'iH V.'; 
 
 .!ii,|,;;rj 
 
 mm 
 
 ^in 
 
^ . /f. 'w, 
 
 PRESENTED TO THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGIML SEMINHRY 
 
 BY 
 
 |VlPs. Alej^ander Ppoudfit. 
 
 :B 34-80 
 ,L8G7 . 
 
THE 
 
 PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST, 
 
 -A.S RELA.TEr> TO 
 
 THE VERBAL INSPIRATION 
 
 HOLT SCRIPTURES 
 
 BY / 
 ELE^ZA.R LORr) 
 
 Sau-|or!i : 
 
 ANSON D. F, RANDOLPH, No. 683 BROADWAY. 
 1859. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1859, by 
 
 ELEAZAR LORD, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of tlio District Court of tlio United States for the 
 Southern District of New-York. 
 
 John A. Gray, Printer and Stereotyper, 
 IG & 18 Jacob St., Fire-Proof Buildings. 
 
In the ensuing pages the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures is 
 argued: first, from the nature and limitation of the oflBce of 
 Christ as Prophet, and His exercise of that office, through the in- 
 strumentality of the sacred writers, by the inspiring agency of 
 the Holy Spirit ; and, second, from the fact of human conscious- 
 ness, that men think and receive, and are conscious of thoughts 
 only in words — so that thoughts conveyed to their minds by in- 
 spiration, must necessarily be conveyed in words in order to their 
 receiving and being conscious of them. 
 
 Piermont, April, 1859. 
 
CO :Nt TENTS. 
 
 I. — The Prophetic Office of Christ — His execution of it 
 partly by His own immediate acts, and partly through 
 the instrumentality of the Sacred Writers, by the in- 
 spiring Agency of the Spirit, 5 
 
 II. — ^The Nature and the Limitatioxs of the Prophetic 
 
 Office, 9 
 
 III. — Of the Office of the Spirit, im relation to the 
 
 Scriptures, 29 
 
 lY. — The Nature of Divine Inspiration, . . . .35 
 V. — "Were the yery "Words of God conyeyed to the 
 
 Sacred "Writers by Inspiration, . . .41 
 
 VI. — Reference to the Verbal Instructions concerning 
 THE Tabernacle and the Leyitical Faith and 
 
 "Worship, 67 
 
 VII. — The Logos and the Spirit Reyealed in the Old 
 
 Testament — The Father chiefly in the New, . 77 
 
 VIII. — The Theory of Guidance, 100 
 
 IX — The Relative and Finite only conceivable by thi; 
 Human Mind — Sir "William Hamilton's Doctrine 
 OF the Conditioned — Relative, Limited, . .129 
 X. — Importance of Verbal Inspiration, . . . .1-12 
 
THE 
 
 PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 I. The Prophetic Office of Christ — His Exe- 
 cution OF it, partly by IIis own Immediate 
 Acts, and partly through the Instrumen- 
 tality of the Sacred Writers, by the Inspir- 
 ing Agency of the Spirit. 
 
 In a former volume I endeavored to state some 
 principles which seemed to me important, both to a 
 right understanding of the nature of Divine Inspira- 
 tion, and to a defense of the doctrine of plenary verbal 
 inspiration : as, namely, that by a law of our minds 
 
 we think and are conscious of thought only in words 
 
 that we conceive thoughts, receive thoughts from 
 others, are conscious of them, remember them, and 
 express, them only in words, which, when uttered, 
 represent them to others as perfectly as we are con- 
 scious of them. This I suppose to be as true of all 
 other intelligent agents as of man — a universal law of 
 intellectual action. In our own case we infer it from our 
 consciousness of thinking in words, receiving thoughts 
 from the verbal articulations and writings of others, and 
 
6 THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CnRIST. 
 
 remembering and expressing them in the same words. 
 Each individual being conscious of this for himself, 
 justly infers that the same is true of all other indi- 
 viduals of his race. When intelligent agents of an- 
 other race — as angels — speak to man, they convey their 
 thoughts in words, and in return receive his thoughts 
 in words ; which implies that they think, are conscious 
 of, and remember their thoughts in words. If their 
 words express their thoughts, they must undoubtedly 
 be conscious of the thoughts in the words which they 
 utter, and they must remember their own thoughts in 
 the words they had uttered, if they truly understand 
 the thoughts in the words uttered in reply. For how 
 could they receive the words of man in answer to a 
 question put by them, if they did not remember the 
 words in which they put the question, and were not 
 conscious of their own thoughts in the words of the 
 question, and conscious of the thoughts returned in the 
 words of the answer ? 
 
 So when the Divine Being speaks to man. His words 
 convey His thoughts. Man receives and is conscious 
 of His thoughts, by receiving and being conscious of 
 His words. All that he knows of the thouglits is ex- 
 pressed in the words. The thoughts can not be con- 
 veyed to his understanding, or realized to his con- 
 sciousness, apart from the words in which they are 
 conceived and expressed. Without irreverence, there- 
 fore, this law of intellectual action may be regarded as 
 of universal application. In the nature of the case the 
 mode of thought, of intellectual action in consciously 
 thinking, is verbal. A wordless thought is as incon- 
 ceivable as a formless flower. Thinking and convey- 
 
THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHEIST. 7 
 
 ing tliouglits apart from words or signs equivalent to 
 silent or vocal articulations, is no more possible than see- 
 ing without visual, or hearing without auditory organs. 
 
 Hence I infer that the Divine thoughts conveyed to 
 the sacred penmen, were conveyed in the very words 
 whicli they wrote as Holy Scripture. 1. Because 
 thoughts can be conveyed from one mind to another, 
 only in words or equivalent signs. 2. Because, man 
 is so constituted that he can not receive, and be con- 
 scious of, the thoughts of another, except in the words 
 which properly express them. 3. Because, the writer, 
 being conscious of the words as he received them, could 
 not write other than those words, without resisting his 
 consciousness, and violating his intcgrit3% 4. Because 
 words so conveyed, received, and written, are the very 
 words of Him who conveyed them; whereas, other 
 words substituted in their place would not be His. 
 
 With this agrees the Scripture doctrine of Inspira- 
 tion — Theopnaustos — a Divine act conveying to the 
 sacred penmen that which they uttered in writing, re 
 alizing to their consciousness the thoughts in the words, 
 in-brcathing them in a manner analogous to the im- 
 pulsion of air into the lungs. All Scripture — namely, 
 that which the sacred penmen were appointed to write, 
 the words which they wrote which constitute the 
 Scriptures — was given, imparted, conveyed to them by 
 Inspiration, the in-brcatliiug act of God. 
 
 Now all who believe the Scriptures to be of Divine 
 authorit}^, regard them as one of the very greatest gifts 
 of God to man. Their relations and objects are such 
 as to make it necessary to regard them as the word of 
 God, the infallible expression of His thoughts. His mind 
 
8 THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 and will ; tlie only rule of faith and life. These claims 
 on their behalf arc founded on their inspiration. Their 
 having been imparted to the writers by inspiration, the 
 act of God, their Author. The thoughts and words ex- 
 isted in the Divine Mind before they were conveyed to 
 the minds of the sacred penmen, and were consciously 
 received and realized in their minds as the words of 
 God before they wrote them. As written, therefore, 
 they are the words of God. 
 
 The Divine procedure in the bestowment of this 
 gift is in harmony with its infinite importance relatively 
 to the glory of God, and the exigencies and destinies 
 of men. It was prqvided for as an esssential part of 
 the system of moral government, and of redemption, 
 to be manifested in the progress of events, by Him, 
 who, as the Logos in the beginning, created all things. 
 To Him, under the same delegated character, in His 
 prophetic office, is to be ascribed the communication 
 to the world of the words of God : partly by His own 
 direct personal utterances to patriarchs, prophets, and 
 apostles, and partly b}^ the inspiring agency of the 
 Spirit, through the instrumentality of the sacred pen- 
 men. It is throughout a delegated ministerial work, 
 performed by messengers officially appointed to convey 
 and publish the messages verbatim, which were com- 
 mitted to them as legates, and to which they were ex- 
 pressly restricted. If the Scriptures throughout were 
 inspired, then every sentence and every word of the 
 original texts jiroceeded from God, the Father of lights, 
 through the Son as His messenger, the Spirit sent by 
 Him, and the sacred penmen as His instruments. 
 
 I shall, therefore, endeavor to show that the pro- 
 
THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 9 
 
 phetic ofi&ce of Christ, tlie Eevealer of God— the Logos 
 in the beginning, and the incarnate Word — exjoressly 
 restricted Him to the utterance of the words prescribed 
 by the Father whose Legate or Messenger He was ; 
 that He executed His office partly by His own imme- 
 diate acts, and partly by the agency of the Spirit offi- 
 cially sent, under the same express restrictions, to in- 
 spire the prescribed words into the minds of men ap- 
 pointed to receive and utter them verbatim in writing. 
 
 II. The Nature axd the Limitations of the Pro- 
 phetic Office. 
 
 I can not better introduce this doctrine than in the 
 words of the Assembly's Catechism, in answer to the 
 question : " How doth Christ execute the office of a 
 prophet ? Christ executeth the office of a prophet in 
 His revealing to the Church in all ages, by His Spirit 
 and Word, in divers ways of administration, the whole 
 will of God, in all tilings concerning their edification and 
 salvation." This plainly signifies that He executed that 
 office from the first institution of the Church, that He 
 executed it by verbal revelations and instructions, and 
 by the agency of the Holy Spirit ; and that the communi- 
 cations so made comprised all that is written in the Holy 
 Scriptures: all which, the Scriptures very clearly teach. 
 
 In that remarkable summary of "statutes and judg- 
 ments," which Moses, at the command of Jehovah, 
 spake to the Children of Israel, and recorded in the 
 book of Deuteronomy, there is a concise description of 
 the prophetic office of Christ. Moses was about to be 
 
10 THE PKOPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 removed by deatli ; and in view of the future exigen- 
 cies of bis people, lie writes : " The Lord said unto me, 
 .... I will raise them up a Prophet from among their 
 brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his 
 mouth ; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall 
 command him. And it shall come to pass, that who- 
 soever will not hearken unto my words which he shall 
 speak in mj name, I will require it of him. But the 
 prophet which shall presume to speak a ivord in my 
 name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or 
 that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that 
 prophet shall die." (Deut. 18.). The particulars in 
 which the Great Prophet was to be like Moses, were, 
 that he should appear in the form of man, raised ujd 
 from among the Jewish people, and that he should 
 speak only the words put into his mouth by Jehovah. 
 This is evident from the context : for the promise was 
 occasioned by the request of the assembled people at 
 Horeb, that they might not hear again the voice of the , 
 Lord their God, nor see again the terrors of Sinai. 
 " They said unto Moses, speak thou with us, and we 
 will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die." 
 The foregoing announcement is expressly applied to 
 Christ, the Logos Incarnate, by the Apostle Peter, 
 (Acts 3 : 22,) "For Moses truly said unto the fathers, 
 A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you 
 of your brethren, like unto me ; him shall ye hear in 
 all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it 
 shall come to pass, that every soul which will not hear 
 that Prophet, shall be destroyed from among the peo- 
 ple." And, again, the martyr Stephen (Acts 7) quotes 
 the same prediction as designating " the Just One " of 
 
THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 11 
 
 whom his accusers had been the betrayers and the 
 murderers. That specialty of the office which pro- 
 vided that The Prophet should speak only the words 
 put in his mouth by Ilim whose Messenger he was, is 
 expressly recognized, and its fulfillment attested by 
 Christ himself. Thus, " He whom the Father sancti- 
 fied and sent into the world" declares of Himself: 
 " I came down from heaven, not to do mine own 
 will, but the will of Him that sent me. . . . My doc- 
 trine is not mine, but His that sent me. . . . He whom 
 God hath sent, speaketh the words of God ; for God 
 giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him. ... I do 
 nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, 
 I speak these things I have not spoken of my- 
 self; but the Father which sent me. He gave me a 
 commandment, what I should say and what I should 
 speak." Again, addressing the Father, when about to 
 close His direct personal teachings. He said: "I have 
 given unto them the words which Thou gavest me." 
 
 It is plain, therefore, that Christ, the Incarnate 
 Word, in the execution of His prophetic office, was at 
 liberty to speak, and actually spoke, those words only 
 which the Father put into His mouth. He was offi- 
 cially in the strictest sense, the Legate, Eepresentative, 
 Messenger of the Father. But He was no less strictly 
 so under the preceding dispensations, than while He 
 personally sojourned on earth in the human nature. 
 As the Logos in the beginning, all things were created 
 by Him, and for Him. From the beginning He was 
 the Legate of the Father, commissioned to execute 
 His will in the works of Creation, Providence, and 
 Grace ; and sustained the offices of Prophet, Priest, and 
 
12 THE PEOPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 King — ^the Kevealer of God, the Teaclier and final 
 Judge of men. No man hath seen God the Father 
 at any time ; the only begotten Son, who is in the 
 bosom of the Father, He hath dccLared Him. His ap- 
 pointment to the subordinate of&ces, relations and 
 agencies which he was to sustain and execute, included 
 the offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, as well as the 
 works of Creation and Providence ; and it is not more 
 certain that He performed those works, and filled the 
 offices of Priest and King during the primeval and 
 Levitical dispensations, than that He executed, what 
 was from the very beginning most necessary — His 
 office as Prophet, Kevealer, Teacher and Law-giver of 
 men. Accordingly He says : " The Spirit of the Lord 
 is upon me ; because the Lord hath anointed me " — 
 designated me to this office — "to preach good tidings 
 unto the meek ; He hath sent me to bind up the brok- 
 en-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the 
 opening of the prison to them that are bound ; to pro- 
 claim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of 
 vengeance of our God ; to comfort all that mourn," 
 etc., etc. Answerable to this was his message to John 
 the Baptist, in proof that He was the Prophet that 
 should come: "Go your way and tell John what 
 things ye have seen and heard, how that the blind see, 
 the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, 
 the dead are raised, to the poor the Gospel is preached, 
 and blessed is Jie, ichosoever shall not he offended in me." 
 
 To the same effect are the prophetic references else- 
 where to His peculiar office as prophet ; as in Isa. 
 59 : 20, 21, "And the Eedeemcr shall come to Zion, and 
 unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith 
 
THE PROPnETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 13 
 
 Jehovah. As for me, this is my covenant with them, 
 saith Jehovah ; my Spirit that is upon thee — the Ee- 
 deemer — and my words which I have put in thy 
 mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of 
 the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy 
 seed's seed, saith Jehovah, from henceforth and for- 
 ever," 
 
 Again, in the 40th Psalm, (quoted and applied Ileb. 
 10,) where the non-requirement and insignificance of 
 the typical sacrifices apart from His obedience in His 
 prophetic and sacerdotal ofiices having been brought 
 into view, it is written : " Then said I, Lo, I come ; in 
 the volume of the Book it is written of me, I delight 
 to do thy will, my God ; yea, thy law is within my 
 heart. I have preached righteousness in the great 
 congregation ; lo, I have not refrained my lips. 
 Lord, Thou knowest, I have not hid Thy righteous- 
 ness within my heart ; I have declared Thy faithfulness 
 and Thy salvation ; I have not concealed Thy loving 
 kindness and Thy truth from the great congregation." 
 
 Under the title of the Messenger (angel) Jehovah, 
 the Messenger of the Covenant, as it is expressed in 
 Malachi 3, He is mentioned many times in the Pen- 
 tateuch and subsequent parts of the Old Testament ; 
 generally as appearing to individuals on extraordinary 
 occasions, in the visible likeness of, and as performing 
 acts proper to man — as speaking audibly, receiving 
 answers, giving directions ; as coming, standing, walk- 
 ing, stretching forth his hand ; as seeing and being 
 seen ; as receiving worship ; as going before the camp 
 of Israel in a pillar of cloud, through the Eed Sea and 
 the wilderness ; as speaking with Moses and with 
 
14: THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 prophets. When His Divine nature only is referred 
 to, He is generally called Jehovah. When His official 
 character and acts, His personal presence and visibility 
 are specially indicated, He is called the Messenger, or 
 a man, or is designated by some official title. The 
 man with whom Jacob wrestled, is in Hosca 12 de- 
 scribed as the Messenger, — even the Lord God of 
 Hosts, whose memorial is Jehovah. " Moses was in 
 the church in the wilderness with the Messenger (Jeho- 
 vah) who spake to him in the Mount Sinai, and with 
 our fathers." (Acts 7 : 38.) 
 
 Thus the Logos from the beginning, under the 
 names which designated His Divine nature, and under 
 the titles which signified His subordinate official cha- 
 racter, and often His visible presence and official acts, as 
 the angel, that is, the Messenger Jehovah, the anointed, 
 that is, the Messiah, etc., executed the office of Eevealer, 
 Teacher, Prophet, under the express condition and 
 limitation, proper to one sent to deliver verbatim the 
 messages of an official superior, — namely, that He 
 should utter no other than the words given, dictated, 
 put into his mouth. Those words perfectly expressed 
 what the Father willed to have uttered in His name, 
 on His authority, as the infallible rule of faith and 
 life. 
 
 But the Divine Prophet, both under the former and 
 the present dispensations, executed this office in part 
 directly in His own person, and partly through the in- 
 strumcntahty of messengers, prophets, and apostles, 
 appointed by Him, and directly subordinate to Him. 
 Under the primeval dispensation He spoke and con- 
 veyed His teachings directly to Adam, Noah, Job, 
 
THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 15 
 
 Abraliam, Isaac, Jacob; and under tlie Levitical, to 
 Moses, to tlie assembled people at Mount Sinai, to tlic 
 people at Bochim, to Gideon, to Jephtba, to Manoab, to 
 the children of Benjamin, and to others on various oc- 
 casions. And under those dispensations,' especially 
 after the death of Moses, He exercised His prophetic 
 office mediately, through the instrumentality of men 
 whom He designated and commissioned to speak His 
 words in His name, as He spoke the words of the 
 Father ; which words He conveyed to them not by 
 His own audible utterances, as to Moses and the 
 Patriarchs, but by the Holy Spirit, inspiring them into 
 their minds, (realizing them to their intelligent con- 
 sciousness, whether in dreams or otherwise.) Thus 
 the word of the Lord came to them, the Spirit spake 
 in them, by them, "by the mouth of all His holy 
 prophets since the world began." 
 
 But in the nature of the case, He, in the exercise of 
 His prophetic office, could not commission them as 
 His delegates, to do more than, was prescribed and 
 authorized in His commission. If He was sent not to do 
 His own will, not to speak of Himself, but to speak only 
 the words given Him, put in His mouth by the Father, 
 then the prophets, teachers, apostles, messengers, whom 
 He commissioned and sent, could do nothing of their 
 own will, could utter no words other than those which 
 He by the inspiration of the Spirit, put into their 
 mouths. Had they presumed to utter a word in His 
 name which He had not commanded them to utter, 
 death was the penalty. That penalty was signally ex- 
 ecuted in dill'erent instances, even upon some who 
 were not publicly regarded as mere pretenders to the 
 
16 THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 sacred office. Thus, " the man of God," who was sent 
 with a special message from Jehovah to Jeroboam, 
 1 Kings 13, and in confirmation of whose message a 
 miracle was wrought, disobeyed in one particular the 
 command wbich he had received. He had received 
 the most express verbal instructions ; but after faith- 
 fully executing them in part, he was induced by a j^re- 
 tended prophet who "lied unto him," to deviate and 
 swerve from the immediate verbal directions of Je- 
 hovah. And, while in the act of disobedience, a mes- 
 sage from Jehovah was sent to him : " The word of the 
 Lord came unto the (pretended) old prophet, and he 
 cried unto the man of God . . •. saying. Thus saith the 
 Lord, Forasmuch as thou hast disobeyed the mouth of 
 the Lord, and hast not kept the commandment which 
 the Lord thy God commanded thee . . . thy carcass shall 
 not come unto the sepulchre of thy fathers." Accord- 
 ingly a lion slew him, and he was laid in the grave of 
 the (pretended) prophet who had seduced him. 
 
 For another instance, take that of Hananiah, a false 
 prophet who had predominant influence with Zedekiah. 
 and his princes and people, and who propliesied direct- 
 ly in opposition to tbe messages delivered by Jeremiali 
 from Jehovah. " Then said the prophet Jeremiah un- 
 to Hananiah the prophet. Hear now, Hananiah ; the 
 Lord hath not sent thee ; but thou makest this people 
 to trust in a lie. Therefore thus saith the Lord, Be- 
 hold I will cast thee from off the face of the earth. . 
 So Hananiah the prophet died." Of the false prophets 
 as a class, in contradistinction to the true, it is said : 
 " They speak a vision of their own heart, and not out 
 of the mouth of the Lord. ... I have not sent 
 
THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 17 
 
 tliese prophets, jet they ran ; I have not spoken to 
 them, yet they prophesied." 
 
 It were to contradict all that is recorded in Scripture 
 on this subject, to say that the phrases " His words," 
 "my words," "the word of the Lord," and the like, in 
 the foregoing passages and elsewhere, signify doctrines, 
 ideas, thoughts, apart from words. For the conveyance 
 of thoughts apart from words is inconceivable ; and the 
 reception of thoughts otherwise than in words, is con- 
 trary to the consciousness of all men. Besides, if 
 thoughts only were conveyed to the minds of the sacred 
 writers, why did not the text simply express that, in- 
 stead of asserting that the words came^ were given, were 
 put into their Tnouths? 
 
 Such being the nature and limitation of their office, 
 those who exercised it both before and after the advent, 
 inclusive of the penmen of both Testaments, were alike 
 bound by its exclusive rule in regard to the source of 
 what they might utter ; and while, in general, they 
 distinctly recognize that rule, and profess to deliver 
 only what they received in accordance with it, if there 
 are historical or poetical books, which have not, in 
 their contents, such explicit recognition, they are so 
 connected by quotations with other books that have, 
 and by their original revelations and predictions, with 
 the entire collection, that their being found in the can- 
 on in the days of Ezra, and at the advent, is jDroof suf- 
 ficient that each and every penman of them, exercised 
 that delegated office, which, under the highest sanction, 
 restricted him to the utterance of those words only, 
 which he received immediately from God. Moreover, 
 it may be safely said that there are in every particular 
 
18 THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 book, passages, tlie very words of whicli must have 
 been supernaturally conveyed to the writer. The book 
 of Genesis, written by Moses, consists wholly of such 
 passages, of which he could have had neither any per- 
 sonal nor any historical knowledge, or at best nothing 
 more than floating popular traditions preserved by the 
 children of Israel in the utmost degeneracy of their 
 Egyjjtian bondage. 
 
 It was a distinct and well-defined class of men that 
 exercised the prophetic of&ce, by special Divine appoint- 
 ment, under the ancient dispensation. They are styled 
 prophets and messengers of Jehovah, who in His name 
 uttered His words ; men of God, as being officially sent 
 by Him ; men to whom the word of the Lord came, that 
 is, the words uttered or inspired by Him ; and collective- 
 ly. His holy prophets, as in the discourse of Peter, " God 
 hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since 
 the world began ; " and in his second epistle : " Prophe- 
 cy came not of old time by the will of man ; but holy 
 me'nof God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
 With this class, as with the apostolic messengers, the 
 office was for life in each instance, and ceased only, 
 when, in the one case, the Canon of the Old Testament, 
 and in the other, that of the New, was completed. 
 And it is to the men of this class that the penmanship 
 of the Scriptures of the Old Testament is ascribed ; for 
 they are collectively referred to and quoted from, as 
 the Scriptures^ the writings^ of the Prophets, and Zechariah, 
 one of the latest of the class, characterizes what had 
 been previously wntten, as " the words which the Lord 
 of hosts hath sent in His Spirit by the former pro- 
 
THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 19 
 
 phets." These and the like descriptions and definitions 
 of those sacred ■writings, decide them all to be alike the 
 word of God. To quote from any part of any one of 
 the books, is to quote the word of God. There is 
 neither any exception indicated in any one of the books 
 themselves, nor any room left for exception in the terms 
 by which, collectively, they are characterized. If ex- 
 ceptions are assumed by human ignorance and presump- 
 tion, they are assumed in opposition to the only infiilli- 
 ble evidence and ground of certainty in the case, the 
 testimony of the Scriptures themselves. It might with 
 reason be assumed that a book professing to be given 
 by inspiration of God, for the high and far-reaching 
 purposes which He had in view, involving His own 
 glory and the eternal destiny of His creatures, and 
 confessedly containing revelations, predictions, laws, 
 promises, from Him, must, in respect to all its contents, 
 be His word ; — His, where it records His own eternal 
 counsels and His acts of creation, providence, and grace, 
 and His, where the facts of human history, and the 
 very words spoken by men, angels, and devils, are, with 
 infallible verity ,_ reproduced and written. As the case 
 stands, to make an exception, were there room for one, 
 would require the same supernatural inspiration by 
 which the whole was given. The case is clear, that so 
 far as the sacred penmen wrote in their official capacity, 
 they wrote the very words given them by inspiration 
 of God. If they wrote any thing otherwise than in 
 that capacity, any thing merely as men, any thing at 
 their own discretion, any words of their own selection, 
 such words are not the words of God, and as honest 
 men, they should have told us which thev were. 
 
20 THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 Thus far, it is, I apprehend, indubitably certain ; 
 namely, that the prophetic office of Christ the Revealer 
 of God, and infallible Teacher of men, restricted Him 
 to the utterance of those words only which the Father 
 gave Him — put in His mouth ; that He exercised that 
 office under the ancient dispensations, from the begin- 
 ning ; tl*at He exercised it in part by His own imme- 
 diate vocal utterances, and in part by the mediate in- 
 strumentality of a succession of men apjDointed by Him 
 as His messengers, to utter vocally and in writing, only 
 the words which He immediately gave them, by the 
 official agency of the Holy Spirit, insj^iring them ver- 
 bally into their minds, as they uttered them. Some 
 further evidence, as to their understanding and execu- 
 tion of this delegated ministerial office as His messen- 
 gers, may seem to be necessary. 
 
 In this collateral aspect of the subject, it is obvious 
 to begin with Moses, and then to glance at the testimo- 
 ny of his successors. And it is proper first to notice 
 that Moses received his call and appointment immedi- 
 ately from Him, who in His own delegated character, 
 appeared to him, as often afterwards,, enveloped in a 
 cloudlike flame, under a title of office, signifying mes- 
 senger, as in Malachi 3 : 1, though here translated angel^ 
 as it is in some scores of instances where it designates 
 the same official person, and as an official title is em- 
 ployed interchangeably with the Divine names which 
 are appropriate to the respective persons of the God- 
 head as declaratory, not of their offices, but simply of 
 their Deity. The Messenger Jehovah, the Messenger 
 of the Covenant, (Mai. 3,) Jehovah the Son, in His 
 delegated character, as the IMesscnger of the Father, 
 
THE PEOPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 21 
 
 sent to declare and execute His will, immediately by 
 nis own personal agency, and mediately through 
 prophets, apostles, messengers delegated and sent by 
 Him — appeared to Moses in a flame of fire, out of the 
 
 midst of a bush And Moses said, I will 
 
 now turn aside and see this great sight. . . . And 
 when Jehovah saw that he turned aside to see, Elohim 
 called unto him out of the midst of the bush. . . . 
 And he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of 
 Abraham, etc. . . . And Moses hid his face, for 
 he was afraid to look upon the Elohim. . . . And 
 Jehovah said, I have seen the affliction of my people 
 which are in Egypt. . . . And I am come down to 
 deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, etc. 
 Come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, 
 that thou mayst bring forth my people out of Egypt. 
 
