowledged. In a
wider respect, there is probably no proposition on
which the higher religious philosophy of the past
hundred years is more agreed than this — that all
religion originates in revelation. Man can know
God only as, in some way, God reveals, or makes
Himself known, to man.1 The questions on which
division arises are — What is the nature or manner
of this revelation ? How is it brought about ? Is
it natural simply, or is it also supernatural ? And
what do these terms — ' natural ' and ' supernatural '
— in this connection themselves import ?
1. It is indeed singular to observe the fascination
which this idea of revelation (Offenbarung) has for
thinkers of all schools in the later philosophy of
religion. This is specially the case in Germany — the
country from which most of the newer impulses
which have entered theology have proceeded. In
Fichte, and Schelling, and Hegel ; in Schleiermacher
and Rothe ; in speculative theologians like
Biedermann and Pfleiderer ; in Old Testament
critical scholars like Schultz and Smend ; in
theologians of positive type like Dorner ; in the
newer theology of Ritschl, the idea of God as
self-revealing, and of religion, including of course
Christianity, as resting on revelation, may be said
to be fundamental. Even where, as in Hegel, or in
the earlier phases of Schleiermacher's thinking, God
1 Cf. e.g. Pfleiderer, Phil, of Rel. iii. pp. 46 ff. (E.T.) ; Dorner,
System of Doct. ii. pp. 133 ff. (E.T.).

I.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 3
is more or less pantheistically conceived, a foremost
place is given to this idea. In Hegel, it is of the
essence of spirit to reveal itself, and Christianity,
as the religion in which God and the conscious
ness of Himself become one in man — in which
Spirit rises to the consciousness of identity with
itself — is the Absolute or ' Revealed ' religion.1
2. As springing from this tendency to recognise
revelation as everywhere the basis of religion, is
next to be noted, in connection with the prominence
now given to the comparative study of religion, the
rise of a disposition to extend the idea of revelation
to all the forms of historical religion, and to regard
these as simply more or less perfect stages in an
ascent of which the religion of Israel, and the develop
ment of this into Christianity, form, thus far, the
summit. This, as will be seen after, is a special
feature in the new ' religious-historical ' way of
contemplating the spiritual development of man
kind. Distinction, naturally, is made between
higher and lower, cruder and more intelligent,
grosser and more spiritual, types of religion ; but
no absolute line, it is held, can be drawn by the
historical investigator between * revealed ' and
' non-revealed ' religions. All must be viewed as
1 Cf. Hegel, ReligionsphUosophie, ii. pp. 191 ff. Sohelling has his
two volumes of the Philosophic der Offenbarung.
A curious illustration of the persistence and influence of this idea
is afforded by the pessimist Von Hartmann, the philosopher of ' The
Unconscious,' who takes over into his Philosophy of Religion the
whole nomenclature of Christianity, descanting among other things
on 'Grace and Faith,' 'The Grace of Revelation and Intellectual
Faith ' (Die Religion des Geistes, pp. 64, 74 ff. ). Among the sub
headings are 'External and Inner Revelation,' 'Traditional and
Personal Revelation,' 'The Originality of Revelation,' 'The Truth of
Revelation,' etc.

4 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
stages in the general upward movement of the
human spirit under the impulse of the divine Spirit.
To this advance every factor in the culture of
humanity contributes.1 It is at the same time
significant that even among those whose general
sympathies are with this standpoint, a tendency
is manifest to claim for the religions of Israel and
Christ, in a peculiar sense, the designation of religions
of * revelation.' Gunkel, a sufficiently radical
Old Testament critic, yet writes, ' Israel is, and
remains, the people of revelation.' 2 Herrmann,
of the Ritschlian school, emphasises the fact of
historical revelation in Christ almost to the exclusion
of revelation anywhere else.3
3. With respect to this universalising of the idea
of revelation, on which more will be said hereafter,
the general principle on which it rests may be
granted, with one important qualification, viz.,
that all true religion originates in revelation. For
it is not here to be overlooked that ' religion ' is a
wide word, and covers much which is self-evidently
false, foolish, and superstitious — in no way the
product of revelation, either general or special, but
the outcome only of man's wayward and unbridled
phantasy. If the savage worships fetishes, or
ghosts, or totems, — if, through an animistic
impulse, he peoples heaven and earth with number-
1 W. Bousset, in his book translated under the title What is
Religion 1 observes : ' The distinction between natural and revealed
^ religion is impossible. . . . Christianity is not the one religion, the
only religion, but simply the most complete species of the genus'
(pp. 8, 9). See also tne remarks of the translator in the preface to
the work.
a Israel und Babylonien, pp. 37-8.
• Cf. his Communion with God, passim.

i.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 5
less imaginary spirits, — if he frames the image of a
tribal god, and carves a stick or stone into some
hideous shape to embody his conception of his
deity, — one is compelled to withhold assent from
the proposition that all this rests on revelation. It
becomes necessary to make an important distinction.
Let it be granted, what is involved in a true philo
sophy of religion, that there is in man that which
impels him in search of an infinite ; granted, what
is likewise true, that there is that in nature, and
in man's own soul, which awakens in him the
sense or feeling of the infinite (sensus numinis),
it cannot be justly disputed that the ideas of God
which spring from this source contain in them an
element of revelation.1 Even where the religion
rises no higher than nature-worship — the worship
of sun, sky, fire, or other natural phenomena — there
is this element of revelation — this sense of a deity
felt to pervade all, at the basis. Lower down, so far
as any trace of this original intuition cleaves to the
savage's conception of his fetish, idol, or spirit, that
glimmer of truth in his religion comes from revelation.
Generally, however, it is precisely this higher element
which the ordinary psychological theories of religion
tend to ignore. Man's religious ideas are sought to
be accounted for by purely subjective causes —
animism, belief in ghosts, and the like — and the
spirits with which the world is filled have no more
reality than the gnomes and fairies of our nursery
story-books. They stand in a quite distinct category
from ideas which have their source in ' revelation,'
even in the widest sense of that word, and ought not
to be confounded with them.
i Cf. Rom. i. 20.

6 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
II. Natural and Supernatural in Revelation.
More fundamental, as marking a dividing-line be
tween parties on this subject, is the question whether,
as the ' modern ' school avers, religion is only of
the natural character now indicated, or whether
a distinction is not to be made between this, and
religion proceeding from a higher and more special
source— a supernatural as distinguished from a
simply natural revelation. This is the vital question
into which, at the present time, all other questions
with regard to revelation and inspiration will be
found to resolve themselves. It is, at the same
time, a question wrapped up in so many ambiguities,
and implicated with so many subtleties, that it is by
no means easy to rid the discussion of it of irrele
vances, and present it to the mind as a clear and
simple issue.
1. An ambiguity, which it is important to observe,
lurks on the threshold in the word ' supernatural '
itself. It is not unusual, and in the sense in which
the terms are used is not incorrect, to express the
point at issue between opposing schools by saying
that it is a question of the admission or the denial of
the supernatural. The very last thing, however,
which writers of the modern school would admit is,
that they are fairly charged with denying the
supernatural. In the fullest sense, they will tell
you, they acknowledge, nay contend for, the super
natural. It is the distinction itself between
' natural ' and ' supernatural ' which, in the interests
of what they take to be a higher point of view, they
seek to break down. There is, they affirm, a super
natural basis of the universe, and a supernatural

i.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 7
presence and action of God in its every part. Only,
they will say, it is a supernatural which is not
distinct from nature, but which expresses itself in
nature's own forces and laws, and in the orderly course
of nature's events. For the older Deistical separa
tion of God and nature, they substitute a God
revealing Himself in the natural order — an ' imman
ence ' of God in nature — in Carlyle's phrase, a
' natural supernaturalism.' x Like Goethe, they
ask : ' What were a God who only gave the world a
push from without, or let it spin round His finger ? '
and with the same author they reply : ' It is fitting
for Him to move the world from within, to foster
nature in Himself, Himself in nature ; so that,
whatever lives and moves and has its being in Him
never lacks His power or His Spirit.' 2 Here then,
and not in interruptions of the orderly course of
things in nature, is laid, it is held, the surest, and at
the same time the broadest and worthiest foundation
of a doctrine of revelation. No other, it is claimed,
is needed ; for who can doubt that a God immanent
and active in every thought and impulse of the
human mind, and teaching and disciplining hourly
by the events of life, can, even if the old-world belief
in miracle be granted to be baseless, secure that
everything needed for the welfare, guidance and
inspiration of the race is furnished to it ?
2. The side of truth represented in the view now
sketched, one-sided as it is when taken by itself,
should not be inconsiderately passed over. One
of the spiritual gains of the last century was un
doubtedly the fall of the older Deistic conception
1 Sartor Resartus, bk. HI. chap. viii.
2 Quoted by Pfleiderer, Giff. Lects. i. p. 288.

8 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
referred to — never, however, that of true Christian
theology — which separated God from His universe,
and the replacement of this by the idea of an
immanent relation of God to the world, and to the
human spirit ; not necessarily, indeed, to the
denial of a transcendent relation as well, which is
the opposite error, but as imposing on the mind the
need of thinking of God's relation to the world as
not outward and mechanical, but as inward and
vital. This change had naturally its effect on the
idea of revelation, which came also to be appre
hended in a more vital way. A right philosophy
teaches us to recognise an element of God's self-
revelation in every true thought, every worthy
exercise of faculty, every achievement of genius,
every advance in knowledge and discovery. The
essential difference of standpoint on the subject
lies, not in disputing God's presence and self-
revelation in nature, but in the point of whether
this is to be regarded as all — whether, as God's
supernatural Being transcends nature, so His
supernatural action also, in the process of revelation,
may not transcend the necessitated order of causes
and effects, and manifest itself in extraordinary,
because free and personal ways.
In view of this divergence of opinion on the subject
of the supernatural, the attempt may now be made
to define more exactly the different attitudes taken
up at the present time to the idea of revelation.
III. (A.) The Religious-Naturalistic Tendency.
A first place must be given" to the view just
indicated — that which identifies the natural and

l] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 9
the supernatural. Though claimed as distinctively
' modern,' it must not be supposed that the view
in question is really new. Goethe and Carlyle have
been quoted. But the doctrine has been the
favourite one of humanists, philosophers, and the
higher class of speculative thinkers from the
beginning ; has been familiar since the days of
Spinoza, Lessing, and Herder. For a classical
illustration, it is not necessary to go beyond
Schleiermacher. To this thinker, in his Discourses
on Religion, every intuition or original feeliag is a
' revelation ' ; ' inspiration ' is simply the general
expression for the feeling of true morality and
freedom ; ' prophecy ' is the religious anticipation
of the other half of a religious event, one half being
given,1 and so on.
1. There can be no question, in any case, that the
obliteration of the distinction of ' natural ' and
' supernatural ' in revelation, as in the other spheres
of God's action, is the watchword of much of our
modern thinking. In the general theory of
revelation, its result is the identification of the
revealing process with the ordinary psychological
activities, and the refusal to admit any higher,
distinctively supernatural, action of the Holy Spirit,
in guiding into or imparting truth. As an influential
theologian of the past generation, Biedermann of
Zurich, succinctly put the point : ' The division
of revelation into natural and supernatural is
ambiguous in expression and abstract and figurative
as respects the fact. It opposes as two kinds of
1 Reden, ii. (Werke, i. pp. 249-50). On Schleiermacher's more
mature view of revelation in his Der Christ. Glavfoe, see Dorner,
Syst. ofDoct. ii. pp. 157-8.

10 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
revelation what are only two moments of all revela
tion, inseparable from one another. All revelation
is essentially supernatural, if under nature is under
stood the natural determinateness of man as finite,
in opposition to his spiritual destination ; and all
revelation is just as essentially natural, if under
nature is understood what belongs to his essence.' J
2. In the treatment of Scripture the effects of this
anti-supernaturalistic tendency are seen in the
complete elimination of the miraculous element in
both Old Testament and New, save, indeed, as any
seeming wonder {e.g., bodily healings) can be
naturally explained, and in the expunging, or
explaining away, of all genuine prediction in
prophecy. How extensively this principle rules in
recent criticism no one acquainted with the book
and magazine literature of our time needs to be
informed. Kuenen's often-quoted remark on the
religion of Israel in its relation to other religions
stands for the position of a whole school. ' For us,'
he says, ' the religion of Israel is one of these religions ;
nothing less, but also nothing more.' 2 Gunkel was
cited above on Israel as ' the people of revelation.'
Yet he says expressly, ' The history of revelation
is transacted among men according to the same
psychological laws as every other human event.' 3
Wellhausen, Duhm, Stade, Cornill, with their
numerous followers in other countries, are here
agreed. ' God,' says Cornill, ' who always arid
everywhere reveals Himself and works in history,
has also revealed Himself and worked in the same
way in history's greatest and most significant phase,

1 Christ. Dogmatik, i. p. 265.
' Rel. of Israel, i. p. 5.

' Op. cit. p. 37.

i.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 11
the history of Israel's religion ' ; adding in defence :
' The natural and the naturalistic are of two kinds ;
would it be really unworthy of God if the process
could be shown to proceed naturally ? Is it not
Just the natural that is the greatest marvel ? ' x
The like conception is applied by Bousset, Wernle,
Loisy, and the school they represent, to the life of
Jesus and the origins of Christianity, with like
result in the elimination of all miracle.
3. The large assumption underlying this denial of
a direct supernatural factor in revelation, viz., the
unbroken continuity of nature, and consequent im
possibility of the miraculous, falls to be discussed at
a later stage. The assumption itself, given forth
with confidence as a self-evident postulate of the
modern mind, recurs so constantly that special
illustration is hardly necessary. As a recent
example, it may suffice to quote the statement in
an able work on The Philosophical Basis of Religion
by Professor John Watson, of Queen's University,
Kingstou, Canada : —
' Moreover,' this writer says, ' the Christianity of
our day must be consistent with the highest products
of reflection. We cannot now adopt in reference to
it a view of history which has been exploded in
other spheres ; we cannot believe that there are
cataclysms in the realm of spirit any more than in
the realm of nature. There are no breaks in the
life of humanity any more than in the external
world. Therefore the kingdom of heaven must
consist in the development of goodness in and
through the ordinary processes by which man is ever
realising his ideals. . . . Hence, just as there was a
i Introd. to 0. T. (E.T.), p. 116.

12 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
primitive view of history and of nature, so there is
a modern view which Christianity must incorporate
on pain of extinction.' x
It might be truer to say that the Christianity
which incorporates this ' modern ' view is, not
threatened with extinction, but is already extin
guished. IV. (B.) The Critical-Supernaturalistic Tendency.
It is now, however, time to point out that, with
all its claims to be the sole representative of the
' modern ' spirit, this naturalistic school has by no
means the whole field to itself ; that, on the contrary,
its fundamental contention is widely dissented from,
even among those who go far with it in its general
critical attitude to Scripture — at least to the Old
Testament. There is a believing-critical, as well as
a naturalistic school of thinkers, and their opinions
also need to be taken account of.
1. Superficial parallels have often been drawn
between the Jewish and Christian Scriptures and
the sacred books of other religions. But the
impartial mind cannot ignore the fact that in the
writings which constitute our Bible there is a unity'
and progression, a guiding purpose, culminating in
Jesus Christ and His redemption, a fulness and
1 Op. cit. p. 187. Cf. Bousset : 'Corresponding to modern culture,
there is a special mode of thinking which is essentially peculiar to
it. The main characteristic of this modern mode of thinking rests
upon the determination to try to explain everything that takes place
in the world by natural causes : or — to express it in another form —
it rests on the determined assertion of universal laws to which all
phenomena, natural and spiritual, are subject' (Op. cit. p. 283).

i.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 13
power of religious truth, which place them in a
category by themselves, and compel the acknowledg
ment of a unique origin answering to their unique V
character. There have never been wanting in the
critical schools men able to perceive this. It is
important constantly to remember, and fair to
recognise, that, if much unsettlement has resulted
from the modern critical movement, in its bear
ings on the ideas of revelation and inspiration,
the unsettlement has not been without many
positive compensations. Dr. Sanday has truly
remarked that we have witnessed about the utmost
lengths to which the critical movement can go.
' It is impossible,' he says, ' for any theory started
in the future to be more thoroughly naturalistic
than many of those which we already have before us.' 1
But the movement has not been wholly destructive.
It will be enough at present to mention one important
gain : the demonstration, viz., which the application
of the strictest historical and critical methods has
afforded of the absolutely unique and extraordinary
character of the religion of Israel. As the present
writer has urged elsewhere,2 with the best will in
the world to explain the religious development of
Israel by principles applicable to all religions, the
efforts of the critics have resulted in a magnificent J
demonstration of the immense and unaccountable
difference between the religion of this people and
every other. The difference is independent of
theories of the age of books, and impresses the mind
nearly as strongly on the newer view of Israel's
development as on the older. How is it to be
J Inspiration, p. 2.
a The Problem of the Old Testament, p. 10.

14 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
explained ? Can psychological causes alone account
for it ? They can not. The further inquiry has
gone, the tendency has increasingly been to force
from the lips of the critics themselves the word
' revelation.' 2. It will not be doubted, at least, that this
distinctive character of the Biblical revelation is
upheld by the greater number of our best known
British critical scholars, e.g., by Dr. Driver, Dr.
Sanday, the late Dr. A. B. Davidson, Dr. G. A.
Smith, and others. The same is true of a multitude
of Old Testament and New Testament critical
scholars on the Continent, yet surely without the
forfeiture thereby of their right to the title ' modern,'
so calmly appropriated by the other side to itself.
Here, as before, a few examples may suffice.
The facts which weigh chiefly with these critical
writers in determining their admission of a super
natural origin of the religion of the Old Testament —
a fortiori of that of the New — are such as these :
the spiritual and ethical character of the Old
Testament monotheism — its idea of God; the
organic unity of the history and religion ; the
evidence throughout of a divine redemptive pur
pose, reaching its goal in Jesus Christ ; not least,
the overmastering impression of Hebrew prophecy.
All these points of view are strikingly represented
in a lecture given a few years ago by Professor
Kautzsch, of Halle, on The Abiding Value of the Old
Testament. This distinguished scholar emphasises
the ethical and religious significance of the Old
Testament. It is, he contends, inexhaustible,
because it springs from the root of faith in a living
God of unconditioned holiness and righteousness,

i.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 15
who is at the same time a God of redeeming grace.
' The abiding value of the Old Testament lies above
all in this, that it guarantees to us with absolute
certainty the fact and the process of a divine plan
and way of salvation, which found its conclusion
and fulfilment in the New Covenant, in the Person
and work of Jesus Christ.' 'Every attempt,' he
declares, ' at explanation through 'human reflection J
or natural development, every form, in short, of
evolutionary theory, now in such high favour, shatters
on one fact — that of prophecy.' The distinguishing
mark by which prophecy is raised high as heaven
above all heathen phenomena with which it may be
compared is, that it ' stands in the service of a
divine plan of salvation.' The prophets are living
witnesses to, and guarantee, the fact that there is «
direct communication between God and man.1
Similarly, the development of God's redemptive
' plan ' was held by the late Professor Dillmann to
be the central idea of the Old Testament ; 2 and
Professor Kittel, a disciple of Dillmann's, writes in
his History of the Hebrews : ' Nothing but an
immediate contact of God Himself with man can '
produce the true knowledge of God, or bring man a
real step nearer thereto ' ; while, of ' the new and
lofty knowledge of God possessed by Moses,' he
declares : ' That knowledge came neither from his age
uor from himself ; it came to him from the
immediate revelation of God in his heart.' 3
Professor G. A. Smith, in his Modern Criticism and
the Preaching of the Old Testament, bases his ' Proof of
i Op. cit. pp. 22, 24, 28-9, 30-1.
a Cf. Dillmann, Alttest. Theol. p. 441.
* Op. cit. i. (E.T.)p. 252.

16 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
a Divine Revelation in the Old Testament ' on the
fact that, ' in a physical environment, very fertile
in polytheism,' Israel alone was enabled, ' not merely
to rise above this to a stage of religion subordinate
only to the Christianity of Christ, but to exhibit
throughout her whole history a religious progress
which Christ affirmed to be the gradual preparation
for Himself ' ; and says : ' To this unique exception
in the history of Semitic religion it is my firm belief
j y that only one cause can be assigned, and that is,
that in the religion of Israel, as recorded in the
Old Testament, there was an authentic revelation
of the one true God.' 1
3. Naturally, in light of these facts, prominence
is given to the idea of ' organic unity ' in the
Biblical religion as a mark of its origin in revelation.
Apart from all theories about the Bible, the earnest
student cannot but be struck by observing in how
marked a degree it is a structural unity — has a
beginning, a middle, and an end. The Bible is a
unique book in this respect, however, only because
it is the record of a unique revelation. It is in the
religion, the revelation, that the real mystery and
wonder lie. It is there, in God's progressive self-
revelation, that the organic unity which impresses
the mind so strongly is to be sought for. Hence,
a writer like H. Schultz, in speaking of the religion
of Israel, can observe that it is ' not a variety of
forms of religion which have merely an outward
connection of space and time,' which has to be
dealt with, ' but one religion, though distinct stages
of its development, which, consequently, are
dynamically and inwardly bound together ' ; in
1 Op. cit. p. 126.

i.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 17
the representation of which ' each member must hark
back on the preceding, a common thread of living
tissue must bind all together — the representation
must be, not merely " historical," but " genetic." ' 1
A like organic unity, combined with progressive
development, it might be shown, reveals itself in
doctrine. While throwing off, or suffering to fall
into the background, what is accidental or temporary,
each stage in the advance of revelation takes up
what is vital and permanent in the preceding stage.
No single grain of the word of God ' which liveth
and abideth ' 2 is allowed to perish in the process.
V. (C.) The Evangelical-Positive Tendency.
1. The above testimonies, chosen from writers of
critical repute, show conclusively that faith in a
supernatural revelation is not only not subverted,
but in certain respects, and for certain minds, is
directly aided by the view of the Scriptures usually
denominated ' critical.' This the adherents of a yet
stricter view of revelation and inspiration — what,
for distinction's sake, may be called the evangelical-
positive — will freely grant. These feel, at the same
time, that, in other respects, the extreme lengths
to which critical theories are frequently carried —
the manner in which critics take the Bible to pieces
and dissect its text, the free fashion in which they
impugn its historical credibility, the later dates
they assign to its narratives, and the extensive
place they allow to myth, legend, invention — in
numerous instances, to intentional fraud,^create
serious difficulties in carrying through a consistent
i 0. T. Theol. (E.T.) i. p. 3. >1 Pet. i. 23.
B

18 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
doctrine of revelation and inspiration, and are, in
no small degree, responsible for the existing widely-
spread unsettlement of opinion on these subjects.
The learned Dr. Dorner, in the sections on
' Revelation ' in his System of Doctrine 1 — sections
marked by his accustomed profundity and insight
• -may be named as an earlier representative of this
more conservative position. It is, despite the
' modern ' current that has set in, probably, in
essential idea, the position of the great majority of
evangelical Christians still. A few words, therefore,
may be said in its elucidation.
2. Criticism has to do with the external form of
the Scriptures, and those are at all times few who
are capable of entering into the intricacies of critical
argument. There is something, however, deeper
than externa] form, on which it is possible for the
humblest to form a judgment, and which will
surely carry the student of divine revelation
further into the heart of the subject than any
amount of critical learning would do — by neglect
of which, in truth, the ablest critics go continually
astray. The one thing criticism can never expunge
from this book, the Bible, is what we speak of as the
Gospel — its continuous, coherent, self - attesting
discovery to man of the mind of God regarding man
himself, his sin, the guilt and ruin into which sin has
plunged him, and over against that the method of a
divine salvation, the outcome of a purpose of
eternal love, wrought out in ages of progressive
revelation, and culminating in the mission, life,
death, atoning work, and resurrection of His Son
Jesus Christ, and in the gift of His Spirit to the
* Vol. ii. pp. 133 ff.

i.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 19
Church and believers. Here also is a fact — the
biggest and most solid fact in the universe — a fact
patent on the face of Scripture to any one who
reads with open eyes, intertwined with ages of
Christian experience, with enduring institutions,
with efforts and achievements, which furnish a
continuous proof of its reality. So long as this fact
stands, the Scriptures will also stand. For it is the
Scriptures which, in their divers parts and divers
manners, embody and convey to us this revelation
of God, and by the verifiable presence of this reve
lation in them, the Scriptures are proved to be,
what they claim to be, the living and inspired
oracles of God.1
Here, then, it is, in the evangelical view, within
Scripture, not outside of it, — within this grand,
cathedral - like structure of divine revelation, —
within this massive, comprehensive, divinely-
unique plan of God's salvation for a world of sinners,
— that the believer in revelation must take his
stand, if he is to recover lost ground in regard to the
Scriptures. He is here at the heart — the centre —
not at the circumference. In the light of what he
beholds of the realised saving purpose of God in
the New Testament, he looks back upon the stages
of its development in the Old, and feels the ground
there also firm beneath his feet. Criticism does not
make him anxious, for he knows that excesses of
criticism must always be blocked and checked by
the presence of this vital evangelical element which
1 2 Tim. iii. 15-17. The above statements are made with clear
recognition that it is precisely these evangelical doctrines which, in
the 'modern view' of Christianity, are swept away (cf. Bousset,
Op. cit. p, 292, and see below, p. 33).

20 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
runs continuously throughout Scripture. If he is
told, as he will be, that he is beginning at the wrong
end, — that he has first to prove that the Bible is
God's Word, and only then can go on to speak of its
Gospel, — his reply is the simple one, that it is the
fact that the Bible has this Gospel in the heart of it
which, above all else, proves to him that it is God's
Word. If that Gospel is in the Bible, he is as sure
as he is of his own existence that it was not man who
put it there. It is too high for him ; he could not
attain to it. The Bible reveals man to himself as
he could never have known himself without its help.
It reveals God to him in lights and aspects of His
grace which it could never have entered the wildest
dreams of his imagination to conceive. It embodies
that grace in a divine plan, working itself out in an
extended history, which it is absolutely certain
no sinful mind could have invented. A book which
contains such a Gospel needs no external attestation
to prove that God speaks through it with authority
to men.
3. The idea of revelation reached along this line
is obviously much more definite in character than
any conception obtained by more general methods.
It has also a regulative value which other views have
not. Accepting a supernatural economy of grace
as the central fact of revelation, it is not trammelled
by the a priori presumptions about miracle which
are apt to vitiate purely critical theories. For
miracle is of the very essence of the economy. It
is able to take up firmer ground on historicity ; for
it sees the meaning and place of the great facts in
the Biblical history, as other theories do not. It
recognises a line of divine revelation extending

i.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 21
through all time. It is therefore prepared to accept
the fact of a record of such special, continuous,
supernatural revelation.
VI. Advances in Later Thought.
It is still, however, to be acknowledged that,
even within the limits of this — the stricter and more
positive school on the subject of revelation and
inspiration — considerable changes and in some
respects advances, have taken place, due to the
widened outlook and more scientific temper of
the age. These will come up in the general course
of the discussion, and need only be briefly glanced
at here.
1. One chief advance is the clearer distinction
made between revelation and Holy Scripture — a
distinction for which much is owing to Rothe, one
of the most suggestive writers on the doctrine of
revelation. This distinction, as Rothe points out,1
the older evangelical theology tended almost
completely to ignore. Revelation in large part
preceded its record ; yet, as will be seen later,
revelation and Scripture come to be for us practi
cally synonymous and co-extensive.2
2. Another change is the clearer conception of
revelation itself as something primarily historical.
Instead of revelation being regarded as consisting
simply or exclusively in the communication of
truths or ideas through internal suggestion, illumi
nation, or intuition — the doctrinaire view of revela
tion, as the late Professor A. B. Bruce called it —
its essence is seen to lie, primarily, in a series of
1 Cf. his Zwr Dogmatik, pp. 54-5. 2 See below, p. 59.

22 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
divine acts : ' God manifesting Himself in the
history of the world in a supernatural manner and
for a special purpose.' x This, of course, is not
intended as the denial of subjective and internal
revelation, as in prophets and apostles. It is still
an important advance when, in accordance with
the Biblical conception itself, the stress is shifted
back, even from prophetic and apostolic teaching,
to the divine acts which stand behind both.
' He made known His ways unto Moses, His
doings unto the children of Israel.' 2 God's saving
acts in Israel — His dealings in grace with the nation
and its fathers — stood behind the prophets' message,
and formed the basis of their knowledge of God and
confidence in Him. Similarly, the work of the
apostles stands in a subsidiary, interpretative,
and ministrative relation to the historical revelation
of God in the personal manifestation of Christ.
3. A third gain in the modern treatment lies in
a more dynamical view of inspiration, as distin
guished from a theory of mechanical dictation —
an idea sometimes confounded with that of in
spiration, but now hardly defended by any school.3
Both revelation and inspiration are conceived of,
without prejudice to their supernatural origin, as
standing in the closest relation to the capacity,
1 Bruce, Chief End of Revelation, p. 57. Dr. Bruce closely follows
Rothe on this point.
2 Ps. ciii. 7.
s Recent writers of all schools allow the fullest play in inspiration
to the individuality of the sacred writers. See, among conservative
writers, Lee, Inspiration of Soly Scripture, pp. 361 ff. ; Bannerman,
Inspiration of the Scriptures, pp. 453 ff. ; Hodge and Warfield, art.
'Inspiration 'in The Presbyterian Review, April 1881. To this last
important article a good many references will be made.

i.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 23
experience, and mental endowments of the in
dividual, and to the circumstances of his age.
Connected with this is to be observed an enlargement
of the idea of inspiration to include, or at least take
account of, the entire process by which, under the
providential superintendence of God, and guidance
of His Spirit, the inspired record has been produced.1
Special stress is laid on the intimate relations of
1 inspiration ' and ' providence.' 2 The importance
of this conjunction will be afterwards seen.3
4. Probably, however, the principal advance in
the modern handling of this subject is in the attempts
at the more accurate discrimination of the related
ideas ot revelation and inspiration themselves. So
long as revelation was directly identified with
Scripture, such discrimination was impossible ;
now nearly all writers recognise a distinction between
the two ideas.4 It is to be acknowledged, neverthe
less, that much haziness still rests over this whole
part of the inquiry, and that, in the distinction of
the relations of revelation and inspiration, too much
has occasionally been looked for from mere verbal
refinements. The distinctions offered are far from
1 Thus, in the Gospels, there is the personal ministry of Jesus,
the oral teaching and preaching of the apostles, leading to the
segregation and formation into an oral type of the incidents and
sayings of Jesus which formed the synoptic tradition, the earlier
records of parts of this tradition, which may have entered into the
composition of the Gospels, etc. An element of inspiration and
divine guidance is present through the whole. (Cf. Westcott, Intro
duction to the Study of the Gospels, pp. 28, 32, 166, etc.)
2 Westcott, as above ; Hodge and Warfield in article cited. The
inter-connection of inspiration and providence may be said to be the
thesis of this article.
» See below, p. 213.
* The writers above quoted all do so, and most others.

24 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
agreeing among themselves, and in all their forms
seem open to manifest objections. A few examples
may be given.
According to Rothe, manifestation, which is the
external and objective side of revelation, and
inspiration, which is its internal and subjective
side, combine in inseparable unity to constitute
the actual revelation. But revelation, it is plain, is
sometimes wholly internal.1
According to Dr. Lee, revelation has reference to
a supernatural communication of knowledge from
God to man : inspiration is ' that actuating energy
of the Holy Spirit . . . guided by which the human
agents chosen by God have officially proclaimed His
will by word of mouth, or have committed to writing
the several portions of the Bible. . . . Revelation
and inspiration are also to be distinguished by the
sources from which they proceed, revelation being
the peculiar function of the eternal Word ; inspiration
the result of the agency of the Holy Spirit.' 2 Does
the Spirit then not reveal ? The idea of revelation
here, besides, is too exclusively doctrinal.
Dr. A. M. Fairbairn propounds a view which is
nearly the reverse of this. ' God inspires, man re
veals. Inspiration is the process by which God gives ;
revelation is the mode or form — word, character,
or institution — in which man embodies that which
he has received. The words, though not equiva
lent, are co-extensive, the one denoting the process
on its inner side, the other on its outer.' 3
' Op. cit. pp. 68-9. ¦' Op. cit. pp. 27-29.
8 Christ in, Mod. TheoU p. 496. For other statements of the dis-
tinction, see Dorner, as above ; Ladd, Doct. of Scripture, i. p. 321 ;
Bannerman, Op. cit. p. 151 ; Westcott, Op. cit. p. 8, etc.

i.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 25
The subject will be considered later, but here it may
provisionally be asked : Can there be any form of
internal revelation (e.g., prophetic) which does not
imply as its condition and correlate an exalted or
' inspired ' state of soul ? Or can there be any
inspiration which is not attended by a measure
of ' revelation ' — of insight into divine things ?
If not, are not the two ideas inseparably conjoined ?
On its objective side, again, has not ' revelation '
a much more extended range than is sometimes
given to it ? Who, e.g., can fail to see that, in the
Old Testament, revelation is not confined to the
specifically miraculous acts or words of God, but
includes the whole historical dealing of God with
Israel, and the providential relations of that people
with other nations (Egypt, Assyria, Chaldsea) — in
other words, carries us beyond the distinctively mira
culous into the sphere of God's ordinary providence ?
The important fact becomes apparent that it is not
always or only in the means or method of God's
working, so much as in the result} that we are to
look for the qualities of divine revelation.
1 Cf. Hodge and Warfleld, as above.

26 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.

CHAPTER II
NATURALISTIC SCHEMES OF REVELATION — SCOPE
AND LIMITS OF NATURAL REVELATION
It has been seen in the previous chapter that God
and revelation are correlative ideas. Revelation
is 'unveiling,' and divine revelation is God's
unveiling of the truth regarding Himself in some
manner and degree to the intelligence and heart
of man. Only as He does thus unveil Himself does
He become known to man. It is futile, therefore,
to set to work to prove the being, personality and
character of God before studying the nature and
modes of His self-revelation. Only in studying the
revelation do we get to know the God who reveals.
I. Nature versus Revelation.
The statement just made, that, if there is not a
living, personal God, there can be no proper
' revelation,' might seem evident from the very force
of the terms. If nature be self-sufficient and self-
explaining, the all and sole Reality, there can be no
revelation of aught beyond itself. There are those,
however, who dispute this, and plead that nothing
more than nature is necessary as a basis for religion.
Nature is its own revelation. The infinite mystery
and wonder of the universe constitute it, on their
view, a sufficient object of reverence. For ' God '

ii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 27
is substituted ' the All,' ' the Universum,' ' Nature ' ;
and religion, identified with ' cosmic emotion,'
becomes worship at the altar of the Unknowable.1
Or the Pantheism latent in such expressions may
become explicit, and God be spoken of as the
Eternal Power, Spirit, Energy, which reveals or
discovers itself in outward appearances. So long,
however, as the idea of revelation is arrested at this
stage, — so long as the process of manifestation is
regarded as a necessary one, be the necessity physical,
or be it logical, — revelation in the proper sense
cannot be spoken of. The only idea of God which
answers to the idea of revelation is that of a Being
who has character and will — power to reveal, and
purpose and end in revealing, — who is self-conscious
personal, and ethical.2
II. Natural Revelation — How to be Conceived.
It must be left to the course of the discussion to
justify the assumption that this is truly the nature
of the Being who has become known to us through
the various modes of His self-revelation. It is
the manner of this self-revelation which is now to
be considered. And a first question relates to the
place to be accorded to Natural Revelation.
1. A distinction made by Ewald in his treatment
1 Cf. Strauss's Der alte und der neue Glaube ; Seeley's Natural Re
ligion, and similar works. For a good criticism, see Bruce, The
Miraculous Elements in the Gospels, pp. 378 ff.
2 Even Mr. Spencer speaks of the Power manifested in evolution
as in some sense self-revealing. He speaks of 'tha naturally-
revealed end towards which the Power manifested throughout
evolution works ' (Data of Ethics, p. 171). Cf. a striking passage
in his First Principles, p. 123.

28 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
of revelation may furnish us with a starting-point.1
Ewald begins his discussion of this subject by
distinguishing between what he calls immediate and
mediate revelation. The ' immediate ' revelation,
in his view, is without a sufficiently clear and
perfectly sure word, and embraces the original
revelation given in the human spirit in creation,
the creation itself as it stands in its glory and
perfection before the gaze of man's spirit, and the
whole history of the human race, which to the
prepared mind teaches truths of eternal freshness
and force. ' Mediate ' revelation, which alone, he
says, deserves the name revelation in the fullest
sense, expresses itself, on the other hand, in intel
ligible and distinct words. It is the word of God
through human discourse. The word of God thus
mediated is declared to have a truly supernatural
source, and to stand in connection with definite
historical occasions. The obvious criticism to be
made on this distinction, in many ways suggestive,
is, that the natural revelation is also in a true sense
' mediate,' — is mediated by the whole system and
course of things through which it comes, — and that
the higher or supernatural revelation, assuming
such to exist, is not always or only, as indeed Ewald
himself recognises, through human discourse, but is
primarily, as before indicated, through acts or deeds
of God — through divine facts which human speech
interprets or conveys.
The distinction which Ewald has in view is better
reached by speaking simply, as is more usual, of
general and special, or of natural and supernatural
1 Cf. his Revelation : its Nature and Record (E. T. of first volume
of his Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott), pp. 5 ff.

il] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 29
revelation. The former is perhaps the preferable
expression, if only for the reason already given,
that all revelation, even when mediated through
only natural means, is supernatural, in the sense
that it has a supernatural basis, and that it is super
natural truth that is revealed.
2. The reality of a natural revelation of God is
everywhere assumed in Scripture,1 and in some
sense has generally been conceded by serious minds.
Yet the attitudes taken up to this natural revelation
at different periods, and by different schools of
thinkers, have greatly varied. In Christian circles
there has usually been the attempt to do justice to
all the truth about God made known through
natural means, while upholding the need and reality
of revelation of a higher and more special kind for
the guidance of man into the full knowledge of God's
character and will, and for the ends of man's
redemption. This balance of view, however, it is
difficult rightly to maintain ; and frequently, in
the history of religious thought, the opposite
tendencies have been witnessed, on the one hand, to
the over-exaltation of the natural revelation, on the
other, to its undue belittlement.
(1) The eighteenth century may be said to be the
period, par excellence, of the exaltation of the powers
of reason, and the assertion of the all-sufficiency
of natural revelation. The Deism of that century
had for its aim to exhibit the revelation of God in
nature as yielding a few simple, unchanging truths
about God, virtue, immortality, and future recom
pense^ — those truths of which all positive religions,
i E.g. Pss. viii. ; xix. 1-5 ; cxix. 89-91 ; Is. xl. 12-14, 26 ; Acts
xiv. 15-17 ; Rom. i. 19, 20.