 It is plain that the title and the names above given, 
 designate the same Divine Person in His delegated 
 character, and that it was in the immediate exercise of 
 His personal agency in that character that He appoint- 
 ed and sent Moses to speak and act in His name ; and 
 that He personally instructed and directed him in all 
 the details of his subordinate ministry. In the pro- 
 gress of the instructions and announcements from the 
 Messenger Jehovah at this first appearance, Moses in- 
 terposed a variety of objections to his undertaking the 
 proffered mission ; and among others that of his not 
 being a fluent speaker. " And the Lord said unto him. 
 Who hath made man's mouth? or who makcth the 
 dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have 
 not I, the Lord ?" Have not I, the Creator, Preserver, 
 and Euler of all creatures, given man the faculty of 
 
22 THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 speecli ? " Now therefore, go, and I will be witli thy 
 mouth, and teach thee tchat thou shalt say^ Moses still 
 demurring, Jehovah condescended to appoint Aaron 
 to sustain precisely the same office in relation to Moses^ 
 that He appointed Moses to sustain towards Himself. 
 The same words which He should speak to Moses, 
 Moses was to speak to Aaron, and Aaron to Pharaoh 
 and the people. " Thou shalt sj^eak unto him, and 
 put words in his mouth : and I will be with thy mouth 
 and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall 
 do. And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people : 
 and he shall be, even he shall he to thee instead of a mouth, . 
 and thou shalt be to him, instead of God.^^ A more 
 precise description, or emphatic limitation, of the office, 
 by which the incumbent was to utter no other than 
 the words put into his mouth by the Superior who ap- 
 pointed him, can be conceived or expressed in human 
 language. 
 
 I need not say, or confirm by any extended refer- 
 ences, that Moses exercised his ministry to the day of 
 his death, in conformity to this descrij)tion and limita- 
 tion. In general, what he uttered is prefaced by "the 
 Lord said unto Moses," or other equivalent formulas. 
 When he wrote, the Holy Spirit, as immediate Author 
 and Inspirer of the Scriptures to be the instrument of 
 His own official agency in the illumination, renovation, 
 and sanctification of men, conveyed to his mind, real- 
 ized to his consciousness, precisely what he should 
 write. 
 
 There is an inherent incongruity and absurdity in 
 supposing that the immediate Messenger of the Father, 
 and the inferior messengers appointed by Him, should 
 
THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 23 
 
 be limited to tlie vocal utterance of the very words 
 given to them respectively, and that the inferior mes- 
 sengers, when called to write^ should be exempt from 
 such limitation, and left to exercise any, the smallest 
 discretion, in the choice of thoughts or words, to be 
 published for the instruction, and as the infallible rule 
 of faith and life, of all nations, during all times, and 
 the rule of final judgment and eternal retribution ! 
 "With what jealous care this specialty of the prophetic 
 office was guarded, and with what severity infringe- 
 ments of it were avenged, is manifest not only in the 
 destruction of individuals, and of whole companies of 
 the professed prophets of Baal, from time to time, but 
 in the signal retribution miraculously visited upon the 
 aspirants and usurpers of the office of Moses during his 
 personal ministry. Thus when "Miriam and Aaron 
 spake against Moses, . . . and said, Hath the 
 Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Hath he not 
 spoken also by us? The Lord heard it and spake 
 suddenly unto Moses, and unto Aaron, and unto Miri- 
 am, Come out, ye three unto the tabernacle of the con- 
 gregation. And they three came out. And the Lord- 
 came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood in the 
 door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam : 
 and they both came forth. And He said, Hear now 
 my words : if there be a prophet among you," — that is, 
 a prophet in the ordinary sense of that word — •" I the 
 Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, 
 and will speak unto him in a dream." — As He often did 
 to the prophets of subsequent times, — " My servant Mo- 
 ses is not so" — not a mere prophet, but represents me as 
 Head of the civil and ritual, as well as the prophetic 
 
24 THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 administration, — " who is faithful in all my house. 
 With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even appar- 
 ently, and not in dark speeches ; and the similitude of 
 the Lord shall he behold : wherefore then were ye not 
 afraid to speak against my servant Moses ? And the 
 anger of the Lord was kindled against them ; and lie 
 departed. And the cloud departed from off the taber- 
 nacle ; and behold Miriam became leprous as white as 
 snow," etc. (Numbers 12.) And when Korah and his 
 confederates rebelled, " and gathered themselves togeth- 
 er against Moses, and against Aaron, and said unto 
 them. Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the con- 
 gregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is 
 among them : wherefore then lift ye up yourselves 
 above the congregation of the Lord ? " . . . "Moses 
 said, Hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath sent me 
 to do all these works ; for I have not done them of 
 mine own mind. If these men die the common death 
 of all men . . . then the Lord hath not sent m,e ; 
 but if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open 
 her mouth and swallow them up, . . . then ye 
 shall understand that these men have provoked the 
 Lord. And it came to pass as he made an end of 
 speaking all these words, that the ground clave asun- 
 der that was under them . , . and swallowed 
 them up, and their houses, and all that appertained to 
 them." The next day, the whole "congregation mur- 
 mured against Moses and Aaron, saying. Ye have 
 killed the i3eoj)le of the Lord ;" when by a supernatu- 
 ral influence fourteen thousand and seven hundred of 
 them were instantly destroyed. (ISTumb. 16.) 
 
 Thus the law of the prophetic office, as limiting the 
 
THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 25 
 
 proplict to the utterance only of the words put into his 
 mouth, as the messenger of Jehovah, was established, 
 and vindicated, and rendered obligatory, and impera- 
 tive, on pain of death, on all who were appointed to 
 that office ; and as such it was understood and acknow- 
 ledged by the successive prophets after Moses. By this 
 law, they were, from its nature, origin, and object, as 
 necessarily subject to the verbal inspiration of the 
 Spirit in what they uttered in ivriting^ as they were to 
 the audible utterances of Jehovah in what they vocally 
 delivered in His name. He therefore spoke directly to 
 them, commanded them to repeat His words, put His 
 words into their mouth, taught them, prescribed to 
 them what they should say. His word. His articulate 
 utterance, whether of prediction, or narrative, precept, 
 or promise, encouragement or threatening, came to 
 them, not at their will and pleasure, but as passive re- 
 cipients. 
 
 Accordingly, the Lord, by His own articulate vocal 
 utterance, called Samuel to the prophetic office ; " ap- 
 peared to him, and revealed Himself to him by the word 
 of the Lord ;" spoke to him directly on various occasions, 
 and specifically directed him what to say, what words 
 to speak ; and he spoke in the name of the Lord the 
 words which he received from Him. When, by im- 
 mediate Divine direction, he anointed David to be king, 
 " the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that 
 day forward." David, at the close of his career as head 
 of the civil administration, and as a prophet, psalmist, 
 and sacred writer, said : ' The Spirit of the Lord spake 
 by me, and His word was in my tongue. The God of 
 Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me." 
 
26 THE mOPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 The word of the Lord came on successive occasions 
 to Elijah, and ho as often delivered the verbal messages 
 which he had received. At length, by express com- 
 mand of Jehovah he anointed Elisha to be prophet in 
 his stead, who also received and uttered special mes- 
 sages from Jehovah. Micaiah, a true prophet, being 
 importuned to concur with the flilse prophets of Ahab, 
 said, though threatened with imprisonment and suffer- 
 ing, " As the Lord liveth, what the Lord saith unto 
 me, that will I speak." Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and 
 the twelve minor prophets, each, from paragraph to 
 paragraph, describes what he wrote, as immediatelj 
 from Jehovah. Daniel, in part, received verbal com- 
 munications through the intermediate agency of the 
 angel Gabriel. By what minute provisions, and special 
 acts and arrangements, the prophets were selected, 
 raised up, qualified, appointed and sent, though not 
 particularly specified in every instance, may be seen 
 by reference to the case of one or two of them. Thus 
 Jeremiah, chap. 1 : " The word of the Lord came nnto 
 me, saying, Before I formed thee, I knew thee, and be- 
 fore thou wast born, I sanctified, and I ordained thee 
 a projjhet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord 
 God, behold I can not speak, for I am a child. But 
 the Lord said unto me, Say not I am a child : for thou 
 shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I shall 
 command thee, thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their 
 faces : for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith tlie 
 Lord. Then the Lord put forth His hand, and touched 
 my mouth ; and the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have 
 put my words iu thy mouth." Jeremiah, accordingly, 
 from time to time, spoke the very words which Jeho- 
 
THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 27 
 
 vah spoke immediately to liim. When lie wrote, he 
 employed Baruch as his scribe^ as Aaron was employed 
 as the spokesman of Moses. " And Baruch wrote from 
 the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord, 
 which He had spoken unto him." (Jer. 36.) Those 
 words which he so wrote on one particular occasion, 
 comprised the verbal utterances of Jehovah to him 
 daring the preceding score of years, the recalling of 
 which therefore, so as to dictate them with infallible 
 accuracy, we may justly, and with confidence, ascribe 
 to the inspiration of them into his mind, by the Holy 
 Spirit, as he uttered them to Baruch. Again, with 
 respect to the great contemporary of Jeremiah, who 
 was called to the prophetic office from among the cap- 
 tives in Chaldea. " The word of the Lord came ex- 
 pressly to Ezekiel ... by the river Chebar ; and 
 the hand of the Lord was there upon him." To fit 
 him for the service to which he was called, he first 
 had a vision of the Messenger Jehovah as seated on a 
 throne. " Upon the likeness of the throne, was the 
 likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. 
 . . This was the appearance of the likeness of the 
 glory of Jehovah. And when I saw it, I fell upon my 
 face, and I heard a voice of One that spake. And He 
 said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I 
 will speak unto thee. And the Spirit entered into me 
 when He spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, 
 that I heard Him that spake unto me. And He said 
 unto me. Son of man, I send thee unto the children of 
 Israel. . . . And thou shall sjxaJc my words unto 
 them^ whether they will hear, or whether they will for- 
 bear." Next, to show him unmistakablv, the nature 
 
28 THE PROPHETIC OFFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 and limit of his prophetic office, the voice from the 
 throne said: "Hear what I say unto thee, . . eat 
 that I give thee. And when I looked, behold an hand 
 was sent unto me ; and lo, a roll of a book was therein, 
 and He spread it before me ; and it was written within 
 and without. . . . Moreover, He said unto mv, 
 Son of man, cat this roll, and go, speak unto the house 
 of Israel. So I ojjened my mouth, and he caused mo 
 to eat that roll. . . . And He said unto me. Son 
 of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, and sjyeak 
 with my ivords unto them, ... all my words that 
 I shall speak unto thee receive in thine heart, and hear 
 with thine ears. ... I have made thee a watch- 
 man unto the house of Israel, therefore hear the word 
 at my mouth. . . . When I speak with thee, I 
 will open thy mouth, and thou shalt say unto them, 
 Thus saith the Lord God." (Ezek. 1-3.) 
 
 Isaiah was called, instructed, and sent, in a similar 
 manner. He saw the Lord, the Messenger Jehovah, in 
 the form of man, sitting upon a throne, and, over- 
 whelmed with a sense of his own corruption, and un- 
 worthiness he said : " Mine eyes have seen the King, 
 the Lord of Hosts. . . . Also I heard the voice of 
 the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go 
 for us ? Then said I, Here am I ; send me. And He 
 said, Go," etc. (Isa. 6.) It was Christ whose glory he 
 saw, and who spoke to him, and commissioned him as 
 His messenger. (See John 12.) Daniel, also, saw the 
 same Divine person, in the likeness of the Son of Man. 
 (Danl. 7.) And Amos, when about to utter some spe- 
 cial and most important prediction, says : " I saw the 
 Lord standing upon the altar : and He said, Smite the 
 lintel of the floor that the posts may shake." (Amos 9.) 
 
THE OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIKIT. 29 
 
 TIT. Of the Office of the Spikit, iisr Eelation 
 TO the Scriptuees. 
 
 A consideration of tlie Office of tlie Holy Spirit 
 in the economy of redemption, will lead us to tlie 
 same results in respect to the nature and limitation of 
 the prophetic office of Christ, and of the subordinate 
 office of His messengers, the prophets of the Old, and 
 the apostles of the New Testament. Tt is according to 
 the teachings of Scripture, and according to the faith 
 of the Church of God in all ages, that the three Per- 
 sons of the Godhead subsisted eternally as persons, co- 
 equal in nature, and independently of all external 
 works, manifestations, and relations towards creatures. 
 And it is no less evident from the teachings of Scrip- 
 ture, its revelations, and its record of facts and events, 
 in the progress of the Divine dispensations, and of the 
 redemption, sanctification, and perpetuation of the 
 Church, that those Persons entered into a covenant, 
 prior to, and concerning the works of creation, provi- 
 dence, and grace, that is, all external works, as being 
 foreordained before the foundation of the world, and 
 centering in the chiefest of them, the work of redemp- 
 tion : and that on the basis of such covenant, and in 
 reference to the execution of it, in and throughout all 
 the ages of time, they assumed official relations towards 
 each other, and towards the creatures that were to be 
 brought into existence ; so that, while they remain 
 three Persons in one essence and one will, their acts to- 
 wards the dependent universe are personal and official 
 acts, arising from their official relations. Hence the 
 
30 THE OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, 
 
 Scripture names and designations whicL refer exclu- 
 sively to tlie Divine nature are common to them all, 
 while each of them, in His official character and rela- 
 tions, is referred to by distinctive titles and appellations, 
 not appropriated to the others. Thus the Father offi- 
 cially represents the will of the Godhead which is exe- 
 cuted by the Son and the Spirit in respect to all the 
 works in question. The Son is officially subordinate 
 to the Father, the immediate Messenger of the covenant, 
 the primary agent in the execution of the Father's will, 
 and the accomplishment of those works. And the 
 Spirit is officially subordinate to the Father and the 
 Son, and is sent by them and either of them, as the Son 
 is sent by the Father. 
 
 The office of the Spirit is therefore specific and lim- 
 ited, as that of a Messenger of the Father and the Son. 
 It can not transcend that will of the Father which the 
 Son was commissioned to reveal and execute, nor be 
 otherwise than subordinate to the official prerogative 
 of the Son. In a word, then, if the Son, as the Messen- 
 ger of the Father, could do no act not prescribed by 
 Him, and could utter no word not given or dictated 
 by Him, and if He could not commission and send as 
 His official messengers — the prophets and apostles — to 
 do more than His own commission authorized, it fol- 
 lows clearly that the Spirit in executing His official 
 agency, is limited by the same conditions as the Son. 
 In relation to the words of Scripture, therefore. He 
 could utter, inspire into, speak by the mouth of, the 
 prophetic and apostolic messengers of the Son, only the 
 very words of the Father and the Son, as they were 
 given to Him. He could no more assist or guide the 
 
THE OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 31 
 
 sacred writers to utter other words, whether reLating to 
 what they knew before or not, than the Son, as Mes 
 Sanger of the Father, sent to speak only His words, 
 could commission His subordinate ministerial instru- 
 ments to speak or write other than the words which 
 He put into their mouths. And if the sacred penmen 
 actually wrote any other than the words put into their 
 mouths immediately by the Son, or mediately, from 
 the Father or the Son, by the Spirit speaking in and 
 by them, such words were not the words of God, but 
 merely the words of men. No conceivable assistance 
 or guidance could transform them into the words of 
 God, or bring them within the rule of official prescrip- 
 tion and authorization. The servant is not greater 
 than his master. 
 
 The official works of the Holy Spirit, in this great 
 economy, may be classed under several distinct heads. 
 
 1, That of inspiring into the minds of the subor- 
 dinate messengers, prophets, apostles, and evangelists 
 the words of the Father and of the Son to be uttered, 
 vocally and in writing by them. This official opera- 
 tion of the Holy Spirit is largely attested with refer- 
 ence to the Scriptures collectively. It is variously 
 described as teaching the sacred writers, giving them 
 what they were to uttei', speaking in them and by them, 
 revealing the truths of the Gospel to them. 
 
 2. That of quickening, regenerating, illuminating, 
 sanctifying the souls of men. In this He employs as 
 His instrument the word of God, and that only — the 
 words of Scripture, of all and every part of Scripture — 
 
32 THE OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, 
 
 tlie words wliicli He Himself had spoken by the moutlis 
 of prophets and apostles. These are the preexistent 
 seeds and genus which He plants in the lieart and 
 quickens into faith and life — the words hy which 
 faith Cometh, the words of life, the sword of the Spirit, 
 the word of God. 
 
 3. That of operating miraculously on physical and 
 intellectual natures. Thus the Spirit of God came 
 upon Saul and also upon his messengers, producing ef- 
 fects, apparently on their bodies and their minds. (1 ' 
 Saml. 10.) Ezekiel says : " The Spirit lifted me up and 
 took me away, and I went in bitterness," etc. The 
 Spirit caught away Philip, after he had baptized the 
 eunuch, and he was found at Azotus. (Acts 8.) 
 
 The miraculous gifts conferred on the apostles and on 
 others on the day of Pentecost, and afterwards, for 
 special purposes, and during a limited period, are to be 
 classed under this head. The gifts of tongues, of in- 
 terpreting tongues, of discerning spirits, and others', 
 were peculiar to that period, and had no connection 
 whatever Avith the origin, bestowment, or writing, of 
 any part of the Scriptures. 
 
 The words of Christ are the words of the Father by 
 Him as sent of the Father. The words of the Spirit 
 which constitute the Scriptures, are the words of the 
 Father and the Son, by llim, as sent by them* As 
 communicated by God the Spirit, and written, they are 
 the words of God in the same sense as the verbal dis- 
 courses of God the Son were His words. It was the 
 office of the Spirit as sent by the Father and the Son, 
 to utter the words of Scripture in writing, through the 
 
THE OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 33 
 
 instrumentality of the sacred penmen; as it was the 
 office of the Son, as sent of the Father, audibly to speak 
 His words to the patriarchs, to Moses and others, un- 
 der the former, and to llis disciples and the Jewish 
 people under the present dispensation. 
 
 It was to supply, to the disciples, the apostles, and 
 the Church, the place of Christ's personal presence and 
 teachings after His resurrection and ascension, that the 
 official agency of the Spirit was promised and exerted, 
 as it was vouchsafed and exerted towards the pro- 
 phets and sacred penmen of the Old Testament. 
 That official agency was as necessary, and as much a 
 provision of the eternal covenant, to Enoch, Noah, the 
 patriarchs, Moses, and all the prophets after him, as to 
 tlie apostles and evangelists of the New Testament. It 
 was a part of the works towards creatures, by which 
 the will of the Father was executed. Therefore, when 
 about to withdraw as to His local, personal presence 
 and ministry, Christ said, " The Comforter," that is, 
 the Paraclete, the Monitor, or Teacher, " which is the 
 Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, 
 He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to 
 your remembrance" — realize anew to your conscious- 
 ness — " whatsoever I have said unto you." " When 
 the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you 
 from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which pro- 
 ccedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me. . . 
 When He, the Spirit of truth is come. He will guide 
 you into all truth : for He shall not speak of Himself; 
 but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak ; and 
 He shall show you things to come. He shall glorify 
 me : for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unt^ 
 
34 THE OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIEIT. 
 
 joxL All things that the Father hath are mine : there- 
 fore said I, that He shall take of mine, and shall show 
 it unto you. It is expedient for jou that I go away ; 
 for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto 
 you ; but if I depart, / will send Him unto tjou^ (John 
 14-16.) Such is the express commission and office of 
 the Spirit, as Messenger of the Father and Son, delega- 
 ted to speak not of Himself, "not His own words, but 
 only the words of the Father and Son. As the words 
 which the Son spoke, were, 1, the words of the Father, 
 officially representing the Godhead, and 2d, His words, 
 as having received them in BQs delegated character 
 from the Father ; so the words which the Spirit offi- 
 cially spoke, recalled, inspired into the minds of the apos- 
 tles and sacred writers, were the words of Christ as re- 
 ceived by Him, and of the Father primarily prescribiag 
 them as the will of the self-existent, eternal, invisible 
 Deity. They are, therefore, in the most absolute and 
 exclusive sense, the words of God — the published, irre- 
 vocable, infalUble declarations — in the only form adapt- . 
 ed to intelligent creatures, of Himself, of His will, of 
 His relations, of the rules and measures of His admin- 
 istration, and the rules of human faith and conduct ; 
 His words, not to men only, but to the whole universe : 
 not for time only, but for all the future of His kingdom : 
 the instrument of all spiritual influences ; the basis on 
 which all holy intelligencies in heaven and earth, are 
 at length to be united. 
 
 He who denies this delegated office of the Spirit, in 
 relation to the words of Scripture, must equally deny the 
 delegated office of Christ in relation to the words, audi- 
 bly spoken by Him : and he who holds to and believes 
 
TUE NATUKE OF DIVINE INSPIRATION. 35 
 
 in the realit}^ and limitation of these offices in respect 
 to the Kew Testament economy, must equally believe 
 in them in respect to the Old. For in this respect the 
 two economies are identical, founded on the same cov- 
 enant, parts of the same system, executed by the same 
 Divine Persons, in the same relations, and issuing in the 
 same specific result, the publication of the Word of God 
 in writing. 
 
 IV. The Nature of Divine Inspiration. 
 
 The way is thus prepared, to show what is the na- 
 ture of Divine Inspiration ; and I define it to be an 
 act of God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, by which 
 He breathed into the mind of the sacred writers, the 
 words which they uttered in writing. Or, in other 
 words : It is an act of the Holy Spirit, in His dele- 
 gated official capacity, by which He conveyed into the 
 minds of the holy prophets and sacred writers, the 
 words of God, as they uttered them vocally and in 
 writing. 
 
 This is clearly contained in the Spirit's commission 
 as Teacher of all things, remembrancer of all that 
 Christ had spoken, exhibitor of things to come, and of 
 all things relating to the Father and the Son. The 
 word Inspiration signifies an act of breathing into — 
 inspiring words into the mind by an act resembling 
 that of inspiring air into the lungs. This is it^ only 
 meaning as used in Scripture. The Scriptures speak 
 of this, and of no other kind of inspiration. It is an 
 act bv which something is conveyed from one person 
 
36 THE NATUEE OF DIVINE INSPIRATIOJST. 
 
 to another ; and in Scripture is often understood and 
 implied wliere the word itself is not inserted. But it 
 is inserted where a general affirmation is made, con- 
 cerning the entire Scriptures as the Word of God. As 
 (2 Tim. 3: 16) "All Scripture is given hy Inspiration 
 of OodP All Scripture, all the words written in the 
 holy books — given, imparted, conveyed by inspiration 
 — the act of God the Spirit breathing them into the 
 minds of the writers : equivalent to saying, all the 
 words which God in the person of the Father, saw 
 fit, and determined to have written as His, on His au- 
 thority, in His name, as the infalhble rule of faith and 
 life to His rational creatures, He in the Person of the 
 Holy Ghost, conveyed immediately by inspiration to 
 the intelhgent consciousness of those whom He ap- 
 pointed to write them. 
 
 "When this inspired affirmation was uttered by the 
 pen of Paul, the canon of Old Testament Scriptures 
 had long been settled, and at least two, and probably 
 three of the Gospels, all the other Epistles of Paul, 
 those of Peter, and probably the whole New Testa- 
 ment, except the Gospel, Epistles, and Eevelation of 
 John, had been written and were extant ; and there 
 can be no reason assigned why Paul should not have 
 included these writings in all Scripture given by in- 
 spiration, which would not equally have prevented 
 Peter, in his second Epistle, referring to all the Epis- 
 tles of Paul as containing things which the ignorant 
 and unstable wrested, as they did also the other Scrip- 
 tures, to their own destruction. What was meant by 
 the Scripture, the Holy Scriptures, the Word of God, 
 was, at least, as correctly understood at that period as 
 
THE NATURE OF DIVINE IXSPIRATIOX. 37 
 
 it is at present. Thej are quoted and referred to by 
 the New Testament writers, as the Word of God, 
 spoken by the Spirit, by the mouth of the writers. 
 Thus in Heb. 3, the writer, after contrasting Christ as 
 the Son over His own house, and as the Apostle, that 
 is, the Messenger, with Moses, who was faithful as a 
 servant, adds: "Wherefore, as the Holy Ghost saith, 
 ' To day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your 
 hearts, as in the provocation in the day of temptation 
 in the wilderness,' " etc. This is taken from the ninety- 
 fifth Psalm, where there is no verbal reference to the 
 Spirit, and we only know of this as of the other 
 Psalms, that the Spirit spake by the writer. And 
 Stephen, (Acts 7,) when charging his accusers of hav- 
 ing persecuted the Prophets, and with not having kept 
 the Law which they had received by the instrumen- 
 tality of Messengers, says : "Ye stiff-necked and uncir- 
 cumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the 
 Holy Ghost : as your fathers did, so do ye." They 
 resisted the Holy Ghost speaking in the Scriptures by 
 the mouth of the Prophets and Messengers of Jehovah. 
 Again, Acts 1, " Peter stood up in the midst of the 
 disciples, and said. Men and brethren, this Scripture 
 must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost, 
 by the mouth of David, spake before concerning 
 Judas. . . . For it is written in the Book of Psalms, 
 ' Let his habitation be desolate,' " etc. See Psalm 109, 
 where, however, there is no allusion to the Spirit. 
 
 The foregoing is, I apprehend, in harmony with all 
 that we are taught in Scripture concerning the person, 
 offices, and agencies of the Holy Spirit. His acts are 
 official acts. The terms by which he is distinguished, 
 
38 THE NATUEE OF DIVIISTE INSPIRATION. 
 
 are titular, official designations. The word Spirit pri- 
 marily signifies h-eath, aii\ and was witli obvious pro- 
 priety, appropriated to signify that essence and life 
 whicli is invisible and omnipresent. God is a Spirit. 
 The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are in essence 
 the same. But in their ofiicial relations and agencies, 
 each is distinguished by titles not common to the 
 others. These titles indicate the peculiar offices and 
 works of the respective jDersons. The offices and works 
 of the Holy Spirit, include the inspiration of the 
 Scriptures, and then the use of the Avords of Scripture, 
 as His exclusive instrument, in convincing the world 
 of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; in teaching, 
 renewing, and sanctifying men ; in working in them 
 repentance, faith, and obedience; applying to them 
 the benefits of the redemption jourchased by Christ, 
 turning them from darkness to light, and from the 
 power of Satan unto God, working in them to will 
 and to do the works of righteousness, sealing and pre- 
 serving them to the day of final redemption. It is not 
 by new revelations that He accomplishes these results, 
 but by the written Word of God, which He Himself 
 breathed into the sacred writei's ; His own word, the 
 instrument of His officially subordinate agency. Hence 
 the qualifying epithets by which He is distinguished 
 "with reference to His peculiar works. As the Author 
 of the Holy Scriptures, and of all holmess in man. 
 He is denominated the Holy Spirit ; as Teacher, the 
 Spirit of Truth, whom the world can not receive — the 
 Spirit of Truth which proccedeth from the Father; 
 and in various relations, the Spirit of Holiness, the 
 Spirit of Faith, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ. 
 