30 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
with their priestcrafts, were the corruptions — and
this in so clear a manner as to render superfluous
all special or miraculous revelation. This Deistical
phase passed with the assaults of a sceptical and
critical philosophy on its foundations, and with the
recognition that there never had been, nor could be,
any such universal ' natural religion ' ; that what
was put forth as such was simply a colourless
abstract of truths borrowed from the positive
religions, and especially from Christianity — truths
which, separated from their vital roots in these
religions, had no emotional or spiritual value.
(2) It is not surprising that, in recoil from a lifeless
Deism and a speculative rationalism, the opposite
tendency has sometimes been manifested to do less
than justice to the natural revelation. More
recently, this tendency is specially apparent in the
German Ritschlian school, which, on the ground of
a theoretic Agnosticism derived from Kant, and a
theory of religion which seeks in the help of superior
powers deliverance from the thwarting influences of
man's natural environment, would expel ' natural
theology ' altogether from Christianity, and rest
everything on the ' revelation- value ' of the Person
of Jesus Christ. It is not denied by Ritschl and
his followers that in some sense there is ' revelation '
also in the lower stages of religion. But it is not
the kind of revelation which the ordinary ' natural
theology ' supposes, and, whatever its worth for
its immediate recipients, it is viewed as now left
behind, and valueless for Christians.1
(3) This, however, is too obviously an exaggeration
to find general acceptance. Once more, accordingly,
» CJC Herrmann, Op. cit. pp. 49, 50, 53-4.

n.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 31
the wheel has turned, and partly as a development
from Ritschlianism itself, partly as a result of wider
tendencies in the culture of the age, a new ' religious-
historical ' school has arisen, which, merging
Christianity in the general stream of religious
development, and again universalising the idea of
revelation, includes all religions equally as phases
of this development. Agreeing with. Deism and
speculative rationaHsm in the rejection of super
natural revelation, this school differs from the
former in renouncing the abstract point of view, and
attaching itself to the idea of the historical evolution
of religion, and from the latter in seeking the origin
of religion in practical impulses, and refusing to
regard it as simply the vehicle of rational and
moral ideas. As it is this school which is at present
coming to the front, it is desirable to give it closer
attention. III. Bousset on Religion and Revelation.
It will help to the comprehension of the positions
of the ' religious-historical ' school if a single book
be accepted for guidance, and for this purpose a
better aid could not be desired than is afforded by
Professor W. Bousset's recently-published work,
What is Religion ?
Here, to begin with, are a few sentences from this
book on the general standpoint :
' History would appear to destroy the idea of
inspiration — that is to say, of any special revelation—
in the Old and New Testament. . . . And what if
history were right ? Suppose this view were the
true one ? In that case only a bold step forward

32 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
will save us. If the science of history demands
that the seals be broken, and the special revelation
be surrendered, then we must seriously consider
the idea of a universal revelation.' x
Earlier : ' It is no question of This religion is true,
that is false ; everywhere we perceive growth,
evolution, imperfection striving towards perfection.
. . . The whole history of the religious life of man
kind stands to us as the great handiwork of God,
a ceaseless apparition and constant intercourse of
God with man, of man with his Maker, in accordance
with the stage to which he has attained.' 2
The theme of the book is then developed thus.
In accordance with his standpoint, Bousset first
explains what religion is — desire for life, belief in
gods or a god, surrender and sacrifice, longing for
redemption ; — and how it originates — in man's sense
of wonder (' on the boundary-line between the
known and the Unknown ' 3), and in the animistic
principle moving the savage to people nature with
innumerable spirits and ghosts of the dead. Religion
is next traced in its evolution from the fetishism,
magic, and worship of the dead of savages, through
tribal religion, with its idea of blood-relationship,
and its loftier objects of worship (' in the tribal life
reverence for common gods or for one universal God
predominates ' i), and national religions, as in
Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece, with their developed
polytheisms, to the prophetic stage. This stage,
held to be more monotheistic in character, with a
i Pp. 289-90 (E. T.). Cf. Sabatier, Outlines of a Phil, of Rel.
(E. T.), p. 34: 'I conceive therefore that revelation is as universal
as religion itself, that it descends as low, goes as far, ascends as high,
and accompanies it always.'
a P. 9. « Pp. 18, 20. « P. 58.

ii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 83
retrocession to religions of the law (' in the history
of religion the valleys succeed the heights ' 1), is
represented by Zarathustra, Buddha, and Con
fucius, by Socrates and Plato in Greece, above all
by the prophets of Israel. Finally, from the pro
phetic impulse proceed ' religions of redemption '
(Buddhism, Platonism), and, as the highest of these,
Christianity. The religion of Jesus, with its
spiritual view of God, its freedom from nationality
and ceremonial, its moral aim, and its proclamation
of redemption (' Christianity is the religion of moral
redemption, and its highest good is the forgiveness
of sin and guilt, and the freeing of the will towards
the good ' 2), is that which, ' if there is to be only
one religion, must be the religion of the progressive
nations of the earth.' 3
It is carefully to be observed, however, where
Christianity is spoken of, that, in our author's view,
the Christianity of the future is to be a Christianity
completely purified from all its ordinarily accepted
supernatural elements. The ' Pauline-Lutheran '
conception of Christianity, it is declared, ' cannot
any longer be accepted in modern life, with its
absolutely independent attitude.' * ' All is here
based on the opposition between sin and grace,
and in the centre of religion is placed the conscious
ness of sin, and the consolation of freedom from sin
and guilt.' 5 Such a conception, it is said, cannot
stand. ' We can no longer speak of the " divinity "
of Christ.' 6 ' The belief in the special significance of
Christ's sacrificial death ' is repudiated by our moral
consciousness.? Human corruption cannot be
» P. 136. * Pp. 267-8. s P. 269. * P. 277.
« P. 276. « P. 279. 7 P. 281.

34 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
preached.1 Miracles, of course, have no place in
the new scheme.2 'Christianity, in its essential
idea, dominant up to the present, is based on a
fundamental conception utterly opposed to the
ideal of life which has Just been described. The
narrow Pauline idea of redemption, which was
developed by St. Augustine, and strengthened
anew by Luther, still dominates it.' 3 This must be
parted with. ' If we accept in its entirety this
conception, if, that is, we take from modern life its
very essence, and force it to self-renunciation, we
shall have absolutely to cast on one side such com
plete and great figures as those of Goethe and Bis
marck.' 4 This last consideration, naturally, is,
with the author, final.
IV. Criticism of Bousset's Theory.
With full acknowledgment of the many interest
ing side-lights thrown on the history of religion by
Bousset's book, the general criticism which suggests
itself on the scheme unfolded in it may be very simply
stated. It is not historical ; it does not do justice
to the true idea of religion, and at every stage hope
lessly mixes up things that differ; it negates the
true conception of revelation, and removes from
Christianity the elements which alone give it vitality,
and enable it to do the work required of it. In an
important sense, its end contradicts its beginning.
This general judgment it is now necessary to justify.
1. The scheme professes to be evolutionary.
Evolution, however, in the right conception of it,
is a process in which one continuous life is seen
» P. 278. 2 P. 284. « P. 275. « Pp. 274, 276-7.

ii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 35
unfolding itself ; in which one stage is seen emerging
from another, to give place, in turn, to a higher
stage. It is not a true historical evolution when,
as here, different types of religion, higher and lower
grades of social existence, in different parts of the
world, are set in order of succession, with no attempt
at proof that one has really grown from the other,
or stands in any genetic relation to the other. It
would be to the purpose if, following up the history
of any one race or people, it were shown that it had
passed by internal development through the stages
indicated, or that, at least, the gains of one people
had been appropriated by another, and there carried
up to something higher.
(1) This, however, is precisely what is not done.
Savage races are described (Polynesian, Indian,
Mongolian, Negro, etc.) — fetishist, unprogressive,
without chronology, incapable of fixed tribal union
(though some of them are shown to have a highly
developed tribal fife ]). But proof is lacking of any
such race or tribe having emerged historically from
that condition by self-development, without contact
with a higher civilisation. National religions are
depicted ; but it is not shown that the higher
elements in the Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, or
Vedic religions, were historically developed out of
the fetishism, animism, ghost-worship, or totemism,
of the savage state, or were preceded by them ;
still less that these polytheistic religions became
simpler, purer, or more monotheistic in the course
of their development, instead of becoming, as is
historically the case, constantly more idolatrous,
superstitious, and corrupt. Prophecy is treated
i Pp. 55-6.

36 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
as a stage in religious evolution ; but it fails to be
shown that prophecy in Israel — that unique
phenomenon — had really any analogy to Buddhism
or Platonism, or sprang from like causes, or that an
outcome like Christianity was the product of develop
ment in any other people or religion but that of
Israel. (2) It has, in short, to be shown that the higher
elements in the historical religions are evolved out of
the lower, and this is not done and cannot be done.
The spirit- worship, magic, ancestor-worship, etc.,
which is so common a feature among savages subsists
as a lower stratum also in higher religions ; but it is
not shown that the higher is a development out of it.
On the contrary, it is inconsequently allowed that
the lower races which cherish these superstitions
have also the idea of a supreme God, though they
do not ordinarily worship Him ; 1 that ' in the tribal
life reverence for common gods or for one universal
God predominates ' ; 2 and that ' most widespread
of all is the worship of the heavenly God — that is,
of Heaven itself — which is not regarded as con
sisting of the many powers mentioned above, but
as a single, powerful being. . . . The well-known
1 ' Most of the Negro races recognise a powerful heavenly being,
or god, that is to say, a giver of life, Heaven — not yet divided into
different divine forms,' etc. . . . 'The same remark applies to the
Malay-Polynesian race. An Almighty God is there recognised,
etc. (p. 39). These races also regard it ' as a matter of course that
in the human body there dwells an independent vital essence — the
soul,' and that ' the soul never dies ' (pp. 47-8). Side by side with
such statements are the customary exaggerations, that 'the differ
ence between man and animal is not felt,' 'the savage has no under
standing of the connection of things,' 'uncivilised man does not
yet know that the light of day proceeds from the si*n,' etc. (pp. 33,
34, 59). 2 P. 58.

ii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 37
similarity of names is clear evidence that the
Indo-Germanic race before its separation into
different tribes had a common possession in the
worship of the God of heaven.' x When the national
stage is reached, a new explanation is given of poly
theism — with which is now connected image-
worship — in the separate tribes which unite to form
the nation bringing their tribal deities (assumed to
be single) with them.2 This polytheism becomes
ever more firmly-rooted, intricate, and mythological.
So far, in truth, from a spiritual monotheism being
the natural outcome of this development, there are,
as has often been remarked, even till this hour, only
three monotheistic religions in the world — Judaism,
Christianity, and Mohammedanism — and all three
are derived from the Bible.
(3) The ethical evolution which the theory postulates
is as little established as the religious. Is it true,
for example, that in the Greek and Indian religions,
' the gods became the spiritual powers which, in
accordance with eternal, inviolable laws, guide the
destinies of the nations in holiness and righteous
ness ? ' 3 Or mark the blunting of ethical conceptions
involved in such a conjunction of sentences as the
following : — ' The phenomenon of simple absorption
in the Godhead now develops into horrible human
sacrifice, especially in the form of sacrifice of children,
and of prostitution ' (illustrations are given from the
Mexican religion, from sacrificing to Moloch, from
Phoenicia, from prostitution in the service of the
Canaanitish-Syrian Astarte, etc.). . . . 'Already
we have wandered a good distance. Already we
see that the religious life is striving after higher
1 P. 60. 2 P. 71. 3 P. 20.

38 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
[!] forms, that a common faith is rising above the
arbitrary thoughts and fantasies of the individual.' 1
2. Viewed in its bearings on revelation, an evolu
tionary theory of this sort does not universalise, hut
in reality excludes, revelation proper. Bousset
contends rightly that ' wherever we have religious
life the gods (or the Godhead) are regarded as
absolute realities, more real even than human life.' 2
Even he, however, will not argue that the fetishes, or
multitudinous spirits of woods, hills, rivers, or the
Baals, and Astartes, and Molochs, of tribal and
national worship, are real beings, or aught but
projections of the religious mind creating imaginary
objects for itself.3 It is not denied that a certain
perception of the divine in nature — a true element
of the natural revelation — may lie behind ; but
the embodiments of this perception are purely
fanciful, products of a childish interpretation of
nature, or something worse, horrible perversions
of the idea of deity. The idea of the true God,
when it comes, displaces these false conceptions,
is not an evolution from them. Reality is not
developed out of unreality. It is playing with words,
for example, to treat the Yahweh of the Old Testa
ment as at first a storm or wind god — an unreal being
— created by man's own phantasy, then to regard
this as the first stage in the revelation of the real
Yahweh of the prophets — the living and true God —
who chose Israel at the beginning to be His people.
3. This, finally, is what is meant by saying that
i P. 67. 2 P. 17.
s Contrasting these ideas with phenoniLAia due to hypnotic sugges.
tion, etc., Bousset himself speaks of them, apparently, as fantasies
and products of the imagination (p. 46).

il] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 39
the end of the supposed evolutionary process con
tradicts its beginning. The culmination of the
process is not even the God of the prophets, but is
the God and Father of Jesus Christ; — a holy God
and heavenly Father, who loves His children, and
is infinitely tender and pitiful toward them ; whe
surrounds them at every moment with His pro
vidential care, and seeks to bring them to the know
ledge and love of Himself ; who abhors and judges
sin, yet is full of mercy to the returning sinner. Is
it conceivable that such a God should have no means
of access to the souls He has made other than that
of evolutionary development ? Or that He should
choose as the only path by which man, through un
counted millenniums, should rise to the know
ledge of Himself this tortuous way of sin, error,
and vile and hideous practice ? Or that this actually
was the path by which man at length climbed to the
consummate heights of the consciousness of Jesus
Christ ? Must we not in consistency, either alter
our ideas of the method of revelation, or, retaining
these, give up the conception of God attained through
Christ at the end ?
V. Sources of Natural Revelation.
Yet the natural revelation remains — in large part,
as may be conceded to the Deist, unchanged from
the creation ; in another and wider respect, cease
lessly progressive, as man's own thoughts grow
wider, as his knowledge of himself and of the natural
universe increases, as the scroll of God's purposes
is gradually unrolled in history. Ewald was right
in speaking of this revelation as one both within and

40 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
without man — as furnished in the very constitution
of his own being, in the glory and order of the
universe as it displays itself before him, and in the
course of events of which he forms a part.
1. Analysing the sources of this revelation a
little further, we distinguish the following : —
(1) First, there is the revelation within man, in
man's own heart, from the beginning, in the sense
of dependence on inscrutable powers, or on a Power,
above and around him (one thinks here of Schleier-
macher's ' feeling of absolute dependence,' or of the
consciousness of the Absolute, taken by H. Spencer
to be a constituent element in all experience) ; while,
stirring within him, likewise from the beginning,
is a rational spiritual nature, which will not let him
rest till he has found an object adequate to his
highest ideal — a God infinite, personal, ethical, and
revealing. Later, as man comes reflectively to know
himself, but still as part of this self-revelation of the
divine, is the discovery made^that God is the im
plicate of his entire rational and moral life, — the
ultimate postulate of moral, consciousness (Kant),
of personal selfhood (Ritschl), of rational thought
(Hegel). The whole distance is thus spanned
between man's first, simplest, and most elementary
sense of the divine, and the last conclusions of the
profoundest philosophy of spirit. 1
(2) But, next, over against man, the subject of
religion, stands the outer revelation — that great,
continual manifestation of God in the existence,
i The truth in such contentions as in Pfleiderer's Gifford Lectures
or in Professor Watson's Philosophical Basis of Religion is here taken
up. A sound philosophy must strive after a supreme unity which
comprehends under itself the Ideas of the true and the good ; and
this is the idea of God (Pfleiderer, i. p. 32).

il] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 41
stability, order, and manifold workings of His
natural creation, in the events of man's life, and in
his providential environment. The heavens and
the earth declare the glory of their Creator. That
which may be known of God, the Apostle says, is
manifest through the things that are made — even
His everlasting power and divinity.1 God has not
left Himself without witness, in that He did good,
and gave from heaven rains and fruitful seasons.
A revelation this, which antecedes all logical reason
ing, which is universal, which is borne in on man
insensibly, irresistibly, in all races and stages of
culture, so long as any spark of spiritual suscep
tibility is left in him. There is no tribe or people, if*
the best investigations may be trusted, but manifests
something of this ' sense of something far more
deeply interfused ' — this feeling of the infinite, as
Schleiermacher and Max Muller would define it —
this sensus numinis of the older writers, — which
is the fact that lies behind the term ' Godhead,' and
is involved in the attribution of ' divinity ' to
superior powers.2
(3) Yet, while this outward revelation is constant,
and in its essential content unchanging, it, too, in the
nature of the case, is endlessly progressive. How
immensely, e.g., has science, through the progress
of discovery, enlarged man's thoughts of God in
space and time, revolutionising, for it is nothing
else, his whole idea of the cosmos ! In how
many ways has it illuminated God's methods of
i Rom. i. 20.
2 The facts may be seen in such works as Max Miiller's Hibbert
and Gifford Lectures, Waitz's Anthropologic (Negro tribes), A. Lang's
The Making of Religion, etc.

42 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
working, illustrating His power in things immeasur
ably great, and His care of things infinitely little,
giving demonstration, in its extension throughout
the universe of the reign of law, of His faithfulness ;
expanding also — though here there may be more
demur — the conception of His goodness ! For
who can doubt, despite much that, to our imper
fect vision, must create difficulty, and leaving out
of view for the moment the evil and suffering for
which man himself is responsible, that the optimist
is right when he declares that the system of things
is, on the whole, in its essential constitution and
tendency, a beneficent one ? The day may be re
garded as past where such a conception as evolution
was thought to conflict with, or supersede, the belief
in ends, plan, purpose, intelligent ordering, and
providential guidance, in creation. These ideas
not simply stand secure ; they have received firmer
grounding in the best thought of evolutionary
science itself.1
(4) The sources of the natural knowledge which
man has, or may have, of God, are thus, as seen,
both internal and external. It is now, lastly, to be
remarked that these two sides of natural revelation,
though separable in idea, are not separable in fact.
The external world would reveal nothing of God
without the key afforded by man's own rational and
spiritual nature. The internal, again, — the world
of personality, rationality, morality, — is evoked
and developed only through contact and in inter
action with the external. It is more, also, it should
be observed, than an idea of God which man
i Cf . on this point R. Otto, Naturalism and Religion (E. T. ), in
'Crown Theol. Library.'

il] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 43
reaches through these combined influences. In
his own consciousness, and in the world around him,
God is discovered to him as an actually existing
Being — a Reality — an all-encompassing Presence —
immeasurable indeed, in His greatness, yet whose
attributes in some degree man is capable of cognising.
VI. Sufficiency of Natural Revelation.
The natural revelation of God is therefore not to
be denied. A more vital question arises when we
come to speak, next, of the sufficiency of this natural y
revelation. If man's developing mind, working on
its natural environment, can reach so much truth
about God, may it not fairly be argued, not only that
this is all the knowledge of God which man has,
but that it is all the knowledge he needs, — that it is
sufficient for all the ends of his religious life ? This
question requires consideration.
1. One way which may be suggested of testing this
point is to make the supposition — a quite unhistorical
one, indeed, — of a mind which is a perfectly pure
mirror of the natural revelation, — or, if one will,
of a succession of such minds, with all the oppor
tunities this gives for development, — minds capable
of taking from the revelation the utmost it is able
to yield, — and to ask : What, in such a case, would
be the result ? What would such a mind (or minds)
be able to reach in the knowledge of God from its
pure intuition, its sense of dependence, its impres
sions of nature, its observations of God's providence ?
Let the utmost be assumed. Let it be supposed
that it is able to rise by assured steps to the thought of
a great Author of the universe, — a God all-powerful,

44 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
all-wise, beneficent, — that in the strength of a firm
moral conviction it grasps the truth of a providence
ruling the world for moral ends, — that it is pene
trated with reverence in presence of this Power, and
is moved to the simpler acts of prayer and worship,
— that in the events of life it thinks it can discern
the guidance of God and answers to its prayers. Let
it be assumed that, from other principles, in con
junction with the religious impulse, it attains the
belief in the soul's survival of death, and in an
enlarged and happier life hereafter.
2. It is perhaps not quite just to speak of this
development of ideas as merely conjecture. There is,
let it be owned, actually seen an approximation to
what is here described, not only as a dim back
ground in most historical religions, but in the beliefs
held by the nobler minds of all ages — e.g., by a
Socrates, a Cleanthes, a Seneca, a Marcus Aurelius.
And the question recurs — If natural revelation
can yield thus much, is it not sufficient ? Is
not this, after all, the real substance of religion ?
When prophets and other good men received
what they thought to be special revelations from
God, may we not suspect that it was simply,
in reality, this natural revelation of God which, in
one or other of its forms, was making itself felt in
their spirits ? In any case, when we strip off
historical accidents, and seek ' the eternal truth '
of religion, is it not to something like this we come
back ? Are we not here, in short, in presence of the
' constants ' of religion, of those parts of it which,
in separation from ' dogmas ' and doubtful historical
facts, man's rational and moral consciousness can
verify — in presence, therefore, of its essential parts ?

n,] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 45
So unquestionably many in these days think. A
little reflection, however, may modify this first
impression, and produce the conviction of the
urgent need of special and authoritative revelation
for man's highest wants.

46 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.

CHAPTER III
NEED OF SPECIAL REVELATION — BIBLICAL AND
ETHNIC REVELATION
The attempt has been made in the preceding
chapter to do justice to the reality and scope of
natural revelation. Some considerations may now
be adduced to show that, grand and varied as
nature's testimony to God is acknowledged to be,
natural revelation alone is not adequate for the
spiritual needs of mankind.
I. Limits of Natural Revelation.
1. A first thing to be observed is that, as was
stated at the outset, the description given of a
perfectly pure mind — a mind serving as the undimmed
mirror of the natural revelation — is entirely unhistori-
cal. A general sense or impression of the divine all
ages and races of men have indeed manifested ; indi
vidual thinkers have often risen to wonderfully clear
and elevated views of God's being, character, and
government ; a confidence in an all-superintending
providence, a rational rule of the world — in itself
a kind of theism — may be traced in the nobler types
of men in all periods of history. It is a fact just as
certain, that no race or age has ever shown itself
capable, by its own efforts, of rising to the height
of the idea of God as just sketched, of grasping it
clearly and steadily, and of connecting with it a pure

in.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 47
and spiritual worship. Impartial study shows the
history of religion to have been rather that of the
obscuration of what purer light may originally have
been possessed ; the sinking of mankind, as Paul
depicts in Rom. i. 18 ff., into ever grosser polytheism
and immorality.
It is, in short, one thing to admit that nature, in
its objective aspect, reveals ' the everlasting power
and divinity ' of its Creator ; and another to affirm
that man, as modern theory regards him, with his
untutored intellect, germinal conscience, undeveloped
powers of reflection, and strong propensities to the
sensuous and material, could evolve from that
revelation all it was fitted to yield him, and create
for himself a spiritual conception of God, and of his
duty, such as is found in Holy Scripture. The
pure mind which the hypothesis postulates is not
there. It never was ; and the picture which history
yields of man in his religious development is not
such as to yield high expectations of his achievements
in the knowledge of God. Once man had lost the
true idea of the divine, and permitted himself to
become involved in the labyrinthine errors of
polytheism, all evidence is against the idea of his
ever being able to work himself out again.
From this first point of view, therefore, the light
of nature would seem to be demonstrably insufficient
for man's need. Something further, — a pure point
of knowledge of God, the product of personal revela
tion, — must be given, if mankind is to attain such a
knowledge of God as will furnish the ground of a
pure, spiritual, and intelligent worship of Him ;
if it is to be saved from losing its way in an
aberration becoming continuously the more hope-

48 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
less. This original point of knowledge must be
tended and developed by further revelations. The
light vouchsafed must, for its preservation and
enlargement, go on shining, in a succession of elect
spirits, more and more unto the perfect day.
2. There is, however, a second and yet stronger
call for special revelation. On the assumption yet
made, the end of revelation would be reached if it
furnished to man clearness and certainty on those
truths embraced in the compass of natural revela
tion — rational and necessary truths. This was the
view of revelation advocated by Lessing in his
Education of the Human Race. Revelation was held
to be necessary solely for the purpose of giving to
man clearer knowledge and firmer assurance of
truths which reason could either discover, or at
least could be depended on ultimately to verify,
for itself. Revelation is illumination. Its content
is ' eternal truths,' and its end is to provide guidance
for man till reason should be able to stand on its
own feet.1 The truth illumined does not go beyond
the truth of reason and conscience, or that disclosed
in nature and providence.
3. Ewald has drawn attention to one defect of any
revelation which confines itself within these natural
limits 2 — it is general and indiscriminative. Nature
is a grand objective manifestation of the power and
divinity of the Creator. But that power and divinity
stand in no specific relation to the individual. It is
a general revelation, like the overarching sky, often
taken as its symbol, or like the sunshine, in which
each has his share, but none a distinct property.
1 Cf. on Lessing, Bruce, The Chief End of Revelation, pp. 17 ff.
2 Op. cit. pp. 18 ff.

in.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 49
It is the same with reason and conscience, and with
the sense of dependence. These yield, indeed,
' eternal truths ' about God — ideas of Him as
Rational Spirit, Author and Upholder of Moral
law, the Absolute Power on which man and the
universe depend. But the truth revealed is wholly
general. Now it should hardly need proof that religion, in
the true idea of it, can never be satisfied with this
general, almost impersonal relation to a God mani
fested in purely universal relations. Religion is in
its essence a relation to a Being who stands, or is
believed to stand, in a personal relation to His
worshippers — a relation which can be satisfied only
in personal communion. This is seen even on the
ground of heathenism, a subject to which further
reference will immediately be made. Heathenism
is a constant attempt to find means of putting the
worshipper and his god into personal relations with
each other. This is much more manifest in the
Biblical religion, in which the craving of the soul is
ever for immediate, conscious, personal relation to
God ; for the personal assurance that God is gracious
to it. This is the nerve of the piety of the psalms,
and of all true religion. ' As the hart panteth after
the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee,
0 God.' * All this, however, it should be obvious,
is possible only on the basis of a relation more
determinate than that yielded by the general revela
tion of God in nature. It means that God has
descended from the sphere of general unto that of
special revelation ; that He has come to man in
some form of self-manifestation, and given him His
i Ps. xiii. l.
D

50 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
sure word, on which He has caused him to hope.1
Supposing man to have attained to the most perfect
ideas of God conceivable through natural revelation,
this still would not satisfy the inmost craving of
religion, which is, not simply that man should know
about God, but that he should get into living, personal,
relations of friendship with Him.
4. This is to regard the need of revelation from
the side of man. But the need and presumption of
special revelation may be shown to follow with equal
stringency from the right idea of God. Man's heart
is yearning for a word of God, a sign or token of
recognition and love. Is God, on His side, to remain
everlastingly silent ? Assume the theistic, which is
likewise the Christian, position, that God is a personal,
self-conscious, ethical, self-revealing Being, — a Being
whose nature is Fatherly love, who made man in
His own image, and seeks to draw him into fellowship
with Himself, — a Being who desires to make
Himself known to man, and to be known, loved, and
served by man, — is it conceivable that He should
remain for ever behind the veil of nature, and be
content to sustain to man only the impersonal,
indefinite relation already described ? In man there
is implanted the impulse to seek after God. Is there
no corresponding impulse in God to draw near to
man, and unveil Himself to him ? To quote Ewald
again : ' How then should He not answer the
earnestly perseveringly questioning spirit of man, —
He of whose Spirit man's is but a human reflection
and an enkindled spark, and to whom in his searching
and questioning He can draw near quite otherwise
than to the visible things in creation ? ' 2 The
» Ps. cxix. 49. a Op. cit. p. 18.

in.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 51
striving, seeking, attaining — is it to be all on man's
side ? Is it enough to say : ' God is there ; let man
find Him out ' ?
It is not a sufficient reply to urge that God does
not thus stand aloof ; that He is already there in
this very striving, stimulating the soul into search
after Himself. He is behind the veil all the while,
aiding man's efforts, quickening his aspirations,
secretly answering his prayers. For, on the theory,
God does not draw near to meet the soul whose
striving He has secretly incited. And why only in
secret ? Why invisible and silent, when He has the
power to speak, to reassure, to help ? It is not
enough, again, to use the word ' love.' For an
inactive love, — a love that does not display itself in
words or deeds, — can satisfy no one. A general
benevolence cannot take the place of love. If God
is truly love, He may be expected to manifest His
love in seeking closer, personal, relations with man.
It follows, as has been argued elsewhere,1 that the
only Theism which can remain tenable is a Theism
which completes itself in a doctrine of special
revelation. The word ' law ' — to some almost a
fetish — need terrify no one in this connection.
Without anticipating later discussion, the one thing
that may be held certain a priori of the Almighty
Author of the universe, assuming Him to be personal,
free, and loving, is that He will not bind His hands
by natural ordinances in any such way as will
preclude His effective interposition for the help of
His moral creatures, when they need and seek His
help. 5. To adduce only one other consideration on
1 Cf. The Christian View of God and the World, pp. 62-5.

52 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
this subject — if the need of revelation follows from a
true idea of God, and of religion as personal fellow
ship, it as surely follows from a right idea of the
plan of the world. History is not, any more than
nature, given up to fortuity. God has His plan
and end in it, the supreme end, as Kant rightly
deduced, being the establishment of a perfect moral
fellowship, or Kingdom of God, among men. Such
a plan is not wrought out automatically, or through
impersonal, unconsciously working laws of evolution.
It can only be wrought out along definite lines,
through the conscious, intelligent, voluntary,
co-operation of men. But how is man ever to co
operate intelligently with God in the furtherance
of His world-purpose if he is left wholly in the dark
about it ? How can he ever be trusted to discover
it for himself, or to know the part God wills him to
take in it ? Is it a higher view of history, to regard
man as groping and stumbling in the dark, or to
conceive of him as taken in hand by God, taught
and disciplined by God, in a manner suitable to
each stage in the development of His purpose,
made an intelligent co-worker with God in the
accomplishment of His ends ? If this plan of God is
further regarded, as in Christianity, as redemptive
and remedial — a work of grace from its inception
to its consummation — the need of revelation to
enable man to avail himself of its provision, and to
realise its aims, is seen to be imperative.
II. Heathen Need of Revelation.
The considerations now advanced suffice, it is
hoped, to show the need and the reasonableness of

in.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 63
special revelation, as well as to create a powerful
presumption in its favour. There is good sense
in a remark of Paley's, in the commencement of
his Evidences, which may be here quoted. ' I deem
it unnecessary,' he says, ' to prove that mankind
stood in need of a revelation, because I have met
with no serious person who thinks that, even under
the Christian revelation, we have too much light
or any degree of assurance which is superfluous.'
He adds : ' I desire moreover that, in judging of
Christianity, it may be remembered, that the
question lies between this religion and none ; for,
if the Christian religion be not credible, no one,
with whom we have to do, will support the pre
tension of any other.'
H confirmation of this need of special revelation
be required, it can be found in abundance on the
field of Heathenism. Not infrequently, by way of
discrediting the Biblical claim to revelation, appeal
is made to the widespread craving for revelation,
and the attempts to satisfy this craving, in the
heathen world. The oracles, divinations, necro
mancies, and other modes of interrogating the
unseen, are dwelt upon, and it is asked — Does not
this evidence of a universal belief in revelation,
and eagerness in seeking after it, prove that the
claim to special revelation in the Bible must be
dismissed as baseless ?
In reality the phenomena in question prove the
very opposite. The craving for communion with
the unseen manifested in them x may not prove that
i Cf. Pfleiderer, Phil, of Rel. iv. pp. 48-9. The juggler and the
charlatan, he says, traded 'on the need of revelation felt alike by
people and by sages.'

54 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
the oracles, auguries, soothsayings, and like super
stitions in heathen religions are true ; but they do
prove the profound and inextinguishable need
which has ever been felt in heathenism for special
revelation. The one thing they show to demon
stration is, that, whoever is satisfied with the
measure of knowledge of God given in natural
revelation, it is not the people who are left to that
revelation, or whose light is dimmer than our own.
In all ages these have eagerly desired more, and,
in default of such better revelation, have sought to
still their craving by resort to oracles and sorceries.1
It is not the lower order of minds only that have
experienced this craving. It is the sages of heathen
ism who have felt the need most profoundly. The
brilliant philosophical systems of the ancient world
gave neither certainty nor content ; in Greece and
Rome alike they are seen ending in scepticism. A
universal uncertainty on the highest questions of
existence was the most marked feature of the age
in which Christ appeared. As Plato affirmed, the
Father of all is hard to find, and, when He is found,
it is impossible to make Him known to all.2 And
in the Phaedo he makes the friend of Socrates express
i Cf. Orelli, Prophecy (E. T.), p. 23: 'The universal search of the
nations for revelation of the Deity and indications of His will proves
a vividly-felt need of self-revelation on His part, a need making itself
directly felt in man as he stands with childlike simplicity in presence
of God and nature. But, although points of attachment were given
to the nations in nature and history, intellect, and conscience, in
which they might discern the Deity, still the uncertain superstitious,
inquisitive, and insane feeling after a divine revelation beyond the
sphere in which God was pleased to make Himself known to them,
show how little these revelations could satisfy the natural man, with
his nature corrupted and his power of perception weakened by sin.'
2 In the Timaeut.

in.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 55
the need for some word of God which will more surely
and safely carry them when the raft of human
opinion fails.1

III. Biblical and Ethnic Revelation.
Suppose now, however, it is granted that special
revelation, as alone adequate to satisfy the religious
needs, and support true faith in God and His pur
pose, is not only possible and reasonable, but is
probable, the question of the relation of heathenism
to revelation is by no means exhausted. The
probability of special, supernatural revelation —
supernatural in the sense of transcending, not in
that of contradicting, the natural — may justify us
in looking for such a revelation along the path
of the history of Israel, and supremely in Christ ;
but the question remains to be asked : Is this
privilege confined to Israel ? If, as is affirmed,
natural revelation is insufficient for man's higher
needs, and heathenism itself craves for something
better, is it to be supposed that all the nations
except Israel have been left through the long millen
niums of their history with only the light of natural
i ' For I dare say,' says Simias, ' that you, Socrates, feel as I do,
how very hard or almost impossible is the attainment of any certainty
about questions such as these in the present life, and yet I should
deem him a coward who did not prove what is said about them to
the uttermost, or whose heart failed him before he had examined
them on every side. For he should persevere, until he has attained
one of two things ; either he should discover or learn the truth about
them ; or, if this is impossible, I would have him take the best and
most irrefragable of human notions, and let this be the raft upon
which he sails through life — not without risk, as I admit, if he cannot
find some sure word of God which will more surely and safely carry
him ' (Phaedo, sect. 85, Jowett's trans.).

56 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
revelation — that special revelation has been wholly
denied to them ?
In answering this question, extremes meet. On
the one hand are found those who would deny to the
nations — to the whole Gentile world — special revela
tion in any form or degree. God has left them,
it is thought, to their own unaided faculties, in the
use of the light of nature, in seeking after Him.
No supernatural assistance has been vouchsafed.
On the other hand, as already seen, are those — the
majority in our own day — who break down the
distinction of natural and supernatural altogether.
This class will admit no distinction in origin between
Gentile religions and Israel's. They see revelation
as truly in the one as in the other. As this commonly
is found to mean that there is no true supernatural
revelation in either case, the two views come, at
bottom, as regards heathenism, much to the same
thing. 1. In dealing with this question, a first thing to be
pointed out is that, whatever place is allowed to
special revelation in heathenism, it cannot affect
the broad fact, historically attested, that heathen
religions were without the light of a clear, authoritative,
supernatural revelation, such as Israel, alone of all
nations, possessed. It is the contrast so clearly
discernible between the religion of Israel and other
religions in this respect which compels the impartial
investigator to assign to the former a special origin.
This also is the broad teaching of the Scripture on
God's dealing with the nations. The nations are
described as ' suffered ' for the time ' to walk in their
own ways.' x They are described as in ignorance of
1 Acts xiv. 16,

in.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 67
the true God and of the way of life.1 ' The times of
this ignorance,' Paul says, ' God overlooked ; but
now He commandeth men that they should all
everywhere repent.' 2 With this corresponds the
peculiar consciousness which Israel at all times had
of its exceptional position as a people standing in
special relation to God. ' For what great nation is
there, that hath a god so nigh unto them, as the
Lord our God is whensoever we call upon him ? . . .
For ask now of the days that are past, which were
before thee, since the day that God created man
upon the earth, and from the one end of heaven
unto the other, whether there hath been any such
thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like
it ? ' 3 If Israel was a vine trained and planted by
the hand of God,4 heathenism can be regarded at
best as a vine growing wild.
2. While this is so, it is next to be remarked that
a special revelation in Israel is not incompatible
with the view that in many special ways God was
present also in heathenism, imparting to heathen
peoples measures of His light and grace. The nations
of men were never, at any period of their history,
left wholly without revelation. Apart from what
may be said of a 'primitive revelation' the light
of which was never wholly lost,6 this is evidenced
in many ways. Paul, in the discourse at Athens
above quoted, defines the end of God's dealings with
the nations : ' That they should seek God, if haply
they might feel after Him and find Him,' but does
not fail to add : ' Though He is not far from each
i Acts xvii. 23 ; Eph. ii. 12 ; iv. 18.
» Acts xvii. 30. » Deut. iv. 7, 32-35.
* Ps. Ixxx. 8-10; Is. v. 1-7. e See below, p. 64.

58 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
one of us.' : Elsewhere he says : ' Yet He left not
Himself without witness ' ; 2 and though the
reference is mainly to the natural revelation of
God's goodness (giving them rains and fruitful
seasons), it need not be supposed that the revelation
was confined to this. The Scripture gives numerous
indications to the contrary. In Abraham's time is
found Melchizedek, a ' priest of God Most High ' —
a man evidently of high and enlightened ideas — at
Salem.3 In Moses' time is the strange figure of
Balaam, a prophet of Jehovah, outside Israel, at
Pethor, by the Euphrates.4, Numerous instances
occur of revelations and warnings to heathen kings
in dreams (Abimelech, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar,
etc.),5 and by prophets (Jonah : the prophetic
oracles to the nations). Job and his friends in the
land of Uz are represented as not without the light
of revelation.6 Cyrus is announced as raised up
and girded by God for the work he had to do.7 H,
as Peter affirmed, ' in every nation he that feareth
[God], and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to
Him,' 8 is it to be believed that God does not draw
near to such seekers with His light, His succours,
His answers to prayer ? Or may we not look to
heathenism itself ? It is a Christian doctrine that
the sages and teachers of heathen peoples received
from God's special iQumination whatever measure
of the light of truth they professed. The light of
the Logos, ' which lighteth every man,' 9 as the
early Fathers taught,10 shone in them. ' If we
i Acts xvii. 27. 2 Acts xiv. 17. 3 Gen. xiv. 18-20.
4 Num. xxii. 5 ff. ' Gen. xx. 3, 6 ; xli. ; Dan. ii. , etc.
• Job iv. 12 ff. ; xxxviii. ff. ; xiii. r ls. xiv. 1 ff.
8 Acts x. 35. » John i. 9.
io The doctrine of the ' spermatic ' Logos— the Logos as implanting

hi.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 69
reflect,' writes John Calvin, ' that the Spirit of God
is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful,
as we would avoid offering insult to Him, not to
reject or contemn truth wherever it appears. In
despising the gifts, we insult the Giver. How, then,
can we deny that truth must have beamed in those
ancient law-givers who arranged civil order and
discipline with so much equity ? . . . Nay, we
cannot read the writings of the ancients on these
subjects without the highest admiration : an admira
tion which their excellence will not allow us to
withhold. But shall we deem anything to be noble
and praiseworthy, without tracing it to the hand of
God V1 In brief, at no time has God withdrawn
His interest, care, providential guidance, help,
revelation, from any heathen people.
3. Without professing to penetrate into what
must always remain more or less a mystery — the
ways of God in His dealings with heathen peoples —
it is perhaps possible to see in general wherein the
broad contrast existed, in respect of revelation,
between them and the people of Israel, It is not
simply that revelation in Israel had a fulness,
clearness, and certainty, a strong and authoritative
note, which it lacked in heathenism ; though that
also is true. The deeper cause lay in the content of
the revelation, and in its connection with a developing
redemptive purpose, working onwards, in continuous
historical process, to a definite goal. Revelation in
heathenism, so far as that is to be recognised, was
of a more partial, sporadic, individual character ;
the seeds of truth in heathen minds — is prominent in Justin Martyr
(1 Apol. 46 ; 2 Apol. 8-13), Clement, Origen, etc.
1 Institutes, bk. n. ch. ii. 15, 16 ; cf. bk. III. ch. xiv. 2, etc.

60 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
it lacked the creative, continuous, progressive
character which it had in the chosen race. There is
a great difference, manifestly, between revelations
which are purely personal and private, and revela
tions, like those to Abraham and Moses, which
enter into a history of the Kingdom of God, and
form part of a series, extending through ages, and
conducting to an end of world-wide significance.
In no case do we find revelation outside Israel
assuming the marked, unmistakable, historical, and
visibly supernatural form it took in that nation.
In character it consisted more in illumination — an
illumination on the basis of the natural revelation,
making that clearer, deepening receptivity for it,
interpreting its lessons through experience. In
Israel revelation had a character of universality ;
an aspect to the world ; it brought in truths, and
founded relations, which held in them the promise
of a future. It is mainly this positive historical
character which distinguishes it from revelation to
the nations outside.1

IV. Limitation of Historical Revelation.
If the question be still pressed, Why should revela
tion have taken this form of limitation it did ? —
why should other peoples not have been favoured
1 Dorner remarks : ' Divine activity, if it is to be called revelation,
must impart something analogous to the product of creation, some
thing new, not previously existent in the spirit. . . . Revelation
denotes not merely the introduction of something new to the in
dividual, but its introduction by God's action to the race as a whole
for the first time. . . . Mere capacity for religion is an insignificant
matter in comparison with that which will be the issue of historical
facts, or God's acts of institution ' (Op. cit. ii. pp. 134-9).

in.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 61
with as full and gracious a revelation as Israel had ? —
it is to be admitted that the answer is one which lies
largely beyond us in the depths of God's own
unsearchable wisdom and counsel.1 Any partial
answer that can be given must be sought for in the
ends which God had in view alike in His giving and
His withholding.2 Here such considerations as the
following occur : —
1. It is necessary to remember, as one element
in the case, the responsibility of the nations in parting
with the light they originally had. From the
Biblical point of view, however it may be in the view
of evolutionary science, the nations were not guilt
less in this respect. ' That which may be known
of God is manifest in them ; for God manifested
it unto them . . . that they may be without excuse ;
because that, knowing God, they glorified Him not
as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in
their reasonings, and their senseless heart was
darkened.' 3 A responsibility, therefore, rested on
mankind for the state of ignorance, error, and
moral corruption into which it had come. It follows
that special revelation, in every instance in which
it was granted, was an act of grace. In historical
revelation the calling of Abraham, the early promises,
the raising up of Moses, the covenant with Israel, the
sending of prophets, were due wholly to grace.
2. It is further to be considered, assuming the
need of historical revelation, that it was only by
the choice of a particular individual, afterwards of
i Cf. Rom. xi. 33.
2 Butler's Analogy, pt. n. ch. vi., on ' Tbe Want of Universality in
Revelation,' may be compared.
» Rom. i. 19, 21. Cf. Dorner, Op. cit. ii. pp. 245-8.

62 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
a nation, that God could work out His gracious
purpose for the blessing of mankind. Historical
revelation had to begin somewhere, in the choice of
a special person, the preparing of a special people,
the providing for ' an election of grace ' within this
people, in order that the world might ultimately be
universally enlightened and benefited. Israel was
to be God's messenger to the world — a ' light of the
Gentiles.' 1 A definite line of historical develop
ment had to be adopted if the desired end was
to be reached. This is the law of election in the
divine economy. Election is not arbitrary. It is
not an act of personal favouritism, but always, as in
the case of Abraham, a means to a larger blessing.2
3. The subject is looked at yet more compre
hensively when it is recalled that the heathen
peoples had their own mission, and that their mission
was not that of the people of Israel. It is not to
deny a divine providence in heathenism to say that
the charismata bestowed on heathen peoples were
other than religious. In heathenism it is the
secular consciousness that predominates. To it is
given the development of civilisation, — of arts, laws,
letters, philosophy, states, — of productivity on the
worldly side. In Israel the religious vocation is the
central one. The sages even of heathenism grasped
truth from the civil, political, philosophical sides,
rather than from the religious. A prophet of
Israel, therefore, would not have found receptivity
among the heathen, even had he risen among them.
The soil was not there on which the seed of divine
truth could be sown, or from which it might be pro
pagated. To secure this a people had to be prepared
» Is. xiii. 6; Ix. 1-3. 2 Gen. xii. 1-3.

m.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 63
There had to be concentration to gain the 7roi> o-toj
necessary to act upon the world. A community of
grace had to be built up from the very commence
ment. Hence, again, the significance of such a
fact as the Call of Abraham ; the meaning of the
hedging round and training of the people of Israel,
till sufficient force was accumulated for larger,
wider action.
4. Lastly, may it not truthfully be said that it was
as essential to the divine purpose that heathenism
should be left for the time freely to develop itself, as
that Israel should be placed under special divine train
ing for the purposes of its mission ? It was not left,
certainly, to develop unguided or unrestrained.
But it was left to develop freely, even in respect of
the God-denying tendency it had taken into its
heart, that this might be revealed, and its real
character become manifest. Civilisation, arts, philo
sophy, science, were permitted to do their utmost,
not only for the sake of their positive gains to
humanity, but that the moral helplessness of a
world without God might be set in its strongest
light. This is no arbitrary procedure on the part
of God. It rests on the eternal law that under the
government of God everything that is, even evil,
must be permitted to manifest its full nature. ' For
nothing,' Jesus said, ' is hid, that shall not be made
manifest ; nor anything secret, that shall not be
known and come to light.' x Only as evil, once it
has entered, is permitted to reveal its whole nature,
can it be effectually overcome. How otherwise
can God's patience, in permitting evil to rise to the
heights it often does, be explained ?
1 Luke viii. 17.

64 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
V. Question of a Primitive Revelation.
A question germane to the present discussion
may here receive a little further attention, viz., the
value to be attached to the idea of a ' primitive
revelation.' Such an idea seems to many investi
gators of the philosophy of religion no longer worthy
of consideration. Dr. G. T. Ladd, e.g., in his recent
large and able work on The Philosophy of Religion,
directs much reasoning agaiast the notions of ' a
primitive revelation ' and ' a primitive monotheism.' x
As opposed to these notions, the words of Zeller
are endorsed as ' undoubtedly correct ' : ' What
humanity possesses of religious truth and religious
life it must win for itself. . . . Religion, like any
human work, could only climb upward gradually,
out of crude and imperfect beginnings, to a nobler
and more pure form.' 2 Is not such a dictum,
however, itself as a priori as anything on the other
side can be ? Is it not, besides, in contradiction
with facts, which show, in many cases, ' undoubt
edly ' a descent in religion from relatively simpler
and purer to grosser and growingly polytheistic
forms ?
1. On the question of a ' primitive revelation '
it is permissible to think that there is a certain
confusion of idea. No one seriously contends,
as Dr. Ladd and others apparently suppose, that
religion ' originated ' 3 in a primitive divine revela
tion. Such an idea is on the face of it untenable.
But it is not untenable to suppose that man had,
from the first, together with his inherent religious
endowment, a measure of divine revelation granted
i Op. cit. pp. 152, 204, 223, etc. ! P. 151. * P. 152.

in.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 65
to him sufficient at least to ground, in an elementary
way, a pure worship of God, and keep him right
in his relations with God. The fact of such revela
tion may be, as Dr. Ladd says, beyond the condi
tions of ' historical,' i.e., extra-Scriptural proof, but
there is no warrant in history or anything else for
denying either its possibility or its probability.1 If
revelation is conceded at all, it is difficult to see why
it should not begin early as well as late. It is not,
surely, to serious reflection, a higher idea of God to
suppose that He should have Left man to grow up
from a semi-brutish, or at least rude and barbarian
state, deeply entangled in sin, error, and idolatry,
before giving him some clear knowledge of Himself,
and of the way of worshipping Him, than to suppose
that He should have put Himself, as the Bible says
He did, into moral relations with His creature at
the first, giving him some assured light for his
guidance. 2. As respects * primitive monotheism,' this also
is an ambiguous phrase, for it is not supposed by
any that man set out with an abstract conception
of the unity of God in formal opposition to the idea
of false gods or of many gods. Enough for the soul
i Dr. Ladd is well aware of the nests of fallacies which lurk in
current speculations about 'primitive man,' and some of the most
valuable portions of his work are those which deal with this subject.
'Strictly speaking,' he says, 'little or nothing is known of primitive
man' (p. 14). 'One must not be imposed on by an offhand trans
ference of the characteristics of savages or uncivilised tribes as now
existing to the case of primitive man. To quote from the highest
authority in anthropology (Waitz), the "primitive man" is a pure
fiction, however convenient a fiction he may be' (p. 135). He
trenchantly criticises the tendency to set up fetishism, totemism,
ancestor-worship, or the like, as the 'primitive form' of religion
(pp. 96-9, 106, 142 ft., 148, 170, etc.). E

66 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
to realise that it was in the presence of its Maker, and
of the Lord of All. On philosophical and historical
grounds it is quite as reasonable to believe that at
the root of the religious consciousness there lay a yet
undifferentiated sense of the divine — a sense after
wards refracted or broken up into the polytheism
we know of — as that monotheism was a late develop
ment from a low-grade fetishism or spirit- worship,
or the imaginative spiritualising of natural objects.
The interest of this question in the present connec
tion is that, in the Biblical conception, in marked
contrast with ' modern ' tendencies, there is no period
in the history of the world when man was without
some degree of special revelation. God is assumed
to have had dealings with man — to have spoken
with man — in the very dawn of his history ; and
the piety of the godly in the primitive age, as in the
ages that came after, had revelation as its basis.
The piety, indeed, is of the simplest and most
unrestrained kind, hardly going beyond the bounds
of natural revelation. But it is non-idolatrous, non-
mythological, spiritual, and is represented, in its
clearness, certainty, and assurance of acceptance, as
the product of ' faith.' 1 One is impressed here with
the reserve of the Biblical notices, so unlike, what one
finds in heathenism, but not less with the fact of
revelation they imply. ' Then began men to call
on the name of the Lord.' 2 ' Enoch walked with
God.' 3 This primitive piety holds in it already
the germ of ' promise ' i of which the long history
of subsequent revelation is the unfolding.
i Cf. Heb. xi. 4 ff. 2 Gen. iv. 26.
a Gen. v. 24. < Gen. iii. 15.

iv.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 67

CHAPTER IV
REVELATION AND HISTORY — FORMS OF
SPECIAL REVELATION
It was before mentioned as one of the chief gains
in the modern treatment of revelation that atten
tion is increasingly concentrated on revelation as
something distinctively historical. In all cases,
indeed, the divine act is connected with the divine
word, without which its meaning would not be
intelligible. With the external or objective element
in revelation there is everywhere connected an
internal. But the historical element in the Biblical
revelation is still that which gives it its distinctive
character. Without this it would be, in great part,
in the air. In proportion as confidence in the
history is shaken, the foundation of the whole
structure of revelation is weakened.

I. Historical Revelation in the Old
Testament.
A question of much importance for the doctrine
of revelation thus arises as to the value of the
historical element in the Biblical religion. The facts
of revelation in the New Testament will be dealt
with later ; at present attention may be directed to
the history in the Old Testament, and to the degree

68 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
in which that is affected by recent critical discus
sion.1 1. The Old Testament assumes the reality of a
historical revelation of God from man's creation
till the close of the prophetic age. It is, on its own
showing, the record of this revelation. A continuous
thread of history unites its end with its beginning,
One thing manifest in the survey of this history is
that, while the parts are organically related, yet the
history does not flow on evenly or uniformly, but
falls into periods of epoch-making importance —
creative periods, as they may be named, — and periods
which, relatively to the former, are not creative, but
what may be called continuative ; 2 — periods when
the forces of revelation are acting, as it were, at their
maximum (e.g., the Call of Abraham, the Exodus and
Law-giving), and periods in which the spirit of
revelation is still, indeed, active, but chiefly on the
basis of what has been already revealed, and as
preparatory to a new advance. A few words must
suffice to indicate the chief stages.
The earliest period in the history of God's
dealing with man — the primitive and antediluvian —
has already been referred to. It covers what is told
of Paradise, the Fall, the lines of Seth and Cain,
the Flood. In it, in a sense, is laid the foundation
of all else in the Bible.
The period next succeeding is that from Noah,
with whom is connected a definite epoch through
i The author can, naturally, only speak as he believes, and the lines
he follows are those already laid down in his special work on the
subject (Problem of the 0. T.). Criticism, in his view, has become
side-tracked, and is bound, ere long, to retrace many of its steps.
2 Dorner aptly compares the original and continuative forms of
revelation to the relation of creation and conservation.

iv.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 69
the covenant made with him,1 to Abraham. In this
period mankind again multiplies, and is distributed
in its families and nations throughout the earth.2
This, according to the Bible, takes place in connection
with the judgment at Babel.3 The divine providence
fixes the bounds of the nations.4 The period is
marked by the growing obscuration of the conscious
ness of God — that confusion of God and the world
which is the root error of heathenism,6 and the loss
of the sense of the unity of God in polytheism.6
Hence the need of a new beginning in special revela
tion, in the call of, and covenant with, Abraham.
The history now moves on through the covenants,
promises, and providential dealings of God with the
chosen family in the patriarchal age. Then follows,
in fulfilment of these promises, the Mosaic age,
with the Exodus, the Sinaitic Covenant and Law
giving, the wilderness discipline, till the settlement
in Canaan. After an interval of disorganisation
under the Judges, a new period begins with the
monarchy, and the fresh nucleus of promises con
nected with the house of David.7 The unhappy
division of the kingdom, and the separate histories
and backshdings of Israel and Judah, lead up to the
age of prophecy — though in the wider sense there
i Gen. ix.
2 Gen. x. The value of the Table of Nations in Gen. x. has been
greatly enhanced by recent discovery. Professor Kautzsch says:
'The so-called table of nations remains, according to all results of
monumental exploration, an ethnographic, original monument of the
first rank, which nothing can replace ' (Die Bleibende Bedeutung des
A. T., p. 17).
* On this, see Schelling's suggestive remarks, quoted by Auberlen,
Div. Rev., pp. 160-2.
4 Deut. xxxii. 8 ; Acts, xvii. 26. e Cf. Dorner, as above.
• Josh. xxiv. 2. '2 Sam. vii.

70 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
were prophets from the beginning.1 A great crisis
in this period is connected with the notable figures
of Elijah and Elisha, when the choice in the Northern
kingdom had come to be between Jehovah and
Baal. The very disappointments and chastisements
of the prophetic age2 — the fall of the Northern
kingdom, Assyrian and Chaldean invasions, etc. — ¦
had priceless results in aiding the disengaging of
the idea of the Kingdom of God from its existing
political form, in distinguishing the true kernel of
Israel (' the remnant ') from Israel after the flesh,
in evoking visions, promises, and hopes of a better
economy, and in giving further and more definite
shape to the idea of the Messiah. The Exile ended
the kingdom of Judah, and prepared the way, after
the return, for the new theocracy, when, purged
from idolatry, the nation, in renewed covenant
with God, applied itself with settled aim to the
keeping of the law of Moses. In one sense this was
a backward step, for life dominated by the law fell
far short of the glowing spiritual ideals of the
prophets, and tended to the legalism into which the
nation afterwards sank ; but it was for that time
the only form of organisation suited to the people,
and might have yielded better fruit than it did,
had the spirit of the people been more upright, and
1 Gen. xx. 7 ; Num. xi. 27 ; Deut. xxxiv. 10 ; Hos. xii. 13 ; Acts iii.
18, 21, etc.
2 W. R. Smith has said : ' The work of the prophets of the Assyrian
and Babylonian periods falls in the most critical stage of the history
of the religion of Israel — when, humanly speaking, it seemed far
from improbable that that religion would sink to the level of common
Semitic heathenism, and perish like the religions of the Semitic
peoples, with the political fall of the nation that professed it ' (The
Prophets, p. 18).

iv.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 71
the lessons of the prophets, whose memories were at
length honoured, b.een more laid to heart.
2. Such, in bare outline, is the picture which the
Bible presents of the course of the history of reve
lation in Israel. This picture, it is well known,
undergoes entire transformation at the hands of
modern critical scholarship. The real course of
events, it is held by many modern scholars, is
nearly the precise reverse of that just described.
The law, in the new scheme, comes in at the end,
instead of at the beginning of Israel's history, and
the history itself is recast from its first page to its
last. The actual process in the history of the
religion, it is declared, was one of gradual de
velopment from small and poor beginnings; the
patriarchs are legendary or ideal figures, representing
perhaps early tribal movements ; Moses, if such a
person ever existed, is largely a legendary creation ;
the history of the Exodus in any case is mostly
legendary. So with the Conquest, and in no small
measure with the history of the Judges and of the
earlier kings.
It need not occasion surprise if this * critical '
view of Israel's history is felt by many, by no means
narrow-minded, to be well-nigh fatal to the pre
tensions of the Old Testament to be a record of a
real divine revelation. It must at least be owned
that, if a supernatural revelation has been given,
the real history of it, on this reading of the facts,
has been displaced by another mainly legendary
and fictitious. It is not on such a basis that the
present writer can undertake to defend the reality
of revelation and inspiration in the Old Testament.
Nor, convinced as he is that, despite its present

72 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
vogue among scholars, the evolutionary, critical
theory of the religion of Israel is not the true one,
and that in criticism itself, in archaeology, in a better
knowledge of the ancient world, in a deeper under
standing of the ideas of the religion of Israel, forces
are surely working to make this evident, does he
feel that he is called to undertake such a task.
The reasons for his non-acceptance of the current
critical scheme he has given elsewhere, and need
not here repeat. But a few results, in their bearing
on the subject in hand, may be indicated.
The documentary analysis of the Pentateuch, and
other results of purely literary criticism (doubtful
as many of these are held to be), may be left un
touched. They are secondary in importance to the
leading question of the reliableness of the historical
content. The general trustworthiness of the
history, as has already been indicated, is, apart from
other reasons, believed to be internally guaranteed
by the depth and organic character — the forward
movement under the direction of a divine purpose —
of the ideas embodied in it. Here, on the surface
of the record, is something which it lies beyond the
capacity of irresponsible editors or collectors of
legends, or even of late prophetically-minded men,
to invent, or introduce into the substance of a
national folk-lore. The religion which unfolds itself
in the history of the Old Testament is one religion,
moving on with stately, serious step — grave, mono
theistic, progressive. It is unfolded with a divine
coherence, and ever-increasing breadth of scope,
depth of meaning, and prophetic insight into the
future. It has, as Dorner says of it,1 teleology as
1 Op. cit. i. p. 274.

iv.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 73
its soul. God is in it, in the displays of His holiness,
majesty, faithfulness, and grace. The purpose it
embodies does not halt till it rests in Christ.
For any one taking this view of the Old Testament
history, it will be found difficult to believe that the
patriarchs are the wholly mythical or legendary
figures many would make them out to be, or that the
covenants and promises of that early age are unreal.
It will be found difficult to believe that Moses was
not divinely raised up and commissioned, and did
not, by divine command, lead the enslaved Israelites
out of Egypt, and across the Red Sea, to form at
Sinai a religious covenant between them and
Jehovah, which pledged them ever after to be His
people. It will be found difficult to believe that
Moses did not then and after give to the people
laws and ordinances — both civil and priestly — in
substance identical with those in the books which
record his legislation. It will be found difficult
to believe that Deuteronomy is not, as it claims to
be,1 a reproduction of actual discourses which the
law-giver, before his death, delivered in the plains
of Moab, on the borders of the land of promise. It
will be found difficult to believe that the Conquest
was not effected by Joshua and the tribes in the
general manner depicted in the Book of Joshua. And
so with the remainder of the history.
All this can be maintained, without insisting
on any overstrained theory of ' inerrancy ' in his
torical detail, and while freely granting that much
in the literary form and dramatic presentation of
the narrative belongs to the telling of the story —
the shape it had acquired in tradition, and is, there-
i Deut. xxxi. 9, 24.

74 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
fore, not to be unduly pressed. It is possible to
concede this, and yet to be persuaded that the
history, even in its early parts, rests, as becomes a
history of revelation, on well-preserved tradition
and sound historical knowledge, to which from a
very early period — earlier, probably, than most
are accustomed to think — documentary material
contributed ; — further, that this was not a work of
man's mind merely, but one in which the Spirit of
God was actively present, to the very end that such
a faithful record of revelation might be provided.
In support of such a view appeal may be made again
to the internal character of the history ; but also,
now more than ever, to the confirmations and cor
roborations of some of the oldest and most contested
statements in the sacred record. Such old docu
ments, e.g., as the Table of Nations in Gen. x.,
referred to above, and the account of Chedorlaomer's
expedition in Gen. xiv., shine, in the fight of modern
exploration, in a new lustre of historical trust
worthiness.1 II. Highest Types of Revelation — Moses
and Christ.
The way is now open for considering more particu
larly the nature and forms of special revelation;
but, before entering on details, it may serve a useful
purpose to glance briefly at the highest and most
perfect forms in which revelation is presented in the
Bible — those, viz., in Moses and in Christ. It cannot
i Cf. in illustration of this part of the subject, Problem of 0. T.,
ch. xi., 'Archaeology and the 0. T. ' ; and The Bible Under Trial,
ch. vi., ' Archajology as Searchlight.'

iv.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 75
but be observed that revelation in the Old Testament
and the New circles specially round these two
poles. With Moses are connected the prophets ; x
with Christ the apostles.2 There is, indeed, as has
already been seen, an earlier stage — the patriarchal,
likewise connected with an epoch-making name :
Abraham's. But Moses and Christ remain the
great, the outstanding, figures in revelation. 'The
law was given through Moses ; grace and truth came
through Jesus Christ.' 3 And when we study these
figures carefully, we perceive, notwithstanding the
immeasurable distance that separates them — Moses,
the servant in the house, and Christ, the Son over
His own house * — a certain analogy in their positions.
To look first at Christ. Here the thing which must
chiefly strike the attentive reader of the Gospels about
Christ, regarded as Revealer, is His perfect unity <
of mind and will with God — what we may call, with
Ritschl, His ' solidarity ' with God. While recog
nising in Christ One who is filled with the Spirit
beyond measure,5 it does not readily occur to us,
in reading the Gospel narratives, to think or speak
of Christ as ' inspired.' The unity of mind of Christ
and God is too intimate for that. It cannot but be
noticed, further, that, while Christ is unceasing in
His inculcation of the duty of ' faith ' on others, ¦'
He never in a single instance speaks of Himself as
having * faith ' in God, or ' believing ' in God. The
reason is the obvious one that in Christ ' knowledge '
in relation to God — pure, immediate, reciprocal,
perfect knowledge — takes the place of what is ' faith '
in us. ' No one knoweth the Son, save the
i Matt. vii. 12; Luke, xvi. 31 ; xxiv. 17, etc. 2 Eph. ii. 20.
» John, L 17. * Heb. iii; 5, 6. « John, iii. 34.

76 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
Father ; neither doth any one know the Father,
save the Son, and he to whom the Son willeth to
reveal Him.' 1 Faith in us is the response to this
revelation which Christ gives of the Father. But
Christ had no other to act as the medium of revela
tion to Him. He drew directlyfrom thedivine source.
The manner of this perfect intersphering of know
ledge of Christ and the Father — an intersphering
which gave to Christ at all points in His earthly life
a knowledge of the purpose and will of the Father —
is part of that ' mystery of godliness ' 2 which we
can never hope fully to penetrate. But the fact is
there — not less evident in the Synoptics than in the
Fourth Gospel ; and it presents us with the perfect
type of revelation.
Now it is worthy of observation that it is an
approach to this higher mode of revelation — though
necessarily on an immensely lower level — which is
attributed to Moses, the founder of the old dis
pensation, as Christ is of the new. It is thus that
the position of Moses is differentiated from that of
succeeding prophets — that, while the Lord made
Himself known to these in dark speeches, He knew
Moses face to face, and spoke to him mouth to
mouth.3 There was an immediacy, freedom, and
unveiled character in the intercourse of Moses with
God which suited the place of honour he occupied,
and the work he had to do, in the economy of
revelation ; and on this height of privilege he stood
alone till the Prophet like unto Moses 4 appeared in
i Matt. xi. 27. 2 1 Tim. iii. 16.
» Num. xii. 6-8 ; Deut. xxxiv. 10. Something of the same kind
is suggested of Abraham — the earlier great figure in revelation — in
Is. xli. 8 : 'Abraham my friend.'
* Deut. xviii. 15 ; Acts, vii. 37.

iv.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 77
the fulness of the times. There will seem to many
a supreme improbability in the supposition that,
holding this unique place in the history of revelation,
Moses should be the dim and legendary figure which
* modern critical theories assert.
It is in any case to be remarked that the higher
prophetic consciousness of a later age never attained
to the altitude here assigned to Moses. Even where
trance and vision are transcended, as generally they
are in the higher prophecy, the prophet still
struggles with his message as with something distinct
from himself, borne in upon him from without,
weighing as a ' burden ' on his spirit, and only
imperfectly assimilated by his own understanding.
In this respect the superiority of the New Testament
revelation stands out in bold relief. An older writer,
Dr. P. Fairbairn, calls attention to this distinction
in his work on Prophecy. ' To some extent,' he
says, ' indeed, though very imperfectly as compared
with Christ, the apostles shared in this higher stand
ing and freer communion to such an extent as to
form a marked distinction between them and the
prophets of the earlier dispensation. For, excepting
on a few special occasions, they never appear to have
received revelations in trance or vision ; and, like
men habitually replenished with the Spirit, they
spoke and wrote as if the Lord Himself spoke and
wrote in them.' 1 This has an important bearing
on the question of inspiration, for it is precisely
this more perfect interpenetration of the apostles
with the Spirit which, in the eyes of many, casts
doubt on their possession of the Spirit in any
peculiar degree at all. Many who would not question
i Op. cit. p. 11. Cf. e.g. 1 Thess. ii. 13.

78 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
that the Old Testament prophets were the recipients
of revelations transcending their natural faculties,
are yet disposed to attribute everything in the
apostolic writings to the private thoughts and
speculations of their authors, and leave no room for
anything of the nature of authoritative revelation.
Yet surely the position of the apostle in the economy
of revelation is higher than that of the prophet, and
the New Testament is not inferior in fulness of
inspiration to the Old.

III. Forms of Biblic.il Revelation.
Revelation is objective, and likewise, it has been
seen, internal. It has, besides, its higher and lower
forms, the study of which helps to throw light on its
nature and supernatural origin. Prophecy has been
named as the highest form of Old Testament revela
tion. But attention may first be given to its
earlier and lower forms, — those which lead up to
the richer developments, and, in part, are involved
in the latter.
Only a brief reference is necessary to certain
modes of revelation — not, however, the earliest, — to
which analogies are found in other religions. Such,
e.g., is the use of the ' lot,' which appears frequently
in the Bible. Divination, indeed, or the attempt to
discover the divine will, or forecast the future, by
means of omens (cf. Ezek. xxi. 21), or other arbitrary
signs, is everywhere sternly prohibited.1 But a
religious character is ascribed to the lot.2 Examples
of its use on solemn occasions are seen in the
» Lev. xix. 26, 31 ; Deut. xviii. 10-14. » Prov. xvi. 33.

iv.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 79
detection of Achan,1 the partition of Canaan,2 the
election of Saul,3 in the New Testament, in the
choosing of Matthias.4 Probably akin to the lot was
the mysterious ' Urim and Thummim ' of the
High Priest.5 This humble means of giving
guidance on critical occasions, God, in His conde
scension, permitted and made use of : the reality
of the divine oracle being guaranteed by its fulfil
ment.6 Of modes or forms of divine revelation in the
stricter sense the following may be distinguished.
1. The lowest form of special revelation recog
nised in Scripture is the dream. It is not implied
that dreams generally, then, any more than now,
were indications of the divine will. 'A dream
cometh with multitude of business.'7 ' Dreamer '
is a term of reproach.8 Dreams are put in a
low grade in the Biblical revelations. A prophet
is not allowed to authenticate himself only by
dreams.9 In special cases, however, God employed
the clreaming state as a vehicle for His revelations.
Generally it was persons who were not ordinarily
or properly organs of revelation who received
communications in this way — secular personages,
i Josh. vii. 14 ff. 2 Josh. xiii. 6 ; xiv. 2.
¦ 1 Sam. x. 20-22. * Acts, i. 26.
" Ex. xxviii. 30 ; Deut. xxxiii. 8, etc. The precise nature of the
priestly oracle is disputed. On Egyptian analogies, cf. Oehler,
Theol. of 0. T. (E. T.), i. p. 319. Oehler remarks: 'These methods
of inquiring into the divine will retire into the background the more
prophecy is unfolded ' (p. 320).
8 Thus in the cases of Achan and Saul, as above ; in the history of
David, 1 Sam. xxiii. 2, 4, 11, 12, etc.
7 Eccles. v. 3.
8 Gen. xxxvii. 19.
8 Deut. xiii. 2-5 ; Jer. xxiii. 28, etc

80 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
heathen kings, etc. (e.g., Abimelech,1 Laban,2 Joseph,3
Pharaoh's butler and baker,4 Pharaoh himself,6
Nebuchadnezzar;6 in the New Testament, Joseph,7
the Magi8). The dream in a few of these cases
does not interpret itself, but has to be interpreted
by another (Joseph, Daniel). There is analogy
for this mode of revelation, in some degree, in the
natural phenomena of dreams ; for it seems undeni
able that in the sleeping state the soul is some
times laid bare to the invisible world in a way that
it is not in the waking condition.9 In accordance
with this natural basis, there is always a subjective
or psychological side to revelations through dreams
which imparts to them their, special colouring.
Pharaoh's dreams, e.g., reflect the conditions of the
Nile.10 2. Akin to the dream, though of a much higher
character, is the vision,11 frequently employed as a
i Gen. xx. 3, 6. 2 Gen. xxxi. 24.
3 Gen. xxxvii. 5. Joseph's dreams were those of secular pre
eminence. 4 Gen. xl. 5. 6 Gen. xli. 1 ft.
6 Dan. ii. 1 ft. ' Matt. i. 20 ; ii. 13, 19. s Matt. ii. 12.
9 Well-authenticated cases exist of impressions, presentiments,
perceptions of things distant, even of prevision, in the sleeping state,
which go beyond the limits of explanation by mere coincidence. The
unusual powers manifested in somnambulism are familiar. Cf. the
publications of the Society for Psychical Research ; Myers's Human
Personality, etc.
10 The dream is regarded as a peculiarity of the E document in the
Pentateuch. On this, cf. Prob. of the 0. T., p. 233. Wellhausen
infers from Gen. xxxviii. 19, that J also must have related Joseph's
dream. The predominance of the dream in E sections may be con
nected with the fact that in the cases of Abimelech, Laban, Pharaoh,
etc. , God appears in His general character as the God of providence.
11 The words used for vision are il&OD (e.g., Num. xii. 6) or Jl^n
(2 Sam. vii. 17 ; Job, iv. 13, etc.), but more commonly jijn (Is. i. l
etc.).

iv.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 81
form of revelation. In Jacob's vision at Bethel it
is said that Jacob ' dreamed,' but the narrative has
more the character associated With vision.1 Vision,
however, was not necessarily, or even commonly,
in sleep. It may be described as an abnormal
state of consciousness, the effect of God's Spirit,
in which the mind is supematurally elevated, and
things are seen and heard which would not be seen
or heard in the ordinary state. The ' eyes are
opened.' 2 The veil is drawn aside which divides
seen and unseen, and there is an apprehension of
supersensible realities. On its human side, the
vision is a subjective phenomenon, that is, the
things seen and heard are not there as outward
facts, at least in the form in which they are perceived
(the form is often symbolical), but are presented
to the inner eye or ear. Yet it is a true presentation
from- the spiritual world.
It is obvious that, psychologically and other
wise, the phenomena of vision present many diffi
culties not easy to resolve. The things presented
in vision, like all inner phenomena, take on a mental
or imaginative character, yet are the means through
which, in sight and sound, a divine revelation is
conveyed. A typical example is the vision of
Isaiah at the time of his call.3 Jehovah is beheld
seated on a throne, high and lifted up, in the temple,
with the seraphim adoring. The foundations of
the threshold of the building shake, and the house
is filled with smoke. It is plain that, in this vision,
1 Gen. xxviii. 12. Jacob falls asleep in the E document, and
awakes in the J document.
2 Cf. Num. xxii. 31 ; 2 Kings, vi. 17.
* Is. vi. V

82 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
the prophet was not beholding an objective reality.1
There was not really a throne set up in the temple,
nor was the house actually filled with smoke. Yet
through this vision the prophet received, as it was
intended he should, a true impression of Jehovah's
presence, majesty, and holiness, humbling him with
a sense of his own unworthiness ; then, in the
words spoken, and the touching of his lips with the
live coal from the altar, obtained the certainty of
his divine call, consecration, and message to the
people. Vision is found as a form of revelation in both
the Old Testament and the New. An early example
is in the forming of the covenant with Abraham.
Jacob had repeated visions.2 As other instances,
Moses and the elders of Israel had visions,3 Balaam
prophesied in vision,4 Samuel's call was in vision.5
Still vision is comparatively rare in the Old Testa
ment till the prophetic period.6 It is found in marked
degree in the later prophets — Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
and Zechariah, and is, naturally, the predominant
feature in Apocalyptic prophecy (Daniel ; in the
New Testament, the Book of Revelation). In the
New Testament we have the visions of Cornelius and
Peter.7 Paul also had ' visions and revelations of
the Lord.' 8 The Apocalypse is wholly vision.
The place of vision in prophecy will be better
considered when that form of revelation comes to
1 Cf. John's vision of Christ in Rev. i.
2 Gen. xlvi. 2 ff. ; cf. xxviii. 10 ff. ; xxxi. 11 ff. (' dream') ; xxxv.
1, 9 ff. 3 Ex. xxiv. 9 ff. ; xxxiii. 18 ff.
* Num. xxiv. 3, 4 ff. »1 Sam. iii. 13.
6 Vision is found in the ministries of Elijah and Elisha ; in Amos,
viii. 1 ff., etc. Isaiah's vision is referred to above.
1 Acts, x. 3 ff, 9 ff. »2 Cor. xii. 1.

iv.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 83
be directly treated. The view once held that all
prophecy was uttered in a state of ecstasy must be
set aside as out of harmony with the facts. If, as
frequently happens, the name ' vision ' is used to
describe those prophecies in which, properly speak
ing, no vision occurs — e.g., ' the vision of Isaiah
the son of Amoz ' x — this is to be explained by the
usage of a time in which vision was, perhaps, the
predominant form of prophecy ; but is also intended
to denote the fact of the exaltation, the super
natural origin, and the vividness — as of actual
seeing — of the prophetic perception. For un
doubtedly prophecy was in every case an elevation
above the ordinary state of consciousness. More
difficult is the question, how far the state called
vision enters in narrative and prophecy into ex
periences which are not directly described as such.
The burning bush beheld by Moses,2 e.g., — would
that have been seen by any other eyes but his at
that time and place ? Possibly not ; yet the ' glory
of the Lord ' appears so often in the narrative as an
objective phenomenon — e.g., in the pillar of cloud aud
fire — that it is reasonable to assume a real appear
ance at the bush also. The speaking of the ass
of Balaam,3 again — that subject which has caused
so much concern — would that have been heard by
the ear of any ordinary bystander ? Or was it, as
the context would suggest, an impression on Balaam's
own mind ? Still less is it easy to determine
whether certain of the actions of the prophets which
are related in the form of narrative — e.g., Jeremiah's
hiding of his girdle by the river Euphrates 4 — are to
» Is. i. 1. 2 Ex. iii. 2.
» Num. xxii. 22-35. * Jer. xiii 1-5.

84 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
be understood as literal transactions, or as events
occurring in vision. The question is reserved to
another chapter.
3. A third and exceptionally interesting form of
revelation, belonging peculiarly to patriarchal and
Mosaic times, is that through the Angel of God, or
Angel of Jehovah. This is a form of revelation which
stands by itself, and presents peculiarities which
have given rise to much discussion. The fact that
it belongs almost exclusively to the earlier period,
when revelation was preponderatingly objective,
shows that it is part of the original tradition, and
not a reflection from later prophetic times, when
revelation had a totally different form.
The peculiarity of revelation by the Malach, or
Angel of Jehovah, is, that this angel appears as a
divine messenger, yet constantly acts and speaks
in a way which implies His identity with Jehovah.
The doctrine of angels, it is to be remarked, is not
one highly developed in the Pentateuch. When
angels appear, as at Bethel and Mahanaim, it is
collectively.1 This angel, in any case, is not an
ordinary angel, but stands in a peculiar nearness to
Jehovah, represents Him, and, as far as words
can do it, is identified with Him. The ' Angel of
the Lord ' (Jehovah) appears to Hagar, but He
speaks to her as God ; 2 and the next verse reads :
' And she called the name of the Lord that spake
unto her, Thou art a God that seeth.' 3 Abraham
extends hospitality to three travellers, one of whom
is early identified with Jehovah, the omnipotent,4
1 Gen. xxviii. 12 ; xxxii. 1, 2. The paucity of reference to angels
Is another mark of the early nature of the tradition.
2 Gen. xvi. 10-12. » Ver. 13. « Gen. xviii. 13, 14.

iv.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 85
the righteous,1 the Judge of all the earth.2 It is
Jehovah who departs from Abraham after his
intercession for Sodom.3 The ' Angel of the Lord,'
again, appears to Abraham on Moriah, and speaks
as Jehovah.4 ' It is evidently this same Angel with
whom, as a man, Jacob wrestles, and obtains from
Him, as God, the blessing.6 In Gen. xlviii. 15, 16,
God and the Angel are apparently identified. It is
the ' Angel of the Lord ' who reveals Himself to
Moses at the bush as the God of the fathers, and as
'Jehovah' ('I Am').6 'Jehovah,' but elsewhere
' the Angel of God,' goes before the Israelites ; and
the people are warned not to provoke the Angel, for
Jehovah's ' Name ' is in Him.8 It is unnecessary
to deal with the later appearances, as to Joshua,
Gideon, Manoah, etc.9
How, it is naturally asked, are such appearances
to be understood ? Different answers have been
given. 1. One view held by many is that the Malach is
a created angel, of high dignity, who represents
God, and speaks in His name, as later is done by
the prophets.10 The analogy, however, does not
hold. The prophets, indeed, speak for Jehovah in
the first person, but they as clearly again distinguish
themselves from their message and its Author.
They usually preface their message with a ' Thus
i Ver. 19. 2 Ver. 25. s Ver. 33.
* Gen. xxii. 11 ff. 8 Gen. xxxi. 24-30 ; cf. Hos. xii. 4.
6 Ex. iii. 6, 14. ' Ex. xiii. 21 ; xiv. 19.
8 Ex. xxiii. 20, 21.
» Josh. v. 13-15 ; Judg. vi. 11 ff. ; xiii. 3 ff. ; cf. Is. lxiii. 9 ; Zech.
iii. 1 ; Mai. iii. 1 ff.
w Thus Augustine and other Fathers. In modern times, Hofmann,
Kurtz, Delitzsch, etc.

86 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
saith Jehovah,' and no one dreams of identifying
them with the Jehovah whose words they utter.
But the Malach does not bring a message of this
kind. He speaks in the first person, and in the
course of the narrative we find that the speaker
is directly interchanged with Jehovah, and is
addressed as Jehovah.
2. A second view, accordingly, is that the Malach
is not personally distinct from Jehovah, but is
simply a manifestation of Jehovah Himself in the
phenomenal world — an entrance into visibility for
the immediate end of revelation — a direct theophany.
This might be accepted, and answers well to certain
of the passages, but fails to do Justice to the fact that
in most of the places — indeed, in the name itself —
a distinction from Jehovah is implied as well as a
seeming identity with Him.
3. The third view, therefore, usually held by those
who reject the first, is that, in the Malach, we have
indeed a manifestation of Jehovah, but of Jehovah
in the form of self-distinction. The revelation
through the Angel, in other words, points to a real
distinction in the nature of God such as is associated
in the New Testament with the idea of the Logos
or Son. The Malach, on this view, is identified with
the Word, or Son of God, who afterwards became
incarnate in Christ. Many of the Fathers (Justin
Martyr, Tertullian,1 Irenaeus, etc.) adopt this inter
pretation of the theophanies. It is a view which
has been held very widely in the Church.
The objection naturally taken to this third inter
pretation is that it seems to read back into the early
1 Tertullian speaks of the theophanies as 'rehearsals' of the in
carnation.

iv.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 87
stages of revelation the New Testament doctrine of
the Trinity. In reply it may be said that the
question is really not so much one of doctrine
as of the interpretation of historical facts. We
cannot, indeed, legitimately read back New Testament
ideas into these early narratives, as if the writers
possessed, or intended to convey, a developed
doctrine of the Trinity. But it is not inadmissible,
in interpreting God's earlier revelations, to use any
light that comes to us from the later; and if later
revelation makes clear to us, as it does, a real self-
distinction in God, there exists no reason why we
should not avail ourselves of the aid of that truth
here. Oehler seems to come very near the essence
of the matter when he sums up by saying, that
' the Malach was a self-presentation of Jehovah
entering into the sphere of the creature, which is
one in essence with Jehovah, and is yet again distinct
from Him.' x The appearances of the Malach may
thus reasonably be held to be an adumbration, and
in part an anticipation, of the later incarnation of
the Son.2
The other forms of theophany in the Old Testament,
as in the fire at the bush, the pillar of fire, the glory
at the tabernacle, etc., are not always to be distin
guished from the Malach, but are, as already seen,
forms of His manifestation.
i Op. cit, i. p. 193.
" Even H. Schultz, who takes a mediating view, allows : ' There is
undoubtedly in the Angel of God something of that which Christian
theology means \o express by the doctrine of the Logos' (0. T. Theol.
(E.T.), ii. p. 223). Delitzsch, who favours the idea of a created angel
(New Com. on Genesis, on ch. xvi. 7, etc.), still holds that 'the
angelologies of God were a prefiguration of His Christophany'
(ii. p. 21).