THE NATUEE OF DIVINE INSPIRATION. 39 
 
 Of Him it is affirmed, that men arc born oi the 
 Spirit; that they are chosen to salvation through 
 sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth ; 
 elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, 
 through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience, and 
 sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ ; that they are 
 led, taught, guided by the SjDirit. 
 
 It is thus apparent that the official agency of the 
 Spirit is founded in the eternal covenant, and is co- 
 extensive with the work of redemption, in its details, 
 its efficacious application, and its final issues. From 
 the beginning, all revelations of the Father's will, as 
 they were uttered by the voice or pen of subordinate 
 human messengers, were immediately inspired into 
 their minds by the Spirit as they uttered them. This 
 was His office as much with respect to every portion 
 as to any portion of the sacred oracles. They are the 
 words of Grod, conveyed, breathed into, realized to the 
 consciousness of men, by the Holy Spirit. If Enoch was 
 a holy man, the Spirit changed his heart and made 
 him so. If he uttered predictions concerning the mur- 
 murers and time-servers of the present dispensation, 
 and the yet future coming of Christ witli His holy 
 myriads to execute judgment upon all the ungodly, 
 they were inspired into his mind by the Holy Spirit, 
 as they were into the mind of Jude as he wrote them. 
 There is, I rest assured, no legitimate, no consistent, 
 no Scriptural view of the subject but this. And in 
 my judgment there are no difficulties incident to this 
 view, at all comparable to the manifold and insur- 
 mountable difficnltics which pervade and confound 
 the views of those who treat of an influence on the 
 
40 THE NATURE OF DIVINE INSPIRATION. 
 
 faculties of men as what tliej iinderstand by inspira- 
 tion, and hold to various kinds and degrees of that 
 influence. 
 
 There is, so to speak, eternal and infinite harmony, 
 consistency, propriety ; order, system, proportion ; 
 reason, intelligence, wisdom; beauty, excellency, 
 love, in all the counsels, acts, and ends of the Triune 
 God, all the relations and agencies 'of the persons of 
 the Godhead. These qualities of Divine perfection 
 are, by the Spirit, disclosed to the faith which is of 
 His operation, in the Holy Scriptures. And they are 
 verbally disclosed to all as far as that was possible, in 
 the words given by inspiration of the Spirit, concern- 
 ing the eternal counsels and covenant, the offices and 
 relations, the administrations and acts, of the respec- 
 tive persons of the Godhead. In what is ascribed to 
 them respectively, there is no confusion, no interfer- ■ 
 ence with each other, no defect as to the final issue. 
 To the Holy Spirit pertained all that relates to the 
 communication of the will of God to man, in the sa- 
 cred writings, the written word of God. 
 
 It is obvious to remark, that upon this doctrine of Di- 
 vine Inspiration, and this view of the whole case, de- 
 pends the theory, the doctrine, the ordinance, the instru- 
 mentality of the ministry of the GosidcI. The ministers 
 of the Gospel are called and commissioned to preach, 
 not philosophy, not their own wisdom, not any human 
 system, not what the office and commission of prophets 
 and apostles forbid their preaching, but the word of 
 God as written by them by inspiration of the Spirit, as 
 the infallible standard of truth, and rule of faith and 
 practice. The standard, the rule, the truth itself is 
 
WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 41 
 
 extant, and unalterably fixed in the inspired writings. 
 To go aside from these, to add to them, to detract from 
 them, is at their peril. If they speak not according to 
 this word, it is because there is no light in them. 
 They are committed to writing to be the fixed, per- 
 manent, unalterable standard to all the subordinate 
 messengers of the Spirit whom He makes overseers, 
 teachers, ministers, in His work of calling, regenerating, 
 and sanctifying men. He who preaches the word 
 which he inspired, preaches that which is His instru- 
 ment in the renovation and sanctification of men. If 
 any man preach any other Gospel than that which 
 Paul preached, not in his own words, but in the words 
 which the Spirit taught him, " let him be accursed." 
 (Gal. 1 : 9.) " If any man shall take away from the 
 words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take 
 away his part out of the Book of Life," etc. (See 
 Eevelation 22 : 19.) 
 
 V. Were the very Words of God conveyed to 
 THE Sacred Writers by Inspiration ? 
 
 But the question very naturally arises. Is it indeed 
 the very words of Scripture upon which so much stress 
 is laid? Are we bound to believe that the words of 
 the original texts of the Holy Scriptures are the words 
 of God, as truly as if He had audibly dictated them to 
 the writers ? Supposing even that all the thoughts — 
 not merely those concerning Original Revelations, but 
 all that might be naturally known to men — were spe- 
 cially selected and communicated to the Sacred AVriters, 
 
42 WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATIOlSr. 
 
 is it necessary to suppose that all the words also were 
 communicated, and that they wrote those very words, 
 and had no discretion whatever in the choice of words ? 
 Human wisdom is gravelled and stumbled at this : as 
 though it were unworthy of the Creator and Lawgiver 
 of men, the Author of language, and Maker of man's 
 mouth, or impossible to Him, to cause His own words 
 to be written as the fixed and permanent expression of 
 His thoughts, and the infixllible rule of human faith 
 and life. Good men, even the best of men, and the 
 best of critics and commentators, while with respect to 
 every particular passage of Scripture, they believe in 
 their hearts that it is the Word of God, as really as 
 any other passage, and quote, criticise, and comment 
 on it as such, nevertheless are reserved, hesitating, 
 non-committal, as to any explicit declaration concern- 
 ing the whole. 
 
 Take for example the critical work of Dr. Stier, en- 
 titled " The Words of the Lord Jesus," of which it is 
 the object " to unfold the meaning and harmony of all 
 the recorded words which fell from the lips of the AVord 
 made flesh." The very definition of Avhat he under- 
 took to do, and every sentence of his elaborate, and 
 in point of evangelical excellence, unequalled exege- 
 sis, implies that he most firmly believed that the re- 
 corded words were the very words of Christ. He as- 
 sumed that, he believed it, he, time and again, asserts 
 it : without that, his work had no basis, his labor no 
 object, his conclusions no authority. The question 
 met him at the outset, " Have we these words just as 
 He spoke them?" " This," he answers, "is the ques- 
 tion of modern criticism, which refuses to take for 
 
WOEDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 43 
 
 granted what should, however, be taken for granted 
 by all who believe in a Eevelation by the Son of God ; 
 namely, that His words can not have fallen to the 
 ground, can not have dropped and been lost through 
 the sieve of erring human composition. Yes, we pos- 
 sess that luhich He spake ! Not indeed in the letter of 
 the verba ipsissima, but through the mediating witness 
 of the Evangelists, elevated in the Spirit. Yet are 
 they truly and essentially the ipsissima, as His teaching 
 for the world and the Church." This answer is good 
 for the heart, but not sufficient, or in point, for the 
 understanding. It leaves that unexplained to which 
 the question relates ; and advances an inference from 
 premises, which, not being self evident, are to be taken 
 for granted. Then as to the very words, there is an 
 indefiniteness, an uncertainty, which gives scope and 
 point to the question. But if they are not His words 
 verbatim et literatim, why should the words themselves 
 be criticised and expounded as His ? If they are not 
 in that sense His words, how can a critical exegesis of 
 them show that what they signify is identical with what 
 was signified by the words which he actually uttered ? 
 If they are not His words in that literal sense, but yet 
 contain His teaching for the world and the Church, 
 why not pass by the words and criticise the teaching 
 only? But says the author, " His words can not have 
 fallen to the ground, can not have dropped and been 
 lost through the sieve of erring human composition ;" 
 as if the words recorded were the very words that had 
 been vocally uttered ; and as if the writers, in record- 
 ing them, had been supernaturally withheld from los- 
 ing them, and preserved from error in writing. But 
 
44 WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 
 
 if the Evangelists were compositors^ or had any discre- 
 tion, or any thing whatever to do with selecting out 
 of all that w^as spoken by Christ, what they should 
 respectively write, how did it happen that one wrote 
 so much more than others of them, and that altogether 
 they recorded so small a portion of the words uttered 
 by Him in the hearing of the disciples ? How came 
 they actually to drop, omit, leave unrecorded an inde- 
 finitely large proportion of all that the Saviour did and 
 said ? (See John 20 : 30 ; 21 : 25.) Either they are 
 His words in the same sense as all the words of Scrip- 
 ture are the words of God, as having been audibly 
 uttered or verbally inspired by Him, or they are merely 
 the words of the Evangelist compositors, and should 
 be expounded as such. The author's faith is right ; 
 but his explanation for the guidance of others to the 
 same result, falters and fails. Practically and experi- 
 mentally, by way of accounting for his "■ rigid adher- 
 ence to the written word," he says : "I read the 
 canonical text of the Bible, as written through the 
 Holy Ghost; but I so read it, not because I have 
 framed for myself any inspiration dogma, .... but 
 because this word approves itself with ever-increasing 
 force as inspired to my reason, which, though not in- 
 deed sound, is through the virtue of that word daily 
 recovering soundness. It is because this living Word 
 in a thousand ways has directed, and is ever directing, 
 my inner being, with all its intelligence, thought, and 
 will, that I have subjected to it the freedom of my 
 whole existence." But he adds an explanation which 
 seems substantially to express, and really to involve, 
 what I am endeavoring to inculcate respecting the 
 
WOKDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION". 45 
 
 office-work of the Spirit in conveying to the Sacred 
 writers the very words which they wrote: "The 
 great and fundamental deficiency of nearly all learned 
 exegesis, with which mine must forever differ, is its 
 misapprehension of the depth and fullness of meaning 
 which, in accordance with its higher nature, necessari- 
 ly belongs to every word of the Spirit. Though be- 
 lieved to be the word of God, it is treated superficially 
 and on principles of partial and one-sided deduction, 
 just as if it were the word of man. In the endeavor to 
 understand it, that depth is not explored where, from 
 the one root of the sensus simplex, the richest fullness of 
 references spring up and ramify in such a manner, 
 that what upon the ground and territory of its imme- 
 diate historical connection, presents one definitely ap- 
 prehended truth as the kernel of its meaning, does 
 nevertheless expand itself into an inexhaustible variety 
 of senses for the teaching of the world in all ages, and 
 especially in the Church, where the Holy Spirit Him- 
 self continues to unfold His germinal zvord, even to the 
 end of the days. While this applies to every loord of 
 the Spirit in its several measure, to the words of the ]Vord, 
 it applies without measure, to an extent Avhich eternity 
 only will disclose ! . . . . The preparatory prophetic 
 word fiinds its end and goal in the word of Christ : the 
 apostolical word rests upon Him as its foundation, is 
 
 in Him already in its rudiments performed As 
 
 to those who believe in the Lord, and yet through a 
 pernicious pseudo-science, either can not or will not 
 bow to that miracle of the Holy Ghost— ilAe sure trans- 
 mission of His life and words in the Gospels, which are 
 the central word in the whole invisible Scripture, may 
 
46 WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION". 
 
 the Spirit of Truth bear more and more convincingly 
 His ovm witness to His own testimony^ wliich tolerates 
 no correction of man." (Stier, Preface, vol. i., Lon- 
 don Ed.) Again in liis critical comments : " Which, 
 then, out of the multitude of His words, should bo 
 committed to record for the world and the Church ? 
 .... The selection and arrangement were not left 
 with man, but were the prerogative of the Holy Spirit, 
 concerning whom the Lord's promise was, ' He shall 
 glorify Me, for He shall take of Mine, and show 
 it Tinto you.' " . . . . ""We find in the Gospels a pre- 
 liminary series of first words, which the Spirit has 
 selected as the most critical in their occurrence, and 
 
 most distinctive in their expression The Lord 
 
 did actually thus speak them, but His Spirit alone 
 could with perfect fidelity reproduce them in the 
 Scripture, and hand them over to the Church." 
 
 " The Evangelists, according to the wisdom of the 
 Holy Ghost, were under the necessity of distributing 
 in portions what was allotted to them to record. . . . 
 How familiarly the Lord's thought and language 
 attach themselves to those Old Testament typical expres- 
 sions in which the spirit had already prophetically 
 exhibited all the germs of the New Testament com- 
 munication. . . . We have through the intervention 
 of the Holy Ghost, the entire actual Sermon on the 
 Mount, which we may hear and understand even as it 
 was spoken by the Lord Himself, . . . the Spirit 
 of Christ Himself, who spake by the prophets, 
 expounds and opens to us by the mouth of Jesus 
 and His apostles, His own fore-written word; and 
 bears witness to it as now first fulfilled, and now first 
 
WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 47 
 
 accessible in its full and consummate meaning, to our 
 understanding. We can not penetrate too deeply into 
 the words of the Holy Ghost, sjDecially can not we 
 hold too firmly by the principle, that the quotations 
 and expositions of the Old Testament in the New, 
 give to us the right key for their interpretation." 
 
 These are samples of his spontaneous deliverances, 
 from time to time, in the progress of his exegesis of 
 the very words of Christ as reproduced in the writings 
 of the Evangelists. Yet, turning again to his Preface, 
 we find him reserved as to his doctrinal or theoretical 
 view of inspiration, and im2:)atient at the abuse heaped 
 upon him by the non-verbalists and deniers of any 
 real inspiration of the Scriptures. " I hold fast," he 
 says, " the rigid inspiration of the "Word in which we 
 find and possess the Christ, yet not in the mechanical 
 fashion of that orthodoxy which seems sometimes to 
 gaze in blank amazement at Him who was born of 
 woman, as if He bad fallen from heaven in his swad- 
 dling-clothes ; tbis I must finally and most earnestly 
 beg every one to observe, on account of the persevering 
 injustice with which I have been treated on this particular ^ 
 To which he adds in a note to his second edition : 
 " This unjust treatment still continues — eight years after 
 this was first written. Probably I may be able to ex- 
 hibit, after a while, more clearly, in what way my rigid 
 and yet not mechaniccd view of Ins23iration is on either 
 hand distinguished from the old and the new doctrine." 
 
 But have we indeed, as recorded in the Gospels, the 
 very words of Christ ? The difiiculties which critics 
 and expositors find in tbis question are not resolved 
 by any of their theories of exj^lanation. What relates 
 
48 WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 
 
 to tlie difference of expression in the details of tlie 
 same narratives by different Evangelists, is now as far 
 from being satisfactorily accounted for, as at any for- 
 mer period. Yet the Gospels are the word of God. 
 The original text claims to give the words of Christ. 
 The different expressions in parallel passages do not 
 indeed involve any contradictions. But in recording 
 the same fact, one Evangelist employs more words 
 than another, and to some extent different words ; 
 each, however, when relating what was said by Christ, 
 professing to give his words. To impute this to differ- 
 ent degrees of accuracy in the memories of the differ- 
 ent writers, to their ignorance, their carelessness, or 
 any other imperfection in them, can not be satisfactory 
 to any one ; even with respect to what two of them 
 personally heard from the lips of Christ, and saw of 
 His acts ; and much less of the other two, who were 
 not original witnesses of His words or works. What 
 was their authority for recording as the words of 
 Christ, different words from those relating to the same 
 fact, which the other writers record as having been 
 heard by them? Be it that the different words in 
 each instance are of the same significance, how came 
 they to employ different words as the words of Christ 
 in any instance? The fact that they did this, stands 
 out conspicuously on the record, and must in some 
 way be consistent with the Divine authority and in- 
 fallibility of the original text. To say that the Evan- 
 gelists wrote under a Divine influence assisting them 
 in the exercise of their faculties — " an influence on 
 their understandings, imaginations, memories, and 
 other mental powers " — an influence of "superintend- 
 
WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 49 
 
 ence, elevation, direction, guidance, suggestion," can 
 in no degree serve to obviate tliis difficulty ; but on 
 the contrary, aggravates it. To suppose one writer to 
 be divinely guided to use certain words in a particular 
 sentence vocally uttered by Christ, and another writer 
 to be guided to use other words in his record of the 
 same sentence, under color of their having been the 
 words which He actually uttered, must appear to every 
 one to be contradictory and impossible. 
 
 The attempts to account for the fact in question, that 
 have fallen in my way, whether by rationalists, who 
 suppose the writers not to have been under any super- 
 natural influence whatever, and to have been not 
 learned but ignorant men ; or by those who suppose 
 them to have been assisted by a supernatural influence 
 on their faculties, appear to me in no respect to abate, 
 but greatly to enhance this difficulty. That which the 
 latter class allege as influence, and call inspiration, is 
 not inspiration in the sense of Scripture ; it is assist- 
 ance rendered to man in the exercise of his natural 
 faculties ; Divine assistance alleged to account for what 
 on the face of it, appears plainly inconsistent and 
 contradictory. 
 
 To account for this seeming difficulty, we must recur 
 to the prophetic office of Christ ; and to His exercise 
 of that office through the agency of the Holy Spirit, 
 sent by Him to inspire His words into the minds of 
 the sacred writers, as He Himself was sent by the 
 Father to speak His words. That in this relation it 
 was the office of the Holy Spirit to teach, renew the 
 conscious memory of, convey by inspiration to, the 
 Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostolic ]\Iessengers of 
 3 
 
50 WOEDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIKATIOX. 
 
 Christ, His words, to be uttered vocally or in writing, 
 by tbem, appears to me to be as clearly evident from 
 Scripture, as that He had officially any relation what- 
 ever to the sacred writings, or to the authoritative and 
 infallible utterances of prophets and apostles. There- 
 fore it is, that the canonical Scriptures, all that the ap- 
 pointed Messengers wrote officially, is, in the nature 
 of the case, and by the declarations of the Scriptures 
 themselves, the Word of God. This view of the mat- 
 ter is pointedly confirmed by a circumstance, which 
 those who mistake influence for inspiration^ seem wholly 
 to overlook, and which is in the last degree incompati- 
 ble with their doctrine. For how could an influence 
 on their memories enabling them to recall the words 
 which they heard from the lips of Christ, supply them 
 with the very words which they wrote in another and 
 wholly different language? It is conceded by all, that 
 the vocal utterances of Christ, in his personal and pub- 
 lic addresses, were not in Greek, but in Aramaic, a 
 form or dialect of the Hebrew language, then com- 
 mon to the Jews of Palestine. Matthew and John 
 therefore heard from His lips, not the Greek words 
 which they wrote, but Hebrew words, which were ver- 
 nacular to them. Mark and Luke did not even hear 
 those words themselves ; and if those words were re- 
 ported to them by those who heard them, still they 
 are not the Greek words which they wrote. The re- 
 calling to memory, however accurately, the very words 
 which Christ had spoken, would not be recalling the 
 Greek words which they wrote. How then did these 
 unlearned fishermen become possessed of Greek words 
 v/hich exactly and infallibly expressed the same 
 
WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 51 
 
 thoughts which Christ had vocally expressed onlv in 
 Hebrew words ? And how are the Greek words which 
 thej actually wrote, His words ? 
 
 These questions can not be answered on any theorv 
 of influence on their faculties. But they involve 
 nothing mysterious or paradoxical, when it is consid- 
 ered that Christ executed His prophetic office in part 
 through that official agency of the Holy Spirit bv 
 which He gave to the sacred penmen, word for word 
 what He received from Christ for that purpose. "The 
 Holy Ghost whom I will send, shall- receive of mine, 
 and shall show it unto you." Though He had spoken 
 to the Jews m their vernacular tongue, which the com- 
 mon people understood. He determined to have His 
 Gospel written and published, at a later period, in the 
 copious, poLshed, and established language both of 
 educated Jews and Gentiles, and to a considerable ex- 
 tent the most popular language in the cities and prov- 
 inces of the Roman Empire. It was intended not for 
 the Jews except temporarily and as orally delivered- 
 but for the nations. The Aramaic, as a vernacular, was 
 soon to be superseded, as the abrogation of the Leviti- 
 cal mstitutions, the destruction of the Temple, and the 
 conquest and dispersion of the Jewish people, were 
 soon to happen. Admitting then that His infallible 
 words were to be given to the nations for all future 
 time, and that the written words of the Greek text are 
 His words, as truly as the Hebrew were His by which 
 He had orally expressed the very same thoughts 
 facts, doctrines, promises, threatenings, precepts, prc^ 
 dictions, is there any alternative to the conclusion or 
 any room for hesitation in saying that He e'ave those 
 
52 WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 
 
 words to the Spirit as His Messenger, sent to convey 
 them by His act of inspiration to those selected and' 
 appointed to write them ? Is it not apparent that this 
 was what He was promised, commissioned and sent to 
 do ? — to teach the subordinate messengers what they 
 should utter and write in the name and as the words 
 of Christ ; or, more briefly. Himself to utter by their 
 mouths and pens, the words received by Him as the 
 immediate Messenger of Chi'ist, acting in His place 
 after His personal withdrawment from the scene in 
 which He directly exercised His ofl&ce as the Messen- 
 ger of the Father. 
 
 On this view it is obvious and consistent to suppose, 
 that just those thoughts and words were by the Spirit 
 conveyed to the respective Evangelists which they 
 were respectively to utter ; to one concise, to another 
 more extended narratives of the same events ; to 
 one facts, doctrines, predictions, which were wholly 
 withheld from the others. Undoubtedly the Divine 
 Wisdom must have determined these peculiarities. 
 And now admitting the Greek words to have been the 
 words of Christ Himself, by the Spirit as His Messen- 
 ger, so conveyed to the three most unlearned, -and the 
 one least unlearned of tlie four Evangelists, it is obvi- 
 ous to consider them unequally qualified by their 
 knowledge of Greek, to receive and write the same 
 words to express the same thoughts in every instance. 
 That in writing they retained the free and intelligent 
 exercise of their faculties, no one doubts. But to be 
 consistent with that, the Omniscient Eevealer must 
 have caused such words, in every instance, to be con- 
 voyed to them as they were qualified to receive and 
 
WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 53 
 
 understand; and this accounts, on a solid and suflS.- 
 cient footing, for tlie fact that different words are some- 
 times employed by the different writers to express the 
 same thought in the same connection. The promise 
 that the Spirit " should bring all things to their remem- 
 brance," can not mean that He should bring the 
 Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic, or Aramaic words of Christ 
 to their remembrance in order to their writing them 
 verbatim as they heard them ; for they did not write 
 those words. It may mean that He should bring dis- 
 tinctly to their remembrance the things, facts, events, 
 to which those words related, so that they might dis- 
 cern the appropriateness of the Greek words which 
 they received and wrote. "When the Comforter" — 
 Teacher, Monitor—" is come whom I will send unto 
 you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which 
 proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me. . . 
 When He, the Spirit of Truth is come. He will guide 
 you into all truth;" that is, by speaking, "for He 
 shall not speak of Himself ; but whatsoever He shall 
 hear that shall He speak ; and He will show you 
 things to come. He shall glorify me ; for He shall 
 receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. All 
 things that the Father hath are mine ; therefore said I 
 that He shall take of mine, and shall show it unto 
 you. He shall teach you all things, whatsoever I have 
 said unto you." Now in this promise of the ofl&cial 
 agency of the Spirit, the subject is that of teaching, 
 conveying intelligence in words in a manner equiva- 
 1 ut to, or identical with, speaking — speaking what, as a 
 Messenger, He heard — taking the words of Christ, and 
 showing, imparting them to the apostles. If this was 
 
54 WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION, 
 
 not specifically His office in this relation, and in dis- 
 tinction from His official agency in the renovation and 
 sanctification of men ; and if the words of Christ were 
 not so given to Him, and given by His inspiring 
 agency to the apostles, let those who can, tell ns how 
 the sacred penmen became possessed of what they 
 wrote, and how what they wrote is the word of God ? 
 But if such was the office of the Spirit in this relation, 
 if, in the absence of Christ, the Spirit received what He 
 intended should be written, and communicated it to 
 those appointed to write his words — as when called be- 
 fore magistrates. He taught, imparted to, the apostles 
 what they should say, at the moment of their utter- 
 ance — ^then what they wrote is the infallible word of 
 Grod, conveyed to mankind by Christ in the exercise 
 of his prophetic office through the official agency of 
 the Spirit sent by Him, and the subordinate agency of 
 those human messengers whom He appointed to com- 
 mit His words to writing. 
 
 This view, I venture to affirm, accords with all that 
 is taught us on the subject in the Holy Scriptures, ac- 
 cording to their verbal and apparent meaning, and ac- 
 cording to all those researches and expositions of 
 modern criticism, which treat them as of Divine au- 
 thority. The Logos from the beginning, the Messenger 
 Jehovah in the early, the Incarnate Word in the 
 i^resent dispensation, is the Kevealer of G-od to the 
 world, in works and word ; the prime official agent of 
 all intelligible revelations, communications, and in- 
 structions. His prophetic offers comprehended and 
 provided for all the verbal communications ever made 
 to the human race. He is, in this relation, the Light 
 
WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY HSrSPIRATION. 55 
 
 of the World. He fulfilled His prophetic office chiefly, 
 under the ancient dispensation, by His own direct 
 agency, till he appointed Prophets to be His messen- 
 gers ; and under the present dispensation, till He com- 
 missioned Apostles to be His messengers. The Spirit 
 conveyed His word to prophets and apostles, and 
 through their subordinate agency to the world. He 
 maintained His ofl&ce and prerogative as Eevealer of 
 the will of God, and teacher of mankind, as part of the 
 work delegated to Him in virtue of the eternal cove- 
 nant. The Holy Scriptures so conveyed are therefore 
 the word of God. 
 
 On no other view but this can either the fact that in 
 parallel passages one Evangelist uses, in particular in 
 stances, different words from another, nor the far more 
 striking fact, that, in general, when narrating the same 
 occurrence, they use precisely the same words ^ be satis- 
 factorily accounted for. This coincidence is most re- 
 markable in the parallel passages of Matthew and 
 Luke, of whom one had been a disciple and hearer of 
 Christ, which the other had not. Neither of them 
 refers to what the other had written, nor is there any 
 historical evidence or probability that the second of the 
 two had seen the Gosj)el of the first. Their identity 
 of expression is the more remarkable, when we con- 
 sider that Matthew was a Jew ; Luke a convert from 
 heathenism : that Matthew wrote his Gospel at Jerusa- 
 lem ; Luke his about the same time, most probably, at 
 Rome : that Matthew had it specially in view to show 
 that Jesus was the Messiah foretold by the prophets, 
 and to instruct Jewish converts; while Luke had 
 special reference to converts from heathenism : and, 
 
56 WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION". 
 
 lastly, that Luke was, from liis education and experi- 
 ence, a far more accomplished writer of Greek tlian 
 Matthew. The supposition advanced by some writers, 
 that they both copied from shorter memoirs, is too 
 derogatory to the whole subject to be worthy of a 
 moment's consideration. Every thing relating to the 
 antecedents, the personal character, and the qualifica- 
 tions, as well as the verbal coincidences of these 
 writers, demands our belief that the words which they 
 wrote were inspired into their minds at the time of 
 their writing. 
 