V

REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch-

CHAPTER V
forms of revelation, continued: prophecy —
DIFFICULTIES OF REVELATION
Three forms of divine revelation have been
adverted to — dream, vision, and theophany, or
revelation through the Malach or ' Angel of
Jehovah.' It is now necessary to speak of prophecy —
the highest and most important of all forms of Old
Testament revelation. I. Nature of Prophecy.
1. Prophecy is a phenomenon peculiar to Israel.
Heathenism has divination, oracles, manticism ; 1
and it has been seen that divine impulse and guidance
are not wholly to be refused to the wise men and
teachers of other peoples.2 But in Israel alone
we have the spectacle of a succession of men,
speaking with full consciousness in the name of a
holy and righteous God, maintaining a lofty and
continuous testimony to His will and purpose, and,
amidst the greatest revolutions in outward affairs,
unerringly interpreting His providence in its bearing
on the ends of His Kingdom — testimony and
i On the phenomena in heathenism, cf. again Orelli, op. cit. (E.T.)
pp. 13 ff. According to Plato .(in Timaeus), the fidvris was the
ecstatic utterer of an oracle ; the it/jo^tJtijs the sober-minded inter
preter of the oracle of the former. 2 See above, p. 57.

v.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 89
prediction finding their fulfilment in the advent,
work, and spiritual Kingdom of the New Testament
Redeemer.1 Prophecy has its analogy in human genius. Some,
accordingly, have sought its explanation in that
gift of geniality, of presentiment, of divining
intuition, with which certain nobler natures are
undeniably endowed ; 2 others see in it only a
heightening of that spiritual faculty which, through
faith in God and righteousness, discerns the sure
issues of good or evil, wise or foolish, conduct, to
which the multitudes are blind.3 But while a basis
of natural endowment, fitting him for his vocation,
is always presupposed in the prophet, this alone falls
far short of accounting for the kind of prophecy
we have in the Old Testament. The clearness,
elevation, certainty, decision, above all, the spiritual
content of Old Testament prophecy, present features
which every naturalistic theory, and even general
spiritual illumination, fail to explain. The element
of prediction in prophecy stands by itself. But in
their ministry as a whole the prophets knew with
perfect clearness that the vision they received,
the word of God which came to them with over
mastering certainty, the message given them for the
1 After careful examination, Orelli says : ' We come to the con
clusion that no phenomenon analogous to Biblical prophecy, even
in form, is anywhere to be found in the world of nations ' (op. cit.,
p. 24).
2 On these views, cf. Oehler, Theol. of 0. T., ii. pp. 340 ff. Giese-
brecht, more recently, explains prophecy from a 'gift of Ahnungs-
vermbgen' with which the prophet is endowed — heightened, how
ever, by the action of the Spirit of God (Die Berufgabung der
Alttest. Propheten, pp. 74, 76, 77, etc.).
* Thus Ewald, and many.

90 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
people, were not the products of their own thoughts,
but had their source in the divine revealing Spirit.
2. A probable etymology of the Hebrew words for
' prophet ' and ' prophecy ' connects them with a
root meaning ' to bubble.' J Hence the prophet
would be one in whom the divine inspiration bubbles
up from heart to lip. Whatever the etymology,
the general sense of the word ' prophet ' is not
doubtful. The prophet is one who speaks for God
to men : he is, as Augustine calls him, enuntiator
verborum dei hominibus. This function of the prophet
is defined in Deut. xviii. 18 : ' I will raise them up a
prophet from among their brethren like unto thee ;
and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall
speak unto them all that I shall command him.' 2
The expressions employed to describe the prophetic
state are such as imply direct inspiration and
revealing action. The Spirit of God comes on the
prophets ; falls on them ; ' the hand of Jehovah '
is strong upon them ; 3 they perceive, as with the
force of bodily perception, facts or truths presented
to their minds ; 4 they receive a ' word ' of God,
and experience an irresistible constraint to utter it.
The recurring formula is, ' the word of God came '
1 "'?t (prophet) from K33 (cognate to V?^), used only in Niphal
and Hithpael (to prophesy). The Niphal form perhaps suggests
passivity. 2 In this sense Aaron is given to be a ' prophet ' to Moses, i.e. , to
speak for him (Ex. iv. 10-17 ; vii. 1).
3 Is. viii. 11 ; Jer. xv. 17 ; Ezek. i. 3 ; iii. 22 ; xxxvii. 1, etc.
4 Cf. Orelli, op. cit. , p. 5 : ' The essential element to be maintained
in prophecy is, that it sees its contents before announcing them. . . .
The contents of prophecy are, consequently, not something thought
out, inferred, hoped, or feared by the prophets, but something
directly perceived.'

v.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 91
to one or another ; 1 and this word, which the
prophets distinguish quite clearly from their own
thoughts and desires, they unhesitatingly proclaim
as the word of Jehovah, and take their stand upon
its truth and the certainty of its fulfilment.
3. It was formerly a not uncommon conception,
borrowed from Philo and the early Church, that the
prophets received their oracles in a state of ecstasy, in
which their own minds were purely passive.2 The
element of truth to be recognised in this view is,
that prophecy implied an unusual and exalted state
of consciousness, and sometimes took the form of
ecstasy or vision. Is. vi. was before given as an
example, and there are many others. But that this
was the only or invariable — even the principal —
way of receiving divine communications, the whole
history of prophecy refutes. Nothing is plainer
than that, in all the higher forms of prophecy, the
prophets retained their consciousness and full
command of their faculties. Not only were their
natural powers not suppressed : they were raised
to the fullest activity of which they were capable.
' It has been justly remarked,' says Riehm, ' that
from the 40th to the 66th chapters of Isaiah, and,
indeed, in most of the predictions of Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Hosea, Micah, and others, there is no trace
of a description of pictures seen in ecstasy.' 3 Even
where the word ' vision ' is employed, it is often,
as already explained, used in a general sense.
1 Joel, i. 1 ; Jer. i. 4 ; xi. 13 ; Ezek. i. 3 ; Zech. i. 1 ; Mai. i. 1, etc.
2 Hengstenberg at first defended this view, but afterwards con
siderably modified it.
3 Messianic Prophecy (E.T.), p. 17. On a possible qualification of
this statement, in respect of vision, see below.

REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.

II. Prophecy in its Historic Relations.
1. It is usual to connect the beginnings of prophecy
with Samuel, and appeal is made in support of this
to 1 Sam. ix. 9 : ' He that is now called a prophet
was beforetime called a seer.' x This usage, however,
can only have application to a particular time
(' The word of the Lord was precious in those days ;
there was no frequent vision ' 2), or to official
designation. Biblical history knows perfectly well
of an earlier prophecy.3 Still, prophecy in the
more official and continuous sense did begin with
Samuel and his prophetic companies, and continued
thereafter uninterruptedly till after the return from
exile. But there is here also development. Samuel
himself stands from the first on the higher plane of
prophecy. His call is followed by a calm, equable
development.4 But in the circle around him the
action of the spirit of prophecy is marked by the
physical excitement which denotes a lower stage.5
The loftier height of prophecy is again reached, at a
great crisis in the history of Israel, by Elijah and
Elisha, who, however, are still acting, rather than
teaching or writing, prophets. Finally, with Amos
and Hosea (possibly with Joel) begins the series
of writing prophets, who continue till Malachi.
1 The term ' seer ' denotes a gift analogous to clairvoyance. It
does not follow that this was a gift in the prophet's own power, or
was exercised about every trifling matter on which people sought to
consult him. The prophet saw as God gave him to see (cf. 1 Sam.
ix. 15), and his answers had reference, not to any or every kind of
events, but, as in Saul's case, to those which had a bearing on God's
Kingdom. 2 1 Sam. iii. 1.
8 Thus Abraham, Moses, Balaam, Deborah, etc.
* 1 Sam. iii. 19-21. ^ i sam. x. n.13 • xix. 20-24.

v.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 93
Not till the eve of Christ's appearance is the voice
of prophecy again heard (Zacharias, Simeon, John
the Baptist).
2. It is now generally recognised as a serious
mistake of older writers to identify prophecy so
exclusively as they did with prediction, and to
regard this in the light of an external seal attached
to the prophet's message. It was really in the
prophet's message to his own times that the essence
of his prophecy lay. The prophet was in the first
instance a messenger to his own age and people :
the message he brought was one called forth by the
needs of his age, and in form and subs.tance was
adapted to these needs. It does not follow, because
of this, that it was a message only for his own time,
and did not embody a revelation of God of universal
import, fitted to take its place in the general
organism of revelation. Prophecy was instinct
with germinal ideas ; with promises, hopes,
admonitions, threatenings ; with abundant predic
tions of nearer or more remote events, in their
revelations to God's Kingdom. The predictive
element will be referred to after. The chief thing
to be observed at present is the intimate relation
which prophecy always sustains to the historical
conditions out of which it springs. This historical
setting can never be ignored, if prophecy is to be
understood. The marvel of the prophecy of Amos,
e.g., can only be realised when the outward prosperity,
yet inward decadence, of the reign of a Jeroboam n.
in Israel are kept in view ; the plaint of Hosea,
when one sees the eagles of Assyria 1 gathering to
make their prey of doomed Samaria ; the magnifi-
1 Hos. viii. 1.

94 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
cence of Isaiah's faith and courage, when one places
himself in the midst of the politics and perils of
Judah in the age of Hezekiah ; the patriotism of
Jeremiah, or prayer of Habakkuk, when one hears
the resistless tread of the approaching Chaldaean
armies. The exile must be remembered in order to
the right apprehension of the visions of Ezekiel, or
of the consolations and hopes of the oracles of
Is. xl. ff. III. Tests of True Prophecy.
1. But were the prophets under no hallucination
when they ascribed, as they so confidently did,
their messages and forecasts of the future, even of
far-distant events, to the voice of God within them ?
That is a fair question to ask. Scripture knows of a
false prophecy as well as of a true. The prophets
themselves had to wage a continual warfare with
others whom they denounced as deceivers.1 But
may not these so-called ' false prophets ' be, as
some have contended, as true as the others, and
may the conflict not be only one of rival prophetic
camps '! Where is the test ?
The prophecy of the Bible offers such tests — tests,
however, which, like those applicable to Christ
Himself, presuppose spiritual discernment in those
employing them. It is not enough that the prophets
say that they have the word of God ; that they
proclaim their possession of the Spirit ; that they
adduce dreams.2 Four tests in particular may be
instanced : —
1 Mic. iii. 16; Jer. xxiii. 9 ff. ; Ezek. xiii. 2 ff., etc. Cf. A. B.
Davidson, 0. T. Prophecy, ch. xvii., 'The False Prophets.'
2 Jer. xxiii. 28. It is not enough even that the prophet works
miracles, Deut. xiii. 1-3.

v.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 95
(1) The claim of the prophet was supported,
first, by his own known character as a man of God.
Genuine prophecy implied a spiritual receptivity.
For the reception of God's word there was needed
a preparation of soul,1 a devout, earnest, deeply-
religious nature, anxious and waiting on God to
know His will.2 The prophets of Israel were one
and all men of uprightness and sincerity, whose
whole spirit, conduct, manner of life, and freedom
from interested motives, placed them above the
suspicion of being wilful deceivers or self-deceived.
(2) Character, however, was not the only test.
The word of the prophet was supported, further,
by its own internal power. The word spoken was
in large measure a self -attesting word ; a word
instinct with the Spirit of holiness ; suited to the
time and need of the nation ; to that extent one
which could be verified by the intelligence and
conscience of those that heard it.3 As originating
from God, it was a word bearing on the ends of God's
Kingdom, and directed to the furtherance of these
ends. (3) It was a special test of a true word of prophecy
that it fitted into the organism of revelation ; in other
words, that it cohered with, and did not subvert
or contradict, the scheme of revelation so far as it
had already gone, It is emphatically laid down,
as in Deut. xiii. 1-3, that the prophetic word must
not contradict fundamental truth, or previous words
of God, but must establish and develop them.
1 Balaam and Saul may be cited as instances to the contrary. But
neither could have been accepted as a prophet in Israel.
2 Cf. Hab. ii. 1-4.
s Cf. Paul, 2 Cor. iv. 2 : 'By the manifestation of the truth com
mending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.'

96 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
(4) Finally, a test of the word of prophecy was its
fulfilment. In true prophecy there was generally
some promise, warning, or declaration of God as to
what was going to happen, and the prophet's stand
ing was based on the fulfilment of that word.1 The
fulfilment of prophecy, accordingly, is often appealed
to in evidence of its truth.2
2. Such being the nature of genuine prophecy, it
is plain that the prophetic office was not one which
any individual could take to himself. Neither
genius, nor spiritual disposition, nor training by
others, could of itself make a man a prophet. The
prophet was made so by the call of God, and, when
that call came, it did so in a manner about which
there could be no mistake. Examples suggest
themselves in the cases of Moses,3 Samuel,4
Amos,5 Isaiah,6 Jeremiah.7 The disciples of the
prophets in the prophetic ' schools ' or ' guilds '
were not all prophets, or received the name only
in courtesy. The schools might prepare a congenial
soil for the spirit of prophecy ; but the call was
not confined to the members of these fraternities.
' I was no prophet,' says Amos, * neither was I a
prophet's son ; but I was a herdsman, and a dresser
of sycamore-trees ; and Jehovah took me from
following the flock, and Jehovah said unto me, Go,
prophesy unto my people Israel.' 8 The prophet to
1 Deut. xviii. 21, 22. The test as given in these verses is a negative
one : ' How shall we know the word which Jehovah hath not spoken ? '
Non-fulfilment was » test of false prophecy ; but, if the prophet
preached idolatry, even fulfilment, or miracle, could not authenticate
his word (Deut. xiii. 1-3).
» Is. xxxiv. 16 ; xli. 21 ff. ; xiii. 9 ; xliii. 9.
* Ex. iii. lift. < 1 Sam. ii. 4 ff. » Amos vii. 14 ff.
• Is. vi. 1 Jer. i. 4 ff. • Amos vii. 14, 15.

v.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 97
whom the call came may not have expected or
desired it ; on the contrary, he may have been
conscious of his utter unfitness, and may have
resisted it till he felt that he dare not resist further.
Jeremiah is a case in point here.1 With the call in
every case came the equipment and the definite
message ; the prophet was supematurally endowed.
IV. Prediction in Prophecy.
Discussion has gathered in an especial way round
the element of prediction in Biblical prophecy, because
here is an element in which the presence of the
supernatural must either be acknowledged, or the
prophecy itself be explained away or denied.
1. There can be little question as to the claims of
the prophets to utter predictions of the future ; and
nearly as little as to the impossibility of explaining
these predictions, on the assumption of their genuine
ness, out of mere natural foresight. The method is
still open of endeavouring to show that the pre
dictions in question were not written till after
the event ; are late additions or interpolations ; or,
when admitted to be genuine, that they were not
really fulfilled. Unfortunately, the chief predictions,
as, e.g., those of Amos of the approaching Assyrian
invasion, and Captivity of Israel ; 2 those of Hosea
and Isaiah of the fall of Samaria ; 3 Isaiah's pre
diction of the deliverance of Jerusalem from Sen
nacherib ; 4 Jeremiah's prophecy of the seventy
years' captivity and subsequent return,5 etc., are
i Jer. i. 4 ff. 2 Amos v. 27 ; vii. 11, 17, etc.
8 Hos. viii., etc. ; Is. xxviii., etc.
« Is. xxxvii. 26-36. » jer. IXv. 11, 12.
G

98 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
of a nature which, except by uncritical violence,
can neither be expunged from the text, nor got rid
of as unfulfilled. They stand as types of a kind of
prediction which pervades Biblical prophecy from
beginning to end. When it is objected that to
introduce supernatural prediction is to put Hebrew
prophecy on the level of 'soothsaying,' it is over
looked that prediction, in the prophets, is never
brought in as a wonder on its own account, but
always in its bearing on the ends of God's Kingdom.1
It is never a mere portent, but has its place in the
unfolding of God's purpose for the world. A
peculiar form of predictive prophecy is the Apocal
yptic, as in Daniel and the Revelation of John, in
which future events and crises in the history of God's
Kingdom are set forth under the veil of symbol.
Some of the symbols are interpreted, while others
remain enigmatic;2
2. Of chief interest, in this connection, from the
Christian standpoint, is the long series of predictions,
which helped to create the expectation of the
Messiah and of His future Kingdom — Messianic
prophecy, as it is wont to be termed. This line of
prophecy, ranging from the first promise in Eden,
through the promises to Abraham and those of
the Mosaic age, the prophecies connecting the
future King with the tribe of Judah and the house
of David, the promises of the New Covenant, of the
gift of the Spirit, of the admission of the Gentiles,

1 On this point, and the whole question of predictive prophecy, see
Problem of the 0. T., pp. 454 ff.
2 Apocalypse in Scripture is not to be explained out of current
Jewish apocalyptic tendencies ; conversely, Jewish Apocalypse is to
be explained from the Biblical models.

v.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 99
to the great culminating prophecies of the Servant of
Jehovah — humbled, atoning, yet finally triumphant
— founds the expectation of a perfect Prophet,
perfect Priest, and perfect King — One whose Per
sonality, as in the Immanuel prophecy,1 breaks the
bounds of mere humanity, and only finds its fulfil
ment in the Christ of the New Testament.

V. Interpretation of Prophecy.
1. Difficulties, naturally, often of no small magni
tude, arise in connection with the interpretation of
a body of prophecy so vast, complex, and sometimes
obscure, as that transmitted to us in the books of
the Old Covenant. Here also arise questions of date,
authorship, text, — such questions, e.g., as tohow far
Is. xl.-lxvi. is a work of the exile, or is itself composite,
or is, to a greater extent than modern scholars are
willing to recognise, the work of Isaiah himself ; 2 or
whether Daniel, in its present form, or entirely, is
a work of the Maccabean age. These critical
questions cannot be gone into here. The solution
of the difficulties of interpretation are mostly to be
sought for in a closer examination of the peculiarities
of prophecy itself : — in observation of the ideal
element which necessarily enters into predictions
of the more distant future ; of the inevitable
clothing of the representations of that future in
i Is. vii. 14 ; viii. 8 ; ix. 6, 7.
2 It is not always considered that, as shown by Jer. xxvi. 17-19,
there was an expectation and prediction of a destruction of Jerusalem,
and captivity of the people to Babylon, in the days of Isaiah and
Micah (Mic. iii. 12; iv. 10; Is. vi. 11, 12; xxxix. 6, 7), though on
account of the repentance of king and people, as Jeremiah tells, the
judgment was postponed.

100 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
forms borrowed from the present ; of the lack of
perspective in the grouping together of events of the
consummation ; and, not least, of the conditional
element in prophecy, leaving room for change in
the mode of fulfilment under altered conditions.1
The one thing ever certain to the prophet's mind is
the consummation itself of the future Kingdom of
God— the shattering of all earthly opposition to
God's purposes, and realisation of the divine will
in a new heaven and a new earth !
2. A word may be said here on a question already
raised : How far a visionary element enters into
prophetic descriptions which do not, on their face,
bear this character ? The principle of vision has
sometimes, perhaps, been carried to an extreme,
as when, e.g., Hosea's marriage to Gomer has been
translated into a visionary transaction.2 But other
sections of prophecy, into which, as here, no moral
problem enters, force the question upon us. Such
instances, e.g., as Jeremiah's long journey to the
Euphrates to hide his girdle, and his second journey,
after many days, to recover it ; 3 Isaiah's walking
' naked and barefoot ' for three years for a sign and
wonder concerning Egypt ; 4 Ezekiel's lying on his
side for three hundred and ninety days before the
drawing of the siege of Jerusalem on a tile,5 etc.
There are difficulties on any view ; but the literal
interpretation of these commands almost involves
incredibilities. Those scholars who find it natural
i These points are treated of in Prob. of 0. T., pp. 460 ff. Cf.
Orelli, op. cit., pp. 50 ff. 2 Thus Hengstenberg, Keil, etc.
' Jer. xiii. 1-11. * Is. xx.
6 Ezek. iv. 1-18. On this class of transactions generally, cf. P.
Fairbairn, Prophecy, pp. 124 ff, and his Appendix, pp. 508 ff.

v.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 101
to place a parabolic interpretation on Jonah's
' three days and three nights ' in the belly of the
fish, should hardly shrink from granting that the
conditions in the foregoing instances are satisfied
by a transaction in vision.
VI. Difficulties in Old Testament Revelation.
It will be proper, before leaving the subject of
revelation in the Old Testament, to glance briefly
at the difficulties which undoubtedly arise in the
consideration of this revelation, especially in its
relation to the teaching of the New Testament.
The class of difficulties in view are not those con
nected with miracle — these will be dealt with in
another chapter — or those arising from supposed
conflicts of the Bible with science. The latter give
little concern, once it is recognised that the Bible is
not a text-book of physical science, anticipatory of the
discoveries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Few people are any longer disturbed by the accept
ance of the Copernican theory of the heavens, or the
knowledge of the long duration of the ages of geology ;
the theory of evolution, now commonly accepted
in principle, has undergone modifications which
remove most of the aspects of conflict between it
and the theistic and Christian view of the world ;
the older statements made as to the enormous
antiquity and primitive barbarism of man, are
undergoing considerable revision ; while the
scriptural (rather the Ussherian) chronology is, on its
side, discovered to need, and to admit of, a corre
sponding extension. It will be difficult for any one
to show that the ideas about God, man's sin, man's

102 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
need, the dependence of the world on God as its
Creator and Ruler, contained in the Bible, are in
any real conflict with what a sober science teaches. '
1. The difficulties intended are those inherent
in the revelation itself which may be thought to
stamp it as something inferior, and unworthy of the
God of the New Testament. Among these may be
named the primitive and naive conceptions of God
and His actions found especially in the earlier
portions of the Bible (anthropomorphisms, as God
' coming down ' to see, repenting, etc.) ; the defec
tive morality of Biblical characters (e.g., Jacob,
Samson, David) ; the sanction given to such
institutions as polygamy, divorce, blood-revenge,
slavery, which the Christian conscience condemns ;
chiefly, perhaps, the severity of the codes of justice,
the commands for the extermination of whole tribes
and peoples (Amalekites, Canaanites), acts like the
hewing of Agag in pieces before the Lord. The old
Gnostics, founding on these and like imperfections
in the Old Testament revelation, boldly ascribed
the whole to an inferior Deity — the Demiurge.
Bishop Butler, in modern times, would urge our
ignorance of the scheme of revelation as a whole,
and point to analogies in God's natural government,
raising similar difficulties.
2. Several of the above-named difficulties seem
adequately met by appeal to the idea of progress
in revelation — an idea to which Butler in his Analogy
does not do the Justice it demands. Revelation is
not complete all at once. If the light with which
it starts is dim, it grows clearer as the ages advance.
i See more fully in the author's Bible Under Trial, ch. ix., 'Op-
positions of Science,' and God's Image in Man ; also below, p. 168.

v.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 103
The world into which it comes is one deeply sunk
in sin, and in the evils which sin brings with it.
Revelation has to take up man as it finds him,
with his crude conceptions, his childlike modes of
thought and expression, his defective moral ideas
and social institutions, and has to make the best of
him it can. Imperfect conditions have to be borne
with for the time, while germs of truth and
principles are implanted which, in their development,
gradually throw off the defective forms, and evolve
higher. In no other way, it should be evident, could God
carry on the government of the world. In no other
way, even yet, can Christian nations legislate and
act, in the full light of Christ's teaching, than by
patient toleration of much that is avowedly defective
and sinful, till what is better has had time to grow.
The wisdom of this method of revelation is seen in
its results. Polygamy, e.g., is contradicted, as Jesus
says,1 by the first principles of the Bible's teaching
on man, yet had to be tolerated as a defective social
institution till higher conceptions could be evolved.
But by Christ's time polygamy had nearly dis
appeared. Divorce was tolerated, we are told, for
the hardness of the people's hearts,2 and was destined
in time to give place to a higher law. Blood-revenge
was checked by the law of the refuge-cities, and
gradually died out with the growth of settled order
and of regular legal procedure. Slavery similarly
was counterworked by the higher ideas of man in
Israel's religion, and the generally beneficent spirit
of its legislation, and in Christ's time had likewise
largely disappeared.
1 Matt. xix. 3-9. » Matt. xix. 8.

104 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
3. A very real difficulty is presented in the un
sparing use of the sword in war, and the commanded
extermination of whole populations, as in the case of
the Canaanites. Was this really God's command ?
Criticism has a simple and plausible way of dis
posing of these difficulties, viz., by denying that
they belong to revelation at all. The writers of the
Bible, it is said, attribute to Jehovah their own de
fective, semi-barbarous conceptions. Hence they
unhesitatingly ascribe to God such enormities as
the slaughter of the Canaanites, or the hewing in
pieces of Agag. The fault of the explanation is
that it seems to remove the foundations of the
revelation altogether ; so in reality creates more
difficulties than it resolves. For, if anything
seems clear in Bible history, it is that the action of
the Israelites in taking possession of Canaan, and
making a clearance of its inhabitants, was not the
outcome of their own thoughts or designs — they
are blamed for not doing it more thoroughly — but
was the result of direct commands of God, in fulfil
ment of His promises to their fathers. There is not
a suggestion anywhere, in Old Testament or New,
that this is not the true reading of events.1 What is
to be said of it ?
In this connection, again, the progressiveness of
revelation counts for something. The usages and
customs of ancient warfare are to be remembered.
It is to be borne in mind also that the cases of the
Canaanites, and of other tribes and individuals
put under the 'ban,' are exceptional. Exter
mination was not the rule in Israelitish warfare,
though generally war, even internal strife, was
i Cf. Acts vii. 4, 5 ; xiii. 19.

v.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 105
fierce enough. The laws of warfare are humane
and merciful compared with those of other nations.1
They give no sanction whatever to the frightful
tortures — the impalings, flayings, blindings, muti
lations — depicted on Assyrian and Babylonian
monuments. But chiefly, extermination, where
commanded, has always an ethical reason. If the
Canaanites were condemned, it was because, after
long patience of God, the cup of their iniquities was
full to overflowing.2 'After all,' says Ottley,
quoting Westcott, ' the Canaanites were put under
the ban, " not for false belief, but for vile actions." ' 3
Nor was there any partiality in this. To quote
what has been said elsewhere : ' The sword of the
Israelite is, after all, only a more acute form of the
problem that meets us in the providential employ
ment of the sword of the Assyrian, the Chaldean,
and the Roman, to inflict the judgment of God on
Israel itself.'4 VII. Wider Considerations.
1. The question may be looked at in a wider light.
The whole spirit of the Old Covenant is, on the
judicial side, in comparison with the New, one of
marked severity. It was an economy in which
' every transgression and disobedience received a
just recompense of reward.' 6 Yet it is a mistake
not to recognise that an awful severity, as well as a
long-suffering goodness, belongs to the God of the
New Testament also. If law veils grace in the old
economy, grace must not be permitted to blind us
i Cf. Deut. xii. ' Gen. xv. 16 ; Lev. viii. 24-30.
» Aspects of the 0. T., p. 179. * Prob. of 0. T., pp. 471-2.
» Heb. ii. 2.

106 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
to the sternness of God's holiness under the Gospel.
God is still ' the Judge,' 1 and very terrible are the
words used of His judgments on evil-doers who
resist His mercy. ' The day of wrath and revela
tion of the righteous Judgment of God . . . wrath
and indignation, tribulation and anguish, upon
every soul of man that worketh evil.' " Jesus is the
revelation of the love of God ; but what terrible
words of doom fall sometimes from His lips.3 The
God of the Christian revelation, we early discover,
is not a God who cannot both look upon and do
things very terrible. ' He that spared not His own
Son, but delivered Him up [to a cross] for us all.' 4
2. To this also, so far to apply Butler's argument,
corresponds the revelation of God in nature. If we
are not to fall into dualism, it is the same God whom
Christ revealed who must be acknowledged to work
and rule in the natural creation. But what terrible
things — famines, blights, pestilences, the sweeping
away of whole populations by earthquake, fire,
flood — are to be witnessed there ? Or in providence,
— what permission of tyranny, crime, oppression,
where a word, it might be thought, would smite the
oppressor in the dust ? Yet God is silent. These
are the enigmas of God's natural government. Is
anything in the Old Testament harder ?
3. The argument of Butler may be applied with
even enhanced force to the ' modern ' objector who
declaims against the character and commands of the
God of the Old Testament. It changes the form of
the problem, but does not alter the essence of it, if,
i 1 Pet. i. 17. 2 Rom. ii. 5-9.
3 Matt. xiii. 41-2 ; xxiv. 50-1 ; xxv. 41, 46 ; Luke xix. 27, etc.
A Rom. viii. 32.

v.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 107
with the modern school, for ' revelation ' we use
the word 'evolution.' What is the Power behind
evolution ? God. But who is to interpret God to
us for the purposes of religion ? If Professor
Bousset, in his What is Religion ?, or Professor G. B.
Foster, in his Finality of the Christian Religion, are to
be trusted, it is Jesus. Here are Bousset's words ;
' We hold fast with all our power to the faith of the
Gospel in a personal, heavenly Father. . . . We
lift our hands in prayer and say, " Our Father in
Heaven". . . All this; God the Father, life in
accordance with His will spent in Joyful work for the
service of the world, forgiveness of sins, and eternal
hope — all this hangs together, and is crystallised in
perfect clearness in the Person of our Lord Jesus.' 1
But see now the picture which is given us of this
God in nature, history, and religion.
In nature : — ' We carry this idea of faith into our
modern knowledge, into our representation of God.
. . . God is to us the Eternal, the AU-Powerful
One, who is potent in the vast, starry world and in
the eternities of time and space, before which
thought grows dizzy — potent alike in the eternally
insignificant things and in the eternally great things.
He is the God whose garment is the iron law of
Nature, which hides Him from human eyes in a
thick husk which cannot be torn off ; who, in accord
ance with the terrible law of the struggle for existence,
leads His creatures upwards into a world of moral,
individual freedom ; who surrounds us with His
existence as with a dizzy abyss. And clinging to
the hand of Jesus we venture to plunge into the
abyss.' 2 i Op. cit., pp. 294-5, 298. 2 P. 294.

108 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
In religion : — Man begins, as we saw, as a savage,
with hideous rites of immolation, human sacrifice,
cannibalism ; he mounts upwards through low
stages of society (the matriarchate, totemism, poly
gamy) to tribal and national unions, still with
lustful and cruel rites, blood-revenge, and multiplied
abominations; wars and exterminations have their
place ; everything objected to in the Old Testament,
in short, reappears as part of the necessary develop
ment. Is the case much mended ? How is the responsi
bility to be lifted from the God of Jesus into whose
plan all this enters ? How are the difficulties — the
contradictions — to be got over ? Is the problem
not rather a hundredfold intensified ? For every
thing, immoral as it is, is now stamped with the
print of Necessity, and made to be of divine origin
as it never was before. Is the God who leads his
moral creatures upwards through all this welter
of evil, ' in accordance with the terrible law of the
struggle of existence,' one whit easier to accept
than the holy God of Abraham, Moses, and the
prophets — even with His awful retributory judg
ments — in whom Jesus Himself believed ? Is a
blind plunge into an abyss with a faith which in
volves a moral contradiction, a reasonable solution ?
Why then is no element of faith in presence of an
inscrutable Holiness, many of whose ways elude
our judgment, permitted in the other case ? The
question is one which, even from the ' modern '
point of view, deserves consideration.

vi.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 109

CHAPTER VI
the element of miracle in revelation
It was seen at the commencement that it is deemed
by many modern thinkers a sufficient reason for
ruling out of consideration the question of super
natural revelation that it involves the element of
miracle. In strictness, therefore, it might appear
that the question of the possibility of special or
supernatural revelation should have preceded the
discussion of the fact of such revelation. On the
other hand, if the fact is proved, this already disposes
of many objections that may be taken to miracle
on the grounds of abstract possibility or probability.
The theoretic objection to miracle can have little
force to minds already convinced of the existence
and agency of a living, personal God, actuated by
love to man, and desirous of bestowing on him the
maximum of blessing. It was seen that it belongs
to the very idea of God, in the full theistic view, to
think of Him as self-revealing. And revelation is
only complete when it becomes personal and special.
It is necessary now, however, that the miraculous
element in revelation should be dealt with as a
question by itself. General objections to miracle
will be considered, but special attention will be
given to the place and reasonableness of miracle
as a factor in revelation.

110 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
I. Definition of Miracle.
1. For the sake of clearness, a distinction should
be made between what may be called the scientific
idea of miracle, and the Biblical or religious idea.
In science, as in philosophy, miracle is defined with
relation to the idea of natural law, or of a fixed order
of nature, of which miracle then appears as an
interruption. In the Biblical idea, a miracle is
likewise an extraordinary event, evincing the
immediate presence and operation of God, but it is
measured rather by the impression it makes upon
the mind, and by its relation to the ends of revelation,
than by its relation to the natural order. It is an
exaggeration, indeed, to say, as is sometimes done,
that the Hebrews had no idea of an order in nature,
and therefore felt no difficulty in conceiving of any
number of miracles. There is no people on earth,
beyond the most childlike stage, that has not some
idea of the difference between ordinary and extra
ordinary events ; and the Hebrews, with their faith
in the creation and ordering of the world by God,
had that idea in an unusually high degree. God had
established the world by His word ; had set bounds
to sea and land by His decree ; had ordained that
seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, should not
cease ; had given measure and order to all things
by His wisdom.1 Still, it is the case that the idea
of natural law, as now understood, was not possessed
by the ancients, and that the Hebrews did not
measure miracle by relation to this idea as moderns
do. The essential thing in miracle was that there
i Cf. Gen. i. 14; viii. 22; Ps. xxxiii. 6-9; cxix. 90-1; Prov. viii.
29 ; Is. xl. 12, etc.

vi.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 111
should be some plain and remarkable interposition
of God for a holy end — say, for the help of His
people, or the Judgment of His enemies ; and
the question of how these extraordinary events
were related to what we should call ' secondary
causes,' or ' laws of nature ' did not enter into
consideration. Suppose it could be shown that any
of these exceptional events, as, e.g., the crossing of
the Red Sea, were naturally mediated, this would
not in the slightest degree alter its character as
miracle in the Biblical sense of that word. The
fact that it happened then and there, in connection
with a revealed purpose, or by divine command,
sufficed to guarantee its character as a divine inter
position. This Biblical idea of miraqle is illustrated by the
terms used to describe these extraordinary events
in the Old and New Testaments. One class of
terms brings out the unusual, exceptional, and
striking character of the works (Heb. K?S , ni&OBJ ;
Gr. repara) ; another lays stress on the power dis
played in them (Heb. rniaa t Tfnxil ; Gr. Bvvd/Mets ;
a third gives prominence to their teleological signifi
cance — their character as ' signs ' (Heb. niK ; Gr.
a-t] /xela). Alongside of these are terms which de
scribe them simply as ' works ' (Heb. CtWp or ni?vJ? ;
Gr. epya). It is the purposeful element which dis
tinguishes the Biblical miracle from a mere portent
or prodigy.
2. Miracle, in the scientific sense, as above re
marked, is concerned with the relation to natural
law. By miracle, in this connection, in distinction
from the general idea of the supernatural, is to be

112 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
understood any real (not simply apparent) devia
tion from, or transcendence of, the ordinary course
of nature, due to the interposition of a super
natural cause. The definition of miracle, with
Hume and others, as a ' violation ' of the laws of
nature, is a question-begging and objectionable one.
It suggests a sanctity belonging to the usual order
of nature which is by no means to be attributed to
it, and precludes the view that nature itself, in the
divine purpose, may be subordinate to a higher
spiritual order, whose ends call for an action of God
above and beyond what nature is capable of. In
nature itself one law crosses and modifies the action
of another, and higher laws suspend or control the
action of lower. Mechanical laws are over-ruled
by chemical and vital. Gravitation is counteracted
by the raising of the arm in obedience to an act of
will. But nothing in nature is 'violated 'thereby.
The whole system of nature, in its reciprocal rela
tions, is a unity, and all, in the last resort, depends
on God, whose will, guided by His wisdom, is the
ultimate law — the law of all laws, cause in all causes.

II. Possibility of Miracle.
1. It has just been observed that the abstract
possibility of such divine interpositions as are
alleged in miracle can scarcely be challenged by
any one who admits the existence of the living,
personal God. There are systems of the universe —
atheistic, pantheistic, monistic, deistic — which, in
their very nature, exclude miracle. Theism, if of a
genuine and vital kind, as it is in the Christian

vi.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 113
religion, creates even a presumption in its favour.
For, as was formerly argued, a living, loving, personal
God, can hardly do other than desire a more
immediate fellowship with man than is provided
for in the impersonal system of nature. Accordingly,
in the region of the spirit; — that with which revela
tion is chiefly concerned — large admissions are
sometimes made by those who would dispute the
occurrence of miracle in physical nature. Man's
spirit is spoken of as open to immediate divine
influences ; God is described as entering into direct
communion of spirit with man. ' How,' asks Dr.
Martineau, in one place, ' should related spirits,
joined by a common creative aim, intent on what
ever things are pure and good, live in presence of
each other, the one the bestower, the other the
recipient of a sacred trust, and exchange no thought
and give no sign of the love which subsists between
them ? ' x Similarly Pfleiderer, ' Why should it be
less possible for God to enter into a loving fellowship
with us, than for men to do so with each other ?
I should be inclined to think that He is even more
capable of doing so. For as no man can altogether
read the soul of another, so no man can altogether
live in the soul of another ; hence all our human
love is and remains imperfect. But if we are shut
off from one another by the limits of individuality,
in relation to God it is not so ; to Him our hearts
are as open as each man's heart is to himself ; He
sees through and through them, and He desires to
five in them, and to fill them with His own energy and
blessedness.' 2 But, if this be so, what becomes of
1 Study of Religion, ii. p. 48.
* Philosophy of Religion (E.T.), iii. p. 305.
H

114 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
the argument against the possibility of supernatural
revelation ?
2. In Biblical revelation, however, miracle enters
into the physical, as well as into the spiritual, sphere,
and it is here that the objection to its admission
is pressed at its keenest. ' The uniformity of
nature,' as science has established it, is urged as an
insuperable objection to the admission of physical
miracle. The chain of causes and effects in the
natural system cannot, it is alleged, at any point
be broken. Even granting the abstract possibility
of miracle, the difficulties of proof are held to be
so great that no miracle, supposing one to happen,
can ever be satisfactorily established by evidence.
The preponderant presumption must always be
against it. On the historical side, the evidence for
miracle in the Bible is declared hopelessly to break
down on critical examination. On this threefold
ground of possibility, credibility, historicity, the mir
acles of Scripture are pronounced to be discredited.
But this verdict may very reasonably be challenged.
III. Miracle and Law.
1. It must have been with some sense of the
irony of his own argument that an acute reasoner
like Hume laid down the position that ' a miracle
is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm
and unalterable experience has established these
laws, the proof against a miracle, from the nature
of the fact, is as entire as any argument from ex
perience can possibly be imagined.' Again : ' It is
a miracle that a dead man should come to life,
because that has never been observed in any age or

vi.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 115
country.' x It may be remarked in passing that, if
the establishing of laws of nature depended, as
Hume supposes, on proof of ' a firm and unalter
able ' — that is, a universal — ' experience,' no law of
nature could ever be made good. For such a
universal induction is, in strictness, impossible.
Laws of nature, in reality, are usually established
by a comparatively small number of experiments,
skilfully conducted, and verified by repetition. The
(general) uniformity of nature is the postulate of,
rather than the conclusion from, such experiments.
But taking Hume's proposition as it stands, how
glaring is the petitio principii involved in it ! How
is it made out that ' a firm and unalterable
experience ' has established that there are no
exceptions to the ordinary course of nature ? For
this the proposition must mean if it is to have any
validity as argument. Only by first ruling out all
testimony to a contrary experience. A dead man
cannot rise to life, because this has never been
observed in any age or country. But has it not ?
This is the very thing to be proved. Hume assumes
in his general proposition that no one has ever had
experience of a miracle, then adduces this as proof
that miracles have never happened !
2. Not a few in recent times endeavour tc remove
the difficulty attaching to the idea of miracle as
contravention of nature by the hypothesis that
miracles — the greatest included — are simply ex
ceptions to what is known of the order of nature,
and may be accounted for by the action of unknown
powers or laws of nature.2 There need be no hesita-
1 Essay on Miracles.
1 Cf. Dr. Sanday, The Life of Christ in Recent Research, ch. viii.

116 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
tion in admitting that much that belongs to the
category of miracle in Scripture may possibly be
thus explained. There is an ' economy ' in miracle.
Natural agencies are used as far as they will go.1
But as a general theory of miracle this hypothesis
labours under two obvious defects. (1) It can
never be proved, and is in itself highly improbable,
that the more signal exercises of miraculous power —
e.g., Christ's instantaneous cleansing of the leper, or
raising of the dead, or His own resurrection — are
simply adaptation of laws and forces already residing
in nature ; and (2) the theory does not dispense with
a supernatural summoning into action and wielding
of these hidden powers on a definite occasion and
for a definite end. The miracle is not a spontaneous
production of nature's laws ; God's will is still
involved in the wonder being wrought. A word
is spoken, a command is given, God's interposition
is invoked, and the marvel follows. It is in the
divine interposition, whatever the mediate agencies
employed, that the essence of the miracle lies.
IV. Credibility of Miracle.
1. A stronger position is taken up when objection
is based, not on the general possibility of miracle,
but on the credibility of the testimony by which the
miracle is supported. It is unquestionable that, in
the ordinary conduct of life, suspicion attaches to
all narratives of supernatural, or even of very
extraordinary, events. The presumption against a
miracle is always strong ; human testimony, where
1 In the flood, the destruction of Sodom, the strong wind at the
crossing of the Red Sea, etc.

vi.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 117
marvels are concerned, is notoriously fallible. How
then, Hume plausibly argues, can the one ever be
successfully weighed against the other ? Is it not
always more likely, even where the witnesses are
entirely honest, that a mistake has occurred, than
that a real miracle has happened ? As against this,
it is to be remembered, generally, that the bulk of all
our knowledge, ordinary and extraordinary alike,
rests on testimony. It has often been pointed out
that, with the exception of the fractional part of
experience which belongs to ourselves, this is true
even of Hume's ' firm and unalterable experience.'
The experience of others is known to us only through
testimony. ' Experience ' and ' testimony,' there
fore, cannot in this indiscriminating way be pitted
against each other. There is a natural instinct
leading us to believe in testimony, and, after all
deductions, testimony is more often true than false.
General distrust of testimony would bring human
existence to an end.
2. Judgment, therefore, must be applied to the
testimony to miracle, as to other things, and when
this is done, and a priori assumptions are discarded,
it becomes apparent that testimony to miracle may
be, and in given circumstances is, perfectly
admissible. To adduce as instances of miracle
such absurdities as ' a pen turned into a pen-wiper,' 1
or a ' centaur trotting down the street,' 2 is to play
with the subject. Miracles, every one feels, are not
to be looked for in ordinary experience. The
report, therefore, of a casual, unconnected wonder,
as that a dead person had come to life in an
adjoining town or parish, would be justly received
l Matthew Arnold. 2 Huxley.

118 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
with incredulity, or, if well attested, a natural
explanation would be sought for it. Let, however,
the question be put — Is a miracle equally incredible,
if occurring as part of, or in connection with, a
general scheme of divine revelation (itself super
natural in character), or for some solemn or
important end of God's Kingdom, or in connection
with persons well- accredited as bearers of a divine
message to mankind ? — few persons, unwarped by
philosophical thepry, will feel that they are entitled
to answer with the same confidence. They will
decline to dogmatise, and will ask that the evidence
be produced, and the case put before them in all its
bearings. This, it must be urged, is the only reasonable
attitude to take up in relation to the miracles
connected with divine revelation in the Bible. It
is not enough to say with Hume that the presump
tion against a miracle must always be greater than
the presumption in its favour. The circumstances
must be looked at. It is conceivable that the
circumstances may be such that there is not only
no antecedent presumption against the miracle,
but a strong presumption for it. Given, e.g., such a
Person as Jesus Christ by His whole manifestation
shows Himself to be, and miracles, including that
of His own resurrection from the dead, become
not simply credible, but natural. It may be easier
to believe that such an One rose from the dead,
than that death continued to hold Him. Or given
again a great scheme of divine revelation, extending
through successive dispensations, it is not incredible
that miracles should be employed at the founding
of such dispensations, or at great crises in their

vi.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 119
course. Similarly with testimony. Everything
here again depends on the kind of testimony, and
on the circumstances in which it is delivered.
Human testimony may be very faulty. But there
are cases in which the testimony is of such a
character, is given by such persons, under such
conditions, with reference to such events, and in
such a manner, that, accepting Hume's own canon,
it would do more violence to reason to reject it than
is involved in its acceptance.
Where these two things coincide : (1) where the
presumption is, in the nature of the case, not
against, but in favour of the miracle ; and (2) where
the testimony is reliable, and the matter plainly
one on which the witnesses are competent to Judge,
the evidence even for miracle, instead of being weak,
may be very strong indeed.
3. In dealing with the evidence for miracle, it is
well not to allow the mind to be unduly biassed by
the marshalling of instances to show how, with the
progress of knowledge, belief in miracle is gradually
being driven out of one department of inquiry after
another, and the reign of law established. This is
the favourite method, e.g., of Lecky in his Ration
alism in Europe. It is pointed out how the progress
of science has banished belief in miracle in number
less regions where it once flourished ; has purged
out legend and fable from history ; has destroyed
belief in witchcraft, etc. Learned men, we are
reminded, once believed in witchcraft. Its reality
was held to be proved by solemn judicial investiga
tions. But ask — what was proved ? The fact that
a man took ill, or a cow died, and that words were
spoken, or a look given, with which the misfortune

120 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
was connected. That is not proof of miracle. What
had to be proved was actual compact with, and the
agency of, Satan, and that could only be done through
extorted confessions, ordeals, and the like — a
totally different case from the Biblical miracles.
It is quite true that advance in enlightenment
has banished a world of fables and superstitions
from belief, and made the conditions of the proof
of miracle more stringent. But is the effect neces
sarily to discredit all miracles, especially the class
of miracles with which we have here to do ? x What
if the effect of the scrutiny should only be to
strengthen the evidence for the latter by bringing
out on how completely different a footing they stand ?
The same remark applies to the alleged ' ecclesi
astical ' miracles, in regard to which, to say the least,
the greatest discrimination requires to be exercised.2
V. Historicity of Miracle.
1. Without dwelling longer on these abstract
considerations, the real and practical question may
now be looked at — How far the miracles which
enter into the scheme of Biblical revelation are
inherently credible and sufficiently attested. This
is the question of historicity. It is not to be denied
that the conditions of the discussion on this question
are considerably altered from what they were in
comparatively recent years. Take, e.g., the old way
of establishing the miracles of the period of the
1 Butler's remarks on this point in his Analogy, Pt. n. ch. ii.
and vii., well deserve consideration.
2 Hume's test-case — the miracles at the tomb of the Abb(S Paris —
is dealt with, and effectually riddled, by Campbell in his Dissertation
on Miracles. Cf. also Leland, Deistical Writers, Let. xix.

vi.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 121
Exodus. First, the Pentateuch was shown by various
lines of evidence to be the work of Moses ; this was
next held to give the narratives in Exodus the
value of the testimony of an eye-witness ; finally,
it was shown that Moses did not deceive, and could
not be deceived, in what he wrote. It would not
be easy now to gain assent to the proposition that
the Pentateuch, as it stands, is the work of Moses ;
so the argument breaks down at the outset.
Similarly, the Gospels had first to be proved to be
the genuine works of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John ; then the miracles were proved by the credit
due to these witnesses. The intellectual outlook
has changed, and, instead of basing belief in the
revelation, as was formerly done, on the proof of
the miracles, it is now customary to hold that it is
the revelation that sustains credit in the miracles —
so far as any credit is given to them. The miracles
of Christ, e.g., are believed in for Christ's sake ; it is
not the miracles that sustain faith in Christ.
There is undoubtedly a large element of truth in
this position. It is freely granted that the miracles
of Scripture cannot be satisfactorily proved as bare,
external facts ; they derive support from their
place in, and connection with, the general scheme
of revelation. On the other hand, it can in no way
be conceded that historical evidence is no element
in the proof. There is historical evidence, and that
of a very cogent kind, for many of the greater
miracles of Scripture — for the resurrection of Jesus
Christ, for example. For others, the evidence is
still considerable, and warrants a reasonable con
viction of the truth of the event. Some miracles
are entitled to our faith as belonging to groups or

122 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
classes which may be regarded as strongly attested
as a whole. We cannot, e.g., prove independently
each separate miracle of Jesus, but we may establish
with great cogency that He did work miracles, and
that miracles entered as a large element into the
apostolic testimony about Him. Beyond this we
are driven back on the internal character and
general credibility of the narrative which records
the miracle, on the connection of the miracles with
the personalities by whom they were wrought, and
the occasions on which they were wrought, and on the
greater evidences which support the scheme of
which they form a part as a supernatural system.
2. One error into which Hume and many since
have fallen, is to assume that the only class of testi
mony available for miracle is individual testimony.
It is the witness of the individual observer which
alone is held to be of account. Then to this the
most stringent tests are applied. This, however,
unfairly represents the real strength of the case. It
might be thought easier to prove an individual
miracle than to establish the reality of a general
supernatural system, of which the individual miracles
form part. But it is not so actually. Just as Plato
found it easier to study Justice ' writ large ' in the
State before beginning to study it in the individual,
so it will be found easier to establish the reality of a
supernatural system on the large scale than to estab
lish the special miracles which are, as it were, parts
or corollaries of that system. The system, because it
is taken as a whole, and regarded in its complete
proportions, may be seen to exhibit evidences of
supernatural origin which go far to sustain the
credit of particular miracles associated with it.

vi.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 123
Much of this evidence, internal to the system, has
already been adverted to — the monotheism, e.g.,
spirituahty, organic unity, teleology, of the reli
gion of the Old Testament ; the unique doctrines
and special adaptation to the needs of a sinful
world of the Gospel of the New Testament ; the
element of prophecy, and fulfilment of the Old
Testament in the New. These are proofs of the
supernatural strain that runs through Scripture as
a whole. VI. Internal and External Evidence.
Hume, therefore, is wrong in staking everything
on * testimony,' and there solely on the witness of
individual persons who can be cited and examined.
The evidence for miracle is much wider in its scope.
1. It is not going too far to say that faith in miracle
may rest on something other than external evidence
of any kind. There is an internal evidence which
often constrains faith where external evidence fails ;
which may be a substitute, or more than a sub
stitute, for external evidence. ' Because thou hast
seen Me,' said Jesus to Thomas, ' thou hast believed ;
blessed are they that have not seen and yet have
believed.' x Suppose, for instance, that the Gospels
had come into our hands without the least
external clue to their authorship, origin, or the value
to be attached to their testimony. Would it have
been our duty to set them at once aside ? Or
would there not still have shone out from their
narratives a convincing testimony to their essential
truthfulness, and to the historicity - of the divine
portrait which they enshrine ? The history contains
1 See further in next chapter.

124 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
miracles. The account of these miracles interweaves
itself with the whole narrative. They are congruous
with the character of the Person who is the subject
of the history. They are wrought, moreover, in
connection with His work ; are never mere show
miracles. They have an ethical character and aim.
They are not excrescences on the narrative, but are
bound up with its substance, and associated with
its profoundest and most original words. They
are part of the material from which the picture of
Jesus emerges. If He is historical, they are. Faith
in them may be felt to be not only reasonable, but
irresistible. Yet external evidence has not thus far
been so much as touched on.
What applies to the Gospels in the New Testament
applies also, though with necessary abatement of
force, to many of the miracles of the Old Testament.
We may not be able to connect the miracle in each
case — or in any case — by a chain of evidence with
the first witnesses. Yet we may have satisfying
proof of a general scheme of revelation; we may
have the presumption of miracle in that scheme,
we may have the congruence of the miracle with
its own stage of revelation, and with the actors in it ;
we may have the internal credibility of the narrative
to which the record of the miracle belongs. We
may have, as before, the ethical character and aim
of the miracles ; their interconnection with other
elements of the history ; their place as integral
parts of a revelation confirmed by the subsequent
history of the revelation. The revelation of God
to Moses at the bush, for instance, is confirmed by
the place which the revelation of God as Jehovah
has in the after history of the people.

vi.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 125
2. When transition is made from internal to
external evidence, it does not follow that the latter —
the external evidence — is to be narrowed down to the
testimony of individual witnesses. Testimony may
be conjunct, not individual ; may be national, not
personal ; may be in consciousness and experience,
not in documents merely ; may be monumental, not
in words. The testimony to the resurrection of
Jesus, e.g., is not weakened by the fact that it is the
conjoint testimony of the whole body of the Aposto-
late — a testimony in which it never wavered or
faltered. The entire New Testament rests on
the basis of this harmonious apostolic testimony.
Such events, again, as the Exodus of Israel, the
crossing of the Red Sea, and the covenant at Sinai,
rest not on the statements of the Book of Exodus
only, but on the far broader basis of the unchanging
national consciousness of Israel. The same is in
a measure true of the facts of the patriarchal history,
which the Exodus presupposes. The covenants
with the fathers, and the promises made to them,
are, as the Book of Deuteronomy shows, the bed
rock of the people's consciousness of their relation
to God.1 Similarly, Christian experience — the con
sciousness of the Christian Church — needs such a
history as that given in the Gospels to sustain it.
The presence of the Holy Spirit in human hearts,
in communities, in history, is as verifiable a fact as
any we know. There is a Holy Spirit in the Church
— the Fountain of light, of holiness, of power ; the
Source of sanctification, of renewal, of peace and Joy.
This effect— itself supernatural — needs a cause, and,
tracing it back, the cause is only to be found in
i Cf. Prob. of the 0. T., pp. 93 ff. 100 ff.

126 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
that day when, the heavens being opened, Jesus,
by the right hand of God exalted, poured forth that
which men saw and heard.1
VII. Special Testimony to Miracles.
These considerations, it is granted, leave many
questions open with regard to the special miracles.
There may be no a priori objection to miracle as
such ; it may be allowed that miracle has a place in
the scheme of revelation ; but this still leaves
undetermined the degree of evidence for this or that
particular miracle. It has already been pointed out
that the degree of this evidence greatly varies. For
some miracles we have very strong evidence. Others
belong to groups or classes strongly attested as a
whole. For others the evidence is weaker, and we
can only say of them that they are reasonable or
credible in their general character, or in the place
they hold in the system of revelation, or in connec
tion with the general credibility of the account.
Even on this subject, however, certain principles
apply, which aid, to some extent, in judging of the
miracles, even where they cannot be individually
tested. 1. One such principle is the marked reserve and
discrimination shown in the use of miracle in revela
tion. One frequently hears of the prodigality of
miracles in Scripture. But this is a very erroneous
impression, especially if comparison be made with
other religions, where often the distinction of natural
and supernatural is utterly abolished. What strikes
1 Acts ii. 33. Examples of institutional testimony are seen in the
Passover in the Old Testament, and the Lord's Supper and the
observance of the Lord's Day in the New.

vi.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 127
the careful reader of Scripture is rather what has
been called the 'parsimony of miracles.' Miracle
is not an element that runs through all Scripture
equally, or appears with lavish prodigality any
where. Miracles are, on the contrary, few, rela
tively to the length of the periods involved, and
are distributed according to a wise and intelligible
principle, viz. : that they are connected with the
great epochs, and grouped around the great person
alities in revelation. Apart from the theophanies,
miracles hardly appear at all in Genesis. The only
physical miracles, if such they can be called, are the
flood and the destruction of the cities of the plain ;
both connected with natural causes. The period
of the Exodus, and of the wilderness wanderings,
is marked, as it was reasonable to expect, by great
' signs and wonders ' — some score or more of miracles.
The Conquest begins with a miracle — the fall of
Jericho — after that no more.1 Judges, apart again
from the theophanies, is free from miracle, unless
we reckon as such the signs of Gideon and the
supernatural strength of Samson. The period of
the kingdom is marked by hardly any miracles till
the rise of the great prophetic figures, Elijah and
Elisha, round whom miracles again cluster. The
prophetic age is almost destitute of miracle. The
dial of Ahaz and the fish of Jonah, with such a
providential miracle as the destruction of Sennac
herib's army, are nearly the only exceptions. The
Book of Daniel has two miracles : the deliverance
of the three Hebrews from the fire, and of Daniel from
1 It is very doubtful if the standing still of the sun and moon in
Josh. x. is not, as the quotation from the Book of Joshua suggests
(ver. 12, 13), to be understood poetically.

128 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
the lions. From the close of Old Testament history
after the exile till the time of Christ there are no
recorded miracles. In the New Testament, there
are the miracles of our Lord's infancy, ministry,
and resurrection, and those connected with the
founding of the Church by the apostles. John the
Baptist wrought no miracles. Paul claimed the
power of working miracles,1 but history records few
examples of its actual exercise. It will be difficult
for any one to say that this is an extravagant
profusion of miracles to be spread over the whole
history of revelation.
2. Another principle, intimately connected with
the foregoing, is that, as already remarked, the
miracles of the Bible are never mere prodigies, or
aimless displays of power, but stand in close relation
with the history of revelation, and are strictly
subordinate to its ends. They are wrought, not
simply to strike wonder into the beholders, but
for high and holy purposes, and to advance the ends
of God's Kingdom. They are wrought mainly
through the agency of, or in connection with, the
great personages of revelation, e.g., Moses, Elijah,
Christ, and are rendered credible by their connection
with these persons, and by the marks of sobriety
and truthfulness in the history generally. This
unique character of the Biblical miracles appears
pre-eminently in the miracles of Christ, but is not
confined to these. The law may be said to be a
general one.
3. For the rest, it may be affirmed that the
testimony of the greater miracles of Scripture does,
in one form or another, go back to eye-witnesses,
> Rom. xv. 18, 19.

vi.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 129
though the process of the testimony cannot always
be traced. The connection of Moses with the
books that bear his name may be left to criticism
to determine. The credibility of the books is not
destroyed by any difficulties about authorship.
The miracles of the Mosaic period, if real, were
wrought on a vast and imposing scale, and were
witnessed by a whole generation of Israelites.
Could the essential facts ever be forgotten ? The
vividness and dramatic character of the narratives
seem to attest that records must have come down
from a time not far removed from the events ; that,
at least, the narratives took shape when tradition
was still fresh and reliable. The histories of Elijah
and Elisha plainly come from the schools of the
disciples of these prophets, and the strain of miracle
in the narratives might be set down to the later
glorification of legend, were it not that it is found
in these prophetic histories alone, is congruous with
the personages concerned, and with the crisis of the
age in which they lived, and is so deeply embedded
in the narratives that it is hardly possible to
eliminate it without destroying the whole story.
The characters of the prophets themselves have a
life-like forcefulness which speaks to the truth of the
portrayal. The narratives of Christ's miracles in
the Gospels rest on a firm foundation of apostolic
testimony. They place us throughout in contact
with original witness. Matthew, who contributes
at least the groundwork of the narrative that bears
bis name, was an eye-witness. John was an eye
witness. Mark was the companion and ' interpreter '
of Peter. Luke put in writing those things which
had been delivered by ' eye-witnesses and ministers
I

130 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
of the word.' * The whole tradition of the fife of
Jesus must have been wrought into shape, and
fixed in the form in which it comes to us in the
Synoptics, during the years of the close association
and preaching of the apostles at Jerusalem. The
product in the Gospels is ' worthy of all acceptation.'
> Luke i. 1, 2.

til] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 131

CHAPTER VII
JESUS CHRIST — THE SUPREME REVEALER AND
SUPREME MIRACLE
Discussion returns at length to the Personality in
whom all revelation is summed up — the One towards
whose advent in the fulness of the times 1 all the
lines of God's providence converged ; whose appear
ance, when He did come, formed the starting-point
for the world's future. Jesus is, without exagger
ation, at the present moment, the centre of the
interest of the world. He is ' set for the falling and
rising again of many.' 2 Thoughtful minds feel
that the task is laid upon them of explaining Him ;
of coming to some understanding with Him. The
heathen peoples — rival systems of religion, in India,
China, Japan, elsewhere — are awakening to realise
that it is with Jesus and His religion they have to
do ; that the supreme question for their future is
the acceptance or rejection of His claims.
I. 'Modern' View of Jesus.
To those who deny supernatural revelation Jesus
is necessarily a problem. What are they to make
of Him ? The one thing they are sure of is, that the
supernatural claims set up for Him cannot be ad
mitted. Whatever their admiration for His Person-
i Gal. iv. 4. 2 Luke ii. 34.

132 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
ality and religion, He must be brought and kept
within purely human limits. To show how this
may be successfully done is the aim of numerous
recent efforts at depicting His life and work. There
are many schools in the negative camp, but this is
the common denominator of them all — the gravi
tation-level to which they all tend. Jesus must be
non-miraculous. 1. The Jesus of the new 'modern' school is
represented thus. The ground fact is that a young
Galilean peasant, son of Joseph and Mary of
Nazareth, starting as a disciple of John the Baptist,
became, about his thirtieth year, the originator of a
remarkable religious movement in Galilee. This
brought Him into collision with the Pharisees and
ecclesiastical heads of the nation, and led, after
perhaps a year's activity, to His being arrested at
Jerusalem at the Passover, and, after trial by the
Sanhedrim, and before Pontius Pilate, put to death
by crucifixion as a blasphemer. Whether, as the
Gospels say, He claimed for Himself the title Messiah
is a moot question ; whether He spoke the Apocal
yptic discourses attributed to Him is held to be even
more doubtful. Probably, as most allow, He did
both, and to that extent, as in many other parti
culars of His thinking, was a victim of delusion, or
shared the erroneous beliefs of His age. But His
soul was one of singular purity — not ' sinless,' for
the modern mind dare not use so absolute a word ;
His religious and ethical ideals were the most
spiritual yet given to mankind ; while the filial
confidence He exercised in the Father, His perfect
love and sympathy with men, and the continual
polemic which cost Him His life against the merely

vn.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 133
outward, ceremonial, and legal in religion, in favour
of a spiritual worship, and an inward morality of the
heart, made Him, in another sense than the theo
logical, the true Founder of a Kingdom of God on
earth. He gave up His fife on the Cross in fidelity
to His convictions, but, it need not be said, according
to this new reading, did not rise again. It is allowed
that His disciples believed He did, and even that
they had seen Him, and that it was by the energetic
preaching of a Risen Lord that the Christian Church
was founded. These dreams, however, we are told,
are gone, and the Church of the future will have to
content itself with a Jesus on whose grave, as
Matthew Arnold said, the Syrian stars still look
down. 2. Such is the picture. What is to be said of it ?
What can be said of it, except that, professing to be
' reHgious-historical,' it is not historical in any real
sense of the word ? It is a picture to be rejected,
not on any a priori dogmatic grounds, but simply
because it does not fit the facts. It does not explain
the Jesus of the Gospels. It does not explain the
faith and hope of the early Christian Church, based
on the facts which the Gospels record. It does not
explain the vast effects which have come from the
appearance and work of this Jesus. It does not
explain how even such an image of Jesus came to be
there — who created it, or could create it, or whence
the materials came from which it was composed.
It does not explain the edifice of Christian life,
work, hope, and aspiration which has been built on
Jesus, and, despite of all assaults on it, has endured
through the ages. It does not explain Christian
experience, Christian character, Christian enthu-

134 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
siasm and enterprise, the consciousness of redemp
tion through Christ which lies at the foundation of
all. II. The Self-Consciousness of Jesus.
Instead of taking this picture critically to pieces,
as has so often been done, the more positive task
may be attempted of regarding Jesus in the light of
His own revelation of Himself and of the Father.
In this may be found the most effective refutation
of the opposite representation.
1. The study of Jesus begins with His own con
sciousness of Himself — with His self-consciousness in
its essentia] contents. The central point in Christ's
self -consciousness is usually sought in His filial spirit
— in his sense of Sonship to God. He felt and
knew Himself from the beginning to be a, or more
correctly the, Son of God. It is true that Jesus had
this uninterrupted consciousness of Sonship ; but it
is an error to speak as if this consciousness explained
itself, or was the most original element in His ex
perience. It is customary to say that from Christ's
consciousness of Sonship — from his possession of
the filial spirit — was derived His conception of God
as Father. But the knowledge of God as Father is
not a deduction from Christ's consciousness of being a
Son. It is the other way. It is through the know
ledge of God as Father that the spirit of filial con
fidence, surrender, obedience, and love, is awakened.
The two things grow up together, but of the two
the intuition of God as Father necessarily takes the
precedence. This again is given, not as a result of
inference or reasoning, but as an original revelation
in the soul of Jesus ; a veritable intersphering of

vn.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 135
the consciousness of the Father and the Son. ' I am
in the Father, and the Father in Me.' x ' No one
knoweth the Son, save the Father ; neither doth
any know the Father save the Son, and He to whom
soever the Son willeth to reveal Him.' 2 The fact of
this immediate knowledge which Christ had of the
Father may be psychologically inexplicable, but it
is none the less real — a ' mystery of godliness.' 3
2. With this original element in Christ's conscious
ness is to be taken a second : His sinlessness. This
was Christ's own consciousness regarding Himself,
and it was the unanimous belief and testimony of
His followers about Him : He was without sin.4
There is, quite naturally, something like a feeling of
resentment growing up among the ' moderns ' that
' sinlessness ' — perfect holiness — unbroken harmony
of mind and will with God — should be attributed to
Jesus. Christ's own saying is often quoted as proof
of the opposite : ' None is good save One, even God.' 5
But this is to mistake the meaning of the passage.
Even in the case of Jesus there was a contrast
between the ethical, developing goodness, advancing
to its human perfection through trial and suffering,
of which He was the subject; — ' Though he was a Son,
yet learned He obedience by the things which he
suffered'6 — and the absolute, eternal goodness of
the Godhead. The realised perfection of the Father
was the archetype even for Him. This was a truth
of which the rich young man, with his light use of the
title ' good,' and his superficial ideals of goodness,
i John xiv. 10. « Matt. xi. 27. s 1 Tim. iii. 16.
* 2 Cor. y. 21 ; 1 Pet. ii. 22 ; 1 John iii. 5, etc.
5 Mark x. 18. Thus Schmiedel, Bousset, G. B. Foster, etc
e Heb. v. 8

136 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
needed to be reminded. But there is in this acknow
ledgment no confession or consciousness of personal
sin on the part of Jesus. That was an element
perfectly foreign to His mind. Jesus never once
confesses sin, or prays for forgiveness of sin. With
the purest and profoundest consciousness of what
sin was in others, He betrays not the slightest trace
of knowledge of sin in Himself ; indeed, repels the
imputation.1 His mission in the world is to save
sinners.2 In the very fact of his taking such a role,
He distinguishes Himself from sinners.
The moral perfection ascribed to Jesus is not less
evident from the actual survey of His character.
As depicted in the Gospels, He is ' holy, guileless,
undefiled, separated from sinners.' 3 One is struck by
the unexampled way in which the greatest ethical con
trasts meet in the perfection of Jesus. With the most
wonderful universahty of nature is seen combined
the keenest individual sympathy ; with marvellous
majesty, the greatest meekness and lowliness of
heart ; with unsullied purity, the tenderest
solicitude for the recovery of the fallen. Dignity
in this character is Joined with repose ; the loftiest
claims with the gentlest condescension ; intensest
devotion with constant practical activity ; burning
zeal for holiness with an all-compassionating mercy.
Wondrous wisdom is combined with yet more
wondrous patience towards those who are slow of
understanding and heart. The will of this holy
being never swerves from God's will. God's end is
His end ; He so embodies and incarnates God that
1 John viii. 46 ; xiv. 30.
2 Matt. i. 21 ; ix. 19, 20 ; Luke, xix. 10.
» Heb. vii. 26.

vn.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 137
He can say : ' He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father.' 1
3. This consciousness of sinlessness in Jesus,
coalescing with the consciousness of His unique
relation to the Father, must, from the beginning,
have made a distinction between Him and others, of
which He could not but have been aware. Such a
consciousness, moreover, could not have been
present without awakening in Him the sense of a
vocation. He alone knew the Father. He knew
Himself to be separated from others by His freedom
from sin, at the same time that He felt Himself knit
to them by bonds of tenderest love. From these
roots developed the consciousness that He was
' sent,' with a mission peculiar to Himself, to save
and bless the world. This sense of vocation is an
element in Christ's consciousness equally original
with the others. It was there in germ from the
first.2 It was part of the revelation of the Father
in His soul. The mode and stages of this conscious
ness of vocation — what is named particularly
Messianic consciousness — are necessarily obscure.
But from the period of the Baptism it is manifest,
and can be studied in its completed form. In this
Messianic consciousness, Jesus connects Himself
with the past. He knows Himself to be the goal and
fulfilment of all Old Testament revelation. He
fulfils law and prophets.3 He appropriates to Him
self all prophecies and promises relating to the
Messiah.4 He is the King — the Son of David — the
1 John xiv. 9.
2 It is manifest in His words when found in the temple with the
doctors, Luke ii. 48-50.
« Matt. v. 17. * Mark ix. 12 ; Luke xxiv. 25-27.

138 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
Founder of the Kingdom of God and Lord over it.
Even while spiritualising the idea of the Kingdom,
and freeing it from all national and legal limitations,
He holds fast to the essential prophetic conception
of a future realised reign of righteousness among
men.1 He knows what is written of the superhuman
dignity, exalted prerogatives, and future triumphs
of the coming King.2 He identifies Himself with
Isaiah's ' Servant of Jehovah ' 3 — specially with
what is foretold of the Servant's humiliation and
atoning suffering, and of His after victory.4 He
connects His death with the redeeming sacrifice
of the Passover.6 His Messianic vocation meant
salvation to the world. It meant sacrifice, consecra
tion, surrender of His life for others, a death which
was redemption.6 His consecration at the Baptism
meant the acceptance of this vocation. Jesus saw
from that first hour what lay before Him ; knew that
He must die. The second and third temptations
show His definite choice of the path of the Cross in
opposition to false and worldly ideals of Messiahship.7
4. Yet another element in this original conscious
ness of Jesus is the consciousness of supernatural
pmoers. This is with Him at least from the time
of the Baptism — probably earlier. In the perfect
purity of His nature, and unbroken consciousness
of Sonship with God, He stood in unique rapport
also with the forces of the natural and spiritual
worlds. These were at His disposal.8 Miraculous
power is implied in the first temptation, while in
this temptation there is the renunciation of all use
i Matt. vi. 10. a Cf. Is. ix. 6, 7. s Luke iv. 21.
4 Luke xxii. 37. 6 In the Lord's Supper.
« Matt. x. 28. i Cf. Matt. iv. 5-11. « Matt. viii. 7-13.

vii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 139
of this power for His own personal ends.1 The
miracles of Jesus — supernatural to us — were natural
to Him ; were, as John calls them, His ' works.' 2
5. From the depths of the unique consciousness
of Jesus sprang naturally His claims. These claims,
stupendous and arrogant, if Judged by a merely
human standard, are but the expression of His
knowledge of Himself, of His mission, of His divine
authority, of the work the Father had given Him
to do. He knew whence He was, and whither He
went ; hence He alone could adequately testify of
Himself.3 He was ' Son of Man,' but also ' Son of
God ' — both expressions being used in a ninique and
pregnant sense. He had divine authority to forgive
sins. He had all authority given to Him in heaven
and in earth.4 He baptized with the Holy Spirit.
He was Fulfiller of the Old Testament ; Messiah ;
King ; Lord of men. He was the Saviour of the
world ; was likewise the Judge of the world. By
relation to Him the everlasting destinies of men were
determined.5 There is no need to imagine ' little
Apocalypses ' 6 to account for the eschatological
sayings of Jesus. The eschatological utterances
came from the same self-consciousness as the rest
of His claims. After He had died, He predicted,
He would rise again.7 He would return in the
glory of His Father, and with the holy angels.8
Exalted to heaven, He would send the Spirit, and
be with His disciples till the end of the world.9
i Matt. iv. 3, 4. 2 E.g., John v. 36 ; x. 25, 32, 38, etc.
» John viii. 14. * Matt. xi. 27 ; xxviii. 18.
• Matt. xxv. 31-46. 6 Thus modern critics.
1 Matt. xvi. 21, etc. 8 Matt. xiv. 27 ; xxv. 31, etc.
8 Matt, xxviii. 20 ; Luke xxiv. 49 ; John xv. 26, etc.

140 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
III. Supernatural Estimate of Jesus.
How are such a life, such a Personality, such a
consciousness, such claims, to be explained ? Out
of mere humanity ? Out of evolution ? Then
must Jesus have been like other men ; of finer,
grander genius, perhaps, but essentially of the same
mould as they, with frailty, imperfection, sin,
adhering to Him. But this, we have just seen,
He was not. How then explain Him ? How did
such a fife begin ? For such an One as Jesus
actually was a unique origin must be postulated ;
such a superhuman beginning as the first and third
Gospels narrate. How did such a life end ? In
death ? Or in triumph over death : in conquest
of death : in resurrection, as the Gospels again
assert ? In affirming the Virgin Birth and the
Resurrection of Christ, we affirm only that the life
of Christ is of a piece ; that it is congruous with
itself, and with the claims which Christ made
throughout His whole life.1
Jesus rose from the dead. His resurrection is
the pre-eminent miracle of the New Testament ; the
miracle which guarantees many others, and sets the
seal of truth on the claims to Messiahship and divine
Sonship that went before.2 It was the rock on which
the apostolic Church was founded ; and unbelief
has not yet succeeded in removing that rock from
its place. Rather does the fact become surer with
the failure of every new attempt to explain it away.
Imposture is given up by all intelligent minds ; the
theory of swoon — of apparent death — was shattered
1 The author has discussed the Virgin Birth of Christ and the
Resurrection in works bearing these titles. 2 Rom. i. 4.

vn.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 141
beyond recall by the criticism and irony of Strauss ;
changes have been rung on the vision-theory till
men in utter weariness are deserting it, and falling
back on the view of ' apparitions ' of the dead
Jesus ; that hypothesis, again, is giving place to
theories of derivation of the belief from Babylonian,
Persian, and other pagan myths. Meanwhile, ' the
firm foundation of God standeth,' J and Easter
hymns are sung as of old in all lands from the sun's
rising to its setting !
The resurrection and exaltation of Jesus shed
light back upon His claims while He was on earth —
interpret them, complete them ; but, further, His
exaltation shows the ultimate ground of these claims
in the full divine dignity of His Person. He who
is raised to the throne of divine dominion ; who is
worshipped with honours due to God only ; 2 who
is joined with Father and with Holy Spirit as, co-
ordinately, the source of grace and blessing,3 must in
nature be divine. There is not such a thing as
honorary Godhead. Hence the apostolic doctrine
of Christ's Person, ' The Word was God. . . .
The Word became flesh. . . . The only-begotten
Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath
declared Him.' 4 Hence, as an immediate corollary,
the absoluteness of Christ's revelation. Jesus is the
Supreme Revealer, not simply by what He said,
but by what He was, by what He did, and by what
He now is. No other can succeed Him, or displace
Him, or supersede His revelation. ' In whom are
1 2 Tim. ii. 19.
2 John v. 23 ; Phil. ii. 9-11 ; Rev. v. 8-14, etc.
» 2 Cor. xiii. 14 ; Rom. i. 7, etc.
« John i. 1, 14, 18 ; cf. Phil. ii. 6-11.

142 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.' 1
All-embracing in its scope, universal as the needs of
humanity, His revelation is yet germinal in its
fulness, embodying ideas, laws, principles, which,
under the guidance of the Spirit, it lies with future
ages to unfold.

IV. Aspects of Christ's Revelation.
1. It has been made a reproach to the religion and
morality of Jesus that He did not busy Himself with
the secular or mundane side of life — with education,
with art, with economics, with politics. Strauss,
J. S. Mill, Mazzini,2 and others.more extreme, have
made this objection to Jesus. But there lies in
such a charge a grave misapprehension of the nature
of Christ's revelation. Jesus did not busy HimseK
with these secular interests ; not, however, because
He despised these things, for, as His parables abund
antly show, they were parts of a divine order which
He fully recognised. The world to Him, with all its
fulness of social relations and interests, was God's
world ; a world which it was His to redeem, and
bring into harmony with the will of God. If Jesus
did not busy Himself directly with these things, it is
because He did better. Had Jesus intermeddled
with the social order of His time ; had He laid
down rules for the regulation of capital and labour,
of rulers and subjects, of bond and free ; had He
spentHis brief ministry in discussing art, or education,
or politics, His teachings long ere this would, like
those of other teachers, have become obsolete.
i Col. ii. 3, 9.
2 Mill in essay on Liberty ; Mazzini in Essays, v. p. 363.

vn.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 143
The order of the world changes, and rules applicable
to one age or stage of society would not be applicable
to another. Hence Christ disclaimed such inter
ference. ' Man, who made me a Judge or a divider
over you ? ' 1 He had higher work to do. But this
He did ; He gave to the world the great regulative
ideas in which He the solution of all these problems.
He enunciated great principles, gave great master-
truths which are to be the light of our seeing in all
our discussions of such questions, and of our legis
lation upon them. He did not, e.g., enter on a crusade
against slavery, which in that age would have been
futile. But He laid down principles as to the nature
of man and man's relation to God — as to the infinite
value of the soul and the essential equality of all men
before God — which struck at the very foundations
of slavery, and were bound eventually to abolish it,
as they have done in all Christian lands.
2. This, however, was not the highest or peculiar
sphere of Christ's revelation. To reach the kernel
of that, it is necessary to go back to His own chosen
expression for the message He brought ; ' the King
dom of God.' The Kingdom of God was the subject
which continually filled Christ's thoughts. It de
fined for Him the end of God's purpose in the world,
and therefore of His own mission. The Kingdom
of God is a conception of many sides and aspects.
Yet, as Jesus apprehended it, the core of the idea is
simple. It is simply the expression for a reign of
God in humanity — for the supremacy of God, or of
God's will, in human hearts and human affairs, and
in every department of these affairs. ' Thy King
dom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on
i Luke xii. 14.