 Again, let it be observed, that if the Gospel in Hebrew, 
 to which Jerome and others refer as extant, was writ- 
 ten by Matthew, as they suppose, for the special use 
 of believing Jews, it is, according to the most compe- 
 tent and reliable writers upon the subject, entirely cer- 
 tain, from internal evidence, that the Greek Gospel of 
 Matthew was not a translation from the Hebrew text, 
 but an independent and original work. And accord- 
 ingly, supposing the Hebrew Gospel to have been 
 used to a limited extent, and to have served a tempo- 
 rary purpose, the Greek Gospel of Matthew alone 
 obtained currency in the Western churches, it being 
 settled by their own testimony that the earliest Fathers 
 did not use, or even possess, the Gospel of Matthew in 
 any other than the Greek form, in which we now pos- 
 sess it. His Gospel, therefore, as we have it, is not a 
 record of the very words which he heard from the lips 
 of Christ ; but is a record of the words of Christ in 
 Greek, conveyed to him by the Spirit as he wrote 
 them. It is preposterous, considering the infinite 
 sacredness and importance of the subject, to suppose 
 
■WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 57 
 
 witli Olsbausen, " That MattheTV himself, when he had 
 composed the Hebrew Gospel, executed likewise a free 
 translaiion, or new composition of it in the Greek lan- 
 guage. It makes no essential difference," he adds, 
 " if we suppose that a friend of Mattheiu ivroie tlu 
 Greek ivork under his direction and authority; but 
 Matthew's authority must necessarily be supposed to 
 have been the means of the diffusion of the Gospel, 
 as otherwise it is inexplicable that there does not ap- 
 pear the faintest trace of any opposition to it." On 
 this, I need only remark : 1. That on this suppo- 
 sition both the verbal discrepancies and coincidences 
 between Matthew and the other Evangelists would be 
 unaccountable and incredible in the very last degree. 
 2. That the Hebrew Gospel, as the author last quoted 
 expressly says, " differed from our Greek Gospel of 
 Matthew, for it contained many things wanting in our 
 Gospel." How then could the Greek be palmed off 
 upon Matthew's, or upon any one's, authority as an 
 honest, not to say an authoritative and infallible transla- 
 tion of the Hebrew ? Suppose Matthew to have writ- 
 ten the Hebrew Gospel, in his official character, and 
 put it in circulation as of Divine authority. Would 
 he have made for permanent and universal circulation 
 a partial translation to supersede the original of his 
 own Gospel, omitting many things^ equally parts of his 
 Gospel with the rest ? 3. It is a desperate supposition, 
 that Matthew, from lack of sufficient knowledge of the 
 Greek tongue, for that is the implied and only con- 
 ceivable reason, procured a friend to translate and 
 garble his Gospel, under his own direction and au- 
 thority. For how could he direct or authorize the use 
 
 3* 
 
58 WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 
 
 of words which he did not understand ? If such was 
 his predicament, it is inevitable that the Greek words 
 were not furnished by a friendly scholar in the capa- 
 city of translator ; but were given to him by Inspira- 
 tion of God, the Holy Ghost, as he wrote them. 
 
 On the supposition that Christ Ilimself appointed 
 the times, the writers, the things to be written, and all 
 the particulars and circumstances relating to the writ- 
 ing and publication of the different Gospels, the whole 
 matter is intelligible and plain ; and this supposition 
 is abundantly more than authorized, by the fact that 
 the Gospels as written are of Divine authority and in- 
 fallibility, and by the acknowledged character and office 
 of Christ, as the Eevealer of God, the Divine Prophet, 
 Teacher, Redeemer, and Saviour of men. But every 
 attempt of learned critics and commentators to account 
 for the phenomena, by assigning mere private, pruden- 
 tial, personal reasons, why the respective Evangelists 
 wrote as they did iu respect to matter and manner, 
 what kind of assistance Mark had from Peter, and 
 Luke from Paul, and under what influence and sanc- 
 tion the Gospels of these two Evangelists obtained 
 public confidence and established currenc}-, does but 
 lower the subject down to the level of mere human 
 wisdom. J£ the words which Mark wrote were not 
 directly inspired into his mind as he wrote them ; if 
 he in his private capacity, not having himself witnessed 
 the things which he relates, sat down to write without 
 a full and perfect knowledge of what he should say, 
 of what avail can it be for the critics to inform us that, 
 in the opinion of the Fathers, or some of them, he was 
 at some period an associate of Peter, and therefore 
 
WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 59 
 
 probably wrote his Gospel under the direction of that 
 Apostle ; and therefore, that his Gospel may reasona- 
 bly be considered as of Apostolic authority ? May it 
 not be Divine, the very word of God, without having 
 been written under the direction of an Apostle ? If 
 Peter dictated to Mark what he should write, as Jere- 
 miah did to Baruch, and as Paul did to Tertius, why 
 was not that fact stated, and the writing called the 
 Gospel of Peter ? K Mark wrote unofficially as a pri- 
 vate man, and the words which he wrote were inspired 
 into the mind of Peter, why did not Peter write them ? 
 He wrote Epistles, why should he not write a Gospel ? 
 He was a Disciple of Christ, and heard His words, and 
 he was an Apostle ; Mark was neither. 
 
 The same course of remark and interrogation is 
 obvious in respect to Luke ; who, not being an apostle, 
 and not having been a disciple, the critics, for similar 
 reasons, imagine to have written his Gospel under the 
 direction of Paul. I humbly conceive that all such 
 theories and conceits in respect to the origin of the 
 Gospels, proceed upon the assumjDtion that mere 
 human agency, human wisdom and discretion, human 
 policy and skill, were concerned in the production of 
 those Divine records of the very words of the Divine 
 official Eevealer and Messenger of the Father, Prophet 
 and Teacher of the world. The ver}'- same men who 
 can repose on the hypothesis that Mark owed what he 
 wrote to the assistance of Peter as an Apostle, can, on 
 another hypothesis, entertain doubts of the genuine- 
 ness of the second Epistle of Peter himself, which he 
 begins by declaring himself " a servant and an Apostle 
 of Jesus Christ." This passes for learning. The Gos- 
 
60 WOEDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 
 
 pel of Mark written under the direction of Peter, tlie 
 Gospel of Luke written under the direction of Paul — 
 and yet both of them the word of God — the very 
 words of Christ. This passes for learning with men 
 who shrink from the idea of verbal inspiration. 
 
 The first three Gospels consist mainly of the verbal 
 discourses of Christ, narratives of His miraculous cures, 
 His journeys, and the like. The Gospel of John has, 
 in its details, little in common with the other three. 
 It omits for the most part what they had particularly 
 described, and consists chiefly of original doctrinal 
 statements and discussions. Now if what Matthew 
 wrote was just what he remembered of the acts and 
 discourses of the Saviour, and if his remembering it 
 was the reason why he wrote his Gospel, how is it to 
 be accounted for that he remembered and wrote so 
 little of all that is recorded by John? And how 
 should it happen that John, when near an hundred 
 years of age, should so well remember the most ab- 
 struse discussions and lofty discourses concerning 
 spiritual and heavenly subjects, and yet recall, or have 
 brought to his remembrance, so little of what was said 
 in connection with the impressive scenes and events of 
 the Saviour's life and pilgrimage? Surely we must 
 needs conclude that, whatever they remembered, neither 
 of them had any thing to do in deciding the question, 
 what they should write. And still more preposterous 
 is it to imagine that Mark or Luke could have had any 
 thing to do with that question. The Infinite Wisdom 
 of Him whose words were to be recorded, in the exe- 
 cution of His prophetic office, prescribed, in all resj^ects, 
 as He was instructed by the Father, as to the time 
 
WOEDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY IXSPIKATION. 61 
 
 when, the persons by whom, and the words in which 
 his own oral discourses, and all that concerned Ilis 
 life. His acts, His teachings. His death and resurrec- 
 tion, and all the future of His Kingdom should be 
 recorded. Any thing short of this is too palpably de- 
 rogatory to Him, and to the subject in every relation, 
 to be for a moment admitted. The announcements to 
 be made, and the events \yhich were to occur, were in 
 the power of the Father to be manifested by the Son 
 in His official work in their due order of succession. 
 There was a fixed and critical moment for every act 
 and event of His life. Hence, though to Him as the 
 Messenger of the Father, all power in heaven and 
 earth was given to be exercised in the fulfillment of 
 His delegated work, yet when questioned as to things 
 not yet to be disclosed. He says : "To sit on my right 
 hand, and my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be 
 given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father." 
 . . . , " But of that day and hour knoweth no man, 
 no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." . . . 
 " My time is not yet come. . . . My Father worketh 
 hitherto and I work. . . . The Son can do nothing of 
 Himself, but what he seeth the Father do : for what 
 things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son like- 
 wise. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth 
 Him all things that Himself doeth — that all men 
 should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. 
 He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father 
 which hath sent Him. ... I can of mine own self do 
 nothing : as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just: 
 because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the 
 Father which hath sent me. . . . The works which 
 
62 WORDS OF GOD CONTETED BY INSPIRATION". 
 
 the Father hath given me to finish, the same works 
 that I do, bear witness of me that the Father hath sent 
 me. ... I speak to the world those things which I 
 have heard of Him. ... I do nothing of myself; but 
 as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. 
 And He that sent me is with me : the Father hath not 
 left me alone. ... I proceeded forth and came from 
 God ; neither came I of myself, but He sent me. . . . 
 I must work the works of Him that sent me, while it 
 is day — as long as I am in the world, I am the Light 
 of the world. . . . Say ye of Him whom the Father 
 hath sanctified and sent into the world. Thou blas- 
 phemest because I said, I am the Son of God ? The 
 hour is come when the Son of man should be glorified. 
 .... Father, save me from this hour : but for this 
 cause came I unto this hour, ... I have not spoken 
 of myself ; but the Father which sent me. He gave me 
 a commandment wliat I should say, and what I should 
 speak. . . . When Jesus knew that His hour was come 
 that He should depart out of this world unto the 
 Father, etc. . . . He that receiveth whomsoever I send, 
 receiveth me ; and he that receiveth me, receiveth Him 
 that sent me. . . . No man cometh unto the Father, 
 but by me. . . . The words that I speak unto you, I 
 speak not of myself: but the Father, that dwelleth in 
 me, He doeth the works, . . . The word which ye 
 hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me. . . . 
 As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. 
 ... If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, 
 
 ye shall ask, etc All things that I have heard 
 
 of my Father, I have made known unto you, ... I 
 have manifested Thv name unto the men which Tliou 
 
WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 63 
 
 gavest me out of the world. ... I have given unto 
 them the words which Thou gavest me. ... I have 
 given them Thy word. ... As Thou hast sent me 
 into the world, even so have I sent them, the Apostles, 
 into the world." 
 
 Such are some of the expressions by which, on suc- 
 cessive occasions. He taught the nature and extent of 
 His prophetic office as the Messenger of the Father ; in 
 connection with which, and with His appointment of 
 the apostles to be His messengers. He pointedly in- 
 structed them, both by example in washing their feet, 
 and by precept, that " The servant is not greater than 
 his lord ; neither he that is sent greater than he that 
 sent him." By the mission of the Spirit, He fully pro- 
 vided for the utterance in writing of the Gospels and 
 Epistles. But when, in the Apocalypse, new and more 
 ample disclosures were to be made concerning His per- 
 son. His works, and the future of His Kingdom, they 
 were expressly given to Him by the Father. (Revela- 
 tion 1 : 1.) 
 
 On this view of the office of Christ as Prophet, and 
 His manner of executing it, so far as the Scriptures and 
 the writing of them are concerned, through the official 
 agency of the Holy Spirit sent by Him, the subject is, 
 I humbly conceive, cleared, by what the Scriptures 
 themselves teach, from the difficulties and paradoxes 
 so commonly supposed to embarrass it. The ground 
 on which the Holy Scriptures, are by Christ Himself, 
 and by the Spirit in His name speaking in the subordi- 
 nate messengers, prophets, and apostles, called the 
 Word of God, is clearly manifest. What the Sacred 
 Penmen wrote, was, word for word, what the Spirit 
 
64 WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIEATION. 
 
 spoke, inspired into tlieir minds, realized to tlieir intel- 
 ligent consciousness, as tliej wrote it. He spake by 
 them as appointed, delegated, to receive and to utter 
 in writing wliat He conveyed to them by inspiration ; 
 by them, by the Apostles, by the Evangelists, by all 
 the jDrophets since the world began. The system, from 
 the beginning, is one comprehensive, perfect, effectual 
 system, for the infallible communication of the will of 
 God to men. The original texts of Scripture were to 
 the Levitical and Apostolic Churches, in matter and 
 manner, just what they would have been had the 
 Divine Messenger of the covenant dictated every word 
 of them to the writers by His own vocal utterance, in- 
 stead of conveying them, when He was personally 
 absent, by the Spirit sent of&cially and expressly for 
 that purpose. 
 
 Two only of the difficulties supposed to be incident 
 to this view of inspiration, appear to me to require a 
 word of explanation. If the very words which the sacred 
 penmen wrote were dictated or conveyed by inspira- 
 tion into their minds ; if they had no liberty or discre- 
 tion in the choice of subjects, or of words, how, it is 
 asked, can it be possible that their own individual 
 peculiarities and personal circumstances, acts, purposes, 
 sympathies, hopes, fears, should be interposed as part 
 and parcel of the sacred writings ? To which I an- 
 swer, that the entire scheme of mediation, intercourse, 
 and fellowship between God and man involves and re- 
 quires this. It was therefore necessary that the Divine 
 Messenger Himself should be capacitated in human 
 nature to sympathize in all that concerned His people 
 individually and personally, to be touched with the feel- 
 
WOKDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION. 65 
 
 ing of their infirmities, to succor and encourage in them 
 the sanctified exercise of all the emotions and affections 
 of their nature. Hence He employs men of like pas- 
 sions, sympathies, trials, with other men, to preach 
 His word. There is a basis in their common nature 
 for sympathy, attention, confidence, faith, on the part 
 of the hearer, with the voice, the manner, the earnest- 
 ness, the personal thoughts and feelings of the speaker. 
 In. like manner He employed the sacred penmen to 
 write in His words whatever of their personal experi- 
 ence, feelings, affections, circumstances, histor}^. He 
 thought necessary for instruction, example, warning, or 
 encouragement to others ; using their thoughts and 
 emotions as He used their pens, consistently with the 
 free exercise of their faculties, and adapting His in- 
 structions to the sympathies of the readers, and avail- 
 ing Himself of the basis and medium of sympathy be- 
 tween the writers and readers. It is obvious that what- 
 ever, concerning the internal or external experience 
 of the writers, was to be expressed in Scripture, must 
 be expressed in perfect conformity to their conscious- 
 ness, and therefore ia words which they would naturally 
 have used. And if the inspiration of those words was 
 justasposssible to the Omniscient Spirit as the inspira- 
 tion of words to express, on other subjects, either what 
 they did or what they did not know before, then there is 
 no difliculty peculiar to the class of words in question ; 
 and they are the words of God in the same sense, and for 
 the same reason, as all the other words of Scripture. 
 
 Bux, says the objector, this makes the writers mere 
 machines ; this is the mechanical theory of inspiration. 
 This hackneyed phrase has had controlling influence 
 
66 WORDS OF GOD CONVEYED BY INSPIRATION". 
 
 witli the entire scliool of writers, who from the days 
 of Whitby have copied each other in substituting for 
 the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures an influence ex- 
 erted more or less according to exigency, on the men- 
 tal faculties of the writers. They do not condescend to 
 explain how men in the intelUgent and voluntary ex- 
 ercise of all their faculties, are any more made ma- 
 chines by writing words conveyed to them by inspira- 
 tion than they would be by writing words audibly dic- 
 tated to them, or copying words from a manuscript or 
 from a printed book. Had they explained the phrase 
 it would not have answered the purpose of creating 
 and sustaining a prejudice against verbal inspiration. 
 The real purport of the phrase is, that if the very 
 words were inspired into the minds of the sacred writ- 
 ers, then they had no discretion either as to the choice 
 of thoughts or words ; and what they wrote of fact or 
 narrative that was known to them before, is the word 
 of Grod in the same sense and for the same reason as 
 other parts of Scripture. Yet the same school of 
 writers admit that the words which expressed jDredic- 
 tions, and whatever they did not know before, must 
 have been dictated, or otherwise prescribed and con- 
 veyed to the writers. Were they then machines in 
 writing all the most essential parts of Scripture ? 
 And with respect to the historical narratives, is it not 
 palpable that a resistless supernatural influence on 
 their faculties, an infallible guidance, direction, super- 
 intendency, restraint from error, must have suspended 
 the free exercise of their faculties, and really made 
 them mere machines ? 
 
CONCERNING THE TABERNACLE. 67 
 
 VI. Reference to the Verbal Instructions con- 
 cerning THE Tabernacle and the Levitical 
 Faith and Worship. 
 
 This view of the prophetic office, the nature of in- 
 spiration, and the merely ministerial relation and 
 agency of the prophets and apostles, might be con- 
 firmed by reference to every part of Scripture. It 
 was in the exercise of His prophetic office, that the 
 Messenger Jehovah gave to Moses a minute verbal 
 description, in exact conformity to which the taber- 
 nacle, the ark, the cherubim, the table, the candlestick, 
 the altar were to be constructed. The description spe- 
 cifies the materials to be employed, and the dimensions 
 and form of the tent or building, and of its several 
 articles of furniture. Moreover a pattern of these sev- 
 eral objects was shown to him in the Mount. The 
 structure itself was to be the place of His official resid- 
 ence. It signified the body in which He was to ap- 
 pear incarnate. "Let them make me a sanctuary: 
 that I may dwell among them. According to all that 
 I show thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and 
 the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall 
 ye make it." After describing the materials, size, 
 form, and other particulars concerning the ark, the 
 mercy-seat, and the cherubim, He adds: "And thou 
 shalt put the mercy -seat above upon the ark ; and in 
 the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give 
 thee" — that is, His words in writing — " and there I 
 will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee 
 from above the mercy-seat, from between the two 
 
68 CONCERNING THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 clierubims wliicli are upon the ark -of the testimony, of 
 all things which I will give thee in commandment unto 
 the children of Israel." The details concerning the 
 table, the candlestick, and the furniture connected with 
 them, being given, it is said: "And look that thou 
 make them after their pattern, which was showed thee 
 in the Mount." Again after a more minute detail con- 
 cerning the construction of the tabernacle, it is added : 
 " And thou shall rear up the tabernacle according to 
 the fashion thereof which was showed thee in the 
 Mount." A like injunction is given in respect to the 
 altar. (Exod. 25—27.) 
 
 The reader will observe that not a word of this de- 
 scription was to be omitted or deviated from in the 
 slightest degree. Every word was to be literally com- 
 plied with. The pattern which was shown to Moses, 
 and which no doubt gave him an impression more 
 vivid and perfect than the verbal description could pro- 
 duce, could not be seen by the artificers who were to 
 fabricate the objects described. To qualify them, 
 therefore, to execute the prescribed work in perfect 
 conformity to the verbal description, speciaj. gifts of 
 the Holy Spirit were imjDarted to them. " The Lord 
 spake unto Moses, sa3ang, See, I have called by name 
 Bezaleel . . . and I have filled him with the Spirit of 
 God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in know- 
 ledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise 
 
 cunning works, to work in gold, etc., etc and 
 
 I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab .... and 
 in the hearts of all that are wise-hearted I have jjut 
 wisdom; that they may make all that I have com- 
 manded thee : the tabernacle of the congregation, and 
 
CONCERNING THE TABERNACLE. 69 
 
 the ark of the testimony," etc., etc. (Exod. 31.) These 
 designations and endowments are repeated in the 
 thirty-fifth chapter ; and in the thirty-sixth it is said : 
 " Then wrought Bezaleel, and Aholiab, and every wise- 
 hearted man, in whom the Lord put wisdom and un- 
 derstanding to know how to work all manner of work 
 for the service of the sanctuary, according to all that the 
 Lord had commanded J^ Then follows in the thirty- 
 seventh and thirty-eighth chapters a detailed statement 
 of the things which they actually made, corresponding 
 to the original prescription. Thus the tabernacle and 
 all its furniture v/ere produced through the agency of 
 these artificers in exact conformity to the pattern shown 
 to Moses in the Mount, and to the verbal description 
 given to him there. 
 
 Now the facts recorded in this portion of sacred his- 
 tory, furnish, I apprehend, a legitimate and irrefrag- 
 able argument to the effect: 1. That the words ad- 
 dressed to Moses were spoken by Jehovah in the exer- 
 cise of His prophetic ofl&ce. 2. That every word so 
 spoken by Ilim is recorded verbatim as He uttered 
 them. 3. That His words so spoken and recorded are 
 the infallible word of God to be literally fulfilled. 
 Like the pattern shown to Moses they have a back- 
 ground in the counsels of the Father, which leaves 
 nothing in matter or manner to the competency or dis- 
 cretion of men. In this case it may be said that the 
 typical purposes of the tabernable, the ark, the altar, 
 etc., required such literal exactness. But in what case 
 of His teaching, directly or indirectly, may not the 
 same be alleged and with equal forco ? The nature 
 and object of His prophetic ofiice and His teachings 
 
70 CONCERNING THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 forbid tlie assumption of any difference in these re- 
 S23ccts. We are here emphatically taught that His 
 words, as written by His servants, are the infallible 
 words of God, and must be complied with and vindi- 
 cated to the letter. If vocal articulations, or their 
 counterparts in writing, are not in every case sufiicient 
 to render an exact compliance feasible, He will inter- 
 pose visible patterns, figures, emblems, types, symbols. 
 The construction of His spiritual temple was the end, 
 towards which the material tabernacle was but an 
 auxiliary ; and the argument from the facts above 
 stated, is, that as the tabernacle was constructed in 
 exact conformity to the verbal directions — the very 
 words of Jehovah, to the exclusion of all dependence 
 on human wisdom or discretion — so all the words of 
 Scripture are His words, in exact accordance with 
 which the spiritual house is built, the spiritual house 
 of which God is the builder, the foundation being His 
 own words written by appostles and prophets, the in- 
 itiative, the chief corner, Jesus Christ. 
 
 The same minute particularity of verbal description 
 is given, chapter thirty-eight, and afterwards, of the 
 ephod, the breast-plate, the Urim and Thummim, the 
 garments of the priests, the ceremonies of their conse- 
 cration, the burnt offering, and all the sacrifices, ofier- 
 ings, rites, and observances prescribed in the ritual of 
 worship. No deviation from the verbal directions 
 could be permitted with impunity. When further in- 
 structions were necessary, either in the execution of 
 the typical, ceremonial, or civil laws, they were verbal- 
 ly announced by Jehovah from between the cherubim. 
 
 To secure a like literal compliance with the word of 
 
, i CONCERNING THE TABERNACLE. 71 
 
 * •• —- 
 
 God, in respect to the materials, construction, and fur- 
 niture of the temple, David received by the Spirit a 
 like minute verbal description, (according to which he 
 would seem to have constructed patterns,) which he de- 
 livered to Solomon, and which are summarily men- 
 tioned, 1 Chron. 28. 
 
 There is a deeper significance in all this than to a 
 casual reader may appear on the surface. Moses was 
 detained in the Mount, in the midst of the cloud, fort}^ 
 days and nights, to receive from the lips of Jehovah 
 the instructions recorded in Exod. 25-31. Very pro- 
 bably he wrote them there as he received them ; as 
 David seems immediately to have written the instruc- 
 tions concerning the construction of the temple, which 
 he received from the Spirit. In both cases the things 
 to be constructed, and the sacrifices, rites, and ceremo- 
 nies to be performed, were to constitute an outward, 
 visible, and exact expression of the mind and will of 
 God, concerning the person, ofliccs, incarnation, sacri- 
 fice, and mediation of Christ, and the way of salvation 
 through Him ; an emblematic, pictorial, visible, repre- 
 sentation of the leading truths of the Gospel. The 
 verbal description therefore behooved to be given in 
 His own words ; and every precaution was accordingly 
 taken that they should be exactly recorded and literally 
 complied with. They were given by Ilim in the ex- 
 ercise of His office as prophet, and the whole proced- 
 ure most directly concerned the glory of Jehovah as 
 Lawgiver and Eedeemer, as Prophet, Priest, and King. 
 But the rest of the Scriptures were likewise given by 
 Him in the exercise of His prophetic office. They are 
 the outward, visible, permanent expression in words of 
 
72 CONCERNING THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 the mind and will of God, concerning the same things 
 in one- relation or another. When Moses had com- 
 pleted the works, " according to all that the Lord com- 
 manded him," the whole was divinely approved and 
 sanctioned. " Then a cloud covered the tent of the 
 congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the taber- 
 nacle . . . the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle 
 by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all 
 the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys." 
 (Exod. 40.) 
 
 Jehovah, having descended from Sinai and taken up 
 his residence in the typical sanctuary, spake to Moses 
 the words which constitute nearly the entire book of 
 Leviticus. It contains in minute verbal detail, the 
 laws, rites, and observances of the religious service en- 
 joined upon the children of Israel, which were to be 
 literally obeyed. If strictly obeyed, it j^romises abund- 
 ant blessings. On the contrary, the least infraction as 
 well as general neglect and disobedience, is threatened 
 with specific or public and overwhelming judgments. 
 It is to the previous instructions concerning the taber- 
 nacle and its furniture, what the Epistles of the New 
 Testament are to the Gospels. Its spiritual instruc- 
 tion by visible acts and types, rendered exactness of 
 verbal prescription absolutely indispensable. Accord- 
 ingly, as is observed by Mr. Bonar, in his Commentar}-, 
 " There is no book in the whole compass of that vol- 
 ume whicli the Holy Ghost has given us, that contains 
 more of the very words of God than Leviticus. It is 
 God that is the direct speaker in almost every page ; 
 Ilis gracious words arc recorded in the form wherein 
 they were uttered. . . . The Gospel of the grace of 
 
 X 
 
CONCERNING THE TABERNACLE. 73 
 
 God, "witTi all that follows in its train, may be found in 
 Leviticus. . . . The rites here detailed were typical ; 
 and every type was designed and intended by God to 
 bear resemblance to some spiritual truth. The like- 
 ness between type and antitype is never accidental." 
 
 Now a typical object or action can afford no definite 
 and accurate instruction, unless the thing typified is 
 verbally understood. The accuracy of the verbal re- 
 presentation is the test of the instruction conveyed by 
 the type. A human face may be so distinctly described 
 in words, that a stranger, on seeing an exact likeness 
 on canvas, will with certainty recognize it. But if 
 the verbal description was not perfectly accurate, he 
 who saw the picture would be left in doubt and un- 
 certainty. So in all these words of Jehovah in Exodus 
 and Leviticus. They are His infallible words, recorded 
 as He spoke them, as the criterion of the meaning of 
 types, literally fulfilled in the antitypes, and vindicated 
 in the history of those to whom they were addressed, 
 As the words infallibly described what was to be ex- 
 hibited and done in the Levitical worship, it was 
 necessary that the typical objects and acts should be 
 exactly conformable to the verbal description ; other- 
 wise they would be understood to signify and teach 
 something else, and not what they were intended to 
 signif3^ The leading doctrines of religion, and the 
 meaning of their typical sacrifices, had, prior to Moses, 
 been taught to the Patriarchs and others, directly by 
 Jehovah Himself, and the New Testament references 
 to their fiiith, show that they imderstood them. "When 
 the system was enlarged and perfected under Moses, 
 many new types and typical actions were introduced. 
 