144 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
earth.'1 The Kingdom of God begins within, in
the new life imparted to the soul by Christ, but the
Kingdom is not intended to remain within. It is to
work itself out into all the spheres and relations of
our human life, and God's will is to be made supreme
in each. It is to work itself out into the family, and
God's will is to be made supreme there ; into social
relations, business relations, civic relations, political
relations ; into arts, commerce, literature, amuse
ments ; and God's will is to be made supreme in all.
There could not be a principle more practical or
comprehensive. 3. In Christ's doctrine of the Kingdom of God
are embodied all the great truths of His revelation.
Here most clearly it is seen that the truth He reveals
is of a kind that, in the nature of the case, can never
become obsolete. His words cannot pass away.2
The revelation flows from Himself — from the depths
of His personal consciousness — and is therefore
inseparable from Himself.
(1) Jesus teaches, first, of God His Father, and truth
about God, His being, His character, His purposes,
His love and forgiving grace, if only it be truth, is
truth eternal as God Himself.
(2) Jesus teaches about man, but about man in
what relations ? Not from the point of view of rank,
or age, or race, or sex, or culture ; but from the point
of view, solely, of man as a spiritual and immortal
being, in His relations to God and to eternity. In
this light alone Christ regards man, speaks of man,
legislates for man, calls man to Himself. He is
tenderly sympathetic, indeed, to man in his weak
nesses and afflictions. He comes eating and drinking.
» Matt. vi. 10. 2 Matt. xxiv. 35.

vn.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 145
He sits at the marriage feast. He keenly observes
the varied play of life around Him. But it is man,
the spiritual being, He is ever beholding in, and
through, and behind all this. Jesus deals with the
universal, the abiding, the essential, in man. It is
this which gives His words weight, and makes them
enduring. They are words for all ages and
stages of civilisation ; for all grades of culture ;
for highest and lowest races ; for all conditions of
human life. Himself the embodiment of God's ideal
of man (' Son of man '), as, on the other side, He is
the ideal embodiment of God to man (' Son of God '),
He reveals man to himself and in his relations to the
Father. As correlative to His doctrine of God's
Fatherhood, He awakens in man the consciousness
of brotherhood.
(3) Jesus teaches, again, about sin — another uni
versal fact in humanity. Sin is that which involves
humanity in spiritual ruin, frustrates man's true
destiny to a life of sonship in God's Kingdom, and
creates the need of redemption. Himself pure in
every thought and act, Jesus speaks of sin as a power
in the heart as well as a fact in the outward life,1
describes it as bondage and disease, as entailing
guilt and, in its awful issues, doom,2 and as im
peratively calling for divine deliverance. He reveals
grace and forgiveness, and connects salvation with
His own Person and work, peculiarly with His death.3
He calls sinners to repentance.
(4) Jesus teaches about righteousness: the righteous
ness of the Kingdom ; and, in opposition to Phari-
i Matt. xv. 19 ; John iii. 3 ff. etc.
2 Matt. vii. 23 ; Luke xiii. 3, 5 ; John viii. 24, etc.
• Matt. xx. 18, 19, 28 ; John iii. 14, 15 ; vi. 51 ; x. 15, etc.

146 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
saic literalism, formalism, and hypocrisy, expounds
that righteousness as flowing from its two principles
of love to God and love to man.1 His ideals are
not the world's. In most respects they are the
inversion of the world's ideals, involving, to borrow
a phrase from Nietzsche, the least sympathetic of
men with Christ's religion, a ' transvaluation of all
values.' They directly invert ordinary human
standards, in everything subordinating the material
to the spiritual, the temporal to the eternal, the
goods of the body to the goods of the soul.
(5) Lastly, Jesus teaches about salvation, or, as it
is often phrased, ' eternal life.' This is the ultimate
blessing of God's Kingdom — participation in God's
own holy, blessed, incorruptible life, a life which
in its nature is above change and death, which,
beginning here, is nourished by the knowledge of
God and fellowship with Him,2 and culminates in
the immediate vision of God in eternity.3
The very enunciation of such truths proclaims the
absoluteness and enduringness of Christ's revelation.
A Kingdom of God based on such truths cannot be
only of earth ; it points beyond, and can only attain
its consummation in the eternal world.4 Immortality
— ' incorruption ' — perfecting in holiness — complete
redemption from sin, pain, and death — union with
all the good — are involved in its very conception.
4. While Christ is the Revealer, His revelation is
not to be divorced from, still less opposed to, the
apostolic Gospel, which further unfolds its import.
1 A chief exposition is in the Sermon on the Mount.
2 John xvii. 3.
s John xvii. 24 ; 1 Cor. xiii. 12 ; Rev. xxii. 3, 4, etc.
* Matt. xiii. 43 ; xxv. 34 ; Rev. vii. 13-17, etc.

vii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 147
It was only in part that even Jesus could discover
to His disciples the whole truth about Himself
and His work ; for salvation was to be through
Himself, and His work had to be completed before
it could be understood. The great sacrifice in which
His mission on earth culminated had not yet been
made, though it was looked forward to, and
intimations were given of it.1 The meaning of that
sacrifice had afterwards to be unfolded. The Cross
had to be shown to be the supreme revelation at
once of the love and of the holiness of God. There
sin and righteousness met together, the one
to receive its decisive defeat through the other.
Salvation from sin did not ignore law, or the law's
condemnation of sin, but was accomplished through
voluntary submission to the worst that sin eould
inflict, or that God's judgment on the sin of the
world entailed.2 Christ was obedient even unto
the death of the Cross.3 The completeness of His
work, its acceptance by the Father, the finality of
His conquest of sin and death, were attested by His
resurrection in power, The apostolic Gospel but
explains all this, and sets it in the full light shed on
it by Christ's exaltation, and the mission of His
Spirit.4 V. The Selp-Humiliation of Jesus.
A question which necessarily arises out of the
claim of Christ to be the medium of the absolute
revelation of God to man — one which has been
i Matt. xx. 28 ; xxvi. 28 ; John iii. 14-16 ; vi. 51, etc.
2 Rom. iii. 21-31 ; viii. 1-3 ; 2 Cor. v. 21, etc.
» Phil. ii. 8. 4 John xiv. 25, 26 ; xv. 26, etc.

148 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
much discussed in recent times — relates to the
limitations of Christ's human consciousness. It is
the problem of the ' Kenosis,' or self-emptying of
Christ in His incarnate life,1 with its effects in
limitationand possibleerror in His human knowledge.
The question of the ' Kenosis ' on its theological
side, or as relates to the supra-temporal (divine)
mode of Christ's being as Son, is here left out of
view.2 Even on the human side, however, it is to
be noticed that the term ' Kenosis ' has no
appropriateness, save as the higher mode of being,
and a voluntary condescension to the human state,
are implied. On a humanitarian theory there may
be limitation, but there can be no voluntary self-
limitation, such as the Pauline term connotes.
It may be desirable, therefore, to drop the use of
this particular term, and speak simply of the
limitations which belonged to Christ as man, and
of the bearings of these on His revelation.
1. The tendency in recent discussion, it must have
been observed, has been to push this doctrine of
limitation very far. Even among those who accept
the reality of the incarnation, and acknowledge
Christ as, in His eternal being, ' very God of very
God,' the disposition is to view Him in the incarnate
state as so ' depotentiated ' of all the attributes of
Godhead as to be hardly distinguishable, in the
growth and development of His human consciousness,
from an ordinary man. He was not only humanly
ignorant of all that did not belong to His direct
mission, but was in actual error on many points.
1 The term is derived from Phil. ii. 7 : 'emptied Himself.'
2 This aspect of the subject may be studied in Prof. A. B. Brace's
Humiliation of Christ.

vii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 149
He shared the views of his contemporaries, e.g., on
such matters as angels and demons, on the Old
Testament Scriptures, on all matters of natural
knowledge. To the ' modern ' theologian, who
rejects the supernatural side of Christ's Person
altogether, such a conception presents no difficulties.
Jesus, as man, naturally was a child of His age, and
shared its errors. On either of these views, the
absoluteness of Christ's revelation seems imperilled.
If error inhered in Christ's thoughts of God, man,
the world, sin, the Scriptures, spiritual existence,
the future, — if His conceptions on these subjects
were naive, illusory, cast in the childlike and im
perfect moulds which an unscientific age afforded, —
what normative value can be ascribed to them ?
They may be beautiful, but are they true ? Must
not modern science and philosophy be called in to
expurgate them, and tell us what ' kernel ' of truth
abides as the result ? This is an attitude with which
the foregoing representations are plainly incompat
ible. 2. On this subject the following remarks may
be offered : —
(1) That Christ's human knowledge had its limita
tions is a necessary corollary from His assumption
of a true and real humanity. This must be conceded,
if the reality of the incarnation is to be maintained.
As a babe in Bethlehem Jesus began His earthly
existence without knowledge of any kind. In
childhood and youth, He grew in wisdom as in
stature.1 He made no claim to omniscience as man.
He asked questions which implied lack of informa
tion. He expressly disclaimed knowledge of the
1 Luke ii. 40, 52. Cf . Calvin, in toe.

150 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
day and hour of His final advent.1 No one who
thinks seriously on the subject will maintain that,
during His earthly life, Jesus carried in His con
sciousness a knowledge of all events of history,
past, present, and future, of all arts and sciences,
including the results of our modern astronomies,
geologies, biologies, mathematics, of all languages,
etc. To suppose this would be to annul the reality
of His human consciousness entirely. The incarna
tion means that Jesus, in becoming man, entered into
all the conditions of a true human life, growth and
development included. If it be said that the
knowledge was still there in Christ's omniscience as
God, and that, had He willed to know, He would
have known ; that it was by voluntary act He did
not know ; it must still be granted that, as in the
deliberate refusal to use His miraculous powers for
personal ends, so in respect of any knowledge He
might have possessed beyond what the Father gave
Him, it was His will not to know. The limitations
of His human consciousness were not assumed, but
real. (2) Does this acknowledged limitation of the
human knowledge of Christ, and ignorance of earthly
science, imply error on the part of Jesus ? This
is a position which must as strongly be contested.
Ignorance is not error, nor does the one thing
necessarily imply the other. That Jesus should use
the language of His time on things indifferent, where
no judgment or pronouncement of His own was
involved, is readily understood ; that He should
be the victim of illusion, or false judgment, on any
subject on which He was called to pronounce, is a
i Mark xiii. 32.

vii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 151
perilous assertion. If the matter be carefully
considered, it may be felt that even sinlessness
is hardly compatible with liability of the judgment
to error. False judgment, where moral questions
are involved, can hardly fail to issue in wrong action.
Saul of Tarsus was sincerely persuaded that Jesus
was a blasphemer, and counted that he was doing
God service in persecuting His followers.1 Suppose
Jesus similarly to have erred in His judgment, in
regard, say, to the Pharisees, and to have included
in His sweeping condemnations a class which had
in it many excellent, if somewhat misguided indi
viduals, would this have involved no moral blame ?
This raises the vital question — Could Christ, as man,
be preserved infallibly from error ? The affirmative
answer can only be given, if it is upheld that, in
dealing with Jesus, we are truly dealing, not; with an
ordinary, but with a supernatural Person. Christ's
was a true manhood, yet it was the manhood of One
the root of whose being was in eternity. We are
becoming accustomed to the idea of ' subliminal
consciousness ' — of a depth in personality from
which issue impulses, monitions, intuitions, of which
ordinary consciousness can give no explanation.
The subliminal consciousness in Jesus was Godhead
itself. From it came that fulness of knowledge
and certainty regarding Himself, the Father and
the Father's will, His mission and work in the
world, which constituted His peculiar revelation.
Is it too much to believe that there came from it
also — what was equally essential for His vocation
— those regulative influences and that subtle
sensitiveness to truth and error, which issued,
1 Acts xxvi. 8-11 ; cf. John xvi. 2.

152 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
when Judgment had to be given, in sure and unerring
insight ?
3. Two crucial cases may be taken as instances.
(1) The one is Christ's attitude to the unseen
spiritual world. Jesus believed in angels, in Satan,
in the reality of demoniacal influences. Was this,
as is commonly assumed, illusion, or simple ac
commodation to prevalent belief ? There is the
strongest ground for thinking it was neither. That
Jesus used popular and figurative language in
speaking of these things proves nothing against
the reality of the fact. If language has meaning, He
unquestionably believed in a spiritual kingdom of
evil whose power it was His mission to overthrow,
and whose agency He recognised in the unhappy
subjects of ' possession.' 1 Surely also if there is
any one thing in which Christ's intuition can be
trusted, it is in a matter of this kind, which turns on
rapport with the spiritual world. That world, it
can be confidently said, lay open to Him as it did
to no other. What He solemnly affirmed of it
could not be less than truth. The modem world
may refuse to believe in anything it cannot bring to
scientific tests, and explain by natural — in this case
by psychological — causes. But there may be things
in heaven and in earth which are above even the
modern world's philosophy, and its eyes are perhaps
opening a little to discern that this may be one of
them. (2) The other case is Christ's attitude to the Scrip
tures. Are His statements and declarations here
i It is not the case that all maladies are attributed to evil agency.
Distinction is made between ordinary sickness, disease, and even
lunacy, and possession (Matt. iv. 23, 24, ix. 32-5, x. 8, etc.)

vii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 153
to be taken as authoritative ? What if modern
criticism can show that many of them are wrong ?
Is the matter to be dismissed by saying that it was
not Christ's mission to teach regarding such things ?
Or that He simply adopted the current erroneous
views of His age ? Here it may readily be admitted
that when Jesus used popular language about
' Moses ' or ' Isaiah,' He did nothing more than
designate certain books, and need not be understood
as giving ex cathedra judgments on the intricate
critical questions which the contents of these books
raise. Had such questions been proposed to Him
for decision, He would probably have dealt with
them as He did with the appeal about inheritance :
' Man, who made Me a judge or a divider over you ? ' 1
But Jesus unquestionably did believe in the Old
Testameut as the inspired record of God's revela
tions in the past, — did believe in the essential
historicity of its contents, — did believe in Moses
and his writings, — did believe in the law, — did
believe that psalms and prophets pointed forward
with unerring finger to Himself.2 Was it Jesus
who was wrong in this ? Or is it criticism, so far as
criticism denies these things ? Jesus certainly had
no more knowledge of the methods and processes
of modern criticism than He had of modern astro
nomy or geology. But this does not imply that He
was mistaken in His Judgment on the Scriptures.
The error lies in supposing that the only way of being
assured of the truth of the revelation of God in the
Scriptures is by modern critical study. Jesus,
through His possession in its fulness of the Spirit
that wrought in that earlier revelation, went with
1 Luke xii. 14. 2 Luke xvi. 31, John v. 45-7, etc.

154 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
unerring certainty to the very heart of it. He not
only penetrated to its truth, but intuitively per
ceived the inner connection of truth and history.
Essential truth to Jesus implied historical truth.
The truths of God's' revelation were not in the air.
They became the possession of mankind through
real events and real acts of God. Revelation, in
a word, was historical. Hence the confidence with
which Jesus uses the Old Testament Scriptures, and
continually appeals to them as the word of God.
This, it is granted, does not settle purely literary
questions. But many literary questions are settled
in principle when the Scriptures are approached aa
Jesus approached them.

viii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 155
CHAPTER VIII
REVELATION AND ITS RECORD — INSPIRATION
The proposition may be laid down, that, if a revela
tion has been given, it is natural and reasonable to
expect that a record will be made or kept of the
stages of that revelation, either by its immediate
recipients, or by those who stand within the circle
of the revelation, and are possessed in an eminent
degree of its Spirit. While the necessity of such a
record, if revelation is not altogether to fail of its
object, cannot of itself prove the existence of a code
of sacred writings, it creates a presumption of their
existence, and powerfully supports the claim of a
body of Scriptures professing to satisfy this require
ment, and actually presenting qualities answering
to their claim. I. Preliminary Positions.
A first point in the above proposition is, that,
if a revelation has been given by God, it is reasonable
to expect that provision will be made for the preserva
tion of the knowledge of the revelation in some
permanent and authoritative form. Otherwise the
object in giving the revelation would be frus
trated. The means of the transmission of know
ledge may be oral, so long as oral tradition, combined
with careful instruction,1 can be depended on ; or
1 Exod. xii. 26, 27 ; Deut. vi. 7, 20 ff., lxxviii. 3, 4 ; Luke i. 1, 2,
etc. ; Gen. xviii. 19.

156 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
it may be partly oral and partly documentary ; or
it may be documentary from the beginning. It
may not be possible now to trace all the links in
this process of transmission ; but the product may
bear in itself evidence that the result intended has
been surely accomplished.
Other points assumed in this proposition are that
the record of His revelation which God gives will be
made either (1) by the original recipients of the revela
tions (e.g., the prophets wrote their own books, Paul
his own Epistles, John his own Gospel) ; or (2) by
those who stand within the circle of the revelation
(e.g., Mark and Luke belonged to the immediate
apostolic circle) ; and (3) that those who produce
the record possess in an eminent degree the Spirit
of the revelation, and are fitted by insight and
sympathy to produce the kind of record that is
required for the purposes in view.
A yet more fundamental assumption underlying
the proposition is, that there is, and has been from
the beginning, a Holy Spirit in the community of
believers who can and does confer these qualifica
tions. The denial of the Holy Spirit in the com
munity of God's people may fitly be described as
the primal heresy — the heresy of all heresies — in the
Christian Church. Scripture assumes as axiomatic
a presence and work of the Spirit from its first page
to its last.
II. Extension of the Idea of Revelation.
When the question is raised of the relation of
revelation to its record, it is first to be noted that
an important extension must be made of the idea

viii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 157
of revelation — an extension carrying us much
beyond the scope of the previous discussion. This
in several respects.
1. It is obvious that the word must here be taken
as including, not only direct divine acts and com
munications, but the whole divinely-guided history (¦¦'
of the people of Israel, and, in the New Testament,
the apostolic action in the founding of the Church.
Here again the principle of the co-operation of divine
providence with revelation for the subserving of the
ends of the latter finds application.1 To providence
must be entrusted the securing and preserving of
such materials as are necessary for a proper pre
sentation of the history. These materials need not
be the work of inspired men, but may come through
the ordinary channels of information — may consist
of traditions, monuments, state records, genealogies,
etc., as well as written narratives. Inspiration is
seen in the use made of these materials, not in the
providing of them.
2. A further step is taken when it is observed that
revelation (' unveiling '), in this wider sense, must
be held to include the insight given by the divine
Spirit into the meaning of the history, through which
holy men are enabled to write it for the instruction
of all ages.2 It is analogous to, though, as befitted
their special task, a higher degree of, that ' Spirit
of wisdom and revelation ' in the knowledge of Christ
which is bestowed on all Christians 3 — a form of
the revelation of illumination applied to the laws
and workings of God's providence in the accomplish
ing of the ends of His kingdom. The prophetic
i See above, p. 23. 2 1 Cor. ... 11 ; 2 Pet. i. 20-21.
3 Eph. i. 17.

158 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
insight is of necessity much deeper than that of the
ordinary believer, because it is prophetic — a special
endowment of the Spirit of revelation for a special
end. 3. It is, however, not simply the history of revela
tion on its divine side which is of spiritual interest,
but the human reception also of that revelation,
and the actings of the human spirit under its
influence, and in response to it, which are to be taken
into account. This also is a necessary part of the
unfolding of the meaning of revelation. In other
words, there is needed, in a book which is to be the
record of divine revelation, not only the record of
what may be called its external historical course,
but the record of its internal history in the life and
experience of souls that have grasped its meaning,
and felt its power. What, for instance, would the
record of revelation be in the Old Testament without
the Book of Psalms ?
It begins to be evident that a record of revelation
in the broad sense includes a great deal more than
the divine acts and communication, or even the
history, with which we began. It includes psalms,
songs, wisdom-teaching, Epistles, — records of human
doubt, struggle, temptation, victory, — sections
which unfold the principles of revelation, apply
and enforce them, turn them into subjects of praise,
deal with them reflectively as doctrine. All this,
too, in a very important sense, is revelation. A
very weighty conclusion follows. We began rightly
by distinguishing between revelation and the record
of revelation. There is an important truth in that
distinction, for it marks the fact that there is an
objective revelation in divine acts and words prior

viii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 159
to any written record. But we have now found that
the line between revelation and its record is becoming
very thin, and that, in another true sense, the record,
in the fulness of its contents, is itself for us the ^
revelation. There are parts of the revelation — some
of the prophetic discourses, e.g., or the Epistles —
which never existed in any but written form. But
the record as a whole is the revelation — God's
complete word — for us. Its sufficiency is implied
in the fact that beyond it we do not need to travel
to find God's whole will for our salvation.
III. Inspiration — the Biblical Conception.
We are thus brought to the particular consideration
of the much-debated subject of inspiration — a subject
in the treatment of which, all will allow, peculiar
difficulties emerge.
Two methods present themselves in dealing with
this subject.
1. We might analyse, as has often been done,
the testimony of Scripture to its own inspiration,
then proceed to inquire how far the facts agree with
this testimony'. Or —
2. We may begin with the facts which illustrate
the nature of inspiration, as seen in the book itself,
then endeavour to show how this agrees with the
witness of Scripture to itself.
For the end at present in view the latter is the
preferable course. It assumes nothing, and is not
open to the objection of forcing the phenomena of
Scripture into harmony with any preconceived
theory. Still, some indication of the general view
taken of inspiration by the Biblical writers cannot

160 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
be wholly omitted. It may surprise those who have
not looked into the subject with care to discover
how strong, full, and pervasive, the testimony of
Scripture to its own inspiration is. Meanwhile it
may suffice to recall the summary which the apostle
gives of the qualities imparted by inspiration to
Scripture in what may be called the classical passage
on the subject — that, viz., in 2 Tim. iii. 15-17.
Comparing this passage as it stands in the Author
ised Version with the form it has in the Revised
Version, it will be observed that certain important
chauges are made in the latter.
1. In verse 15, the words ' Holy Scriptures ' are
more correctly translated ' sacred writings.' The
terms (ra tepa lypd/Mfiara) are different from
those used in ver. 16, ' every Scripture ' (praa-a <ypa<f>rj)
The verse then reads : ' That from a babe thou
hast known the sacred writings which are able to
make thee wise unto salvation through faith which
is in Christ Jesus.'
2. Instead of the translation, ' All Scripture is
given by inspiration of God, and is profitable,' etc.
the alternative rendering is preferred : ' Every
Scripture inspired of God is also profitable,' etc.
The R. V. margin, however, retains : ' Every
Scripture is inspired of God, and profitable,' etc.
On this it is to be remarked that, whichever form is
adopted, the sense is not essentially altered. The
form ' Every Scripture inspired of God is also profit
able ' may be a broader, but it is certain that it is
not intended to be a narrower, form of statement
than the other. The apostle assuredly does not
mean to draw a distinction between a Scripture
which is inspired, and a Scripture which is not

viii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 161
inspired, or to suggest that any of the ' sacred
writings ' of the previous verse fall into the latter
category.1 Such an idea is totally foreign to his
thought. What he plainly means is that ' every
Scripture,' as being inspired (OeoirvevcrTos), is also
profitable. 3. That for which inspired Scripture is ' profitable '
is thus described : ' For teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness ; that
the man of God may be complete, furnished com
pletely into every good work.'
The doctrine of the passage, then, may be thus
briefly summed up : —
(1) There is a collection of ' sacred writings '
which Timothy had known from his childhood.
These are, it need hardly be said, the Old Testament
Scriptures. (2) The contents of these books were able to
make wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus
Christ. To Him they pointed ; in Him they were
fulfilled ; in the light of His appearance and salvation
they were now read.
(3) The Scriptures included in this collection
were ' God-inspired ' — more broadly, ' every Scrip
ture,' which may include a Gospel like Luke's (cf.
1 Tim. v. 18), or even Paul's own Epistles (cf. 2 Pet.
iii. 15).
(4) As having this character, the Scriptures were
profitable for teaching, etc., and had as their end
' that the man of God may be complete, furnished
completely unto every good work.' There is no want
of the spiritual life which they did not meet.
Paul, it will be observed, does not give any descrip-
1 Cf. Sanday, Inspiration, pp. 88, 89.
L

162 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
tion of the nature or degree of the inspiration he
attributes to the Old Testament (or other) Scriptures.
He does not, e.g., say that it secured verbal inerrancy
in ordinary historical, geographical, chronological,
or scientific matters. But (1) it seems at least clearly
implied that there was no error which could inter
fere with or nullify the utility of Scripture for the
ends specified; and (2) the qualities which inspira
tion is said to impart to Scripture, rendering it
profitable in so great and rich a degree, make it clear
that the inspiration itself was of a high and excep
tional kind.

IV. Inspiration and the Record.
(A) The Person.
With these general determinations in view, we now
proceed to an examination of the fact of inspiration
as that meets us in the actual phenomena of Scripture.
The chief question which invites attention here is
the general relation to inspiration of its record. The
nature of this relation has already been indicated in
speaking of the record of revelation as made, either
by the original recipients of the revelation, or by
those who stood within the circle of revelation, and
were possessed in a special degree of its Spirit. The
subject must now be more closely investigated.
A first question arises as to the relation of the
inspired person to the record. Scripture is spoken
of as ' God-inspired ' ; but it is important to notice
that inspiration belongs primarily to the person,
and to the book only as it is the product of the
inspired person. There is no inspiration inhering
literally in the paper, ink, or type, of the sacred

viii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 163
volume. The inspiration was in the soul of the
writer ; the qualities that are communicated to the
writing had their seat first in the mind or heart of
the man who wrote. It is on the mind, heart,
faculties of the man that the Spirit works : the
work is inspired as coming from his thought and pen,
and as having the power of quickening and awaken
ing a like glow of soul in those who read. This is
seen very clearly in considering the inspiration of
genius, as it appears, e.g., in the works of a Shake
speare, a Milton, or a Goethe. The inspiration in
these cases is in the souls of the men, and only
derivatively in their writings.
V. (B) Materials of the Record.
A more difficult question arises with respect
to the relation of inspiration to the materials of the '
record. It is not uncommon to hear inspiration
spoken of as if it rendered the subject of it superior
to ordinary sources of information, or at least was
at hand to supply supematurally all gaps or de
ficiencies in that information. The records of the
Bible have only to be studied as they lie before us
to show that this is an entire mistake. It was said
above that it is reasonable to expect that, if God
has given a revelation, He will provide for the know
ledge of that revelation being preserved, and handed
down in its purity. The facts warrant us in saying
that this has been actually done. But this, as has
likewise been pointed out, and as the most conser
vative writers will admit, is the work of providence
rather than of inspiration. Inspiration does not in
any case create the fact-materials it works with.
It works with the materials it has received. Its

164 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
presence reveals itself in the use it makes of the
materials, and in the insight it shows into their
meaning. This will be seen by looking more care
fully at the nature of these materials.
1. In historical matters it is evident that inspira
tion is dependent for its knowledge of facts on the
ordinary channels of information — on older docu
ments, on oral tradition, on public registers, on
genealogical lists, etc. No sober-minded defender
of inspiration would now think of denying this
proposition. One has only to look into the Biblical
books to discover the abundant proof of it. The
claim made is that the sources of information are
good, trustworthy, not that inspiration lifts the
writer above the need of dependence on them. In
the Old Testament, for instance, reference is con
stantly made to older or contemporary writings as
authorities for the information given as to the acts
of the various kings. Thus, for the history of
David, reference is made to three works — the Book
of Samuel the Seer, the Book of Nathan the
Prophet, the Book of Gad the Seer.1 For numerous
reigns extracts are given from ' the Book of the
Chronicles of the Kings of Israel '2 (or ' of the Kings
of Judah,' or ' of the Kings of Israel and Judah ').
The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah embody gene
alogies (thus also Chronicles), letters of Persian
kings, and other documents.3 The Gospel of Luke, in
1 1 Chron. xxix. 20 ; cf. on Solomon, 2 Chron. ix. 29 ; on Reho-
boam, 2 Chron. xii. 15, etc.
2 The quotations from this large work, under one or other of its
titles, occur more than thirty times in the Books of Kings (e.g.,
1 Kings, xiv. 19, xvi. 20). Also repeatedly in the Books of
Chronicles (2 Chron. xx. 34, xxvii. 7, etc. ).
» Ezra ii. 22, iv. 8-22, viii. 1, etc., Neh. vii. 5, 64, etc.

viii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 165
the New Testament, explains distinctly the manner
in which that book was composed, viz., by accurate
research into those things which had been delivered
to the Church by first-hand witnesses. ' Foras
much,' says the evangelist, ' as many have taken in
hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters
which have been fulfilled among us, even as they
delivered them unto us, who from the beginning
were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it
seemed good to me also, having traced the course
of all things accurately from the first, to write unto
thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou
mightest know the certainty concerning the things
wherein thou wast instructed.'1 Where sources
of information fail, or where, as may sometimes
happen, there are lacunae, or blots, or misreadings
of names, or errors of transcription, such as are
incidental to the transmission of all MSS., it is not
to be supposed that supernatural information is
granted to supply the lack.2 Where this is frankly
acknowledged, inspiration is cleared from a great
many of the difficulties which misapprehension has
attached to it.
2. This principle applies not only to historic, but
to prehistoric times, where written records altogether
fail. It does not follow that a sound tradition in
essential things may not have been preserved from
the beginning. On the Biblical representation of
man's origin and relation to God, and of a line of
blessing from the earliest age, it may be presumed
that it would be. But that tradition will necessarily
differ in character from the tradition of historical
times, when language, arts, and letters are in some
i Luke i. 1-4. * See further below, pp. 179-80.

I

166 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
degree developed. It will be couched in part in
the forms of thought and speech characteristic of
the childhood of the world. As the hieroglyphic
precedes alphabetic writing, so the media of trans
mission of the knowledge of events will be of necessity
poetical, symbolical, pictorial, imagmative. This
is to be distinguished from ' myth,' which is a pure
creation of the imagination, and not the medium of
the knowledge of an actual transaction. The
example in Scripture is the early chapters of Genesis.
The theory at present prevailing, that these chapters
— the story of creation and paradise, antediluvian
lists, flood, etc. — are based on Babylonian myths,
appropriated and purified by the spirit of revelation
in Israel, falls below the mark of dignity in the
narratives. It is truer to regard them as the
embodiments of the earliest and most precious
traditions of the race, in the purer form in which
they descended through the ancestors of the Hebrew
people. They may, however, be ancient, and yet bear
traces of transmission in a more or less allegorical
or symbolical form. Few, e.g., will be disposed to
take literally the account of the making of Eve out
of the rib taken from Adam's side while he slept.1
The story of the Fall, again, may well be the account
of an actual historical catastrophe in the commence
ment of the race, in its cradle in the region of the
Tigris and Euphrates.2 Truths of eternal moment
may be enshrined, it is believed are, in its simple
narrative. Yet, with many of the most devout
expounders of the story, we can hardly err in seeing
symbolical elements, or an allegorical dress, in the
features of the serpent, the trees, the cherubim.
i Gen. ii. 21-5. 2 Gen. ii. 8-15.

viii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 167
The cherubim, throughout Scripture, are ideal
figures.1 While, again, remarkable longevity may
have been, and probably was, characteristic of the
oldest race of men, there is, even in the most con
servative circles, a growing consensus of opinion that
the early genealogies cannot be interpreted with
modern literality — that chronology demands an ex
tensive lengthening of the pre-Abrahamic period,
and that the names given in the lists stand rather
for representatives of tribes, or clans, or for heads
of families, than for individuals.2 The genealogies
also are obviously reduced to a technical scheme
in which many links may be omitted. These
chapters, nevertheless, embody valuable ancient
material, picturing the earliest age of humanity,
and conveying profound truths, which inspiration
can appropriate, and utilise for its own ends.
The words of Herder on these early chapters of
Genesis may here be recalled. ' This is a wonder,'
he says, ' to which the worshippers of reason have
not yet given a name — the story of the fall of the
first man. Is it allegory — history — fable ? And
yet there it stands, following the account of the
Creation, one of the pillars of Hercules, beyond
which there is nothing — the point from which all
succeeding history starts. . . . And yet, ye dear,
most ancient and undying traditions of my race —
ye are the very kernel and germ of its most hidden
history. Without you, mankind would be, what
1 On the cherubim, cf., as an older writer, Dr. P. Fairbairn,
Typology of Scripture, i. pp. 222 ff.
2 Cf., e.g., Dr. A A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology (1879), p. 297 ;
Dr. W. H. Green, Bib. Sacra, April 1890 ; Dr. J. D. Davis, in his
Diet, of Bible, art. 'Chronology.'

168 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
so many other things are — a book without a title,
without the first leaves and introduction. With
you our race receives a foundation, a stem and root,
even in God and in father Adam.' 1
This principle applies, finally, to the relations of
inspiration to scientific knowledge. The Bible is
not, nor was ever intended to be, an anticipative
text-book of science. This is evident on the face
of it. Where natural phenomena are described, it
is as they appear to the natural observer. There is
no pretence of acquaintance with our modern
astronomy, geology, physics, or biology; or with
modern scientific classifications of plants and
animals. The standpoint is religious — the creation
of the world by God, its dependence on Him, His
universal activity in it and providence over it.
These conceptions stand on a distinct footing from
details of science. They have their origin in no
source lower than revelation, and carry in them
already the outlines of a cosmogony such as we have
in the opening chapter of Genesis. If there is so
little real conflict — one would rather say so remark
able a harmony — between the Biblical representa
tions and science, it is because the Bible, at the
outset, has got the right standpoint for the contempla
tion and interpretation of nature — the true key for
the unlocking of its riddle. Without seeking a
visional or other special origin for the narrative in
Genesis, this at least may be asserted : that the
sublimity, freedom from mythology, monotheism,
and general agreement with scientific truth of the
Genesis account puts it on a totally different plane
i Aelteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (quoted by Auberlen,
Div. Revelation, p. 188, which also consult on this subject).

viii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 169
from all heathen cosmogonies. It is related to the
Babylonian myth by contrast rather than by
resemblance.

VI. (C) Literary Form of the Record.
A last question relates to the relation of inspiration
to the literary form of the record. The chief point
to be laid stress on here, in opposition to mechanical
views of inspiration — now, however, seldom enter
tained — is, that inspiration does not annul any
power or faculty of the human soul, but raises all
powers to their highest activity, and stimulates
them to their freest exercise. It is not an influence
acting on the soul as a passive instrument, as a player
might draw music from a harp, but a life imparted
to the soul which quickens it to its finest issues.
It follows that there is no form of literature capable
of being employed by the genius of man which
inspiration cannot employ as its medium. Every
one recognises this to some extent in the variety of
styles and forms of composition in the Bible. We
have in its pages historical narrative and biography ;
poetry in psalm, hymn, song ; gnomic wisdom in
proverbs ; didactic and doctrinal composition in the
epistles ; hortatory discourses and appeals ; parable
and allegory ; apocalyptic vision. Each writer in
these departments has his own style and idiosyn
crasies of thought and treatment. His genius is
enkindled, not suppressed, by the power of the
Holy Spirit inspiring him.
This principle of the free use by the Spirit of every
form of literature will, in the main, be accepted by
all ; and hesitation need not be felt in carrying

170 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
out the principle to its fullest extent. Some have
scrupled to admit this.
1. There is the form of drama. Job, e.g., is a great
dramatic poem ; one of the grandest in literature.
It turns, on the human side, on the possibility of
disinterested piety ; on the divine side, on the
vindication of the divine righteousness and goodness
in the permission of the sufferings of the righteous.
Its plan is carried through in a prologue, setting
forth the theme of the Book ; in dialogues between
Job and his friends, in the noblest style of poetry ;
and in an epilogue, restoring the union of virtue
and happiness in the return of Job's prosperity.
Inspiration could not have found a nobler medium
for the inculcation of its lesson ; yet some have
shrunk from admitting the dramatic form of the
work, lest it should detract from the truthfulness
of its contents. One has only to ask — How could
an accurate report of these long, sustained discourses
be obtained or preserved ? to see the untenableness
of the opposite supposition.
2. There is, again, the form of composition which
consists in presenting a theme in the dress of a speech
or treatise of some person of repute. Few, probably,
will dispute that this is a legitimate mode of com
position, if used simply as a literary form, without
attempt to deceive. As such it is often employed in
ordinary literature. No one, e.g., objects to such
a work as Landor's Imaginary Conversations. Where,
on the other hand, there is a deliberate attempt to
deceive by passing off one man's work as the pro
duction of another, as in Macpherson's Ossian, the
practice is condemned. It is ' forgery.' The same
principle must be applied in judging of Holy

viii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 171
Scripture. If a writing is intended to deceive,
there is pseudonymity in the bad sense, and this,
one cannot but Judge, the Spirit of inspiration must
exclude. Simply as a form of literary composition
no legitimate exception can be taken to it. Critics
as conservative in tendency as Hengstenberg and
Keil, e.g., admit this to be the character of the Book
of Ecclesiastes. The Book is a didactic work
composed in the name of Solomon. Most modern
critics regard the Book of Deuteronomy as either a
free literary composition of this kind, or at least a
free reproduction of speeches traditionally attributed
to Moses. Many things, however, have to be taken
into account before this can, to the extent claimed,
be conceded : the testimony of the Book itself, the
archaic character of its contents, the circumstances
of its discovery, its unequivocal acceptance as a Book
of Moses in the age of Josiah.1 Many who take this
view frankly stamp the Book as a pseudograph.
This would, on the principle here stated, be fatal to
its inspiration. It is sounder to argue that the
manifest inspiration of the Book affords warrant for
the rejection of the theory of its fraudulent character.2
3. Under this principle of dramatic representation
may be brought the didactic expansions of speeches,
as in the Books of Chronicles — the speech of Abijah,3
for example — where the homiletic aim of the book
has to be considered. In modern preaching on the
characters and events of the Bible the same thing is
continually witnessed. Scenes are depicted ; and
the thoughts, feelings, and supposed actions of the
i Cf. Problem of the O.T., ch. viii.
2 The same remark may apply to the Second Epistle of Peter.
» 2 Chron. xiii. M2.

V

172 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
persons are dramatically exhibited.1 The genius
of the Hebrew language in using direct speech
('He said,' 'Then answered they,' etc.), where a
modern would use the indirect form (oratio obliqua),
not professing to give the exact words, contributed to
this form of composition. Especially is this dramatic
form of narration inevitable in matters handed
down by oral tradition, and acquiring a particular
form by repeated telling. There is no more
charming idyll than the story of the meeting of
Abraham's servant with Rebekah in Gen. xxiv.
But certainly there was no stenographer at the well-
mouth or in Laban' s house to take down verbatim
reports of the conversations between the parties.
This does not militate against the exquisite literary
form, or essential truth, of the narrative, but it
means that the form in which it reached the narrator
was that which it had acquired in long-preserved
tradition. Still less can it be claimed that verbatim
reports are preserved of conversations in Eden,
or from days before the Flood. The substance
belongs to antiquity ; the form is that assumed
in traditional transmission.
4. Another literary form frequently used in
Scripture — pre-eminently in the discourses of Jesus
— is parable, and, as before seen, commentators are
not a little exercised as to whether some of the
descriptions in the prophets — e.g., Hos. i. — given in
the form of narrative, are not really parabolic or
visionary. Many modern interpreters maintain
that the Book of Jonah, with its story of ' the great
fish,' is really, and in design, a parabolic work. With-
1 The late D. L. Moody was an expert at this dramatic form of
Biblical story-telling.

viii.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 173
out questioning that parable is, for prophetic
purposes, an admissible form of teaching, one
would like to feel surer that the application of the
principle in this case is not simply a way of escaping
from a felt difficulty in the contents of the Book.
The Book of Jonah teaches certainly the loving
regard of God for the heathen, but it is in no way
clear that the Book is intended as a parable to
teach this lesson ; still less that the fish incident is
an allegory of the swallowing up of Israel by heathen
ism, etc. Chap. ii. apart, the Book — entirely different
in cast from the Jewish ' Haggada ' — reads like a
piece of serious history, and is, so far as one can see,
meant to be so accepted. There is a verisimi
litude in the account of Jonah's preaching in Nine
veh which forbids its rejection off-hand as fiction.
Ch. i. 17 ; ii. 10 has a different character, and may
be emblematic of some deliverance, the exact nature
of which was not known, but the memory of which
is preserved in the verses of the psalm (ii. 1-9).
But many will feel that they could accept even the
difficulty of the ' fish ' more readily than they could
reject the historicity of the entire book. Emblem or
history, the incident appears in the New Testament
as the foreshadowing of a greater event than itself —
a ' sign.' x
5. A more delicate point arises when it is asked
how far legend may be employed by inspiration as a
vehicle of instruction. Here again there is room
for distinction. Legend in itself is a legitimate
form of literature, and few preachers or orators
would hesitate to introduce a beautiful or appro
priate legend to adorn their speech or convey a moral.
i Matt. xii. 39-41.

174 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
What is open to the preacher now in proclaiming
the word of God can hardly be thought of as inad
missible to the divine Spirit in preparing a Scripture
for the world. There is, however, a very clear
difference between the use of legend for ornament,
or for purely literary purposes, and the passing off of
legend as a substitute for historic truth. A literary
use of legend may be permissible ; x it may be not
unlawful, even, to use narratives into which legendary
elements have crept, provided the substance of the
narrative is true, and the truth to be conveyed
remains unaffected. It is a very different matter
when, as in some theories, practically the whole
history is converted into legend, and the foundation-
facts on which revelation rests are assailed, or
converted into fictions, inventions, and imagina
tions of men. This happens, e.g., when the whole
patriarchal history, and the larger part even of the
Mosaic history, are converted into legend ; or when,
in the New Testament, the incidents in the life of
Jesus, including His miracles and resurrection, are
resolved into myth, or Babylonian fable. Against
such tendencies strong protest must be entered.
The spirit of the Bible is truth, and history is a thing
sacred in its eyes. The Bible is jealous of its
historical truthfulness, and few books have stood
the most rigorous tests applied to their statements,
even in regard to the remotest times, better than the
Bible has done.
1 E.g., legendary allusions seem to be found in the Epistle of Jude
(vers. 3, 14, are drawn from Apocryphal sources).

ix.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 175
CHAPTER IX
INSPIRATION — THE SCRIPTURAL CLAIMS
The foregoing remarks on inspiration have pro
ceeded on the basis that the inspired record must be,
and is, sufficient to convey to us, in purity and faith
fulness, the whole will of God for our salvation and
guidance. But the course of the discussion, and
survey of the Biblical facts, suggest also certain
limitations with which the doctrine of inspiration,
in its application to the several parts of Scripture,
must necessarily be received. This is an aspect of
the subject which, as arising out of the data pre
sented in Scripture itself, likewise requires attention.
I. Limits of Biblical Inspiration.
The limitations attaching to inspiration arise
from the causes already specified — the progressive-
ness of revelation, the varying degrees of inspiration,
and the fragmentariness or other defects of the
materials with which inspiration deals.
1. A first important principle in this connection is,
that inspiration cannot transcend the existing stage of
revelation, in the sense of wholly rising above the im
perfections of that stage, even although, in prophetic
anticipation, a higher stage may be foreshadowed.
This is only to say, in harmony with what was
formerly advanced on the progressiveness of revela
tion, that, while, at every stage, an erinobling and

176 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
purifying light is shed by inspiration on the whole
field of conceptions then existing, the record is
necessarily marked by whatever imperfections still
inhere in these conceptions. The Mosaic stage of
revelation, e.g., did not clearly condemn polygamy or
slavery, though it held in it (already, as Jesus shows
of marriage, in the narrative of creation) 1 ideas and
principles which effectively wrought for the abolition
of both. The Song of Deborah is an inspired pro
duction — Deborah is a ' prophetess ' 2 — but parts
are on the lower key of the rude age of the Judges.
There are portions of the Psalms — prayers for the
destruction of enemies and imprecatory psalms,3
which no Christian congregation could now sing,
or use in any form without excessive spiritualisa-
tion. We find in the New Testament that inspired
apostles themselves grew in knowledge with regard
to circumcision, and the obligation of the law on the
Gentiles,4 and to the end some had wider and some
narrower views.5 Jesus disclaims the imitation by
His disciples of the example of Elijah.0 What was
suitable to the age and circumstances of that
prophet (Jesus does not condemn Elijah) might not
be suitable to a higher dispensation.7 All this does
not detract from the sufficiency of the Biblical
record, taken as a whole ; it detracts only from the
sufficiency of certain portions of it if taken by them
selves. The lower stages have to be read in the
light of the higher, with the correction which the
higher affords. A Christian may uphold the divine
1 Matt. ix. 3-9. 2 Judges, iv. 4 ; v. * E.g. Ps. cix.
« Acts x. 14, 15, 28 ; xi. 8, 9 ; xv. 6-29 ; Gal. ii. 12, 13.
« Acts xxi. 18, 25. 6 Luke ix. 34-6.
* Cf. on John the Baptist, Matt. xi. 11.

ix.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 177
authority of the Old Testament, but he will not feel
that he is bound by the Mosaic law of divorce. Jesus
did not come to destroy the law or the prophets, but
to fulfil them.1 But the fulfilment was itself an
abrogation of whatever was imperfect in the earlier
stages. 2. A second important limitation in the application
of the idea of inspiration arises from the recognition
of degrees in inspiration. The doctrine of degrees
in inspiration has been wrought out, occasionally
with great minuteness, in the older theology ; but
it is in a somewhat different sense the term is used
now. The doctrine need not be viewed with
jealousy, or stumbled at, if properly explained and
reasonably guarded. It is implied, as already said,
in any true doctrine of inspiration, that the record
of revelation must emanate from one possessed in
a special degree of the Spirit of revelation, qualifying
bim for his task ; but it does not follow that all
inspired persons possess the Spirit in a like eminent
degree. Inspiration in Scripture is of different kinds,
and for different ends. It is certainly too narrow
an idea of inspiration to tie it down to the production
of the written record. There is inspiration in
speech as well as in writing ; and there are lower
grades of inspiration in the form of special charismata
(wisdom, artistic skill, physical powers), shading
off till it becomes difficult to distinguish them from
heightened natural endowment. A special inspira
tion, e.g., is ascribed to Bezaleel for the construction
of the tabernacle.2 Samson's possession by the
Spirit took the form of supernatural strength.3
i Matt. v. 17, 18. 2 Ex. xxxv. 30, 31.
* Judges xiii. 24, 25 ; xiv. 18 ; xv. 14, etc.
M

178 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
But, keeping to inspiration in its relation to the
written record, can it be doubted that like distinc
tions are to be recognised ? The difference may
depend on the subject of inspiration himself or
herself; — a Deborah, e.g., stood on an immensely
lower plane than an Isaiah or a Paul; or it may
depend on the greater or less energy of the working
of the Spirit at particular periods or under particular
conditions. Laws are at work here, as in the
varying degrees in the intensity of the operation of
the Spirit in the history of the Church (Revivals),
which we can only imperfectly comprehend. But
the fact is obvious that, whereas at some periods
and in some souls the Spirit of revelation is working,
if one may so say, at a maximum, at other times,
and in other persons, He is operating on a lower
plane, and, still to speak reverently, with feebler
energy. Every one, by a species of ' higher criticism'
of his own, recognises this in practice, whatever he
may do in theory. No one, e.g., would compare the
Books of Chronicles, in point of spirituality, with
the prophecies of Isaiah or the Gospel of John,
or the books of Esther and Ecclesiastes, as to the
canonicity of which the later Jews themselves had
doubts, with the Epistles of Paul. The prophets
after the exile stand, on the whole, on a lower plane
than the earlier prophets — Hosea, Amos, Isaiah,
etc. In the natural body, as Paul reminds us,1 all
members have not the same office, and so is it here.
Some parts of Scripture have a humbler function to
fulfil than others. It may be a very real and
necessary function, but it is not the highest. The
level of truth in one place is not as high as in others.
1 Rom. xii. 4 ; 1 Cor. xii. 12-26.

ix] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 179
To get the whole truth we have to take the record
in its entirety, comparing part with part. The
Epistle of James may be as necessary a part of a
complete Scripture as the Epistles of Paul, but the
doctrine of Justification would not be understood
from the Epistle of James alone.
3. As a third limitation in the application of the
idea of inspiration, account has to be taken also of
the character and quality of the sources of information
inspiration has to work with, and of the fact that,
while adequate for the ends of revelation, these
sources, judged by a literary standard, may be in
various ways defective. Inspiration, it has been
seen, has its materials furnished to it. These
materials come in various ways, often through
secular channels. There may be gaps or omissions
in the information conveyed. In minor respects,
as in the copying of MSS., mistakes may have crept
into them. The writers of the historical books
(Samuel, Kings, Chronicles) used, as we found,
earlier documentary material, — prophetic memoirs,
state chronicles, histories of kings, lists, genealogies,
etc. It is this which gives the books the high
historical value they possess. If, however, these
prophetic memoirs, lists, etc. were transmitted in
MS. form, as they must have been, the MSS. were
obviously open to the ordinary mishaps of trans
mission. Names and numbers might get corrupted,
no doubt often did, before the inspired author was
reached. It is often said that inspiration only
guarantees freedom from all mistake in the original
autograph. But in the cases supposed there is a
long previous history of documents to be considered.
This, in turn, may affect the inspired writer's own

180 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
treatment, as, e.g., in the computation of the
synchronisms in the Books of Kings, where an error,
due to corruption in the regnal years of any of the
kings (Pekah's twenty years in 2 Kings xv. 27, e.g., is
shown by the Assyrian synchronisms to be a mistake)
may throw the reckoning out of step. Genealogical
lists, again, may readily be fragmentary, torn, or
illegible, in the form in which they came into the
hands of the sacred writers, as was manifestly the
case in some of the lists in Ezra, Nehemiah, and
Chronicles. Is inspiration to take responsibility
for these defects ? Or is a supernatural communica
tion to be assumed, in each case, to supply the
missing word, or correct the misspelt name or
corrupted number ? This cannot be reasonably
maintained, nor does the result in the books show
that such correction was made. It did not need
to be for the ends of inspiration. Matthew Henry's
suggestive remarks on this head have been quoted
by the author in another connectisn.1 This devout
writer, commenting on 1 Chron. viii. 1-32, observes :
' As to the difficulties that occur in this and the
foregoing genealogies we need not perplex ourselves.
I presume, Ezra took them as he found them in
the books of the Kings of Israel and Judah (ch. ix. 1),
according as they were given in by the several tribes,
each observing what method they thought fit.
Hence some ascend, others descend ; some have
numbers affixed, others places ; some have historical
remarks intermixed, others have not ; some are
shorter, others longer ; some agree with other
records, others differ ; some, it seems likely, were
torn, erased, and blotted, others more legible.
i Prob. ofO.T., pp. 486-7.

ix.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 181
Those of Dan and Reuben were entirely lost.
This holy man wrote as he was moved by the Holy
Ghost ; but there was no necessity for the making
up of the defects, no, nor for the rectifying of the
mistakes of these genealogies by inspiration. It
was sufficient that he copied them out as they came
to hand, or so much of them as was requisite for the
present purpose, which was the directing of the
returned exiles to settle as nearly as they could
with those of their own family, and in the places of
their former residence.'
The general phenomena which have to be dealt
with in framing a doctrine of the inspiration of
Scripture have thus been briefly sketched. More
special points will arise as the subject is further
treated. It now remains to be asked how far the
conclusions reached are in harmony with the teach
ings and claims of Scripture itself as to its own
inspiration, and what kind of doctrine of inspiration
answers best to both requirements — the Scriptural
claims, and the actual phenomena of the book.
II. Claim to Inspiration. (A) The Old
Testament in the New.
A first question is — Is any claim made in Scripture
itself to an inspiration of the book as a whole, and
in its several parts ? If there is, what is the nature
of the claim, and what weight is to be given to it ?
In seeking an answer to this question, one fact
confronts us at the outset. No claim to inspiration
made in the Bible — even in such a passage as 2 Tim.
iii. 15-17 — can be regarded as covering the whole of
Scripture as we have it. This for the simple reason

182 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
that the Bible as a completed book did not then
exist. Plainly ' the Scriptures,' in the usage of the
Gospels and the Epistles, can, with the exception of
2 Pet. iii. 16, where Paul's Epistles are included,
and possibly 1 Tim. v. 18, only be interpreted of
the Old Testament. The expression, however, does
include the Old Testament writings, according to the
ordinary Canon of the Jews, which may be taken
as practically identical with our own. It does not
follow that these passages have no bearing on the
writings of the New Testament, or furnish no
guidance as to the estimate to be put on these. Few,
probably, will admit a supernatural inspiration for
the Old Testament and deny it to the New. An
Old Testament Scripture settles the question of
principle as to an inspired record of revelation.
Reasons may be shown for bringing the New Testa
ment writings under the same category ; the state
ments of Jesus and His apostles will then be of
validity for the New Testament also.
1. Beginning, then, with the Old Testament, it may
be regarded as universally conceded that, in the time
of Jesus and His apostles, the books we call canonical
were accepted by the Jewish people as in the full
and true sense ' God-inspired.'' The Sadducees,
indeed, accepted only the ' law,' and there were
disputes among a section of the Rabbis as to Ecclesi-
astes and Esther ; but no such doubts existed in the
minds of the bulk of the people, and certainly none
existed in the minds of the writers of the New Testa
ment. Modern writers may question whether the
view of Jesus and His apostles was a correct one,
but they will not question that the view was there.
2. One crucial passage affirming this belief, 2 Tim.

ix.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 183
iii. 15-17, has already been considered. It really
embodies the consentient New Testament doctrine
on the subject. Everywhere a code of writings is
recognised bearing the designations of ' the Scrip
tures,' x the holy Scriptures,' 2 ' the sacred writings,' 3
— the same which the Jews technically divided into
' the law, the prophets, and the (holy) writings,' 4 —
and everywhere, in direct speech or by implication,
these writings are treated as the ' God-inspired '
and authoritative record of God's revelations to, and
dealings with, His ancient people. They are, as
Paul names them, ' the oracles of God.' 6 It is thus,
also unquestionably, that Jesus received the Old
Testament. The Synoptics and John are at one in
their teaching here. The ' law ' was to Jesus * the
commandment of God,' as contradistinguished from
the ' tradition ' of men,6 and ' one jot or one tittle,'
He declared, would not pass from it ' till all things be
accomplished.' 7 Prophecies and psalms were ful
filled in Him.8 ' The Son of Man goeth,' He declared,
'even as it is written of Him.'9 His appeal was
always to Scripture, and the word of Scripture was
final with Him. ' Have ye not read ? ' 10 ' Ye do err,
not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.' u
This, because ' God ' speaks in them.12 ' Ye search
the Scriptures,' He says to the Jews, ' because ye
think that in them ye have eternal life ; and these

i Matt. xxi. 42 ; Luke xxiv. 27. ' Rom. i. 2.
* 2 Tim. iii. 15. * Cf. Luke xxiv. 44.
" Rom. iii. 2. « Matt. xv. 6, 9.
' Matt. v. 18. 8 Luke xviii. 31 ; xxii. 37 ; xxiv. 27, 44.
» Matt. xxvi. 24 ; Mark xiv. 21.
io Matt. xix. 4. " Matt. xxii. 29.
u Ver. 31 ; cf. Christ's answers to the tempter, Matt. iv. 4, 6, 7.

184 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
are they which bear witness of me.' 1 ' If ye believed
Moses, ye would believe me ; for he wrote of me.' '
He draws the most pregnant principles and lessons
from the sacred history— even from its earliest parts.3
David spake ' in the Spirit.' 4 ' The Scripture,' He
avers, as common ground between Him and the Jews,
' cannot be broken.' 5 The Jews are those ' unto
whom the word of God came.' 6 No doctrine of in
spiration, surely, could be more emphatic.
3. Yet Jesus, as Founder and Lord of a new
dispensation (' the Kingdom of Heaven '), did not
accept the Old Testament unconditionally, as if the
stage of revelation represented in it were perfect, or
was not, with His coming, to give place to a higher.
The dispensational imperfections of the Old Testa
ment are fully recognised. He took up, therefore,
as Son of Man, a lordly and discretionary attitude
towards its letter, laws, and institutions. This is
seen in His teaching on such subjects as marriage and
divorce,7 the Sabbath,8 clean and unclean in meats,9
etc. He fulfilled, but in fulfilling, necessarily super
seded and abolished much in the legal economy.
The precepts of the law received a deeper and fuller
interpretation and expression, in agreement always,
however, with the law's own underlying principles.10
4. Taught by Jesus, and possessed of the Spirit
promised to them,11 the apostles and other New
i John v. 39. 2 Vers. 46, 47 ; cf. Luke xvi. 31.
3 Matt. xix. 4-6 (marriage) ; xxii. 31, 32 (resurrection) ; Matt.
xxiv. 37, 38 ; Luke xvii. 26-32 (Noah, Lot).
* Matt. xxii. 43.
» John x. 35. « Ibid.
1 Matt. xix. 8, 9. 8 Mark ii. 27, 28.
• Mark vii. 18, 19. io Matt. v. 12 ; xxii. 35, 40.
u Luke xxiv. 49 ; John xvi. 26 ; xx. 22 ; Acts ii.

ix.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 185
Testament writers accept and treat the Old
Testament precisely as Jesus did. The inspiration
of the Old Testament Scriptures is constantly
assumed, though, naturally, the apostolic witness
relates chiefly to the prophets and psalms.1 The
Messianic interpretation of Scripture employed by
them is the continuation of that employed by Jesus
Himself. The Spirit of Christ spake in the prophets.2
The word of Scripture is a word of the Holy Spirit.3
Scripture, comprehensively, is ' God-inspired.'

III. (B) The Old Testament Claim in General.
1. The above testimonies, which could be greatly
multiplied, seem sufficiently explicit. The ques
tion which will now be asked is, whether they are
borne out by the claims which the Old Testament
makes for itself. That the Jews believed in the
inspiration of their sacred writings is allowed. Do
the New Testament passages prove more than that
Jesus and His apostles shared the belief of their
nation ? It might perhaps be answered that, in
the Christian Church, at least, the Old Testament
can never mean less to Christ's disciples than it
meant to Christ Himself. The question is, however,
a fair one as to the compatibility of the claim made
for the Old Testament in the passages cited with the
witness of the book itself. And here many doubts
may be suggested. The Old Testament, like the
New, is not a single work, but a collection — a library
i Acts i. 16 ; ii. 16 ff. ; iii. 18, 24 ; Rom. i. 2 ; iii. 21 ; xvi. 26 ;
1 Cor. xv. 3, 4 ; Heb. iii. 6 ff. ; 1 Pet. i. 2 ; Rev. xix. 10.
» 1 Pet. i. 11.
» Acts xxviii. 25 ; Heb. iii. 7 ; vi 11, etc. ; 2 Pet. i. 20.

186 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
— of books. The origin of many of these is obscure ;
some appear to make no claim to inspiration ; most
were brought together and acquired canonical
authority only at a late period. Where is the
evidence that this collection of literature as a
whole possesses the quality of inspiration claimed
for it ?
2. At this point the question of the inspiration
of the Old Testament becomes implicated with that
of canonicity — a subject on which it is not possible
here to enter.1 This only may be said, that, among
the causes determining the reception of a book into
the Old Testament Canon, belief in the inspiration
of the book may be accounted as the chief. This is
the reason which Josephus gives ijor the rejection of
later books, viz., ' the exact succession of prophets
having been no longer maintained.' 2 The books
which were received were, according to him, ' justly
accredited as divine.' 3 On any other principle it
would be difficult to account for the exclusion of such
a work as that of the Son of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus),
written about 200 B.C., or of compositions like the
Psalms of Solomon. While, moreover, many ques
tions regarding the origin of particular books must
remain unsolved, the greater part of the Old Testa
ment can be shown by its internal character, by the
claims made for it, and by its place in the history
of revelation, to be entitled to rank as a work of
inspiration. 3. It is a fact of much significance that, in many
passages of the Old Testament, we find references to
what appears to be a code of sacred writings in use
* Cf. Prob. ofO. T., pp. 481 ff.
* Contra Apion. , i. 8. 3 Rnd.

ix.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 187
among the pious in Israel, through the study of which
their minds were nourished, and by meditation on
which they were comforted and sustained. Such
are the references to the ' law ' and ' word ' of God,
in many of the Psalms. Whatever the date of
compositions like Pss. i., xix., cxix., they do not,
at least, come down so far as the final closing of
the Canon ; and no one who reads attentively
their eulogies on God's law, and exhortations to
meditation on it, and notes the qualities ascribed
to the law (enlightening, quickening, converting,
cleansing, directing, etc.), can fail to perceive that
a very considerable range of literature, in a known
form, must already have existed for the godly. It
is arbitrary to bring the whole of the Psalms down
below the Exile. Ps. i. would seem to have existed
before Jeremiah, who quotes it.1 Ps. xix. has a good
claim to be Davidic.
It is not the Psalms themselves, however, that
are alone in question ; it is the ' law ' of God which
they presuppose and praise. The attributes
ascribed to the law — attributes which only inspira
tion could impart — can hardly be satisfied by the
sacrificial and priestly directions of the Levitical
code. Something of wider scope and more spiritual
character must be understood. Or take such
passages as Ps. xii. 6 : ' The words of the Lord are
pure words, as silver tried in a furnace, purified
seven times ' ; or Ps. xvii. 4 : ' By the word of Thy
lips, I have kept me from the ways of the violent ' ;
or the references to God's ' ways,' ' ordinances,'
' statutes,' in Ps. xviii. 21, 22 (by the highest title
Davidic), and the inference must be the same. The
1 Jer. xvii. 8.

188 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
psalmists had sure ' words ' of God, — tried words,
rules and laws for life, on which they could
rely with certainty as coming from Jehovah.
Other parts of the Old Testament present similar
indications. Job is exhorted to ' receive the law from
[God's] mouth and lay up His words ' in his heart ; l
and the patriarch' replies : ' His way have I kept,
and turned not aside. I have not gone back from
the commandment of His lips : I have treasured
up the words of His mouth more than any necessary
food.' 2 In Proverbs we read : ' Every word of
God is tried. . . . Add thou not to His words,
lest He reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.' 3
Where were these life-giving words to be found, if
not in some form of Scripture ? So Isaiah can
appeal ' to the law and to the testimony,' i and can
exhort his readers : ' Seek ye out of the book of the
Lord, and read : no one of these shall be missing,
none shall want her mate.' 5 Jeremiah can speak
of a ' law of the Lord,' which false pens had
falsified.6 Hosea, speaking for Jehovah, mourns :
' I wrote for him the ten thousand things of my law ;
but they are counted as a strange thing.' 7 Daniel
consults ' the books ' for the number of the years
set for the desolation of Jerusalem,8 and speaks of
that which was 'written in the law of Moses, the
servant of God.' 9 In brief, Scriptures, which must
have contained the records of God's dealings with
His people, a knowledge of which is constantly
presupposed, ' laws ' of God for the regulation of
the heart and conduct, ' statutes,' ' ordinances,'
i Job xxii. 22. 2,Job xxiii. 11, 12. « Prov. xxx. 5, 6.
* Is. viii. 20. 5 Is. viii. 20. « Jer. viii. 8.
' Hos. viii. 12. » Dan. ix. 2. » Vers. 11-13.

ix.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 189
' words ' of God, are a postulate of a great part of
the Old Testament.
P7. (t7) Old Testament Claim— The Several
Parts.
It is necessary now to approach nearer, and ask
whether any of these inspired Scriptures can be more
closely identified. And here another fact which
meets us is, that, if the testimony of the Old Testa
ment itself be taken — and it is that we are now
dealing with, not theories about the Old Testament
— a large part of the materials of the Old Testa
ment do come from men who were indubitably,
and in the highest sense, inspired.
1. This appears in part from the character of the
material ; but it appears also from what is expressly
stated. The law, as a whole, claims divine authority.
As a whole, also, it claims to emanate from Moses.
Grant, if it is thought necessary, that it may have
undergone revision, codification, editing, at later
times, by competent authority — for only under such
authority could changes gain acceptance — it is still
' the book of the law of Moses ' as far back as we can
trace it.1 Parts of it are attested in a special manner.
The Book of the Covenant, e.g., is expressly said to
have been written by Moses at the forming of the
covenant with Jehovah at Sinai.2 The Book of
Deuteronomy is likewise said — the discourses
contained in it at least are — to have been written
by Moses, and formally delivered by him to the
priests.3 Whether the book in its existing form is
i Josh. i. 7, 8 ; viii. 30, 35 ; xxiv. 26 ; 2 Kings xiv. 6 ; Neh. viii.
1 ; Dan. ix. 11-13, etc.
» Ex. xxiv. 4, 7. * Deut. xxxi. 9, 24.

190 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
this very work, or a more or less expanded repro
duction of it by a later prophet, is a secondary
question ; the inspiration of the book is felt in
every verse and line. Joshua, similarly, is declared
to have written in ' the book of the law of the Lord.' 1
2. Taking next the extensive prophetic literature
of the Old Testament, it will not be denied that this
claims to be produced under direct divine inspira
tion. The prophets are the inspired men, par excel
lence, of the Old Testament. Called and equipped
for their special work by God, endowed with a
special measure of His Spirit, receiving their messages
from His hand, delivering them under the solemn
sanction of a ' Thus saith the Lord,' accrediting them
with supernatural prediction, they speak and write
with an authority which cannot be taken from them.
Their writings, accordingly, answer in the highest
degree to the tests of inspiration.
3. The prophets, however, were more than
preachers ; they were the historians in Israel.
History, in the Old Testament, in its conception,
genesis, spirit, execution, is of necessity sacred history.
It is never a mere record of secular events, but is a
history of revelation, — such, therefore, as only men of
a prophetic spirit could produce. The Jews in
dicated their sense of this fact, and the idea under
which the historical books were accepted into the
Canon, by designating the series from Joshua to
2 Kings (Ruth excepted) ' the former prophets.'
The prophets, in fact, seem all along to have acted
as the sacred ' historiographers ' of the nation, writ
ing monographs on particular reigns, or histories of
events contemporary, or nearly so, with themselves.
1 Josh. xxiv. 26.

ix.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 191
This is fully borne out by the notices in the later
books, already alluded to, of the prophetic sources
from which the longer narratives are compiled.1
While the prophetic compositions were themselves
in circulation, they would, in their separate form,
to some extent serve the purpose of Scripture. It
was needful, however, that in the end longer histories
should be drawn up ; and, though we cannot now
trace the steps by which these sacred documents,
were collected, the essential parts extracted from
them, and the whole brought together in the setting
which exhibited the divine meaning, we may see in
the product that this task also was carried through
by^ prophetically minded men, themselves deeply
imbued with the spirit of the history they recorded.
It is this prophetic character of the books which
gives them their claim to a place in an inspired
collection. The same remark applies to the earlier history in
the Pentateuch. The Book of Genesis is a history
of revelation till the death of Joseph. The remain
ing books record, along with the legislation, the
events of the Mosaic period — that formative period
in Israel's history. These books form really part of
the ' law,' the foundations of which, if not much
more, Moses, the most gifted of prophetic spirits, is
credited with laying. If Joshua, on whom the
spirit of Moses rested,2 and others like-minded,
collaborated or continued the work, the reality of
its inspiration, internally attested by its massive
unity, insight, and pervasion by the great ideas of
revelation, is not affected.
1 See above, p. 164 Cf. Kirkpatrick, Divine Library of 0. T.,
pp. 13 ff. ; Ottley, Aspects of 0. T., p. 145 ff., etc. 2 Josh. i. 1-9.

192 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
4. The Psalms, which exhibit rather than declare
their inspiration, have already been spoken of ; but
one passage, which may be regarded as typical of
their standpoint on this subject, represents David
as saying, ' David the son of Jesse saith. . . the
Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His word was
upon my tongue.' 1 The Wisdom-literature has its
classical form in the Book of Proverbs, and is
there put forth, not as a product of man's genius,
but as an utterance of the Eternal Wisdom, the
outpouring of whose Spirit is promised.2

V. New Testament Inspiration.
1. If a seemingly disproportionate attention has
been bestowed upon the Old Testament, it is for the
reason already given, that few who acknowledge a
divine inspiration in the Old Testament will be
disposed to deny it to the New. The apostles are
placed by Jesus Himself in the category of prophets,3
again are raised above the prophets of the Old Testa
ment.4 It is promised that, in their need, the Spirit
of the Father will speak in them.6 Especially in the
farewell discourses of Jesus is the Spirit promised to
guide them into all truth, and to bring all things to
their remembrance, whatsoever He had said to them.6
The outpouring of the Spirit on the disciples —
1 2 Sam. xxiii. 2. Dr. Sanday remarks : ' We have to note that
there are a number of instances in which the Psalmist adopts forms
of language which we are accustomed to associate specially with
prophecy,' and refers for instances to Dr. Cheyne's Aids to Devout
Study, etc., p. 152 (Inspiration, p. 195).
2 Prov. i. 20 ff. ; viii. 1 ; 'prophecy,' xxx. 1. Cf. 1 Kingsiii. 5-15.
3 Matt. xxiv. 34. * Matt. xi. 11 ; xii. 17, 52. * Matt. *. 20.
6 John xiv. 26 ; xv. 26, 27 ; xvi. 13, 14.

ix.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 193
pre-eminently on the apostles — at Pentecost, with
its remarkable results in illumination of the mind
and endowment with spiritual and miraculous
power, shows in how signal a way this promise was
fulfilled.1 The Spirit was the element in which the
early Church lived. Baptism of the Spirit, with
accompanying gifts, frequently followed baptism
and the laying on of hands.2 The apostles, and men
like Stephen, are spoken of as ' filled with the Holy
Spirit,' 3 and as discoursing under His influence.
Revelations, prophecies, tongues, were no un
common phenomena.* It is understood, rather
than always claimed, that writings emanating from
apostles and those associated with them possessed
the quality of inspiration.
2. The writings of the New Testament have only
to be examined to make clear, not only the light and
power which are the supreme attestation of their
inspiration, but the pervading assumption, and often
open assertion, of their unique and authoritative
character as inspired writings.5 Paul's apostleship
was based upon a special call and a distinct mission,
for the carrying out of which he had special promises
and special qualifications given to him (' filled with
the Holy Spirit' ).6 He never faltered in his claim
to be ' an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of
God ' 7 — ' separated unto the Gospel of God ' 8 —
who had received his message, not from man, but
by ' revelation ' from heaven.9 In his preaching h©
1 Acts ii. etc. 2 Acts viii. 15-17, etc.
' Acts ii. 4 ; iv. 8 ; vii. 55, etc. * 1 Cor. xii.
6 1 Cor. ii. 4-10 ; 1 Thess. i. 5 ; ii. 13 ; 1 John iv. 6 ; Rev. xxii.
19, etc.
« Acts ix. 17. 7 Eph. i. 1, etc.
• Rom. i. 1. » Gal. i. 11, 12,
N

194 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
claimed to possess the Spirit,1 and to speak ' the word
of God,' in the fullest and most authoritative sense.2
John makes similar claims to the possession of the
Spirit, enabling him to understand and to write the
truth so that no one is at liberty to gainsay.3 He
claims, indeed, for his hearers a like ' unctfon,'
qualifying them to understand and Judge of the
truth,4 as Paul prays that a ' spirit of wisdom
and revelation ' may be given to his converts.5
But the apostles are the teachers ; their converts
and disciples are the taught. Peter writes with a
like clear note of certainty, as of one who preached
the Gospel ' by the Holy Spirit sent down from
heaven.' 6 The Apocalypse is a product of the Spirit
of prophecy — a ' revelation.' 7 In general — and
stronger language could not be used — the ' mystery
of Christ ' has ' now been revealed unto His holy
apostles and prophets in the Spirit.' 8 In conse
quence, the Church is declared to be ' built upon the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ
Jesus Himself being the chief corner stone.' 9
3. These illustrations suffice to show in how
special a manner inspiration is claimed for the
apostolic writings, and in how real a sense these are
entitled to be brought under the category of
' Scripture ' — as, indeed, Paul's Epistles already are
in 2 Pet. iii. 16. The character of New Testament
inspiration will receive further elucidation in the
next chapter, but a word may perhaps be said here
1 1 Cor. ii. 12, 13, 16.
2 Rom. x. 8 ; 2 Cor. 1, 18 ; v. 19 ; 1 Thess. ii. 13 ; iii. 14 ; Col. i.
25, etc.
3 1 John iv. 6 ; v. 15, 19, 20. * 1 John ii. 20, 26-7 ; iv. 6.
» Eph. i. 17. « 1 Pet. i. 12.
» Rev. xxii. 19; cf. i. 1-3. q Eph. iii. 5. » Eph. ii. 20.

ix.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 195
on the inspiration of those who stand in a secondary
relation to the apostles — writers, e.g., like Mark and
Luke. On what grounds, or in what sense, is inspira
tion to be attributed to them ? The inspiration
of the Gospels by these writers, as will be seen later,
does not rest solely on the inspiration of their
immediate authors. Much of their content is the
well-attested and internally confirmed teaching of
Jesus Himself : their substance, almost entirely,
is that compendium of sayings and events, resting
on testimony of apostles and eye-witnesses, which
had taken well-fixed shape as the result of Spirit-
guided apostolic teaching and preaching long before
the evangelists brought it into its present written
form. But the evangelists were none the less
themselves inspired men. They were men who
belonged to the apostolic circle, and stood in a
peculiar relation of intimacy with the apostles,
sharing in their work, and, as the whole conditions
of the Church in that age prove, possessing in a special
degree gifts of the Spirit.
This is an interesting point. A comparison of the
facts relating to the companions of the apostles —
to Silas, Timothy, Mark, Luke, in particular — did
space permit of it, would show how broad a basis
for the claim to inspiration could here be laid. One
need only recall the manner in which Paul habitually
associates such men with himself in the most sacred
and responsible functions of his ministry, — how he
writes, e.g., ' For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who
was preached among you by me, even by me, and
Silvanus and Timothy, was not yea and nay,' 1 —
how he Joins the same two with him in his epistolary
i 2 Cor. i. 19.

196 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
greeting to the Thessalonians, and says : ' Our
Gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in
power, and in the Holy Spirit,' 1 — how he repeatedly
dwells on 'the gift' which Timothy had received,
with prophesyings, by the laying on of hands,2 —
to see that Mark and Luke must have been sharers
of a like consecration and like gifts,3 qualifying
them for the special work they were ultimately to
undertake. The Spirit's guidance, which was not
wanting in every step of an apostle's journey,* was
not likely to be lacking when the life of the Master
came to be written. And the result shows beyond
controversy that it was not.
i 1 Thess. i. 1, 5.
2 1 Tim. i. 18 ; iv. 14 ; 2 Tim. i. 6, 14.
» Cf. Acts xii. 25 ; xiii. 1, 2, 5 ; xv. 36-41, eta
* Acts xvi. 7, etc

x.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 197

CHAPTER X
INSPIRATION — RESULTS FOR DOCTRINE OF
HOLY SCRIPTURE
It is now time to gather up results, and ask whether
a doctrine of inspiration is attainable which shall at
once be true to the facts of the record and true to
the claims of Scripture itself on this important
subject. In the answer to this question is involved
the answer to another — Is there for the Church of
to-day a tenable doctrine of Holy Scripture ?
I. Revelation and Inspiration — Their
Relations.
1. It will have been seen that it is sought in
the preceding pages to approach the subject of
inspiration through that of revelation. This seems
the right method to pursue. The doctrine of
inspiration grows out of that of revelation, and can
only be made intelligible through the latter. The
older method was to prove first the inspiration
(by historical evidence, miracles, claims of writers),
then through that establish the revelation. This
view still finds an echo in the note sometimes heard
— ' If the inspiration of the Bible (commonly some
theory of inspiration) be given up, what have we left
to hold by ? ' It is urged, e.g., that unless we can
demonstrate what is called the ' inerrancy ' of the
Biblical record, down even to its minutest details,

198 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
the whole edifice of belief in revealed religion falls
to the ground. This, on the face of it, is a most
suicidal position for any defender of revelation to
take up. It is certainly a much easier matter to
prove the reality of a divine revelation in the
history of Israel, or in Christ, than it is to prove the
inerrant inspiration of every part of the record
through which that revelation has come to us.
Grant the Gospels to be only ordinary historical
documents — trustworthy records of the life of Christ,
apart from any special inspiration in their authors —
we should still, one may contend, be shut up as much
as ever to the belief that the Person whose words
and works they narrate was One who made super
human claims, and whose character, words, and
deeds attested the truth of these claims.1 It is
assuredly easier to believe that Jesus spoke and acted
in the way the Gospels declare Him to have done,
than to prove that Mark and Luke possessed
an exceptional inspiration in the composition of
their writings — though, as has been already stated,
there is the best reason for believing that they did.
1 This has often been put as strongly as it can be by the stoutest
defenders of the infallibility of Scripture. Cf., e.g., Bannerman,
Inspiration : the Infallible Truth and Divine Authority of the Holy
Scriptures, pp. 18 ff. Drs. Hodge and Warfield, arguing for an
' errorless Scripture,' write : ' Nor should we ever allow it to be
believed that the truth of Christianity depends upon any doctrine of
inspiration whatever. Revelation came in large part before the
record of it, and the Christian Church before the New Testament
Scriptures. Inspiration can have no meaning if Christianity is not
true, but Christianity would be true and divine, and being so, would
stand, even if God had not been pleased to give us, in addition to his
revelation of saving truth, an infallible record of that revelation
absolutely errorless by means of inspiration' (Presby. Rev., April
1881, p. 227).

x.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 199
2. The same remark applies to the tendency to
make 'inerrancy' — i.e., hard and fast literality in
minute matters of historical, geographical, and
scientific detail — a point in the essence of the doctrine
of inspiration. The subject will come up later, but
at present it may be observed that, at best, such
' inerrancy ' can never be demonstrated with a
cogency which entitles it to rank as the foundation of
a belief in inspiration. It must remain to those who
hold it a doctrine of faith ; a deduction from what
they deem to be implied in an inspiration established
independently of it ; not a ground of belief in the
inspiration.1 It is, as before, easier to establish the
fact of the reality and all-pervading presence of an
inspiration adequate to the ends of revelation than
to demonstrate this particular aspect of it.
3. But now another fact has to be taken into
account. If, on the one hand, it has been seen that,
in the order of inquiry, revelation precedes inspira
tion, it has become not less clearly evident that over
a large area, in the fact itself, revelation and inspira
tion are closely and inseparably united. Internal
revelation, e.g., such as we have in prophecy, or in the
* revelation of Jesus Christ ' claimed for himself by
Paul, is not conceivable save as accompanied by an
inspired state of soul. Inspiration is involved in the
very reception of such a revelation ; is a necessary
i Bannerman says : ' The unintentional errors which may be and
are found in writings marked by perfect historical veracity, cannot
be taken account of as affecting the force or conclusiveness of this
argument. Making any allowance that can reasonably be demanded
for the possibility of such errors, and subtracting from the sacred
text what might by any chance be set to that account, there remains
enough for the purpose which the friends of inspiration have in view,'
etc. (op. cit., p. 284).

200 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
condition of the revelation being apprehended,
possessed, and communicated to others. In the
very acknowledgment, therefore, of revelation as
an element pervading the Bible and giving unity to
its parts, there is implied an acknowledgment of
inspiration. Just as, on the other side, there can be
no degree of inspiration, however humble, which
does not imply some measure of revelation.
4. Revelation and inspiration thus go together,
and conjointly give to the written word a quality
which distinguishes it from any product of ordinary
human wisdom. Inspiration, Paul says, confers on
Scripture the properties of being ' profitable for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction
which is in righteousness ' — of being able ' to make
wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus.' 1 Of similar nature are the qualities ascribed
in the psalms to the law of God — ' restoring the soul,'
' making wise the simple,' ' rejoicing the heart,'
' enlightening the eyes,' 2 etc. As Jesus says of His
own words, that they ' are spirit and are life,' 3 so of
the word of God in general it is declared that it ' is
living and active, and sharper than any two-edged
sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and
spirit, of both joint and marrow, and quick to
discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.' * The
last passage is the more significant that, in the
context, the writer has been identifying words from
the Book of Genesis and the Psalms with words of
God and of the Holy Spirit.6 Paul and John
likewise declare that to the spiritual man (and
i 2 Tim. iii. 15-17. 2 Pss. xix. 7-9 ; cxix., etc.
3 John vi. 63. * Heb. iv. 12.
" Heb. iii. 7-iv. 11.

x.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 201
only to him) belongs the discernment of the word
of God.1

II. Witness of the Spirit to Inspiration.
1. On this undeniable, self-attesting spiritual
quality of Scripture some would lay the whole weight
of the proof of inspiration. It is the testimonium
Spiritus Sancti — the witness of the Holy Spirit — on
which Calvin, some of the Reformed Confessions,
and a writer like John Owen, would rest almost
exclusively the certainty of the divine origin and
authority of Scripture.2 The aim is to obtain a
ground for assured faith in God's Word indepen
dently of Church and tradition. The Westminster
Confession — somewhat broader in its outlook — states
the matter in this way : ' We may be moved and
induced by the testimony of the Church to an high
and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture, and the
heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine,
the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts,
the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to
God), the full discovery it makes of the only way
of man's salvation, the many other incomparable
excellences and the entire perfection thereof, are
arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence
itself to be the word of God ; yet, notwithstanding,
our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible
truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the
inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by
and with the word in our hearts.' 3
1 1 Cor. ii. 14, 16 ; 1 John iv. 1-3.
2 Calvin, Instil. I. 7. 4, 5 ; Helvet. and French Confessions ; Owen,
Din. Orig. of Script., chs. ii. iv. 3 Ch. i. 5.