 4 
 
74 CONCERNING THE TABERNACLE, 
 
 The system was so enlarged and complicated as to re- 
 quire a minute verbal description of all the details. 
 The signification of the added types and the whole 
 tableaux of visible manifestations and acts was to be 
 taught to the Priests and Levites, and through them to 
 the people. And in order that the pictorial instruction 
 should be infallibly correct — that the types when ex- 
 hibited to the worshippers, should signify exactly Avhat 
 was intended by them — ^it was necessary that the exhi- 
 bition should in every particular exactly correspond to 
 the verbal directions ; even as it was necessary that the 
 things pertaining to the tabernacle should be made in 
 exact conformity to the pattern shown to Moses in the 
 mount, and to the verbal directions there given. Hence 
 the incessant and scrupulous care enjoined upon the 
 Priests, and practised by them, in administering this 
 system. 
 
 Now from these premises, I think an unanswerable 
 argument is to be derived, in proof of the verbal in- 
 spiration of all the words of Scripture. In all the di- 
 rections above referred to, the words are confessedly 
 the very words of Jehovah. The infallibility of the 
 words, and an exact conformity to them in the acts, 
 was essential to the accuracy of the instruction, the 
 faith of the worshippers, and the acceptablencss of 
 their worship. Jehovah Himself, who prescribed the 
 system, was personally present, beholding what took 
 place. If, then, this sj^stem of typical instruction, this 
 temporary ritual, these ceremonial observances, this 
 scheme of discipline and faith, having for its end the 
 erection of the spiritual house for '"' an habitation of 
 God through the Spirit, required, 1st, to bo ^jrcscribcd 
 
CONCERNING THE TABERNACLE. 75 
 
 in the very words of its founder ; and 2d, to be exe- 
 cuted in exact conformity to the verbal prescription ; 
 is it not a legitimate and irresistible inference, that all 
 those teachings, ordinances, prescriptions, whether in 
 the Old or the New Testament, which were not aided 
 and enforced by external and typical objects and acts, 
 required, so much the more for that reason, to be given 
 in His own infallible words as the rule of faith and 
 life? Was the Levitical church built on the verba 
 ipsissima of its founder, and the more advanced Christ- 
 ian church, built not on His own infallible words, but 
 on words selected by men assisted according to exi- 
 gency ? Was Christ the architect, builder, teacher of 
 the Levitical church, and not as truly and perfectly 
 such of the Christian ? Were the apostles as His Mes- 
 sengers, superior to Moses ? Hear what the Scripture 
 saith : " Consider the apostle — {Messenger) — and High- 
 Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus ; who was faith- 
 ful to Him that appointed Him^ as also Moses was faith- 
 ful in all His house. For He was counted worthy of 
 more glory than Moses, inasmuch as He who hath 
 builded the house, hath more honor than the house. 
 For every house is builded by some one ; but He that 
 built all things is God. And Moses verily was faith- 
 ful in all His house, as a servant, for a testimony of 
 those things which were to be spoken after; but Christ 
 as a Son over His own house ; whose house are we if we 
 hold fast the confidence, and the rejoicing of the hope 
 firm unto the end." (Heb. 3.) This passage was intend- 
 ed to demonstrate the superiority of Christ to Moses, 
 and relates to the founding of the Levitical church — 
 the house, the spiritual building, of which Moses was 
 
76 CONCERNING THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 a constituent. It shows : 1. That Jehovali, who con- 
 ducted the children of Israel, and dictated His laws to 
 them, was personally and officially the same as Christ 
 Jesus, the Messenger of the Father. 2. That He built 
 the church or house, and that it was His own. 3. That 
 Moses was but a servant to Him ; and hence, as He 
 was the builder, teacher, guide, of the house under the 
 Levitical system, He is the same in relation to the same 
 house under the Christian system ; and as Moses was 
 but a servant, so are the apostles but servants in rela- 
 tion to that building. The general inference from the 
 whole is, that Moses had not a j)article of discretion in 
 regard to the words which he wrote, nor in regard to a 
 literal compliance with them ; and for the same reason, 
 the sacred writers who succeeded him could not exer- 
 cise a j)article of discretion. It would be every whit 
 as consistent, and as scriptural, to ascribe to the pro- 
 phets and apostles, the selection of those persons who 
 should constitute the house and be fitly framed together 
 for an habitation of God through the Spirit, (Eph. 2,) 
 as to ascribe to them the selection of a single word of 
 those Scriptures in conformity to which the house un- 
 der all dispensations is constructed. 
 
 The argument from the foregoing premises, might 
 be indefinitely illustrated and enlarged upon, so as to 
 confirm by many particulars the one conclusion ; and 
 make it manifest, that as the tabernacle which was 
 pitched in the wilderness by the instrumentality of 
 Moses, had its perfect prototyjjc in the pattern shown 
 to him in the mount ; so the Scriptures as the word of 
 God, are the utterances of His mind and will in His 
 own infallible words. They constitute in an external , 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 77 
 
 visible, and permanent form, His expression of His 
 mind and will ; the embodiment and tangible product 
 of the prophetic office ; the portraiture and mirror of 
 His image ; the medium of His converse and fellow- 
 ship in the Spirit with His people ; the instrument of 
 the Spirit in illuminating, renewing, and sanctifying 
 His people, and erecting them into His spiritual tem- 
 ple ; the objective basis of their faith, the warrant of 
 their prayers, the rule of their lives ; His verbal testi- 
 mony concerning Himself, and His past and future 
 works. 
 
 VII. The Logos and the Spirit Eevealed in 
 THE Old Testament — The Father chiefly in 
 THE New. 
 
 The foregoing doctrine of the prophetic office of 
 Christ and of His manner of executing it, till all that 
 the Father had determined to have recorded for the 
 permanent instruction of the Church and the world, 
 was written, affords a sure basis for the doctrine of 
 plenary verbal inspiration. He who from the begin- 
 ning was officially the Eevealer of the Father, received 
 His words, and through the official agency of the 
 Spirit, and the fitting instrumentality of men appoint- 
 ed for that purpose, communicated them to the world 
 in the books of Holy Scripture ; so that their original 
 infallibility and Divine authority were neither dimin- 
 ished, nor in any manner hazarded by the transmission. 
 All the purposes of the Divine wisdom respecting this 
 world and the dependent universe, the entire adminis- 
 
78 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 
 
 tration of law and government, providence and grace, 
 over fallen creatures, througli subordinate official agen- 
 cies and instrumentalities, demanded tliat the words of 
 God should be conveyed to man, without abatement 
 of their infallibility or authority ; for they constitute 
 the rule of administration, and the only rule of hu- 
 man faith, conduct, accountability, and destiny, and as 
 such abide forever, and are to be fulfilled to the letter 
 in all intermediate and all final issues. He who, in 
 virtue of the eternal covenant, took on Him this office 
 of Eevealer, Prophet, Messenger — was appointed heir 
 of all things, and head over all things in their rela- 
 tions to His Church, and fulfills His mission, exercises 
 His prerogatives, and rules His kingdom in this world 
 in accordance with, and, so far as the obligations and 
 agency of man are concerned, by the instrumentality 
 of the word of God, recorded in the Holy Scriptures. 
 In the incipient and prefigurative exercise of His 
 sacerdotal office. He employed the subordinate instru- 
 mentality of the Aaronic priesthood, under a prescribed 
 and rigid ritual. In the exercise of His regal office 
 during His Theocratic administration,' He appointed 
 David and His lineal descendants, to represent Him. 
 In the exercise of His prophetic office relatively to the 
 writing of the Holy Scriptures, He sent the Spirit — 
 His immediate, omniscient, infallible messenger — to 
 impart the words to be written, to the prophets, apos- 
 tles, and evangelists, whom He appointed to receive 
 and write them ; so that when written, they should 
 have the same infallibility and authority, as if directly 
 uttered by His voice, or recorded by His hand. This 
 was alike demanded, by the nature and purpose of 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 79 
 
 His office, His relations, as Messenger of the Father, 
 and as Lawgiver, Eedeemer and Judge of men, and 
 by the ignorance, the exigencies, and all the moral 
 and spiritual relations of men. 
 
 His words are the indispensable element of man's 
 faith in Him. Peoples, nations, individuals, that have 
 them not, are wholly devoid of faith. His greatest 
 utterances under the ancient and under the present 
 dispensation, were identical with the forth-putting of 
 His almighty power in the production of His visible 
 works ; and faith in the works as His, neither exists, 
 nor is possible apart from His words. " It was He 
 who said Be, and it was." "Let there be light, and 
 there was light." " Behold I, even I, do bring a flood 
 of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh." " He 
 said to Moses, Stretch out thy hand over the sea. . . . 
 and He caused the sea to go back, . . . and the waters 
 were divided." " He said," that is, commanded^ let 
 there be, " and there came divers sorts of flies. ... He 
 said, and the locusts came." " He sent His word and 
 healed those who cried to Him, and delivered them 
 from their destructions." "By the word of Jehovah, 
 were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by 
 the breath of His mouth." " He rebuked the wind, 
 and said unto the sea, Peace, be still ; and the wind 
 ceased and there was a great calm." ..." He said, 
 Lazarus, come forth ; and he that was dead came forth." 
 Hereafter, " all that are in their graves shall hear His 
 voice, and shall come forth." 
 
 It would seem to have been the opinion of theolo- 
 gical writers generally, of all denominations, not only 
 that very little is to be found in the Old Testament 
 
80 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 
 
 Scriptures concerning the Christ, either as preexisting 
 before His incarnation, or as exercising any of His 
 mediatorial ofl&ces ; but that still less is recorded respect- 
 ing any official agency of the Holy Spirit. Because 
 with particular reference to His official works, He is 
 expressly promised for the execution of them after the 
 ascension, and the arrival of the day of the Pentecost, 
 it seems to have been assumed that His official works 
 were then to be commenced. It has, apparently, been 
 taken for granted that the Scriptures of the Old Testa- 
 ment were a Eevelation of the Father, and of His rela- 
 tions and acts towards creatures ; or of the self-exist- 
 ent Unity, without distinction of persons or offices. 
 Whereas, rightly viewed, the Old Testament is for 
 substance a Revelation of the Son in His delegated 
 character, relations, offices, and acts ; and of the Spirit 
 in His offices, as sent to communicate to the Prophets 
 the words of the anointed Messenger of the Father, and 
 to sanctify the souls of men through the instrumentality 
 of the truths recorded. In reality, that which the New 
 Testament adds to the teachings of the Old, is, preemi- 
 nently, its Revelations concerning the Father. To this 
 object the Gospel of John, from the third to the seven- 
 teenth chapters inclusive, and his first two Epistles, 
 are more especially devoted : and the entire volume 
 of New Testament Scriptures may be cited in evidence, 
 that the Lord Jesus Christ is personally and officially 
 identical with the Jehovah, the Messenger, (Angel,) 
 Jehovah, the Messiah, of the Old Testament, under 
 whatever names or titles His works may be ascribed to 
 Him, in either case. To Him — the Logos from the be- 
 ginning — the law, the prophets, and the Psalms relate. 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AKD THE NEW. 81 
 
 Of Him — the Logos incarnate — the Apostles and 
 Evangelists wrote. In His complex person, perfected 
 by His incarnation, and visibly manifested to the 
 world. He revealed, declared, made known the Father, 
 as personally and officially distinguished from Him- 
 self, and as having sent Him to proclaim and execute 
 His will. The Greek word translated Father occurs 
 in the New Testament more than twelve-score times as 
 a designation of the Father^ in distinction from the Son 
 and Spirit. The parallel Hebrew word, though some- 
 times employed in the sense of Creator, as in Isaiah 
 63 and 64, does not occur as distinctive of the Father, ex- 
 cept prophetically, 2 Sam. 7 : 14, as quoted, Heb. 1 : 5. 
 That He is distinctively referred to, however, under 
 those names which indicate the Di\ane nature of the 
 respective persons of -the Godhead, is manifest in vari- 
 ous places : as in Psalm 2 : 7, where the Son makes 
 the declaration, "Jehovah hath said unto me. Thou art 
 my Son," etc., and Psalms 22 : 1, etc. ; 45 : 2, 7 ; 110 : 4, 
 and elsewhere. And that the Patriarchs, Moses, and 
 the Prophets understood sufficiently to evolve and 
 regulate their fliith, what is more fully revealed in the 
 Gospel, concerning the Father, is as evident as that 
 they understood any thing distinctively of the Ee- 
 dcemer, the Sanctijaer, and the method of salvation. 
 The faith through which they were justified is express- 
 ly commended in the Gospel as the model of that of 
 Christian believers. Their faith looked forward 
 through covenants, promises, predictions, ordinances, 
 types, as that of Christian believers looks back to the 
 central manifestation of the system in the Incarnation 
 and sacrifice of Christ. But in all that concerned 
 
82 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 
 
 their instruction, their ritual and mode of worship, and 
 their forms of obedience, tliey had to do directlj with 
 the Son as the oiScial administrator of the system, visi- 
 ble in His personal manifestations, works, and words ; 
 and with the Spirit sent invisibly to inspire His words 
 into the minds of Prophets aj)pointed to utter them 
 vocally or in writing, and through those words as His 
 instrument to enlighten, renew, and sanctify believers. 
 Their faith in the things announced and foreshown, 
 but then future — unequalled, unparalleled by the re- 
 trospective faith of modern times — demonstrates that 
 they had an intelligent apprehension of the system. 
 Well did David know, what he plainly declares, that 
 the Spirit spake by him. Well did the prophets know 
 that He spake by them — by every true prophet since 
 the world began. Well did every believer know the 
 Spirit as his inward illuminator, teacher, and sanctiiier. 
 The Hebrew word translated Spirit occurs in the 
 ancient Scriptures some four-score times, as a personal 
 designation of the Holy Spirit, as sent, as speaking by 
 the mouth of the prophets, as being poured out, given 
 to, dwelling in believers, etc., while under other desig- 
 nations, and in the effects properly to be ascribed to 
 Him, He is continually referred to. And that His of- 
 ficial presence and agency in the true worshippers was 
 realized at every period, is implied in their recorded 
 experience, in the expressions of individuals from the 
 days of Abraham to the advent, and in those of Simeon 
 and Anna at that period. In a word : The Old Testa- 
 ment Scriptures, together with the New, are as truly and 
 comprehensively the work of the Spirit, as the material 
 universe was the work of the Logos in the beginning. 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 83 
 
 They are the visible and abiding monument of His of- 
 ficial agency in the execution of the mediatorial sys- 
 tem, and in accordance with the eternal covenant. 
 They stand related to all ranks of intelligent crea- 
 tures ; disclosing to the successive generations of men, 
 and to principalities and powers in heavenly places, 
 the manifold wisdom of God, in His infallible words, 
 as " revealed unto His holy Apostles and Prophets by 
 the Spirit." They are the medium of His indwelling 
 presence and influence in the hearts of believers, and 
 the indispensable instrument of His sanctifying energy. 
 They are the public testimony and declaration to the 
 world, and the dependent universe, of His Deity and 
 Personality, of His coequalitj^ with the Father and the 
 Son, of His official works, and of the vastness, the per- 
 manence, and the ever-increasing results of His om- 
 niscient and ceaseless agency. 
 
 The Gospel, and the first two Epistles of John, writ- 
 ten last of all the Scriptures, are devoted chiefly to the 
 Eevelation of the Father : especially the Gospel, 
 Chap. 3-17. The first chapter of the Gospel, how- 
 ever, relates to the Son in His delegated character, 
 the Logos as revealed, and as the Eevealer and actor 
 throughout the prior dispensations, and at His incarna- 
 tion. In this official character He was in the begin- 
 ning. All things were' made by Him. In Him was 
 life, he gave life to all creatures. He was the light, 
 the source and giver of intellectual and spiritual light 
 to men. He was, that is, from the beginning, in the 
 world, and the world was made by Him, and the world 
 knew Him not. The light shone, but the darkness 
 admitted it not. He came to His ancient chosen peo- 
 
84: THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 
 
 pie, but tliey, with some exceptions, received Him not. 
 At lengtli. He became incarnate, and manifested His 
 personality. His peculiar office work, and His glory as 
 j)roceeding from the Father. 
 
 In this retrospective and historical view, He is called 
 the Logos, which is a primary designation of Him in 
 His official relations as creator and upholder of all 
 things, and as Eevealer of the Father. The apj^ropri- 
 ation of this abstract term as a personal designation of 
 the Revealer of God, is by some recent critics traced 
 to the consideration that consciousness in an intelligent 
 being — consciousness of existence, of affections, of 
 thoughts, is realized in words — silently articulated or 
 conceived ; which when vocally expressed or written, 
 reveal the thoughts which were primarily conceived in 
 them. Hence the concrete Hebrew term Dahar^ and 
 the Chaldee term Memra^ as used to represent the vocal 
 articulation of the thoughts of which the Being was 
 silently conscious. Such, so far as we know, is, un- 
 doubtedly, the law of mind, of intellectual conscious- 
 ness and action. And since the thoughts of the 
 Divine mind, so far as they are made known to us, 
 may be truly conceived by us, and since the words in 
 which they are made known, are the words in which 
 we conceive and become conscious of them, it would 
 seem to be as proper to suppose this to be a law of the 
 Divine mind as to suppose that the audible vocal ar- 
 ticulations of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, 
 respectively, which are recorded in the Scriptures, truly 
 convey to us the otherwise inscrutable thoughts of the 
 Di^'ine mind. 
 
 On this view, when we call the Scriptures the word 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 85 
 
 of God, we mean that the original words of Scripture 
 are the written representation of the silent or the vocal 
 articulations in which the thoughts which they express 
 were consciously conceived and existed in the Divine 
 mind. To convey those thoughts in those words ap- 
 pertained to the Logos in His prophetic office. If we 
 have the thoughts, we have through His official 
 agency the very words in which the thoughts origin- 
 ally inhered, and were committed to Him to be pub- 
 lished to the world. In part He published them by 
 His own vocal utterances ; and in part by the agency 
 of the Spirit on His behalf inspiring them into the 
 minds of the sacred writers. 
 
 To say then with strictness and propriety, that the 
 words of the original texts of Scripture are the words 
 of God, is to say that they are in visible writing, the 
 articulations in which as audibly uttered or silently 
 conceived, the thoughts conveyed were originally 
 realized in the Divine mind. In other words, that 
 thoughts in the Divine mind are verbal in a manner 
 corresponding to that of thoughts in the human mind ; 
 so that when vocally articulated or written, they remain 
 as truly His as the thoughts which they express. All 
 that we know of the thoughts as His, is expressed in 
 the words as His, as the original, formal, and indispen- 
 sable mode and vehicle of the thoughts ; as in the case 
 of man, he expresses his thoughts in words, and the 
 words are as truly and in the same sense his as the 
 thoughts are. 
 
 Hence when the Logos tells us that He came down 
 from heaven, not to do His own will, not to speak His 
 own words or as of Himself ; but to do the will of the 
 
86 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 
 
 Father who sent Him, to speak, as His Messenger, the 
 words prescribed by Him, He must be understood to 
 mean the very words in which the thoughts were pre- 
 scribed and reahzed to His consciousness. And when 
 the Spirit in His name, and on His behalf, was sent, 
 under the same specific restrictions, to convey the pre- 
 scribed thoughts to the sacred writers, the same ad- 
 herence to the words in which they were prescribed, 
 is rendered certain by the terms of His commission. 
 
 So far then as concerns the original texts, there is 
 the same evidence that we have the very words of God, 
 that there is that we have His thoughts. They are the 
 words of God officially prescribed and given by Him 
 to the Son as His Messenger. And as the Son prima- 
 rily executed His prophetic office by vocally and audi- 
 bly uttering the words given to Him, and thus 
 manifested Himself to the world by His verbal utter- 
 ances. He was designated by the abstract term which 
 naturally and forcibly indicated His peculiar office and 
 mission. 
 
 Consistently with this, and with the just authority of 
 translations, we denominate our version of the original 
 texts the word of God, on the ground of its being a 
 true expression in English words of the thoughts ex- 
 pressed in the original text. That text furnished a 
 perfect standard of the thoughts : so that a translator 
 who perfectly conceived the thoughts in the words of 
 that text, and perfectly conceived the same thoughts in 
 the words of another language, might express them as 
 perfectly as the original expressed them. To whatever 
 extent he accomplished that, his version would be of 
 like authority with the original, and as such would be. 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 87 
 
 with propriety, called the word of God, as expressing 
 His mind and will with the same certainty as the 
 original ; and to whatever extent he failed of this, his 
 version would lack authority. 
 
 On this view of the official character and relations 
 of the respective persons of the Godhead, making their 
 acts official acts, and regarding the Logos from the 
 beginning as executing the external works of creation, 
 providence, and grace, and His offices of Prophet, 
 Priest, and King, the Old Testament becomes intelli- 
 gibly harmonious with the New, and the Scriptures 
 exhibit throughout a perfect unity of plan, and entire 
 coherence and consistency in their details. They ex- 
 hibit the mind and will of the Godhead, officially repre- 
 sented by the Father, and manifested by the personal 
 agencies of the Son and the Spirit as His Messengers. 
 Thus all that appertained to the work of the Logos is 
 in harmony with His officially subordinate relations, 
 whether before or after His incarnation. Being the 
 recognized actor and revealer from the beginning, the 
 mediator between the invisible Godhead — officially 
 represented by the Father — and the human race, He 
 prescribed their obedience and their worship ; and 
 after the apostasy of man, their worship by sacrifices, 
 and their ritual of service. In the exercise of His sa- 
 cerdotal office, He presided over that worship, and was 
 as mediator, its immediate object. To Him, in this 
 view, the altars of sacrifice were erected by the patri- 
 archs ; who at those consecrated places called on His 
 name, and received verbal communications from Him. 
 So during the period of the Tabernacle and that of the 
 first Temple. The prayers of the worshippers uniformly. 
 
bo THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 
 
 like those of Abraham just prior to the destruction of 
 Sodom, were addressed to Ilim as being the mediator 
 personally present, by whom and through whom their 
 worshij) was accepted. This usage was continued 
 under the New Testament until the Levitical system 
 was superseded, and the Father revealed as officially 
 the ultimate object of spirital worship. Hitherto the 
 worshippers had looked through their typical sacrifices 
 to the Divine Mediating Logos, who interceded for them 
 with the invisible God. But in anticipation of His 
 personally visible withdrawment from them, and of a 
 more full disclosure of the system, He more particu- 
 larly taught them concerning the Father. " Verily, ' 
 verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the 
 Father in my name, He will give it you. Hitherto 
 have ye asked nothing in my name : ask and ye shall re- 
 ceive, that your joy may be full. These things have 
 I spoken unto you in proverbs : but the time cometh 
 when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but 
 I shall show you plainly of the Father. At that day 
 ye shall ask in my name : and I say not unto you, 
 that I will pray the Father for you : for the Father 
 Himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and 
 have believed that I came out from God. I came forth 
 from the Father and came into the world," etc. (John 
 16 : 23-28.) These passages and others relating to 
 the same subject, seem clearly to teach, that previously 
 the prayers of the true worshippers, offered through 
 the mcdiative significance of typical rites, had been 
 addressed to God only as manifested in the personal 
 Logos ; who in His Divine nature and His official acts, 
 was Jehovah the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 89 
 
 Jacob, They regarded Ilim as Jeliovali their right- 
 eousness — God, their Saviour. Beyond Him, proba- 
 bly, no others than spiritual worshippers had any 
 reference. For He Himself says: "0 righteous Fa- 
 ther, the world hath not known Thee : but I have 
 known Thee, and- these have known that Thou hast 
 sent me. And I have declared unto them Thy name, 
 and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou 
 hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." 
 (John 17.) Subsequently, throughout the Epistles, 
 the Father is often distinctively mentioned ; and 
 prayers, thanksgivings, and doxologies are addressed 
 to Him. 
 
 The order in which the official relations of the 
 persons of the Godhead were manifested and recorded 
 in the Scriptures, is natural and congruous to man's 
 apprehension. The actor and revealer in visible 
 works and audible words, behooved first to make 
 Himself known by His acts and the manifestation of 
 His offices. By exhibiting the works of creation and 
 Providence, by prescribing social and rehgious institu- 
 tions, by verbal revelations and instructions, by 
 piacular sacrifices, and by acting as civil Head and 
 Euler of His people ; and at length by becoming in- 
 carnate, and fulfilling the predictions and typical rep- 
 resentations of the past. He incidentally declared and 
 prepared the way for that distinctive and ample decla- 
 ration of the Father, which is recorded in the Gospel. 
 In His revelations and instructions from the beginnino- 
 the official personal agency of the Spirit was exerted, 
 invisibly, in communicating His words to the prophets 
 and sacred writers ; through which delegated agency, 
 
90 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 
 
 by tlieir instrumentality, He uttered tlie sacred oracles 
 in writing. That the relations of the respective per- 
 sons were, in a proper sense, official^ is evident from 
 the representation that the Son was subordinate to the 
 Father, and the Spirit to the Father and the Son ; 
 whereas, apart from those relations, they were coequal 
 and one in essence. Kor is this view a novelty. 
 Augustine — as quoted by Calvin — treating of this 
 subject, says : " These distinctive appellations denote 
 their reciprocal relations to each other. . . . The Fa- 
 ther, considered in Himself, is called God ; but with 
 relation to the Son, He is called the Father. . , . Christ 
 considered in Himself, is called God ; but with rela- 
 tion to the Father, He is called the Son," 
 
 I perceive no foundation for the distinction which 
 some make, between the Logos, in respect to His sub- 
 ordination, relations, or offices, and the Christ, the God- 
 man, the Theanthropos. The Logos was in the begin- 
 ning — all things were made by Him. The Logos became 
 incarnate and dwelt with men — the God-man — the 
 Christ. As predicted yet to come, " clothed with a 
 vesture dipped in blood. His name is called the Logos 
 of God." (Rev. 19.) Li Colossians 1, He is distin- 
 guished from the Father as "His dear Son : in whom 
 we have redemption through His blood ;" and " by 
 Him," under that designation, " ivere all things created^ 
 that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and 
 invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or 
 principalities, or powers : all things were created by 
 Him and for Him : and He is before all things, and 
 by Him all things consist. And He is the Head of the 
 body the Church." Here all the works, relations, and 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 91 
 
 offices, wliicli are elsewhere ascribed to the Logos and 
 the Christ, are ascribed to the Son. The same things, 
 which in one place, whether in the Old or the New 
 Testament, are ascribed to Him under one relative or 
 official title, are under other titles ascribed to Him in 
 other places. In very numerous instances different 
 titles, which represent the same Person in His subor- 
 dinate relations, occur interchangeably ; and those 
 which are used with special reference to the one or to 
 the other nature in the complex Person, are used inter- 
 changeably with those which specially refer to the 
 complex Person. The Person is the same, whether 
 contemplated as the Logos before or after the human 
 nature was united to that Person. He was the Jeho- 
 vah, the Messenger, the Anointed, under the Old Tes- 
 tament, in the same sense, the same subordinate rela- 
 tions, the same offices, as He is the Lord, the one sent, 
 the Christ, under the New Testament. He appeared in 
 the Shekina, in the tabernacle and temple, and to 
 Isaiah and Ezekiel, and also on the holy mount, to 
 Saul on his way to Damascus, and to John in the isle 
 of Patmos. His works, manifestations, acts, under the 
 Old, are recognized as His in the New; and those 
 under the New are prefigured and predicted in the Old 
 Testament. In all alike He is the same delegated 
 Person. In the apocalypse He is styled the Alpha and 
 Omega, the First and the Last, Jesus Christ, the Lord, 
 the Son of God, the Lamb of God, the Word of God. 
 As such, the redeemed and the angels of heaven wor- 
 ship Him. All that we know concerning Him, we 
 know of Him in the official, delegated, subordinate 
 relations and agencies which He sustains, and by which 
 
92 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 
 
 He is rendered cognizable and conceivable by us. I 
 apprehend that all that He did and does — as Creator, 
 Ruler, Revealer, Redeemer — ^is in one relation to the 
 Father — that of official subordination, (See Hebrews 
 Chap. 1, and Eph, 3) — while, distinguished as the 
 Second Person of the Trinity, He is the coequal of the 
 Father. But whether this view be adopted by every 
 one, or not, can make no difference in respect to the 
 Prophetic office of the Divine Revealer. For in that 
 office no one can doubt but that He was subordinate to 
 the Father : as a Messenger — one sent — is in the nature 
 of the case, subordinate to Him by whom He is sent. 
 