202 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
2. The principle here enunciated has undoubt
edly wide scope, and may be applied with effect to
sustain belief in the inspiration of parts of Scripture
which do not of themselves directly make such claim
¦ — the Psalms, e.g., or certain Epistles, or the Gospels.
The New Testament Epistles have only to be com
pared with the productions of the post-apostolic
age,1 or the canonical with the apocryphal Gospels,
to see how immense — in the case of the Gospels how
incredibly great — is the descent. It is not simply
that the Gospels, as embodying the words of Jesus,
and narrating His acts, have a divineness that goes
beyond any dignity that inspiration could impart ;
but the record itself, in its simplicity, manifest
fidelity, self-effacement of the human author, per
vasive sense of the divine greatness of One, to the
significance for the world of whose appearance the
wise men of the age were so utterly blind, compels
the acknowledgment that more than human care and
skill were involved in its production — that the
finger of God is there ! If the other internal evidences
are added,2 a strong argument may be built up,
not only for the reality of revelation in Scripture,
but for an inspiration in the books in which that
revelation is conveyed.
3. It must still be confessed that the principle
here employed may be pushed too far, and made to
sustain conclusions which cannot in justice be
1 The Early Fathers, as will be seen, were fully conscious of this
difference. 2 In his (posthumous) work on Inspiration, Dr. F. Watson, of
Cambridge, justly lays stress on the evidence from the Biblical
Doctrine of Sin (ch. vii.), the Harmony of the Teaching (viii.), the
Purity of the Teaching (ix.), the Abidingness of the Teaching (x.),
etc.

x.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 203
rested on it. How, e.g., can it legitimately be em
ployed, taken by itself, to sustain the canonicity, not
to say the inspiration, of books like the Song of
Solomon, Esther, or Ecclesiastes, which belong, in
the opinion of some, to the lowest grade of inspiration;
or, still further, to establish a perfectly ' errorless '
record ? x The principle, in fact, may be, and often
has been, applied in a quite opposite direction, viz.,
to warrant the rejection of all parts of Scripture
which do not appeal to the individual mind, or, as
Coleridge says, ' find ' it. One recalls here Luther's
rejection of the Epistle of James as ' an epistle of
straw,' because he did not find in it Paul's doctrine of
Justification. Richard Baxter, one of the saintliest
of men, thus wrote : ' I confess, for my part, I could
never boast of any such testimony or light of the
Spirit or reason ; neither of which, without human
testimony or tradition, would have made me believe
that the book of Canticles is canonical and written
by Solomon, and the book of Wisdom apocryphal
and written by Philo, as some think, or that Paul's
Epistle to the Laodiceans and others is apocryphal,
and the second and third Epistle of John canonical.
Nor could I ever have known all or any historical
books, such as Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings,
Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, to be written by divine
inspiration, but by tradition,' etc.2 This may be
1 Cf. Bannerman, op. cit., pp. 270-1, who points out this weakness.
In the view of the present writer, the Book of Esther, which Dr.
Sanday puts lowest, gets scant justice from some of its critics. It is
a wonderful record of God's providence. The permission given to
the Jews to defend themselves (Esth. viii. 11 ; ix. 1, 2) is not to
be confounded with the decree to massacre issued earlier at the
instance of Haman (iii. 13). Cf. Dr. Sanday's note, op. cit., pp. 222-3.
2 Preface to Second Part of Saints' Rest.

204 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION ' [ch.
felt to carry objection too far on the other side ;
but the fact that a man like the author of The Saints'
Everlasting Rest could write in this strain shows the
precariousness of the principle as one on which to
rest the whole Biblical case for inspiration. Many
evidences converge to sustain inspiration — internal
witness, testimony of the books, use by other
Scriptures, witness of Christ and His apostles,
effects and fruits in experience and history — and all
are to be welcomed.
4. The inspiration which gives its distinctive
quality to Scripture, as claimed for its writings by
Jesus, by prophets and apostles, and often by the
books themselves, is not of a kind that can properly
be paralleled by human genius, or even by the
ordinary illumination of Christians. It is some
times said : ' Isaiah was inspired as Shakespeare,
Burns, Scott, or Carlyle was ; Paul was inspired
as Luther or Mazzini was.' But could any of these
gifted men have prefaced their utterances, as the
prophets did, with a ' Thus saith the Lord ' ; could
it be said of the greatest of them what is said of New
Testament apostles and prophets, that a Church
was founded on their witness ? ' ' Built upon the
foundations of the apostles and prophets. . . . The
mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not
made known unto the sons of men, as it hath now
been revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets in
the Spirit.' x The Spirit is given to all Christians,
but in diversity of measures, and with specific gifts.
And what ordinary Christian will feel that he could
use language about himself like the above !
i Eph. ii. 20 ; iii. 4, 5. Cf. Dr. Sanday on ' Modern Prophets,'
op. cit., pp. 166-7.

x.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 205

III. Inspiration in History.
1. For further light on the nature of inspiration
one turns naturally to history, to inquire what views
on the subject have been entertained, inside the
Church and out of it, at different periods. Ideas
of both revelation and inspiration, as before seen,
are not wanting in heathenism. Analogies drawn
from these foreign sources, however, are apt to
mislead oftener than to help. No heathen religion
possesses that which is the fundamental presupposi
tion of Biblical inspiration — a living God, and a
community within which the Holy Spirit of God
is continuously active. The sporadic oracles of
heathenism — pythonic responses and the like —
assuming these to be as genuine as they were
generally spurious, had nothing in common with
this continuous, growing form of revelation through
chosen, inspired organs. Neither is the analogy
required furnished by the ' sacred books ' of other
religions. The ' Rishis ' of the Vedas do not claim
for themselves more than a poetical inspiration.
Buddha's ' enlightenment ' was no inspiration from
above, for his system had in it no place for either
God or Holy Spirit. The Gathas or hymns which
form the oldest parts of the Zend-Avesta are put
into the mouth of Zoroaster. They contain invoca
tions and prayers for enlightenment, and .Ahura
answers ; but this is probably not more than literary
form. The Confucian classics make no claim to
inspiration. Mohammed, of course, claims that the
messages combined in the Koran were communicated
to bim by direct revelation, and his claim must be

206 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
treated on its merits ; but few, treating it im
partially, will be disposed to concede it. The Bible
makes no claim for the origin of its books such as
is made for the Koran — that their parts came down
in external revelation from heaven, — and the claim,
if made, could not be entertained.
2. Philo and Josephus sufficiently attest the
belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures among
the Jews. The early Rabbis held the same doctrine.1
Josephus connects inspiration with the prophetic
gift; Philo, the earlier of the two, borrows from
heathen mantic the idea of ecstasy, in which the
individuality of the inspired man is wholly
suppressed, and his soul reduced to pure passivity.
This, it has been seen, is far from the conception of
inspiration in the Bible itself. It is a position now
universally recognised by writers on the subject
that inspiration does not suppress individual genius,
but heightens and develops it. All the powers that
lie in a man's natural endowment, the gains of his
training, the results of his experience, are laid hold
of, and fused into a new unity round the central
point of the new revelation that is given to him.
Self-consciousness, the power of self-control, are not
lost. ' The spirits of the prophets are subject to
the prophets.' 2 This, too, in the main, is the
doctrine of the early Church. That the early
Fathers, in the most emphatic way, maintained the
complete inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, Old
1 See in detail on the teaching of Philo and Josephus in the works
on Inspiration by Sanday, Lee, Bannerman, Watson, etc. On the
Rabbinical views, cf. Sanday, pp. 80-2, 90 : ' What might be
thought somewhat strange, the disputed books [Eccles., Song, Esther]
seem to be used quite as freely as the rest.'
2 1 Cor. xiv. 32.

x.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 207
Testament and New, no one acquainted with their
writings will deny ; x and if the favourite illustra
tion of the lyre and plectrum may appear to lean
to a view akin to Philo's of the suppression of the
human consciousness, the general trend of their
teaching will show that this is by no means the
intention.2 Montanism, which took this view, was
rejected. Origen, in particular, contends strongly
against the comparison of Jewish prophecy to the
frenzied utterances of the Pythian prophetess.3 He
holds for himself the strictest doctrine of inspiration,
getting over the contradictions and other difficulties
which he allows to exist (really, and not merely,
as some say, ' apparently ') in the historical and
prophetic parts by the aid of his allegorical method
of interpretation.*
The opinions of the Reformers on inspiration have
frequently been discussed. There is a singular
breadth and modernness in Calvin's exegesis ; but
his faith in the entire inspiration of the Scriptures
is profound and uncompromising. The ultimate
guarantee of inspiration, as already seen, is found
by bim in the internal witness of the Holy Spirit.6
The creeds of the Reformed Church embodied the
same conceptions. Occasionally divines carried
1 The testimony of the Early Church is very fully exhibited in
Westcott's Introd. lo the Study of the Gospels, Appendix B. A long
catena of passages is given in Lee, Appendix G. Clement of Rome
says: 'The blessed Paul at the beginning of the Gospel in very
truth wrote by inspiration ' to the Corinthians. Ignatius says : ' I
do not give you injunctions as Peter and Paul ; they were apostles,
I a condemned man.'
2 Athenagoras is an exoeption. He speaks of the prophets as
'entranced and deprived of their natural powers of reason.'
3 Contra Celsum, vii. 4.
4 De Princip. iv. 1 ; Contra Cels. iv. 48. 5 Instil. I. 7. 4, 5.

208 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
them to extremes that never obtained general
sanction.1 Luther's views, as his ordinary teaching
and use of Scripture show, were scarcely less high ;
but, applying a subjective standard, his judgments
on certain books, as the Epistle of James, Revelation,
Esther, even the Epistle to the Hebrews, were rash
and arbitrary.2 These Judgments affected canonicity
rather than inspiration. Sometimes Luther is
misjudged, as, e.g., when Dr. F. Watson states :
' He described the argument St. Paul derived from
Hagar and Sarah in the Galatians as too weak to
hold.' 3 This is a mistaken statement, as any one
will see who reads what Luther really wrote on what
he calls ' this goodly allegory,' ' a wonderful
allegory,' praising the apos'tle for his use of it.
What he does say is : ' For if Paul had not proved
the righteousness of faith against the righteousness
of works by strong and pithy arguments, he should
have little prevailed by this allegory. But, because
he had fortified his cause before with invincible
arguments . . . now, in the end of his disputations,
he addeth an allegory, to give beauty to all the rest.
For it is a seemly thing sometimes to add an
allegory,' etc.4 There is no suggestion of any
feebleness in Paul's inspiration.
Later views came gradually to prevail, especially
through Arminian influence, and modern opinions
1 E.g. The younger Buxtorf (followed by the 'Formula Consensus
Helvetica') affirmed the inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points.
2 ' He was as thoroughly convinced of the inspiration and au
thority of the Word of God as the most orthodox divine can be, but
he had free views on the mode of inspiration and the extent of the
traditional canon ' (Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, i. 215).
' Inspiration, pp. 232-3.
* Com. on Gal. iv. 24, etc.

x.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 209
have already been adverted to. Disputes turn largely
in recent times on what is named ' verbal ' inspira
tion, and on the degree to which ' inerrancy,' or
complete freedom from error or contradiction in
matters not directly involved in the substance of
the inspired teaching, is implied in inspiration.

IV. 'Verbal Inspiration.'
1. The phrase ' verbal inspiration ' is one to
which so great ambiguity attaches that it is now
very commonly avoided by careful writers.1 There
is, indeed, a sense in which the phrase expresses a
true and important idea. It opposes the theory
that revelation and inspiration have regard only to
thoughts and ideas, while the language in which
these ideas are clothed is left to the unaided faculties
of the sacred penman. This is a defective view.
Thought of necessity takes shape and is expressed
in words. If there is inspiration at all, it must
penetrate words as well as thought, must mould
the expression, and make the language employed
the living medium of the idea to be conveyed.2 The
Scripture lays stress upon the a^rds — often on the
1 E.g., by Lee, Bannerman, etc. The former prefers 'plenary,'
the Utter 'dynamical.' Hodge and Warfield defend the word
'verbal,' but with careful explanation. 'There is the more excuse,'
they say, 'for this misapprehension because of the extremely
mechanical conceptions of inspiration maintained by many former
advocates of this term "verbal." This view, however, we repudiate
as earnestly as any of those who object to the language in question '
(op. cit. p. 233).
2 ' The slightest consideration,' says Dr. Westcott, ' will show that
words are as essential to intellectual processes as they are to mutual
intercourse. . . . Thoughts are wedded to words as necessarily as
soul is to body ' (Study of Gospels, p. 14).
O

210 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
very form of the expression. ' We speak,' says
Paul, ' not in words which man's wisdom teacheth,
but which the Holy Spirit teacheth.' x
2. ' Verbal inspiration,' however, is often taken
to mean much more than this. It is apt to suggest a
mechanical theory of inspiration, akin to dictation,
which all intelligent upholders of inspiration now
agree in repudiating. In the result it may be held to
imply a literality in narratives, quotations, or reports
of discourses, which the facts, as we know them, do
not warrant.
(1) A very evident illustration of the untenable-
ness of this theory is in the reports of the Lord's own
sayings in the Gospels. It is well known that ia the
reports of Christ's words in the Synoptic Gospels
there is often a very considerable variation in
expression — a difference in phraseology — while yet
the idea conveyed in all the forms is the same. At
most one side or another of the truth is brought out
with slightly different emphasis. In illustration, let
the version of the Lord's sayings in the Sermon on
the Mount in Matthew be compared with that in
Luke,2 and the wide divergence in expression, with
identity in idea, will at once be seen. Here the
advocates of verbal inspiration are themselves com
pelled to recognise that absolute literality is not of
the essence of inspiration — that the end is gained if
the meaning of the saying is preserved, though the
precise form of words varies. There may be com
pression, combination, change of construction —
even (as in John) interpretation ; but the truth is
purely given.
(2) Another palpable illustration of this freedom
1 1 Cor. ii. 13. 2 Matt. v. -vii. ; Luke vi. 20-40.

x.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 211
in regard to the letter, while the sense is accurately
conveyed, is found in the New Testament quotations
from the Qld Testament. In these, it is again well
known, great variety in the method of quotation
prevails. Sometimes, where the end is better served,
the quotation is taken directly from the Hebrew
(e.g., Matt. ii. 15) ; occasionally the translation is
free (Matt. ii. 6) ; ordinarily the quotation is made
with more or less exactness from the Greek version —
this even where the Hebrew is somewhat widely de
parted from (Matt. xii. 17-21 ; Rom. ix. 33 ; 1 Pet.
ii. 6 ; Heb. x. 5-7, etc.). Inspiration here again
must be held compatible with a want of literality
in the words.1
3. In view of these facts, it is felt by many that,
to express the idea of an inspiration which pervades
all the parts of the record, the word ' plenary ' is more
suitable than ' verbal.' This term, while doing justice
to the freedom of the sacred writer in his use of
language, argument, and illustration, in the employ
ment of his faculties in research, and in his methods
of using his material, avoids the mistake into which
others fall of speaking as if parts of the record were
inspired, and parts uninspired. The passages usually
quoted in support of this view are Paul's words in
1 Cor. vii. 10, 12, 25 : ' Unto the married I give
charge, yet not I, but the Lord. . . . But to the
rest say I, not the Lord. . . . Concerning virgins
I have no commandment of the Lord, but I give my
Judgment.' These verses, however, are not valid
to establish any such distinction as is alleged. What
Paul means to say is only that he had no direct
* command ' from the Lord for what he said — no
» See further on this point, The Bible under Trial, pp. 268 ff.

212 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
word of Jesus spoken while on earth — such as he had
in the case of marriage. Yet Paul claimed that he
had ' the Spirit of God ' in giving his Judgment on
the cases before him ; x nay, goes so far as to declare :
' If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet, or
spiritual, let him acknowledge of the things which I
write unto you, that they are the commandments of
the Lord.'2

V. 'Inerrancy' of the Record.
While, by most of the older writers, the inspiration
of the entire record in the Bible is strenuously affirmed,
great diversity of view prevails as to the mode of the
action of the divine influence by which this result is
secured. Theories of dictation of historical matter,
or of communication of facts that could be ascer
tained by ordinary methods, are now universally
surrendered ; 3 the distinction of ' revelation ' and
' inspiration ' is better recognised ; but whereas
some would lay chief stress on the exaltation of the
human faculties, and conscious direction and ' sug
gestion,' others are content to resolve inspiration
into a divine ' superintendence,' often unconscious,
leaving everything else — and this the greater part —
1 Ver. 40. 2 1 Cor. xiv. 37.
s The slight qualifications of this which Dr. Lee (p. 147) and others
make, e.g., in the supernatural communication to Paul of the
institution of the Lord's Supper (Bannerman, p. 189), rest on a
misunderstanding. Paul undoubtedly ' received ' the Lord's words
at the Supper from the apostles or general tradition.
Hodge and Warfield lay stress on this human side. ' Each drew
from the stores of his own original information, from the con
tributions of other men, and from all other natural sources. Each
sought knowledge, like all other authors, from the use of his own
natural faculties of thought and feeling,' etc. (p. 229).

x.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 213
in the production of an ' errorless ' record to ' provi
dence.' x The question which here arises is — Does
the Bible itself claim, or inspiration necessitate,
such an ' errorless ' record, in matters of minor
detail ? The discussion may close with a few words
on this subject of ' inerrancy.'
1. Very commonly it is argued by upholders of
this doctrine that ' inerrancy ' in every minute
particular is involved in the very idea of a book
given by inspiration of God. This might be held to
be true on a theory of verbal dictation, but it can
scarcely be maintained on a Just view of the actual
historical genesis of the Bible. One may plead,
indeed, for ' a supernatural providential guidance '
which has for its aim to exclude all, even the least,
error or discrepancy in statement, even such as
may inhere in the sources from which the information
is obtained, or may arise from corruption of anterior
1 This is the thesis, elaborated with much fulness, of Hodge and
Warfield. 'We intentionally,' they say, 'avoid applying to this
inspiration the predicate "influence." It summoned, on occasion, a
great variety of influences, but its essence was superintendence.
This superintendence attended the entire process of the genesis of
Scripture, and particularly the final composition of the record. . . .
The Scriptures were generated through sixteen centuries of this
divinely regulated concurrence of God and man, of the natural and
supernatural, of reason and revelation, of providence and grace. . . .
The natural knowledge came from all sources, as traditions, docu
ments, testimonies, personal observations, and recollections, . . ,
yet all were alike under the general direction of God's providence.
The supernatural knowledge became confluent with the natural in a
manner which violated no law of reason or of freedom. And through
out the whole of His work the Holy Spirit was present, causing His
energies to flow into the spontaneous exercises of the writer's
faculties, elevating and directing where need be, and everywhere
securing the errorless expression in language of the thought designed
by God. This last element we call inspiration ' (pp. 226, 229, 231).

214 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
documents. But this is a violent assumption which
there is nothing in the Bible really to support. It
is perilous, therefore, to seek to pin down faith to
it as a matter of vital moment. Inspiration, in
sanctioning the incorporation of an old genealogy,
or of an historic document in some respects defective,
no more makes itself responsible for these defects
than it does for the speeches of Job's friends in the
Book of Job, or for the sentiments of many parts
of the Book of Ecclesiastes, or for the imperfect
translation of Old Testament passages in quota
tions from the Septuagint.
2. Even on the assumption of a ' verbal ' in
spiration, it has been seen in how wide a sense
literal accuracy in the Biblical records has to be
interpreted. The theory may be stretched, moreover,
by qualifications, admissions, and explanations, till
there is practically little difference between the
opposite views. Thus, writing on the New Testa
ment quotations, with reference to the objection
of Dr. S. Davidson that, on the theory of verbal
inspiration, the New Testament writers should have
adhered to the ipsissima verba of the Holy Spirit
in the Old Testament, seeing these were best, the
able defenders of an ' errorless ' record already
repeatedly cited remark : ' Here, however, a false
view of inspiration is presupposed, and also a false
view of the nature and laws of quotation. Inspira
tion does not suppose that the words and phrases
written under its influence are the best possible
to express the truth, but only that they are an
adequate expression of the truth. Other words
and phrases might be equally adequate : — might
furnish a clearer, more exact, and therefore better

x.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 215
expression, especially of those truths which were
subordinate or incidental for the original purpose
of the writings.' x It would be difficult, however,
to show that this superiority always belongs to the
LXX. renderings adopted. More generally, we have
such wide acknowledgments as the following :
' It is not claimed that the Scriptures any more
than their authors are omniscient. The information
they convey is in the forms of human thought, and
limited on all sides. They were not designed to
teach philosophy, science, or human history as
such. They were not designed to furnish an
infallible system of speculative theology. They are
written in human languages, whose words, inflec
tions, constructions, and idioms bear everywhere
indelible traces of human error. The record itself
furnishes evidence that the writers were in large
measure dependent for their knowledge upon
sources and methods in themselves fallible, and that
their personal knowledge and Judgments were in
many matters hesitating and defective, or even
wrong.' So much being admitted, it hardly seems
worth while to deny the compatibility of inspiration
with the possibility of minor errors also in the
matter of the record. Yet ' the ipsissima verba
of the original autographs ' are held to be free from
the slightest taint of such error.
3. These things have in justice to be said on the
one side. On the other side, one finds himself in
substantial harmony with the defenders of this
view in afnrming that the sweeping assertions of
error and discrepancy in the Bible often made
cannot be substantiated. Ascribe it to ' providence,'
1 Hodge and Warfield, op. cit. p. 256.

216 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION [ch.
to ' superintendence,' to ' suggestion,' or what one
will, — and inspiration is probably more subtle and
all-pervading than any of these things, — it remains
the fact that the Bible, impartially interpreted
and judged, is free from demonstrable error in its
statements, and harmonious in its teachings, to a
degree that of itself creates an irresistible impression
of a supernatural factor in its origin. It is of little
profit to discuss such a subject as ' inerrancy ' in
the abstract. When the objector descends from
generalities to details, one knows where to find
him ; and here, in cases without number, it has
been shown by the progress of knowledge that it
is he, not the Bible, that is wrong. Many of the
alleged discrepancies are such only in appearance,
or are readily explained by difference in point of
view or aim, or from technicalities of structure,
as in genealogies, or from methods of grouping and
generalising, where precise detail is not aimed
at. Some are due to corruption in the texts —
this frequently in names and numbers — either in
the existing texts, or possibly in the MSS. sources
used by the sacred writer himself. Archaeology
has brought confirmation to the statements of the
Bible, even in its oldest parts, in a multitude of
particulars in which its accuracy had been con
fidently challenged. Illustration of these assertions
has been furnished in abundance elsewhere.1 When,
in smaller matters, discrepancy is urged, as, e.g., in
the various reports of the titles of the Cross, it is
time for the discussion to stop.
4. On this broad, general ground the advocates
1 See, in illustration, Prob. of 0. T., ch. xi. ; The Bible under
Trial, chs. vi., xi.

x.] REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 217
of ' inerrancy 7 may always feel that they have a
strong position, whatever assaults may be made on
them in matters of lesser detail. They stand
undeniably, in their main contention, in the line
of apostolic belief, and of the general faith of the
Church,1 regarding Holy Scripture. The most
searching inquiry still leaves them with a Scripture,
supematurally inspired to be an infallible guide in
the great matters for which it was given — the
knowledge of the will of God for their salvation in
Christ Jesus, instruction in the way of holiness,
and the ' hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot
lie, promised before times eternal.' 2

VI. Conclusion.
This leads, in closing, to the remark that, in the
last resort, the proof of the inspiration of the Bible
— not, indeed, in every particular, but in its
essential message — is to be found in the life-giving
effects which that message has produced, wherever
its word of truth has gone.3 This is the truth in
the argument for inspiration based on the witness
of the Holy Spirit. The Bible has the qualities
claimed for it as an inspired book. These qualities,
on the other hand, nothing but inspiration could
impart. It leads to God and to Christ ; it gives
light on the deepest problems of life, death, and
eternity ; it discovers the way of deliverance from
sin ; it makes men new creatures ; it furnishes the
1 This is shown, as respects the Early Church, in the copious
extracts compiled by Dr. Westcott and by Archdeacon Lee in their
appendices to their works formerly referred to (p. 207).
2 Titus, i. 2. s Col. i. 5, 6.

218 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION
man of God completely for every good work.1 That
it possesses these qualities history and experience
through all the centuries have attested ; its saving,
sanctifying, and civilising effects among all races
of men in the world attest it still. The word of
God is a ' pure word.' 2 It is a true and ' tried '
word ; 3 a word never found wanting by those who
rest themselves upon it. The Bible that embodies
this word will retain its distinction as the Book of
Inspiration till the end of time !
i 2 Tim. iii. 17. a Pss. xii. 6 ; xix. 8 ; cxix. 140, etc
* Ps. xii. 6 ; xviii. 30.

REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 219

BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following books may be referred to : —
Rothe, Zur Dogmatik, (Pt. n., 'Revelation'; Pt. in., 'Holy
Scripture'), 2nd Edit., 1869.
Ewald, Revelation: Its Nature and Becord, E. T., 1884.
Dorner, A System of Christian Doctrine, E. T., vol ii, Div.
in. ('The Doctrine of Religion,' 'The Doctrine of
Revelation, 1881).'
Oehler, Theology of the Old Testament, E. T., vol. i. (Pt. I.,
'Of Revelation'), 1874.
Auberlen, The Divine Revelation, E. T., 1874.
Orblli, Old Testament Prophecy ('Introduction'), 1893.
A. B. Davidson, Old Testament Prophecy, 1903.
G. T. Ladd, The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, vol. i., 1883.
A. B. Bruce, The Chief Mud of Revelation, 1881.
W. Lee, The Inspiration of Holy Scripture : Its Nature and
Proof, 1874.
J. Bannerman, Inspiration : the Infallible Truth and Divine
Authority of the Holy Scriptures, 1865.
A. A. Hodge, and B. B. Warfield, Art. 'Inspiration' in
The Presbyterian Review, April 1881.
B. F. Westcott, An Introduction to the Study of the Gospels,
1872.
R. F. Horton, Inspiration cmdthe Bible: An Inquiry, 1888 ;
Revelation and the Bible: an Attempt at Reconstruc
tion, 1892 ; Verbum Dei, 1893.
W. Sanday, Inspiration (Bampton Lectures), 1893.
J. M. Gibson, The Inspiration and Authority of Holy
Scripture, 1908.
D. M. M'Inttre, The Spirit in the Word, 1908.

INDEX

Anoestor-Worship, 4, 32, 35,
65.
Angel of the Lord, 84 ff.
Animism, 5, 32.
Apocalypse, 82, 98, 194.
Arnold, M., 117, 133.
Athenagoras, 207.
Auberlen, C. A. , 69, 168.
Augustine, 34, 85, 90.
Bannerman, J., 22, 24, 198-9,
206, 209, 212.
Baxter, R, 203.
Bible, unity and uniqueness of,
12, 16, 72 ; Gospel in, 18 ff. ;
claim to inspiration, 181 ff. See
Scripture.
Biedermann, A. E., 2, 9.
Bousset, W., 4, 11, 12, 31 ff. ;
107-8.
Bruce, A. B., 21-2, 23, 48, 148.
Buddhism, 33, 205.
Butler, Bishop, 61, 102, 106,
120.
Buxtorf, 208.
Calvin, J., 59, 149, 201, 207.
Carlyle, T, 7.
Christianity, 'modern' views of,
11, 33, 132 ff. ; evangelical
views of, 18 ff., 140 ff.
Cleanthes, 44.
Clement of Borne, 207.

Coleridge, S. T.,203.
Confucius, 33, 205.
Cornill, C. H., 10.
Creation, revelation in, 28 ff.,
39 ff, 43 ff., 47 ff.
Criticism of Old Testament, 13 ff. ,
17, 71 ff. ; of Gospels, 132 ff.
Davidson, A. B., 14, 94.
 Samuel, 214.
Davis, J. D., 167.
Deism, 7, 29-31.
Delitzsch, P., 85, 87.
Difficulties in Old Testament,
101 ff.
Dillmann, A., 15.
Divination, 53, 78, 88.
Dorner, I. A., 2, 9, 18, 24, 60-1,
68-9, 72.
Dreams, revelation in, 79-80.
Driver, S. R., 14.
Duhm, B., 10.
Ethnic revelation, 55 ff.
Evangelical - positive tendency,
17 ff.
Evolution, 34 ff., 42.
Ewald, G. H. A. v., 27-8, 89.
Fairbairn, A. M., 24.
 P., 77, 100, 167.
Fetishism, 4, 5, 32, 35 ff.
Poster, G. B., 107, 135. 221

222

REVELATION AND INSPIRATION

God, immanence and transcen
dence of, 7 ff. ; self-revealing,
2ff., 40, 50 ff., 57 ff., 67 ff.
Goethe, 7, 163.
Green, W. H., 167.
Gunkel, H., 2, 10.
Hartmann, E. von, 3.
Heathenism, need of revelation,
53 ff. ; nature of revelation in,
66 ff., 16 iff.
Hegel, 3, 40.
Hengstenberg, E. W., 91, 100,
171.
Herder, 9, 167.
Herrmann, W., 4, 30.
History, place and value in revela
tion, 21-2, 67 ff. , 174.
Hodge, A. A., 22-3, 25, 167, 198,
209, 212 ff.
Hume, D., 115 ff, 122 ff.
Huxley, T. H., 117.

Ignatius, 207.
Inspiration, changes in views of,
22 ff. ; in Scripture, 19, 156,
159 ff. ; in relation to person,
162-3; to materials, 163 ff.,
179 ff. ; to literary forms,
169 ff. ; limitations of, 175 ff. ;
views of Jesus and Apostles,
182 ff. ; in Old Testament,
181 ff., 185 ff. ; in New Testa
ment, 192 ff. ; nature of, 161-2,
199, 204, 209 ff. ; in history,
205 ff. ; relation to providence,
23, 163, 213 ; ' verbal ' inspira
tion, 209 ff. ; inerrancy, 73,
199, 203, 212 ff. ; test of, 217.
Irenaeus, 86.
Israel, religion of, divergent views
on, 71 ff.

Jesus Christ, modern views of,
131 ff. ; self-consciousness of,
134 ff. ; sinlessness of, 135 ff. ;
claims of, 137 ff. ; miracles of,
118, 121-2, 124, 128, 138 ; resur
rection of, 140-1; divine dignity
of, 141 ; absoluteness of revela
tion of, 141, 146 ; relation to
secular interests, 142 ff. ; teach
ing of, 144 ff. ; humiliation of,
147 ff. ; human knowledge of,
149 ff.
Josephus, 186, 206.
Justin Martyr, 69, 86.
Kant, 30, 40, 52.
Kautzsch, E., 14-15, 69.
Keil, C. P., 100, 171.
Kingdom of God, 52, 60, 93, 98,
100, 128 ; Christ's teaching on,
143 ff.
Kirkpatrick, A. P., 191.
Kittel, R., 15.
Kuenen, A., 10.
Laed, G. T., 24, 64 ff.
Lang, A., 41.
Laws of nature, 110 ff., 114 ff.
Lecky, W. E. H., 119.
Lee, W., 22, 24, 206-7, 209, 212,
217.
Lessing, 9, 48.
Logos, the, 58, 86-7.
Loisy, Abbe, 11.
Luther, 34, 203-4, 208.
Marcus Aurelius, 44.
Martineau, J., 113.
Mazzini, 142.
Messianic prophecy, 98.
Mill, J. S., 142.
Miracle, denial of, 6, 8 ff., 109 ff. ;
Biblical and scientific ideas of,

INDEX

223

110 ff ; possibility of, 112 ff. ;
credibilty of, 116 ff. ; historicity
of, 120 ff. ; character of Biblical
miracles, 126 ff. ; Jesus the
supreme miracle, 131 ff. ; miracle
and law, 114 ff. ; testimony and
miracle, 117 ff, 123 ff., 126 ff. ;
of Jesus, 118, 121-2, 124, 128,
138.
' Modern ' School, 6, 11, 12, 33-4,
47, 71, 107, 131 ff, 149.
Mohammedanism, 37, 205.
Monotheism, in heathenism, 36-7;
primitive, 65-6.
Moody, D. L., 172.
Muller, Max, 41.
Nature, uniformity of, 11, 110 ff.,
115 ff.
New Testament, fulfilment of
Old Testament in, 14, 15, 18 ff.,
98-9, 137-8; inspiration of,
192 ff.
Nietzsche, F. 146.
Oehler, G. P., 79, 87, 89.
Old Testament, critical theories
of, 13 ff, 17, 71 ff. ; Gospel in,
18 ff. ; historical element in,
22, 67 ff, 73 ; inspiration of,
161, 181 ff.
Orelli, Conrad v., 54, 88, 90.
Origen, 59, 207.
Ottley, R. L., 105, 191.
Otto, R., 42.
Owen, J., 201.
Paley, 53.
Pantheism, 27.
Patriarchal age, 61-3, 69, 71, 73.
Prophecy, 14 ff., 32-3, 35-6, 75 ff. ;
nature of, 88 ff. ; predictive,
96, 97 ff.

Polytheism, 35, 37, 66, 69.
Providence, relation to inspira
tion, 23, 163, 213.
Riehm, E., 91.
Religion, origin in revelation,
2 ff. , 40, 64 ; natural and re
vealed, 6 ff., 28 ff. ; Bousset on,
31 ff. ; ground in man's nature,
5, 32, 40 ; a personal relation,
48 ff. ; in heathenism, 49, 53,
55 ff.
'Religious-historical' school, 3,
llff.,31ffi, 131 ff.
Resurrection of Christ, 140-1.
Revelation, in modern thought,
2 ff. ; universalising of, 3 ff.,
31 ff. ; general and special, 28 ;
natural revelation, 27 ff., 39 ff. ;
sufficiency of same, 43 ff. ;
ethnic revelation, 55 ff. ; primi
tive revelation, 64 ff. ; special
revelation, need of, 46 ff ;
periods in, 67 ff. ; Moses and
Christ, 74 ff. ; forms of, 78 ;
prophecy in, 88 ff ; difficulties
in, 101 ff. ; miracle in, 109 ff. ;
Christ as supreme Revealer,
131 ff. ; revelation and inspira
tion, 23-4, 199 ff. ; relation to
record, 21, 155 ff., 196 ff. ; ex
tension of idea of, 25, 156 ff.
Ritschl, A., 30, 40, 75.
Rothe, R., 21-2, 24.
Sabatier, L. Auguste, 32.
Sanday, W., 13, 14, 115, 161, 192,
203-4, 206.
Schaff, P., 208.
Schelling, 3, 69.
Schleiermacher, 2, 9, 41.
Schmiedel, P. W., 135.
Schultz, H.. 16, 87.

224 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION
Totemism, 4, 35, 65.

Seeley, Sir J. R., 27.
Seneca, 44.
Smith, G. A., 15.
Smith, W. Robertson, 70.
Socrates, 33, 44, 54-5.
Spencer, H., 27.
Spiuoza, 9.
Stade, B., 10.
Strauss, D. F., 27.
Supernatural, meaning of, 6 ff.
•See Miracle.
Teleology, in revelation, 12, 14,
15, 72.
Tertullian, 86.
Testimony to miracle, 114, 116 if.,
120 ff, 126 ff.

Vision, in revelation, 80 ff. ; in
prophecy, S2-3, 100.
Waitz, 41, 65.
Warfield, B. B., 22-3, 25, 198,
209, 212-13.
Watson, F., 202, 206, 208.
Watson, Prof. J., 11, 40.
Wellhausen, J., 10, 80.
Wernle, P., 11.
Westcott, B. P., 23-4, 105, 207,
209, 217.
Zeller, Eduard, 64.
Zoroaster, 33, 205.

Studies in Theology
A New Series of Hand-books, being aids to interpretation
in Biblical Criticism for the use of Ministers,
Theological Students and general readers.

12mo, cloth. 75 cents net per volume.
THE aim of the series is described by the general title.
It is an attempt to bring all the resources of modern
learning to the interpretation of the Scriptures, and
to place within the reach of all who are interested
the broad conclusions arrived at by men of distinction in the
world of Christian scholarship on the great problems of Faith
and Destiny. The volumes are critical and constructive, and
their value can scarcely be overstated. Each volume will
contain bibliographies for the guidance of those who wish to
pursue more extended studies. It is expected that the series
will consist of 12 volumes.
The writers selected for the various volumes are represen
tative scholars both in this country and in Europe. Each of
them has been assigned a subject with which he is particularly
qualified to deal, as will be at once apparent even in this
preliminary announcement giving a list of some of the vol
umes in preparation.
ARRANGEMENT OF VOLUMES
A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.
By Arthur Samuel Peake, D.D., Professor of Biblical Exegesis
and Dean of the Faculty of Theology, Victoria University, Man
chester. Sometime Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Author of
"A Guide to Biblical Study," " The Problem of Suffering in the
Old Testament," etc. [Ready.
FAITH AND ITS PSYCHOLOGY. By the Rev. William R. Inge,
D.D., Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Cambridge, and
Bampton Lecturer, Oxford, 1899. Author of "Studies of the
English Mystics," " Truth and Falsehood in Religion," " Personal
Idealism and Mysticism," etc. [Ready.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. By the Rev. Hastings Rash-
dall, D.Litt. (Oxon.), D.C.L. (Dunelm), F.B.A. Fellow and
Tutor of New College, Oxford. Author of " The Theory of Good
and Evil," etc., etc. [Ready.

REVELATION AND INSPIRATION. By the Rev. James Orr,
D.D., Professor of Apologetics in the Theological College of the
United Free Church, Glasgow. Author of " The Christian View
of God and the World," " The Ritschlian Theology and Evangelical
Faith," " The Problem of the Old Testament," etc. [Ready.
AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THEOLOGY. By the Rev. A. M. Fair-
bairn, D.D.,D.Litt., LL.D., Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford.
Author of " Studies in the Life of Christ," " Religion in History and
in Modern Life," " Christ in Modern Theology," etc.
A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT.
By the Rev. George Buchanan Gray, D.D., D.Litt., Professor
of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis, Mansfield College, Oxford.
Author of " The Divine Discipline of Israel," " Studies in Hebrew
Proper Names," etc.
CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. By the Rev. Wil
liam Cunningham, D.D., F.B.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cam
bridge. Hon. Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
Archdeacon of Ely. Formerly Lecturer on Economic History to
Harvard University. Author of " Growth of English History and
Commerce," etc.
HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT FROM THE APOS=
TOLIC AGE TO THE REFORMATION. By Herbert B.
Workman, D.Litt., Principal of the Westminster Training College.
Author of "The Church of the West in the Middle Ages," "The
Dawn of the Reformation," etc.
HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT FROM THE REFOR=
MATION TO KANT. By A. C. McGiitert, PhD., D.D., Pro
fessor of Church History in the Union Theological Seminary, New
York. Author of " The History of Christianity in the Apostolic
Age," and " The Apostles' Creed."
HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT. By the
Rev. Edward Caldwell Moore, D.D., Parkman Professor of
Theology in Harvard University. Author of "The New Testa
ment in the Christian Church," etc.
THE CHRISTIAN HOPE: A STUDY IN THE DOCTRINE
OF THE LAST THINGS. By William Adams Brown, Ph.D.,
D.D., Professor of Systematic Theology in the Union Theological
Seminary, New York. Author of " The Essence of Christianity,"
and " Christian Theology in Outline."
Other volumes are in preparation and will be announced later.

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