 What I contend for is that the original Hebrew and 
 Greek texts were given by inspiration of Grod, as they 
 were written. On no other ground can I conceive 
 them to be infallible, or entitled to be called the word 
 of God ; as they are according to their own declara- 
 tions. With questions and difficulties, alleged to exist 
 in the present state of these texts, I meddle not. What- 
 ever they may be, and I apprehend them to be far less 
 real and important than is commonly imagined, they 
 are, I conceive, fully as hard to be surmounted on any 
 other view of the subject, as on that of original Verbal 
 Inspiration : that is, if the Bible is, in respect to its 
 contents, to be considered as any thing more than a 
 mere human composition. If they are the word of 
 God, uttered by the Spirit through the sacred penmen, 
 then to ascribe to man's agency any thing of their 
 matter or manner, can be neither more scriptural, nor 
 more rational, than to account for the Divine act of 
 creation, by ascribing the matter of the globe, and its 
 original forms, to chemical affinities and gravitation. 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 93 
 
 The difficulties, whatever thej may be, actually 
 exist. They have arisen since the texts were origi- 
 nally written. Suppose that the words first written 
 were given to the writers by Inspiration, and were 
 therefore infallible, and perfect for all the purposes in- 
 tended ; and that these difficulties of various readings, 
 omissions, redundancies, and the like, are due to the 
 writers of the manuscript copies now extant. Then 
 we have to a very large, though indefinite extent, the 
 original infallible words. To that extent they are the 
 very words of Grod, and are an authoritative and perfect 
 standard, by which to test the various readings and 
 discrepancies. Now, since these variations in different 
 copies are, by common consent, admitted not to afiect 
 any important fact or doctrine, or if they do in any in- 
 stance, such fact or doctrine is elsewhere and repeated- 
 ly expressed in the earliest, most perfect and most 
 reliable copies, the correction of them only requires a 
 comparison with that which is adopted as the standard. 
 This settles the matter, obviates the difficulty, and 
 leaves the text in its unimpaired authority. To what- 
 ever extent this may be accomplished, you have the 
 infellible standard, the original words, intact. 
 
 But suppose the original text, and that of the oldest 
 copies, to have consisted of the selected and fallible 
 words of man, like the words substituted, or interpo- 
 lated by the copyists, then, though you may have an 
 approximately original, you have at best but a fallible 
 text, by which to correct variations. The process of 
 correction by such a text could not possibly be easier 
 or more certain, than by a fixed and in&llible standard. 
 
 It is on the ground of the official relations and words 
 
94 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 
 
 of the Hoi J Spirit, that His personality, and that sins 
 against Him personally, are specified in Scripture. In 
 His relations to men, He is personally the immediate 
 author, teacher, giver, of all their knowledge, intel- 
 lectual and sj^iritual, of the holiness and perfection of 
 the Divine Being, through His inspired words and by 
 His indwelling, enlightening, purifying influence. In 
 the execution of His ofl&ce He stands between the Son 
 as Kedeemer, and those whom He redeems: and by 
 His own energy through the "Word of God as His in- 
 strument, brings them into union with Him. They 
 individually, and as a community of believers — the 
 church — "are built on the foundation of the apostles 
 and prophets." That foundation is, indubitably, the 
 Word of God, written by the apostles and prophets as 
 it was given to them — inbreathed, inspired by the 
 Spirit. It is therefore the infallible and only basis of 
 that faith by which believers are united to Christ and 
 made partakers of the redemption purchased by Him. 
 The Spirit is as the Inspirer, the immediate author of 
 that Word. It is written, that it may be His instru- 
 ment lodged in the understandings and hearts of men. 
 To resist and reject that word is to resist Him, and re- 
 ject His regenerating and sanctifying influence. He 
 who rejects Plis words, rejects the only instrument by 
 which He exerts His power and influence on the minds 
 and hearts of men. To persist in rejecting His words, 
 is to preclude the possibility of renovation and sancti- 
 fication ; and is a sin against Him personally. As 
 illustrations of this, I may cite a Scripture or two with 
 reference to the church of the ancient dispensation. 
 Stephen, Acts 7, refening to the history of the He- 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 95 
 
 brews and Israelites from tlie call of Abraham to the 
 day of his own arrest and martyrdom, says, to their 
 representatives, the Sanhedrim or council, before whom 
 he was called to defend himself: "Ye stiff-necked and 
 uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the 
 Holy Ghost: as you fathers did, so do ye. Which of 
 the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And 
 they have slain them which showed before of the com- 
 mg of the Just One, of whom ye have been now the 
 betrayers and murderers ; who have received the law 
 by the instrumentality of Messengers and have not 
 kept it;" which plainly imports, that they rejected the 
 words of the Holy Spirit uttered by the prophets as 
 messengers of God. And Isaiah, chap. 63, with the 
 same retrospective reference, says: " They rebelled and 
 vexed the Holy Spirit." 
 
 The official work of the Holy Spirit in conveying 
 the words of God to men, whether, as in the earliest 
 ages, only to be uttered vocally by them, or at later 
 periods to be uttered vocally and in writing, is the 
 foundation, the condition precedent to His official work 
 of sanctification. As His instruments they must be 
 received, understood, lodged in their minds, prior to 
 His exerting that work. For He works in, through,- 
 by, them, and not otherwise. Hence the absolute ne- 
 cessity of their being published, preached, and to a 
 greater or less extent, received, understood, reahzed to 
 the consciousness of every individual in whom He 
 works a change of heart, enlightens, teaches, purifies, 
 and preserves through faith unto salvation. They may 
 be more or less received and understood, as hitherto to a 
 great extent they have been, by men in whom He docs 
 
96 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 
 
 not execute His official work ; but He executes tliatwork 
 in none who have not some intellectual knowledge and 
 conviction of them. And were the conviction indubi- 
 tably fixed in the minds of all who read or hear the 
 words of Scripture, that thej are " in truth the words 
 of God," afar more extended execution of His work 
 might be confidently expected. This, in the future, 
 will undoubtedly be realized. The seed, which is the 
 Word of God, will, as in the apostolic age, be sown 
 unmixed with tares, and will be made to germinate by 
 the energy of the Spirit. They shall be all taught of 
 God. The Spirit will be poured out upon all flesh. 
 Then will the official work of the almighty, omniscient, 
 omnipresent Spirit, as regenerator and conservator of 
 the Church, through the instrumentality of the words 
 inspired by Him, be fully manifested and acknowl- 
 edged, to the glory of the Father and of Christ. Then 
 shall the head stone of the spiritual temple be exalted 
 with shoutings of Grace, grace ! — not by man's power, 
 " but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." "Faith," 
 says Calvin, book 3d, "has a perpetual relation to the 
 word^ and can no more be separated from it, than the rays 
 from the sun, whence they proceed. Therefore God 
 proclaims by Isaiah, Hear and your soids shall live. And 
 that the word is the fountain of faith, is evident from this 
 language of John : These are written that ye might be- 
 lieve. . . . The ivord itself, however it may be con- 
 veyed to us, is like a mirror, in which faith may behold 
 God." The nature, universality, and permanency of 
 the work of the Spirit in the Church, manifest the re- 
 lation of His official agency to the progress and con- 
 summation of that scheme of grace, of which the 
 world itself was created t<? be the scene. 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 97 
 
 If tlie Holy Spirit actually revealed any thing, 
 made any original communications to the prophets or 
 apostles, as He is, tune and again, asserted to have 
 done, I ask the abettors of a multifarious influence as- 
 sisting them in the exercise of their natural faculties, 
 how, by what means, in what way He disclosed and 
 conveyed to them such new thoughts, doctrines, pro- 
 phesies? Would any stimulating assistance to their 
 memories, imaginations, and understandings suffice in 
 such a case, and raise them, as some affect to conceive, 
 to such a pitch of spintual intuition as to enable them 
 to discover the deep things of God? No, say others, 
 this was revelation^ as if that word was sufficiently un- 
 intelhgible and mysterious to cover up the matter. 
 But others, who define the inspiration of the Scriptures 
 to be an influence of assistance to men's faculties, 
 stultify themselves by excepting all that the sacred 
 writers did not know before — whole books, whole 
 chapters, paragraphs, sentences, clauses, single words — 
 as being inspired by that " higher and more genuine 
 inspiration" which the Scriptures themselves teach, 
 and which Paul expressly defines. But if the Scrip- 
 tures assert that genuine inspiration of any part of the 
 Scriptures, they assert it of the whole and every part 
 of them, without exception. The terms which they 
 employ, and the very nature of that genuine inspira- 
 tion, forbid the supposition of any exception in any 
 canonical book. 
 
 On the view that the Logos in the beginning, the 
 
 Jehovah of the Old Testament, and the Incarnate 
 
 Word of the New, signified one and the same Divine 
 
 Mediatorial Person, the Eevealer of God, exercising 
 
 5 
 
 
98 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 
 
 at every period of the sacred narrative, His proplietic 
 ofl&ce, tlie peculiar and progressive disclosures of the 
 Scriptures as written and published from time to time, 
 are in harmony with His concurrent ilnd His ultimate 
 objects, and suited to their accomplishment. As an 
 effect of the apostasy, and of the deceitful lures and 
 influences of the god of this world, the hearts of men 
 were alienated, their understandings darkened, their 
 minds blinded to all spiritual truths. No mere manifes- 
 tation of the Divine perfections in the works of crea- 
 tion and Providence, nor any such exhibitions of truths 
 concerning the Divine existence and perfections, as 
 constitute what is called natural religion, would sufi&cc 
 to restrain the corruptions of the fallen race, and to 
 prevent the universal reign of idolatry and wicked- 
 ness ; as is shown by the history of all the natitjns, to 
 whom such manifestations only have been made. 
 Personal Manifestations of the Eevealer Himself in 
 the relations in which He was cognizable and conceiv- 
 able by men, were requisite ; and would have been 
 requisite indeed had there been no apostasy, and were 
 therefore made in Eden, prior to the fall. The Infinite, 
 Divine Being — whether as a Unity or as a Trinity — 
 unconditioned by cognizable relations to created intelli- 
 gences, would have been incognizable and inconceiva- 
 ble to them. The Logos, assuming such relations, 
 manifested Himself in them to the observation, intelli- 
 gence, and faith of men and angels, in His works of 
 creation, Providence and grace under various aspects 
 and successive dispensations ; and esjDCcially in His 
 redemptive work, as Mediatorial Prophet, Priest and 
 King, the Personal Image, and Eevealer of the Invisi- 
 ble Divinity. 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW. 99 
 
 But these personal relations and manifestations were 
 rendered cognizable by men, not so much by His ex- 
 ternal and visible acts, as by His vocal utterances of 
 words explanatory of His acts, prerogatives, counsels, 
 and purposes, and of their relations, obligations and 
 duties. On the exercise of His prophetic office, there- 
 fore, the disclosure and progress of the system depend- 
 ed from the beginning ; and from the necessity of His 
 verbal disclosures being in perfect harmony with the 
 manifestations of His invisible acts, we may with cer- 
 tainty infer the importance of every word uttered by 
 Him, and in His name by His messengers — nay, the 
 absolute necessity that His thoughts should be uttered 
 by them in His own words. 
 
 The original doctrine of Satan, which he proposed 
 to Eve, was pantheistic; Ye shall be as gods, knowing 
 good and evil. Cain and his followers adhered to this 
 teaching ; notwithstanding the manifestations of Divine 
 omnipotence, wisdom, and forecast in the visible works 
 of creation. The negation of that blinding and de- 
 structive heresy, by the assertion of infallible truth 
 in the words of the Logos, as Creator of matter and of 
 all things out of nothing, is expressed in the very first 
 sentence of recorded Scripture ; where, from the nature 
 of the subject, and the object of the declaration, we 
 are bound to believe that the words employed are the 
 very words of God. But in reality there is the same 
 reason why all the other words of Scripture are the 
 very words of God. The antagonism of Satan did not 
 cease ; nor was it during the ages of idolatry and re- 
 bellion on the part of the chosen people, or at the 
 assault in the wilderness on the second Adam, rebuked 
 and repelled b}'' any other than the very words of God. 
 
100 THE THEORY OF GUIDAI^CE. 
 
 Vin. The Theory of Guidance, and of a Dis- 
 tinction BETWEEN EeVELATION AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 It is among the remarkable things connected with 
 the history of this subject, that men of the most emi- 
 nent character for learning, and personally as Christ- 
 ian men, who believe the words of Scripture through- 
 out, to be the infallible words of God, and whose faith 
 and hope repose on them as such, do nevertheless per- 
 ceive no difference — in respect to their being His 
 words — ^between their having been selected by the 
 sacred writers under the guidance of the Spirit, and the 
 very words themselves having been imparted to the 
 writers hy the Sjnrit — imparted in a manner equivalent 
 to an audible vocal articulation. Were such men re- 
 quired to answer the question, whether, if selected by 
 the writers without the supposed guidance, the words 
 of the sacred text, however true, appropriate, and 
 answerable to the thoughts, could with any semblance 
 of propriety be called the words of God, they would, 
 no doubt, at once, and decidedly, answer in the nega- 
 tive. And on the other hand, if asked, whether the 
 very words being conveyed by the Spirit to the minds 
 of the sacred writers, would not determine them to be 
 literally the words of God, they would as readily and 
 decidedly answer, Yes. What then is really effected 
 by the alleged guidance ? Suppose a sacred writer to 
 know with perfect accuracy, a fact which he was to 
 narrate, and to know it in the very words which truly 
 represented it. Would a supernatural guidance be 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 101 
 
 necessary in that case to determine him to choose the 
 very words which he already knew as truly and accu- 
 rately representing the fact, and a deviation from 
 which would to his intelligent consciousness, misrepre- 
 sent it ? Suppose it to be a fact of consciousness, and 
 that he perfectly understood the words in which he 
 was conscious of it. Surely in such a case it can not 
 be said that he was supernaturally guided to choose 
 the words of which he was already conscious. The 
 utmost that could be pretended in such a case, would 
 be that he was restrained from choosing words con- 
 trary to his knowledge, and his consciousness, and 
 thereby falling into error. But cases of this sort con- 
 stitute a large part of what is written in Scripture, of 
 which the writers had previous knowledge ; with refer- 
 ence to all which cases it is obvious that the writers 
 having previously, and perhaps for years, been con- 
 scious of the right words, could not, when they came 
 to write them as Holy Scripture, select them by a 
 supernatural guidance ; nor could such guidance add 
 any thing to the words to render them more true or 
 infallible than they were before and without the sup- 
 posed guidance. 
 
 It being an admitted and undeniable fact, that the 
 words recorded by the sacred writers, were, to a large 
 extent — as in immediate revelations, predictions, etc. 
 — conveyed to the writers by the Holy Spirit, the 
 alleged guidance is asserted only of those historical or 
 other facts of experience and observation which were 
 previously within the knowledge of the writers. Now 
 assuming this statement to embrace all the cases in 
 which an infallible guidance is supposed, I think it 
 
102 THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 safe to say that the assertion of it is unscrijDtural, un- 
 necessary, inconceivable, and impossible. 
 
 1. The assertion of an infallible guidance of the 
 sacred writers in the selection of words to express his- 
 torical or other facts, appears to me to be unscriptural, 
 in the sense of not being taught in Scripture, and of 
 being contrary to what is taught. I do not find any 
 such doctrine taught in the Bible; nor have I met 
 with any writer on the subject who adduces any evi- 
 dence, by quotations or criticisms, to show that it is 
 taught in the Bible. It is propounded by Dr. Whitby, 
 and nearly every writer since, as an hypothesis, a theory 
 devised to obviate certain objections and diOiculties of 
 matter and style. It is called a theory of Inspiration, 
 but only by imposing on the word inspiration a sense 
 different from, and contrary to the sense which that 
 word bears in Scripture ; as different from, and con- 
 trary to that sense, as an act which conveys thoughts 
 from one mind to another is different from and con- 
 trary to an act or influence which terminates on the 
 exercise of the mind in thinking. 
 
 2. The supposed guidance of the sacred writers is 
 wholly unnecessary and superfluous. There is nothing 
 in the nature of the case to demand it. The effect re- 
 quired is fully provided for by the Scripture doctrine 
 of Inspiration, which teaches that what the sacred pen- 
 men wrote was conveyed to their minds by the in- 
 breathing act of the Iloly Spirit. It teaches this com- 
 prehensively of all that they wrote in tlieir official 
 capacity. Most, and probably all writers upon the 
 subject, admit and hold that this Scriptural inspiration 
 obtained in respect to revelations and whatever was 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 103 
 
 not previously known to tlie writers. The Scriptures 
 assert it indiscriminately of all that they wrote. It 
 surely is as comjjeteut to the whole as to any part, and 
 it can not be pretended that there is any more difficulty 
 in conceiving that, out of all the things previously 
 known to a prophet, certain particular ones, when in 
 the discharge of his office he sat down to write, should, 
 by the inspiring act of the Spirit, be specially and viv- 
 idly, and exclusively realized to his consciousness, to be 
 then and there uttered by him in writing, than there 
 is in conceiving that original and immediate revelations 
 should be so realized to his consciousness. Another 
 and different kind of supernatural agency in the case 
 is therefore unneccssarj^. Such an inspiration is as 
 perfect a ground of infallibilitj', in respect to the one 
 portion of what is written, as in respect to the other 
 portion ; and if the supj^osed guidance was necessary 
 to render the one portion infallible, then the portion 
 which was inspired without guidance, would lack the 
 necessary ground of infallibility. 
 
 3. The supposed guidance appears to mc to be incon- 
 ceivable and impossible. For it implies that the sa- 
 cred writers were, in the intelligent exercise of their 
 faculties, guided to select words whereby to express 
 thoughts of which they were not conscious, which is 
 inconceivable and impossible. For if, prior to the 
 guidance, they were conscious of the thoughts, they 
 were conscious of them in words. They could not be 
 conscious of them apart from words, as I have before 
 abundantly shown, and as a little reflection must con- 
 vince every man who thinks. And if it be said that 
 the words of which they were conscious were not the 
 
104 THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 best, the most correct and proper, whereby to express 
 the thoughts, and that perfect and infallible truth re- 
 quired that all of them, or some of them, should be 
 exchanged for other words, then I submit that it is in- 
 conceivable and impossible that the alleged guidance 
 should enable them to select such other words. For 
 in the nature of the case the words of which they were 
 conscious expressed the thoughts to their intelligent 
 consciousness, and if a change of the words for others 
 was necessary, a change of the thoughts also was 
 equally necessary. For if the new words did not act- 
 ually modify or change the thoughts, then new words, 
 could not be requisite. But they could not be con- 
 scious of the new or modified thoughts, till they were 
 conscious of them in words, and therefore they could 
 not be guided intelligently to select words whereb}'' to 
 express them. Inevitably the new or modified thoughts 
 must be conveyed to their minds in words by inspira- 
 tion, in order to their becoming conscious of them. 
 They, by the exercise of their faculties, guided or not 
 guided, could no more conceive the new thoughts, or 
 select words whereby to express them, than they could 
 conceive the thoughts contained in a prediction, and 
 select words whereby to express them. 
 
 But says the theorist : All those things in Scripture 
 which the writers did not previously know — all the 
 thoughts of which they were not previously conscious 
 — were communicated to them by revelation ; and he 
 assumes that they were or might be communicated 
 apart from and indej)endcntly of words, so that the 
 sacred writer having the thoughts, partly by revela- 
 tion, and partly by his own experience and observa- 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 105 
 
 tion, might select the words whereby to express them, 
 and being infallibly guided in his selection by the 
 Spirit, might select words free from error, and infalli- 
 bly true. Ilis theoiy is contrary alike to our con- 
 sciousness, and to the teachings of Scripture, It is 
 moreover absurd and ridiculous until he demonstrates : 
 1. That men are conscious of thoughts apart from 
 words, and may receive revelations from the infinite 
 intelligence otherwise than in words; and 2d, that 
 such supernatural guiding influence was actually ex- 
 erted on the intellectual faculties of the sacred writers. 
 The first he never can demonstrate, and without that, 
 the second would be unnecessary and futile. 
 
 If it be said that Divine power might enable men to 
 select words whereby to express thoughts of which 
 they were not conscious : then 1. Such an exercise of 
 Divine power would not be an act of guidance^ but an 
 act of creation ; and 2, it would not be consistent 
 with the free and intelligent exercise of men's facul- 
 ties, but contrary to such exercise, and in itself and 
 its effects merely mechanical. Either, therefore, the 
 thoughts and words were in their due arrangement 
 conveyed to the sacred writers by inspiration, or they 
 uttered in writing their own thoughts and words with- 
 out any supernatural assistance of any kind. 
 
 The proposition that men were guided in making a 
 selection of words to express thoughts which they 
 were already conscious of in words which expressed 
 them as perfectly as they conceived them, is in every 
 respect absurd. For either it assumes that they se- 
 lected the very same words — which would be no se- 
 lection ; or that they selected words which did not 
 5*. 
 
106 THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 express tlie thouglits in conformity to their conscious- 
 ness, and therefore which did not express the same 
 thoughts. To say that they selected other thoughts, 
 and also selected words to express such other and dif- 
 ferent thoughts, is quite another proposition, but no 
 less absurd ; for they could not be conscious of the 
 other thoughts apart from the words in which they 
 conceived them. 
 
 I therefore object to that distinction between Reve- 
 lation and Inspiration, which makes Revelation the 
 communication of truth, and Inspiration the guidance 
 of the Holy Spirit, by which its subject is rendered 
 infallible in the communication of truth. 1. I find no • 
 such distinction expressed or implied in the Scriptures 
 themselves, I know of no Scripture which teaches 
 that some portions of the Bible in distinction from 
 others, or that the whole of it, was communicated to 
 the writers otherwise than by Inspiration. The Scrip- 
 tures themselves declare that they are all given by 
 Inspiration of God. Paul says of the things which 
 were communicated to him, and which he preached 
 and wrote, that "God hath revealed them unto us by 
 His Spirit." Various Scriptures assert that the Holy 
 Ghost spake by the mouth of prophets and by David. 
 Quotations from the Old Testament assert that the 
 Holy Ghost spake the jDassages quoted : as Heb. 3 : 7, 
 and Acts 1 : 16. 
 
 2. The words translated Inspiration both in the Old 
 and New Testaments, mean the same as the phrase, 
 Ireathed into. To say that what the sacred penmen 
 wrote was given to them by Inspiration of God, is pre- 
 cisely equivalent to saying that the words which they 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 107 
 
 uttered in writing were breathed into their minds, or 
 conveyed into their minds, by the Holy Spirit. Now, 
 since it was absolutely necessary that the words of 
 original Kevelations should be communicated to the 
 sacred penmen, and since the revelations are declared 
 to have been communicated to them by Inspiration, it 
 is unscriptural and superfluous to make a distinction, 
 as though Revelations were communicated in some 
 other way than by Inspiration. 
 
 3. The Scriptures every where teach that what the 
 sacred penmen uttered in writing was spoken by the 
 Spirit. It was what He said. The words are His 
 words as being s^Doken to them by Him, and uttered 
 by Him through their instrumentality. He spoke His 
 own words by their mouths ; uttered His own words 
 by the instrumentality of their pens. 
 
 4. This distinction assumes that Inspiration conveys 
 nothing whatever of thoughts or words to the sacred 
 penmen. It assigns to the word Inspiration a wholly 
 different sense, namely, that of guiding them in their 
 act of communicating truth to the world. It is made 
 to signify a guiding influence on the faculties of the 
 men, making them infallible in their act in announcing, 
 uttering, communicating truth. It is an inspiration of 
 the men, not a conveyance of truth to them. It as- 
 sumes that they had already in their minds, by some 
 other means than inspiration, the truths which they 
 were to communicate ; and that all they further needed 
 was a guidance in the selection and utterance of words. 
 That supposed and necessary guidance is made to take 
 the place of, and to signify all that is signified by in- 
 spiration ; and on this ground Revelation is distin- 
 
108 THE THEOEY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 guished from Inspiration; as though the Scriptares 
 taught us nothing, and it was of no importance to us 
 to know any thing, as to how, in what manner, by 
 what agency revelations were communicated to the 
 sacred writers. 
 
 5. No evidence whatever is adduced to justify call- 
 ing guidance inspiration. No evidence, I apprehend, 
 can possibly be adduced from the Scriptures them- 
 selves. It is at best a mere theory, founded on what 
 is supposed to be necessary in the case — necessary to 
 make the Scriptures infalhble. It being assumed that 
 the sacred writers selected the words which they wrote, 
 and that as men they were liable to err, it is alleged 
 that they were infallibly guided in the exercise of their 
 faculties in making the selection, and infallibly pre- 
 served from error in writing. But it is not proved or 
 even attempted to be proved that they selected the 
 words. On the contrary it is expressly asserted that 
 the Scriptures, that is, the words as written, were given 
 by inspiration of God. The thoughts are not Scrip- 
 ture apart from the words. If the thoughts were given, 
 the words must have been given with them. More- 
 over, with reference to large portions of Scripture, it is 
 allowed by all that the words must have been com- 
 municated to the writers. But if they were communi- 
 cated from the Divine to the human mind, it must 
 have been either, first by articulate audible utterances, 
 or second, by silent conveyance of them to the minds 
 of the recipients by the Almighty and Omniscient 
 Spirit ; and since they certainly were not all spoken 
 audibly, it follows that the rest must have been con- 
 veyed by the act of the Spirit. 
 
THE THEOEY OF GUIDANCE. 109 
 
 But says the objector, Why not admit this distinc- 
 tion between Revelation and Inspiration? Why not 
 adopt the hypothesis that inspiration means a guidance 
 of the writers ? If they were inflillibly guided in their 
 choice of words, why is not that as good a ground of 
 infallibility, as a conveyance to them of the very words 
 of God ? What semblance of difference is there ? I 
 answer, that this theory of guidance is mere hypothesis, 
 not shown to have any foundation in fact, not shown 
 to be necessary, not taught in Scripture. Whereas, 
 the Scriptures teach that the very words of God were 
 given, and therefore were infallible as being His. If 
 the words were given by inspiration, then the writers, 
 guided or not guided, did not select them. One of 
 these views is true and the other not. They can not 
 both be true. One is asserted in Scripture. The 
 other is a speculative theory. That which is asserted 
 in Scripture presents incontestable proof of the infalli- 
 bility of the words. The hypothesis, not being it- 
 self established upon any evidence, can afford no 
 proof or ground of infallibility. It is therefore to be 
 rejected. It leaves it as an open question, whether or 
 not the writers were infallibly guided in selecting the 
 words ? It affects to determine the ground on which 
 the Scriptures are to be received as the infallible word 
 of God, not on the testimony of Scripture, but on a 
 theory of man's device. And if one may safely do 
 this under the notion of an inspiration of infallible 
 guidance, another — since there is not a word in Scrip- 
 ture concerning infallible guidance — may as safely do 
 it, under the notion of an inspiration of Direction, that 
 is, "such assistance as left the writers to describe 
 
110 THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 things in tlieir own way, directing only the mind in 
 the exercise of its powers ;" another, under the notion 
 of an inspiration of Elevation, " which added a greater 
 strength and vigor to the efforts of the mind, than the 
 writers could otherwise have attained ;" another under 
 the notion of an inspiration oi swperintendency, "which 
 preserved generally from any thing being put down 
 derogatory to the revelation with which it was con- 
 nected." The Scriptures say nothing and know no- 
 thing of either of these kinds of inspiration. They are 
 mere fancies of men ; and the difference between them 
 and the Scripture doctrine of inspiration, is the differ- 
 ence between Scripture and hypothesis, truth and 
 falsehood, what God says and what man says. I can 
 conceive of an enlightened and good man, who firmly 
 believes in the infallibility of the Scriptures as the 
 word of Grod ; but who, in his feelings and medita- 
 tions, has so long and familiarly associated that belief 
 with the idea of a Divine guidance of the sacred 
 writers, in the selection of the words which they 
 wrote, that the idea seems to him to bs scriptural, or 
 consistent with Scripture ; and, as his faith is firm, he 
 can not see, nor easily be made to see, that such guid- 
 ance is not as good a ground of faith in the words, 
 being the real and infallible words of God, as would 
 be the utterance of the same words by Ilim, audibly 
 OT by inspiration, into the minds of the writers, and 
 through their instrumentality to the world. His theo- 
 ry of guidance seems to him to come to the same 
 result as the doctrine of immediate verbal inspiration ; 
 and the result alone appears to him to be of any im- 
 portance in the case. 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. Ill 
 
 But submit to the same man a parallel case where 
 the infallible words of Scripture, as the very words of 
 God, are the sole ground of his faith, and he will in- 
 stantly start back. Take the doctrine of Justification 
 by faith, and suppose him, in view of the express 
 verbal statements of Scripture, to believe justification 
 to be " an act of God's free grace, wherein He pardon- 
 eth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in His 
 sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to 
 us and received by faith alone." Now suppose a friend 
 should say, I believe in justification as firmly as you, 
 and in the same result, namely, salvation. But I un- 
 derstand by justification, not an act of God, pardoning 
 us, and imputing to us the righteousness of Christ; 
 but I understand by that word, a work A\T:ought in us 
 and making us righteous — sanctification — in which 
 our own agency is concerned, and to which, indeed, 
 primarily, our active agency is indispensable : as the 
 active agency of the sacred writers in the selection of 
 the words which they wrote was, in the order of time, 
 indispensable before they were guided in the selection. 
 They could not be guided before they acted. We can 
 not be said to be justified till we are personally righteous 
 and holy, which we are not till we are sanctified. Would 
 he not instantly and earnestly reply : You mistake the 
 matter. You have an erroneous and baseless theory. 
 Sanctification is not justification. You deceive your- 
 self by giving it that name. Justification is as differ- 
 ent from sanctification as a Divine act of creation is 
 from a human act of obedience. It is purely a Divine 
 act, in which no agency of man is exerted. It is ex- 
 pressly taught to be such in the words of Scripture. 
 
112 THE THEOEY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 Whereas, your theory on the subject is neither taught 
 nor implied in Scripture. It is a theory invented by 
 man to exalt and flatter himself and his acts in the 
 affair of salvation. But, rejoins the other, why object 
 to my view ? It comes to the same thing. If we arc 
 sanctified we shall be saved, and that is the end de- 
 sired. Can there be any better ground of assurance that 
 we shall be saved, than that of our being sanctified ? 
 What difference is there between the two views? 
 Answer : the one view is according to the teachings of 
 the word of God : the other is contrary to those teach- 
 ings derogatory to the Scriptures, and as a theory, hy- 
 pothetical and absurd. 
 
 The Greek word translated guide occurs five times 
 in one form, and five times in another form in the New 
 Testament. Matt. 15 : 14 : If the blind lead the blind— 
 They be blind leaders of the blind. Matt. 23 : 16, and 
 24 : Woe unto you, ye blind guides. . . . Ye blind 
 guides which strain at a gnat. Luke 6 : 39: Can the 
 blind lead the blind ? Acts 1:16: which was guide to 
 them that took Jesus. Rev. 7:17: and shall lead them 
 unto living fountains of waters. Eom. 2 : 19 : art a 
 guide of the blind. Acts 8 : 81 : except some man 
 should guide me. And John 16 : 13 : He will guide 
 you into all the truth. 
 
 The passages which relate to blind guides, and the 
 blind leading the blind, relate, no doubt, to guiding by 
 verbal instruction. The same is true of Acts 8 : 31. 
 The Eunuch was reading the Prophet Isaiah. Philip 
 said, Understandest thou what thou readest ? And he 
 said, How can I, except some man should guide me ; 
 that is, teach me, explain to me. "Of whom speak- 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 113 
 
 eth tlie Prophet this, of himself, or of some other 
 man ?" He understood well enough the words that he 
 was reading, but they did not indicate to him who it 
 was that should be led as a lamb to the slaughter. As 
 to that, he needed a further disclosure ; namely, the 
 verbal instruction which Philip was sent to give him. 
 "The Spirit said unto Philip, Go near and join thy- 
 self to this chariot.^' (Verse 29.) 
 
 There are some remarkable personal references in this 
 narrative from verse 26 to verse 40, which throw light 
 on our view of the prophetic office. Terse 26 : " And 
 the angel of the Lord spake unto PhHip, saying. Arise, 
 and go toward the south," etc. This is the Old Testa- 
 ment designation of Jehovah as the Messenger of the 
 Father — the Messenger of the Covenant, (Mai. 3,) 
 the Messenger (angel) Jehovah, who appeared to 
 the Patriarchs, and to Moses, spoke familiarly to 
 him, gave the law at Sinai, and was head of the 
 theocratic dispensation. The rationalistic commenta- 
 ries, which, when the angel, or an angel is said to 
 speak to a man, resolve the statement into an inward 
 impression or impulse which is felt by the subject, but 
 is not produced by any external personal agent ; and 
 when the Spirit is said to speak, as in verse 29, deem 
 the statement to mean nothing more than an inward 
 suggestion or intuition, are unworthy of even the low- 
 est degree of human wisdom. If these views may be 
 adopted in the present and other cases in the New 
 Testament, they may be adopted in respect to all 
 that Moses and the prophets have written, and all pre- 
 tense of supernatural acts and events recorded in the 
 Bible may at once be given up. 
 
114 THE THEOEY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 The plain import of this passage is, that the Messen- 
 ger Jehovah in the exercise of His projjhetic office, as 
 in earlier periods, spoke to Philip, and directed him to 
 go, in his ofiicial character, to a certain place, for a 
 special service. He obeyed this verbal direction ; and 
 being abont to exercise his office as preacher, that is, 
 to utter such words as the Spirit inspired into his mind, 
 put into his mouth, for immediate. utterance, he, like 
 others of his time who spoke, officially, only what the 
 Spirit supplied to them and spoke by them, was thus 
 committed to the official direction and control of the 
 Spirit. " Then the Spirit said unto PliiHp, go near, 
 and join thyself to this chariot," (v. 29.) The Eunuch 
 asked him to explain as to what person it was to whom 
 the Prophet referred. ' ' Then Philip opened his mouth, 
 and began at the same Scripture, and preached unto 
 him Jesus," (v. 25.) Having accomplished the specific 
 service on which he was sent, " The Spirit of the Lord," 
 the Holy Spirit as sent by Christ the Messenger of the 
 Father, "caught away Philip" . . . who "was found at 
 Azotus : and passing through he preached in all the 
 cities, till he came to Cesarea." (Verses 39-40.) 
 
 The only other passage in which the word guide oc- 
 curs, as specified above, is John 16 : 13: "He will guide 
 you into all the truth." The whole passage, and the 
 parallel passages, most evidently restrict what the Spirit 
 was promised and commissioned to do to verbal teach- 
 ing, communicating truth verbally to the apostles. 
 Thus : " I have yet many things to say unto you, but 
 ye can not bear them now. Howbcit, when He, the 
 Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all the 
 truth; for He shall not si^eak of Himself; but whatso- 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 115 
 
 ever lie shull hear, that shall He speak ; and He will 
 show you things to come. He shall glorify me ; lor 
 He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you." 
 (John 16 : 13-15.) The whole of this clearly relates to 
 communications to be made in words, as by speaking. 
 The import of the passage may be expressed as fol- 
 lows : Christ, in His office of Prophet, had yet many 
 things to say to His disciples. But the time had not 
 arrived for Him to say them, and would not arrive till 
 after His ascension ; so that He could not directly ex- 
 ercise His office by uttering them. But He would 
 send the Spirit as His Messenger to speak them in His 
 name, and to glorify Him by receiving and uttering 
 only what He gave Him to communicate to them. 
 Thus He would guide them into all the truth by speak- 
 ing, verbally teaching, them all the truth ; as Philip 
 guided the eunuch by his verbal explanations. With 
 this view the parallel passages agree : " The Holy 
 Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name. He 
 shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your 
 remembrance, whatsoever / have said unto youy 
 (14 : 26.) "But when the Comforter is come, whom I 
 will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit 
 of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall 
 kstify of me," (15 : 26.) To teach is to communicate 
 knowledge verbally. To recall what has been said, is 
 to recall words which had been uttered. To testify is 
 to utter verbal testimony. 
 
 To pretend that the word guide in the passage above 
 quoted, means an influence of the Spirit on the under- 
 standings, memories, or other faculties of the sacred 
 writers, which did not teach and communicate to them 
 
116 THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 tlie very words they were to write, but only directed, 
 guided them in the exercise of their faculties in the 
 selection of words and communicating them by writ- 
 ing, is to pervert the very words of Christ, and in 
 derogation of the office of the Spirit, The selection of 
 the words which He was to teach and utter was not 
 delegated even to Christ, or by Him to the Spirit. 
 The Spirit was not commissioned or authorized to 
 speak of Himself, that is, words selected by Himself, 
 but only the words which He received from Him by 
 whom He was sent. To imagine that the penmen of 
 Scripture had any personal agency in the selection of ■ 
 the words, is to exalt them above the Spirit, and above 
 Christ, to an official equality with the Father. And 
 as to the idea of a guidance of the apostles in their 
 selection of words, there is not a hint of that specialty 
 in the passage under consideration. If there is any 
 guidance referred to different from direct verbal in- 
 struction, it is a guidance into all the truth, abstractly 
 and apart from words. If the theorizer says the 
 guidance relates both to the truth and the words, he 
 says what the text does not say. 
 
 The Saviour, providing for the execution of His 
 prophetic office, through the official agency of the 
 Spirit, and through the subordinate official agency of 
 the apostles, says in His address to the Father, John 
 17: "And now I come to Thee, and these things I 
 speak in the world, that they might have my joy ful- 
 filled in themselves. I have given them Thy word. 
 .... Sanctify them through thy truth. As thou hast 
 sent me into the world, even so have I sent them into 
 the world." The official relation of the apostles to 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 117 
 
 Christ, as delegated by Him to utter His -words as 
 they should be communicated to them by the Spirit, 
 was probably as well understood by them and by the 
 Church in their times, as any fact relating to Christ- 
 ianity. It was not necessary to repeat or to reaffirm it. 
 All that was necessary was to assert, and occasionally 
 to give miraculous evidence that they were apostles. 
 But during the first age, Christ Himself in the exer- 
 cise of His prophetic of&ce through subordinate hu- 
 man agents, was not confined exclusively to the 
 apostles ; as vmder the Old Testament He was not 
 confined to those prophets who were sacred writers. 
 And as this consideration strikingly corroborates the 
 foregoing view concerning His prophetic office, I shall 
 refer to some instances. 
 
 "And in those days came prophets from Jerusalem 
 unto Antioch," where Paul then was. "And there 
 stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by 
 the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout 
 the world ; which came to pass in the days of Claudius 
 Caesar." (Acts 11 : 28.) At a later period, when Paul 
 was at Cesarea, the same j^rophet came there. "And 
 he took Paul's girdle, and bound his own hands and 
 feet, and said. Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the 
 Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this gir- 
 dle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gen- 
 tiles." (Acts 21 : 11.) On this it may be observed : that 
 in the exercise of his office the utterance of Agabus is 
 expressly said to be the utterance of the Holy Ghost. 
 The expression, "Thus saith the Holy Ghost," is 
 equivalent to "Thus saith the Lord," in the Old 
 Testament. Through this man as His instrument, the 
 
118 THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 Spirit spoke certain words, lie concurrentlj, and freely 
 exercising his vocal organs, in articulating the words. 
 
 There were in the Church at Antioch certain pro- 
 phets and teachers, among whom were Barnabas and 
 Saul. "As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, 
 the Iloly Grhost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul, 
 for the work whereunto I have called them." 
 
 Paul, on his way from Miletus to Jerusalem, landed 
 at Tyre. "And finding disciples, we tarried there 
 seven days ; who said to Paul through the Spirit, that 
 he should not go up to Jerusalem." (Acts 21 : 4.) In 
 cases like this, it would seem that the words uttered 
 by the Spirit were audible to all the persons present ; 
 whether uttered through the instrumentality of the 
 vocal organs of men or not. The plain inference from 
 such cases, is, that Christ exercised His prophetic 
 office either by audible utterances of the Spirit as His 
 immediate Messenger, or by the agency of the Spirit 
 through men as His instruments ; and that in particu- 
 lar cases, the SjDirit, instead of speaking directly to 
 the apostles, or to them through their own vocal or- 
 gans, spoke audibly to them in common with others, 
 or through the instrumentality of others. In either 
 case, and in all cases, in which the Spirit is said to 
 speah^ the articulation and utterance of words is signi- 
 fied, and it is no less certain that He sj^oke only the 
 words of Christ which He was sent to utter. 
 
 The main difficulty with many of the excellent men 
 who have adopted, under the name of Inspiration, a 
 supposed influence exerted in diffi.^rent degrees on the 
 minds of the sacred writers, is that of conceiving why 
 those things which were previously within the know- 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 119 
 
 ledge of the writers, should need to be inspired into 
 their minds — realized to their consciousness, specially 
 by a divine act, when they were called to write them 
 as parts of Holy Scripture. It seems to them, that all 
 that could be necessary in such a case, was, that what 
 they so wrote should be irv£, without mixture of error. 
 And since such portions of the sacred writings are, in 
 conjunction with the rest, called the Word of God, 
 they conceive that a Divine influence must have been 
 exerted on the faculties, preserving them from error, 
 and as some believe, guiding them in the choice of 
 thoughts and words. This inference, from the nature 
 and necessity of the case, is strengthened, in theii 
 view, by the fact that the individuality of the writers, 
 their respective peculiarities of style and manner, ar€ 
 manifest in what they wrote ; which is regarded ai 
 clearly implying that they wrote purely of their own 
 free will, in their own natural way, as knowing it al 
 ready and being conscious of its truth. 
 
 Now let it be observed, 1st. That since the Scrip 
 tures largely consist of the kind of matter referred to, 
 and since it is intimately intermingled with original 
 revelations, prophecies, doctrines, and facts previously 
 unknown, we must undoubtedly conclude that the Di- 
 vine Author of the original Revelations, saw fit, re- 
 quired, determined, that the historical and personal nar- 
 ratives and other things referred to as previously known, 
 should be inserted in the writings which were to be 
 received as His word, and the rule of faith and life. 
 2d. That the matter so required and inserted, shows 
 to what extent, and in what manner, the Divine Law- 
 giver, and Author of the original Eevclations, saw it 
 
120 THE THEORY OF GUIDAKCE. 
 
 to be necessary — to the instruction of mankind, and 
 the perfect administration of His government, and the 
 accomplishment of His purposes of mercy and justice 
 — ^to connect the revelations, doctrines, precepts, etc., 
 which He gave and enjoined, with the agency and ex- 
 perience of contemporary individuals, families, and 
 nations, and with human nature in like particulars and 
 like circumstances, in all subsequent time. 3d. That 
 this object made it absolutely necessary that the his- 
 tory and experience of the parties referred to, their 
 acts, their thoughts, feelings, purposes, desires, hopes, 
 joys, griefs, should be expressed in the very words 
 which they employed to express them, which perfectly 
 conveyed their meaning, and with which both they 
 and the sacred writers were perfectly familiar in the 
 style which they respectively employed. No other 
 words or style could possibly have expressed exactly 
 and perfectly the facts and expressions referred to, at 
 the different times, and by the penmen who at those 
 times wrote successive portions of the Scriptures. 
 4th. That this being granted, it is apparent why the 
 Divine Author — having determined what should be 
 included in the Scriptures, and that they should all be 
 uttered on His authority as His infallible word — should 
 specifically inspire into the minds of the writers, the 
 very words which they and their immediate contem- 
 poraries would employ and did employ to narrate the 
 same personal, social, and other facts of their experi- 
 ence. And because the writers and their readers un- 
 derstood the words and style which were in common 
 use to express all personal and social facts, relations, 
 and beliefs — all that they previously knew — it was 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 121 
 
 absolutely necessary to their understandings, that the 
 supernatural revelations should be communicated in 
 the same familiar words and styles : and accordingly 
 they were so revealed, and are so exjDressed, in words 
 in common use, and in styles, phrases, idioms, as pecu- 
 liar to the respective writers, as are the narrative and 
 historical parts of Scripture. 
 
 Here then is an intelhgible and an ample reason why 
 both the historical parts of Scripture, and the super- 
 natural revelations, should be expressly inspired into 
 the minds of the writers in the words and styles in 
 common use ; and if all the contents of the Scriptures 
 were predetermined to be included in them by Him 
 who seeth the end from the beginning, that they might 
 all be equally of His authority, His word, the rule of 
 faith and life, then any objection either to the words 
 and styles employed, or to their having been inspired 
 into the minds of the sacred penmen, expressly to be 
 written as they are, is wholly without sense or reason. 
 If there could be any valid objection to the convey- 
 ance by inspiration of the historical parts of Scripture, 
 on account of their being written in the familiar words 
 and styles of man, the same objection would be 
 equally valid against the conveyance in that way of the 
 supernatural facts and doctrines. There they are, the 
 supernatural and the natural, inseparably commingled 
 together, each being essential to the intelligibility of 
 the other, and both expressed in similar words and 
 styles. The portions previously known to the writers, 
 stand in a relation to the supernatural portions, which 
 their being true and free from error, fulfills only in 
 part. They are true and free from error ; but in the 
 
 6 
 
122 THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 place whicli they occupy tliey are more than that. 
 The Divine "Wisdom 23redetermined that they should 
 be there written in the words and styles in which they 
 were true to the apprehension and understanding of 
 the writers and readers, and that they should be there 
 as part of the Holy Scriptures, as His Word, written 
 on His infallible authority. 
 
 Now in view of the facts of the case — that the 
 Scriptures, promiscuously, are \VTitten in the familiar 
 words and styles of the writers ; that they are, never- 
 theless, collectively, the word of God ; that they ex- 
 pressly affirm of themselves, that they were given by 
 inspiration of Grod, written in the words which the 
 Holy Ghost spake by the prophets, and taught the 
 apostles ; and that they are, as written, of infallible. 
 Divine authority — it is plain that the objectors' mode 
 of accounting for the results, is wholly inadequate, as 
 well as unscriptural and unnecessary. At best, the 
 supposed influence on the faculties of the writers, were 
 such an influence admitted, could do no more than 
 preserve the writers from error, which is far short of 
 what the case required. It would be merely a negative 
 or restraining influence. It would not invest the truths 
 recorded with Divine authority, and make them infalli- 
 ble, the word of God, in distinction from all other 
 truths of human history and experience, which are 
 not written as parts of the Holy Scriptures. And if 
 the objector goes further, and imagines that the sup- 
 j^osed influence on the faculties of the writers, selected 
 out of all that were previously known to them, the 
 particular truihs which they were to write, and the very 
 words and styles which they were to employ, then it 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 123 
 
 may be observed : 1. That tlie supposed influence on 
 their faculties, superintending, elevating, or guiding 
 their exercise of them, could not produce those results. 
 It would require a wholly different influence, an influ- 
 ence which, instead of affecting their exercise of their 
 own faculties, conveyed new intelligence, new thoughts 
 and words, to them — intelligence as to which of all 
 the truths known to them, they should write, and which 
 they should omit — intelligence therefore which they 
 coTild not have possessed before, and could not have 
 discovered or infallibly deduced, by any exercise of 
 their faculties — and intelligence as to which of all the 
 words in their vocabulary they should select to express 
 infallibly the particular truths they were to record ; a 
 point which, equally with the selection of the particu- 
 lar truths, omniscience only could infallibly determine. 
 2d. If this supposed influence conveyed such new in- 
 telligence, new thoughts and words, unknown to the 
 sacred writere before, and undiscoverable by them, 
 then it was not what is pretended, an influence re- 
 straining or directing the exercise of the human facul- 
 ties, but Iheopneustos, the inbreathing, inspiring act of 
 God, conveying the requisite intelligence, the particu- 
 lar truths, the particular thoughts, the particular words 
 which they were to write, as His Word, the Holy 
 Scriptures, the infallible rule of faith and life. 
 
 It is clear, then, that he who admits that a Divine 
 influence was necessary to preserve the sacred writers 
 from error, must admit that no conceivable influence 
 on their faculties, superintending or guiding their exer- 
 cise, could accomplish what the case required ; and 
 that an influence which conveyed into their minds tin 
 
124 THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 very thoughts and words they were to write, was in- 
 dispensable ; which is Inspiration, in the sense of 
 Scripture. 
 
 In what respect it can be any easier to conceive why 
 a Divine influence of guidance should be necessary, in 
 the case of things previously known to the writers, 
 than to conceive why those things should be immedi- 
 ately inspired into their minds, is by no means appar- 
 ent ; nor is it apparent how an influence could be 
 exerted, which preserved from error, but left the mat- 
 ter, the words, and the styles, just as they are, natural 
 and peculiar to the writers. The difficulty and objec- 
 tion relate, however, in fact, to the words and styles 
 themselves, as they actually exist in the Scriptures, 
 and not in any degree to the question whether the 
 writers previously knew the things which they wrote, 
 or to the reasons why they wrote in tlieir accustomed 
 words and styles. 
 
 To one who has a clear conviction that the Bible is 
 God's Book, wherein He has made an infallible and 
 permanent declaration of Himself, of His acts, of His 
 relations, of His purposes, for all the future ages and 
 dispensations, and so manifested Himself as to be con- 
 ceivable and cognizable to man and to all finite intelli- 
 gences, the pretended distinction between revelation 
 and inspiration must appear to be preposterous and 
 absurd. For who does not know that this wondrous 
 catena of communications is delivered in the simple 
 and homogeneous form of narrative and history ; where- 
 in superhuman truths, and facts of human experience, 
 are as intimately associated, commingled, and merged 
 together, as if there were no distinction between them. 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDAKCE. 125 
 
 They are in fact inseparable, and involve eacli other. 
 The narrative assumes and is the vehicle of the doc- 
 trines ; and but for that could never have existed. To 
 suppose that one part of the matter of successive chap- 
 ters, paragraphs, verses, was communicated to the 
 sacred writers by one operation of Divine agency, and 
 the other part by another operation ; or that the one 
 portion was communicated to them disconnected from 
 the other, and that the other portion was supplied by 
 them, or was received in a way to have the slightest 
 dependence on their agency, either in attaining it, or 
 in combining the two portions in one homogeneous 
 composition, is as preposterous as it would be to sup- 
 pose of a history of Greece or Rome, that all the details 
 of it which related and owed their coloring and influ- 
 ence to the system of government and of idolatr}', and 
 to the character and acts of the civil, military, and 
 priestly functionaries, were written by one man, and 
 that the other details relating to the private lives, and 
 social customs of the people, and mixed up in every 
 sentence with the former, were written separately by 
 another man : or to suppose that all the words required 
 to express both of these kinds of details, were written 
 separately on slips of paper, and so shaken up together 
 as to adjust themselves in thokregular and finished 
 Gt imposition. Nay, this is but a faint illustration of 
 the preposterousness and absurdity of the notion re- 
 ferred to. For in such history of Greece or Rome all 
 the details are merely human, finite, and within the 
 observation and comprehension of a historian. Where- 
 as, in the Bible, a large portion of the details are 
 superhuman, not within man's observation or previous 
 
126 THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 knowledge, and required to be adjusted consistently, 
 harmoniously, perfectly, in composition, with the facts 
 and details of human experience, and temporal, social, 
 and civil affairs of individuals, families, and nations. 
 To assign this task of composition in any the remotest 
 degree to human agency and skill, is to assign to such 
 agency what no conceivable miracle could bring about, 
 namely, plenary knowledge or omniscience. 
 
 The Bible is one Book. It has one object : the 
 revelation of God and the salvation of man. To this 
 its details converge and its history relates. On the 
 one hand its Divine Author manifests Himself Person- 
 ally, visibly, historically ; acting, speaking, determin- 
 ing. On the other, as the details and issues have to do 
 with man, his character, relations, and agencies, his 
 sentiments, affections, and emotions, are mixed up, as 
 warp and woof, with the superhuman events, doctrines, 
 predictions, precepts, promises, exhortations, and com- 
 minations; mixed up just so far, and in such pro- 
 portions from time to trnie, as Infinite Wisdom saw 
 fit. In its relation to man, it is not a general history 
 of different nations, nor a secular history of the one 
 peculiar people, except as they were in immediate re- 
 lation with the covenant people, the redeemed Church 
 of God, His family, Hi^ household. His liege subjects. 
 His witnesses, the subjects of His immediate discipline, 
 and the depositories of His written word, for their own 
 instruction and rule of faith and life, and ultimately 
 for all kindreds and peoples who shall be reclaimed 
 and brought under the bond of His covenant. The 
 scope, design, and tendency of it therefore, as a whole, 
 and in all its details, are moral and spiritual. The in- 
 
THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 127 
 
 fluence of every sentiment, and every word of it, is 
 fraught with, moral and spiritual bearings and issues 
 on the minds and hearts, and in the lives and doctrines 
 of men. From beginning to end, its Author and Ee- 
 vealer is the same, the Alpha and Omega, the First 
 and the Last ; and He is finally to judge, and to acquit 
 or condemn each individual, according to the words 
 which He has caused to be written. 
 
 To suppose such a book, involving in every part, 
 not only the wisdom and goodness, but the hohness, 
 righteousness, justice, and truth of God, to have de- 
 pended in any tittle of its contents or its composition, 
 on the will, the understanding, the imagination, or 
 the memory of man, is to misconceive, or to forget, its 
 Author, its nature, and its object. 
 
 If there are in Grermany, or elsewhere, hyper-tran- 
 scendentalists, or idealistic intuitionalists, who can 
 conceive of poetry apart from poetical language and 
 imagery ; of prediction apart from prescience — the fu- 
 ture by spiritual retrospection ; of history independ- 
 ently of past events ; of revelations without a revealer ; 
 of thoughts without words, they must be left to enjoy 
 their dehrious hallucination in their own peculiar way. 
 But men who believe concerning God, that He fore- 
 ordained whatsoever comes to pass; and that the 
 Scriptures are, in matter and form, in contents and 
 composition, in thoughts and words, idiom and style, 
 just what He willed them to be, as the rule of His ad- 
 ministration, and the only rule of faith and life to man, 
 can not intelligently believe that one part of them, any 
 more than all the other parts, were communicated to 
 the sacred writers or attained by them, otherwise than 
 
128 THE THEORY OF GUIDANCE. 
 
 in the very words and sentences prearranged and 
 composed, as they were written in tlie original 
 texts. 
 
 What our condition, as rational and as" fallen crea- 
 tures, requires for us, is a standard of truth, a fixed, in- 
 fallible criterion. Such a standard must be out of and 
 independent of ourselves, and preexistent to our wants. 
 Such a standard is the word of God, as given in the 
 Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. Not a part 
 of those Scriptures : not one part to one man, and an- 
 other part of them to other men ; but the whole of 
 them, according to their verbal significance, purport, 
 and design, for every man, the word of God, and, 
 therefore the infallible rule of faith and life. If human 
 reason, speculation, theory, may sit in judgment on 
 the question, may select some of those writings as the 
 word of God, and may reject others as of human au- 
 thorship, knowledge, will, or discretion, then they are 
 no standard in the sense, and to the effect that our 
 exigencies, and our immortal hopes and destiny de- 
 mand. They are but a nose of wax for each theorist 
 to wrest conformably to the devices and desires of his 
 own heart. All that we can possibly know of any 
 doctrine, precept, promise, instruction, we know by 
 the words iu which it is expressed in the texts of 
 Scripture. If the words were given by Inspiration of 
 God, then they constitute an infallible standard of faith 
 and life. If they were not so given, and all of them, 
 their infallibility can not be maintained. 
 
THE RELATIVE AKD FINITE. 129 
 
 IX. The Relative and Finite only conceivable 
 BY THE Human Mind — Sir William Hamil- 
 ton's Doctrine of the Conditioned— Relative, 
 Limited. 
 
 One of the most striking facts which is exhibited in 
 the history of the human race, is that of the absence 
 from the minds of whole nations, from age to age, of 
 any just ajDprehensions of the Supreme Being; any 
 notions or beliefs transcending those which they enter- 
 tain of creatures ; and which they express in the lan- 
 guage and the rites of idolatry. A parallel foct, no 
 less conspicuous in history, is that no portion of the in- 
 dividuals of the race, or of any particular nation, has 
 ever attained just notions and beliefs concerning God, 
 and His works, otherwise than from His own infallible 
 words. From these facts it is obvious to infer that 
 there is an inherent difficulty in the case, which no- 
 thing but the words of God can supersede. This dif- 
 ficulty may, in some respects, be aggravated by the 
 moral depravity and blindness of men as fallen crea- 
 tures ; but it exists primarily in the chasm between 
 the infinite and the finite. The Infinite Being, uncon- 
 ditioned by relations, acts, and expressions, within the 
 observation and conscious apprehension of men, is to 
 them, because they are creatures, utterly inconceivable. 
 To suppose the contrary would be to suppose man to 
 be the equal of his Creator, and to have the same 
 knowledge and the same consciousness. The Logos, 
 therefore, manifested such relations, acts, and verbal 
 expressions in Eden, before man fell ; manifested His 
 6* 
 
130 THE RELATIVE AND FINITE. 
 
 Personality and His attributes in such relations, and 
 under such limitations, as to be conceivable and know- 
 able by man witli his limited capacity of thought. It 
 is in those relations, as described in the words of God, 
 that we apprehend Him. Beyond that. His words 
 which assert His mode of self-existence, His infinite 
 perfections, His eternal counsels and purposes, reveal 
 Him not to our intellectual comprehension, but to our 
 faith only. 
 
 Hence the absolute necessity and absolute import- 
 ance of the words of God, in correlation with all His 
 personal and visible manifestations and works ; and of 
 their being as truly His words uttered by Him, as that 
 the attributes and works which they describe should 
 be truly His. And accordingly the progress of His 
 written word coincided with that of the manifestation 
 of His relations in His works of providence and grace. 
 The Logos in the beginning, and from time to time, 
 appearing visibly, signalizing His presence by His 
 acts, speaking audibly, and accompanying His words 
 by exertions of His power in the production of visible 
 effects, manifested His Personality'' and His Divine at- 
 tributes in such a manner as to be cognizable to man : 
 but to all intelligent and correct apprehensions and 
 constructions. His words were as essential as His 
 works. Without them, Adam and the patriarchs 
 would have been as far from rightly construing His 
 works as manifesting His Divine nature, attributes, and 
 relations, as the j^agan nations have ever been. This 
 necessity of words, as explanatory of external exist- 
 ences and relations, and as the medium and vehicle 
 of thought — of the conception, reception, conscious- 
 
THE RELATIVE AND FIjSTITE. 131 
 
 ness, and memory of thought — is common to all cre- 
 ated minds, iuasmuch as in all the capacity of thought 
 is limited. This necessity is the same to angels and to 
 men ; and therefore, the joint manifestation in works 
 and words — commenced at the dawn of man's exist- 
 ence, and continued through successive dispensations 
 — would seem to have been as really for the instruc- 
 tion of the one as of the other class of minds. "What 
 relation this may have had to the apostasy of Satan 
 and his confederates, may be further removed from 
 our comprehension than its relation to the fall of man. 
 But the relation to the knowledge and the agencies of 
 the holy angels, of this joint manifestation of works 
 and words, might easily be traced in all that is revealed 
 to us, concerning their ministries towards the heirs of 
 salvation, and towards the sacred writers, and jointly 
 with the triumphant Church in the doxologies and 
 praises of heaven ; and concerning their agencies to- 
 wards the Logos, both before and after His incarna- 
 tion. From these disclosures it is at least reasonable 
 to infer that they attained their knowledge of Ilis per- 
 sonality, Ilis attributes and relations, Ilis offices, dele- 
 gated agency, works, and words, in the same way, and 
 by the same manifestations, as man. So far, at least, 
 as is known to us, no similar manifestations have been 
 exhibited elsewhere than upon this earth ; and with- 
 out them neither angels nor men could attain any true 
 notions or beliefs concerning the Logos, or concerning 
 the invisible, the infinite, the incomprehensible Deity, 
 I may confirm these views by a reference to the 
 writings of the late Sir William Hamilton, the most 
 able, the most scriptural, and most reliable and de- 
 
132 THE EEL ATI VE AND FINITE. 
 
 monstrative of those wlio have endeavored to elucidate 
 the operations and the limitations of the human mind. 
 I quote from his chapter on the Philosophy of the 
 Conditioned. His nomenclature can hardly be famiUar 
 to most readers; and if, by necessarily omitting 
 many qualifying or explanatory clauses I somewhat 
 impair the fullness of his meaning, I hope nevertheless, 
 in general, to exhibit it correctly. 
 
 He means by the conditioned^ existencies, or objects, 
 which have, and are contemplated as having relations 
 to other existencies or objects, and, as limited thereby, 
 being conceivable and cognizable by the limited 
 capacity of man. On the other hand, by the uncon- 
 ditioned is meant that which in its nature is infinite, 
 and without limitation in space, time, ox degree; and his 
 doctrine, as being that of the consciousness of all men, 
 is, that the conditioned and limited, but not the uncon- 
 ditioned, is cognizable and conceivable by the finite 
 mind of man. 
 
 "The mind can conceive, and consequently can 
 know only the limited and the conditionally limited. 
 The unconditionally unlimited, or the Infinite, the un- 
 conditionally limited, or the Absolute, can not positively 
 be construed to the mind ; they can be conceived only 
 by a thinking away from, or abstraction of, those very 
 conditions under which thought itself is realized ; con- 
 sequently the notion of the unconditioned is only neg- 
 ative — negative of the conceivable itself. .... The 
 result is the same, whether we apply the process to 
 limitations in space, in time, or in degree. . . . The infi- 
 nite and the absolute are equally inconceivable to us. 
 ... As the conditioned [related, limited] is the only 
 
THE RELATIVE AND FINITE. 183 
 
 possible object of knowledge and of positive thongbt 
 — thougbt necessarily supposes conditions. To thinh 
 is to condition, and conditional limitation is tbe funda- 
 mental law of the possibility of tbouglit. . . . The 
 mind can not transcend that sphere of limitation, with- 
 in and through which exclusively the possibility of 
 thought is realized. Thought is only of the condi- 
 tioned ; because, as we have said, to think is simply to 
 condition. The absolute is conceived merely by a ne- 
 gation of conceivability ; and all that we know, is only 
 known as ' won from the void and formless infinite.'' 
 How indeed it could ever be doubted that thought is 
 only of the conditioned, may well be deemed a matter 
 of the profoundest admiration. Thought can not tran- 
 scend consciousness ; consciousness is only possible un- 
 der the antithesis of a subject and object of thouglit, 
 known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each 
 other ; while, independently of this, all that we know, 
 either of subject or object, either of mind or matter, is 
 only a knowledge in each of the particular, of the 
 plural, of the different, of the modified, of the phe- 
 nomenal, . . . We can never, in our highest generali- 
 zations, rise above the finite ; our knowledge, whether 
 of mind or matter, can be nothing more than a know- 
 ledge of the relative manifestations of an existence, 
 which in itself it is our highest wisdom to recognize as 
 beyond the reach of philosophy. . . . "We are thus 
 taught the salutary lesson, that the capacity of thought 
 is not to be constituted into the measure of existence, 
 and are warned from recognizing the domain of our 
 knowledge as necessarily coextensive with the horizon 
 of our faith. And by a wonderful revelation, we are 
 
134 THE RELATIVE AND FINITE. 
 
 thus, in tlie very consciousness of our inability to con- 
 ceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired with 
 a belief in the existence of something unconditioned 
 beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality." 
 
 Here then we have in the constitution, the limited 
 capacity of thought, and the universal consciousness 
 of man, a clue to the reason why both the thoughts 
 and words of Scripture were given by the Creator 
 Himself; and why they were given at such times, un- 
 der such circumstances, in such connections with ex- 
 ternal works and events, in such connections with 
 human history, experience, agency, and discipline, and 
 in language and idiom adapted to man's capacity. 
 Thought is conceivable only of the finite, the limited. 
 Thought can not transcend consciousness. We are 
 conscious of thought only in words. But the Scrip- 
 tures have to do with man's relations to what is above 
 his capacity, the invisible, the spiritual, the infinite. 
 " The Scriptures principally teach what man is to he- 
 lieve, concerning God, and what eluiies Be requires of 
 him ;" in respect to neither of which has he, in him- 
 self, the slightest degree of competency ; nor, with re- 
 spect to either, can he be instructed or have any con- 
 scious knowledge, without the instrumentality of 
 words. But every sentence of Scripture — in itself, 
 its connection with other sentences, or its necessary 
 implications of doctrines, duties, moral relations, or 
 spiritual affections — implies a knowledge on the part 
 of its Author, of which man is wholly incapable, an 
 all-comprehensive knowledge of existencies not lim- 
 ited, and of all the relations, connections, bearings, 
 influences of things spiritual and eternal. Divine and 
 human. 
 
THE RELATIVE AND FINITE. 185 
 
 Now all tlie manifestations of the Logos were con- 
 ditioned, that is, relative and finite, and therefore cog- 
 nizable and conceivable as objects of thought in 
 correlation with the words which He uttered in 
 announcing and describing them. The superhuman, 
 so limited, was thus brought within the sphere of finite 
 apprehension, while His words concerning the uncon- 
 ditioned — the Infinite, the Absolute — are intelligible 
 and sujfficient as a basis and guide of our faith ; just 
 as in respect to our faith in the existence of matter. 
 The relative manifestations of the particular qualities 
 of matter, are within our capacity of thought and know- 
 ledge, in correlation with the words in which we think 
 them. The qualities only are manifested — but as man- 
 ifested, they irresistibly infer a correlate as their basis 
 — that of which they are qualities, conditions, limita- 
 tions, which we call matter, and in which we have as 
 firm a faith as we have in the qualities, but of which 
 in itself we know nothing. 
 
 From the very commencement of His delegated 
 work, the titles and acts of the Divine Eevealer are 
 significant of relations and limitations within our 
 capacity of knowledge : His titles ; as the Son of God, 
 The Word, the Image, the Messenger, the Anointed, 
 the Mediator, the Prophet, Priest, King, Kedeemer, 
 Saviour : His acts ; of speaking, commanding, forbid- 
 ding, prescribing, predicting, promising; of seeing, 
 hearing, appearing visibly, controlling and producing 
 visible effects on physical natures, not to specify others 
 involving superhuman knowledge and power, or to 
 particularize those in which, as after His literal incar- 
 nation, the exercise of His hands, feet, eyes, and other 
 
136 THE RELATIVE AND FINITE. 
 
 human organs, is asserted of Him. It was in tliese 
 manifestations that He was conceivable, cognizable, 
 knowable, by men and angels, as Divine, as delegated, 
 as one Person in two distinct natures, as Prophet, 
 Priest, and King — Revealer of God in works and 
 words — the conditioned propounding the uncondi: 
 tioned to our faith. For the correlate of a Son is a 
 leather ; of a ivord, the thought expressed by it ; of an 
 image, an original; of a Messenger, an official Supen'o)-. 
 So the correlate of Divinity manifested under such 
 conditions and limitations, is the Divine nature infinite, 
 unconditioned. A knowledge of the conditioned, 
 necessitates a spontaneous faith in the unconditioned. 
 
 I hence observe — 
 
 1st. That all the manifestations of the Logos were 
 prescribed, I may say, necessarily prescribed ; since, in 
 acts and words, they are the basis and prerequisite con- 
 dition, of our faith in the unconditioned, the infinite 
 nature and attributes of the Divine Being. They 
 could not possibly owe their existence to any finite in- 
 telligence. 
 
 2d. That the words of Scripture, which directly or 
 indirectly, all relate to those manifestations, were in- 
 cluded in what was prescribed ; since they are, as much 
 as the acts, the basis, and prerequisite condition of our 
 faith. 
 
 3d. That in the Scrijitures, however, there is no 
 ground of discrimination, no line drawn between what 
 relates to the conditioned, relative, limited, and the 
 verbal statements which evolve and connect with the 
 former our faith in the unconditioned. 
 
 4th. If, therefore, the Scriptures are the rule of out 
 
'* THE RELATIVE AND FINITE. 137 
 
 faith in the Person, the acts and the words of the 
 Logos ; in what He has revealed concerning the Per- 
 sonal relations, offices, and acts of the three Persons of 
 the Godhead ; and in what we believe concerning the 
 infinity and eternity of the Divine Being, which are 
 incognizable and inconceivable to our finite capacity, 
 it is as incredible, nay, as impossible, that any word of 
 Scripture, written and pubHshed on the authority of 
 God, should in any sense have originated with man, or 
 depended on his knowledge or his will, as it is that he 
 should be the originator and author of the rule of his 
 own faith, and that of angelic or other created intel- 
 ligences. 
 
 5. This conclusion derives point and emphasis from 
 the consideration, that the words which constitute the 
 historical parts of Scripture, and which alone can by any 
 one be supposed to have been supplied by man, were 
 at least, in general, uttered in immediate connection 
 with the manifestation of Divine acts to which they 
 relate, and which they describe — as in the narrative of 
 the plagues of Egypt and the entire record of the Ex- 
 odus, the sojourn in the wilderness, the conquest of 
 Canaan, the story of the Judges and of the Kings of 
 Israel and Judah, the four Gospels, the Acts of the 
 Apostles. He, therefore, who selected the words must 
 have comprehended the acts with infallible accuracy, 
 their conditions, relations, limitations, designs, ten- 
 dencies, and possible influences and issues ; since the 
 words define and describe the acts, in their due con- 
 nection with Divine and human agencies, and with 
 spiritual and secular results. 
 
 The mind can not conceive, and therefore can not 
 
138 THE RELATIVE AND FINITE. 
 
 know the Infinite ; and for the reason that infinity is 
 unconditioned — not relative, not limited. The entire 
 category of divine manifestations therefore, consists of 
 finite particulars, addressed to the limited capacity — 
 the observation, the wisdom, the hearing, the under- ' 
 standing of man, so as to be cognizable and conceiv- 
 able by him. But the Scriptures which record those 
 manifestations, and the words of Scripture which as- 
 sert the infinity in nature and attributes of the Divine 
 Being, are the original and only real ground of faith. 
 He who believes the Scriptures in both these relations, 
 believes in the infinity of the Divine Being and Per- 
 fections, and in the distinction of Persons in the God- 
 head, their official relations, the delegated mission of 
 the Son and of the Spirit, and the entire series of man- 
 ifestations ascribed to them. Of these, the manifesta- 
 tions in words are no less exclusively theii's than those 
 exhibited in acts ; and no tittle of the words, any 
 more than of the acts, can be ascribed to man. To- 
 wards the unconditioned — the Infinite One, he simply 
 exercises faith. Of the respective Persons as revealed 
 and manifested in their relations, acts, and words, he 
 has both knowledge and faith. They are revealed in 
 such acts and relations as to be cognizable and con- 
 ceivable to him — acts and relations which do not tran- 
 scend his capacity of thought and knowledge — acts of 
 reciprocal intelligence — relations of mutual sjanpathy 
 and fellowghip. His fellowship is with the Father, and 
 with the Son, through the indwelling influence of the 
 Spirit. The love of God the Father, the grace of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and the communion of the Holy 
 Ghost, are realized to him. He knows God as He has 
 
THE EELATIVE AND FINITE. 139 
 
 revealed Himself. He worships the Father through 
 the mediating Son, by the aids of the Spirit. But in 
 all this, and in all his acts of worship and obedience, 
 the Word of God recorded in the Scriptures is, exclu- 
 sively, his rule of faith and life ; and to it, as such, he 
 has in himself the witness of the Spirit by whose in- 
 spiration it was given to the sacred penmen. 
 
 Of this doctrine of the conditioned^ I may observe : 
 1. That it is wholly incontrovertible by argument. 
 He who attempts to controvert it, must of necessity be- 
 gin by assuming that there is no difference or distinc- 
 tion between the infinite and the finite; and must 
 argue that to conceive and know the finite is the same 
 as to conceive and know the infinite. This is the es- 
 sence of ixintheism; but it is mere assumption, fancy, 
 delusion, unsupported by reason, and contrary to 
 universal consciousness. 2. That this doctrine is the 
 uniform deliverance of every man's consciousness, in 
 harmony with all the facts of his experience and ob- 
 servation, and with every thing, doctrinal and histo- 
 rical, that is recorded in the Scriptures. To say that 
 man is not God, but a creature ; not infinite, but finite ; 
 is to say that his capacity of thought, of understand- 
 ing, of knowledge, is finite, limited ; and that he is by 
 the constitution and condition of his being as incapable 
 of conceiving, comprehending, knowing, the infinite, 
 as the infinite transcends and exceeds the finite. 3. 
 This doctrine, so palpably prerequisite, presupposed, 
 and essential, to any true knowledge of God or of our- 
 selves — any true knowledge of what is revealed and 
 enjoined in the Scriptures, or true faith in what is as- 
 serted of the nnrevealed, the infinite, the uncondition- 
 
140 THE RELATIVE AND FINITE. 
 
 ed — any true knowledge of ourselves as rational and 
 accountable creatures ; of our relations to one another, 
 to the past, and to the future ; of our relations to God 
 and to the system of faith and obedience which He has 
 prescribed in His Word, rests ultimately on the consti- 
 tution which God has given us as creatures, and is tes- 
 tified by our consciousness in harmony with the Scrip- 
 tures. We can no more evade, suppress, or rid 
 ourselves of it than we can divest ourselves of our in- 
 tellectual and moral nature ; and being in perfect har- 
 mony with the Scriptures and with all our experience, 
 its authority is unquestionable and irresistible. 
 
 Now I conceive that the doctrine which I have en-, 
 deavored to establish in a former volume — that by our 
 constitution as intellectual and rational beings, we 
 think in words, and can not exercise our capacity of 
 thought otherwise than by silent or vocal articula- 
 tions, which represent and realize our thoughts to our 
 own consciousness as perfectly as we conceive them ; 
 that we receive the thoughts of other minds only in 
 their spoken or written words, and in signs equivalent 
 to vocal articulations ; and that we are conscious of, 
 remember, and express our thoughts only in words 
 and equivalent signs ; and, therefore, that the thoughts 
 of the Divine mind conveyed to the sacred writers by 
 inspiration, were necessarily conveyed in words, in or- 
 der to their being consciously received and realized to 
 the understanding and consciousness of the recipients, 
 consistently with their constitution and with the nat- 
 ural exercise of their faculties — ^is in some respects, at 
 least, analogous to the foregoing doctrine of the condi- 
 tioned^ and like that, as being in harmony with Scrip- 
 
THE RELATIVE AND FINITE. 141 
 
 ture, and resting ultimately on tlie constitution and 
 consciousness of man, is of like authority ; and I there- 
 fore urge it as being essential to any right knowledge 
 of the nature, extent, and effect of Divine Inspiration, 
 and of the authority and infallibility of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. If, as the consciousness of all men testifies, we 
 think, receive thoughts from others, and are conscious 
 of thoughts only in words, then, to teach that any 
 thoughts of the Divine mind were communicated to 
 the sacred writers without and independently of words, 
 is to teach that man may know and be conscious of 
 those thoughts independently of words, and contrary 
 to, and independently of, his constitution and the nat- 
 ural exercise of his faculties, which is to make him 
 more than man, more than limited, more than finite. 
 If that was of the nature of Inspiration, then such 
 things in Scripture as were previously known to the 
 writers, must be excluded from it ; for they must have 
 been conscious of those things in words. But if all 
 Scripture was given by Inspiration of God, and if it 
 was of the nature of Inspiration to convey both 
 thoughts and words, then it would be as rational to im- 
 pute that which constitutes a Scripture miracle to the 
 human messenger whose instrumentality was employed 
 in the manifestation of it, as to impute any word writ 
 ten and published as the word of God, to the human 
 messenger whose mouth or pen was employed in ut- 
 tering it. 
 
 It is therefore on the basis of what the Scriptures 
 expressly teach concerning their Inspiration, and of 
 the facts respecting man's constitution and experience 
 — that thought is possible only of the conditioned, the 
 
142 PLENARY VERBAL INSPIRATION. 
 
 limited, the finite; that thought can not transcend 
 consciousness, and that man can receive and be con- 
 scious of thoughts only in words — ^that I rest the doc- 
 trine of the plenary verbal Inspiration of the original 
 texts of Holy Scripture. 
 
 X. The Importance of the Doctrine of Plenary 
 Verbal Inspiration. 
 
 All that we know or conceive of the Divine Being, 
 of His mode of existence, and of His attributes, is de- 
 rived from the words of Scripture. Those words,' 
 therefore, must be His words ; for otherwise than by 
 receiving them from Him, the sacred writers could not 
 conceive the thoughts which they express. 
 
 All that we know of His ways of manifesting Him- 
 self to creatures, and all that we know of spiritual 
 existences and the invisible world, is taught in those 
 words, which therefore must be His. 
 
 All that we know or can know, of His objects, pur- 
 poses, and ends, in the works of creation and Provi- 
 dence, is contained in those words, which are therefore 
 His words. 
 
 All that we know of His method of redeeming, 
 pardoning, sanctifying, and saving men, is taught in 
 those words, and therefore they are His. 
 
 All that we know of His physical and moral gov- 
 ernment of the world, is taught in those words ; and 
 all that we know of man's relations to Him, of man's 
 apostasy, his obligations, his moral and religious du- 
 ties, his rule of foith and life, his resurrection, his fu- 
 
PLENARY VERBAL INSPIRATION. 143 
 
 ture existence, and his destiny, is communicated in 
 those words. 
 
 But under these heads all the words of Scripture 
 are comprised, either by their direct reference, by 
 necessary implication, or by their moral and historical 
 connections and relations. And in the relations in 
 which they are used they are so connected and in- 
 volved with superhuman, invisible, and spiritual exist- 
 ences and realities, which are wholly beyond the 
 limited capacity of man to discover or comprehend, as 
 to preclude the supposition that he had any agency 
 whatever in the selection of them, and to enforce the 
 conclusion that they are, from first to last, the words 
 of God, selected and prescribed by His omniscient 
 wisdom. They accordingly comjDrise all that He has 
 seen fit to have recorded for the permanent instruction 
 of the Church and the world, all the verbal revelations 
 which He has made concerning Himself, all that man is 
 to believe concerning Him, and the duties He requires 
 of man, the only and infallible rule of faith and life. 
 
 We thus have a glimpse of their importance in the 
 economy and administration of the Creator and Ruler 
 of the world ; of their connection with the knowledge, 
 faith, obedience, and salvation of men ; and of the 
 necessity of their being communicated to all the indi- 
 viduals of the race, and of their enduring forever as 
 the criterion, and in vindication of all the issues of the 
 system. The place which they occupy in the economy 
 of providence and grace, in the manifestations of 
 righteousness, in the administration and the issues of 
 moral government, bespeaks their transcendent imjDort- 
 ancc to the glory of God, and all that relates to man 
 
144 PLENARY VERBAL INSPIRATION". 
 
 iu time and in eternity. And hence it is apparent, 
 why He who ]3rojected and who administers this won- 
 drous system, caused His own words to be recorded 
 and published as His authoritative and infaUible pro- 
 clamation to the world — to men and angels — and why 
 His official messengers, in the execution of this work, 
 were restricted to the utterance of the words which He 
 prescribed. 
 
 In view of what the Scriptures declare, we have 
 faith in the being and attributes of the Infinite One, 
 as existing in a threefold personality in one essence 
 and will, prior to all external works. And since the 
 fact is revealed in Scripture, we can conceive that, 
 with reference to an external universe to be brought 
 into existence, the three coequal Persons entered into a 
 mutual covenant concerning all the details of such 
 universe ; and with reference to the actual execution 
 of the works of creation, providence, and grace, as- 
 sumed relations towards each other, and towards every 
 particular of those works. But as those relations with 
 creatures involved a condescension of the Infinite to 
 the conditions and limitations of the finite, it is mani- 
 fest why a subordination of the personal executors 
 and administrators of the system — that is, of the Son 
 to the Father, and of the Spirit to the Father and the 
 Son — was requisite. 
 
 To bring the Infinite within the conditions and lim- 
 itations of the finite, so as to be conceivable and 
 knowable by the finite capacity of man, was, so to 
 speak, the problem to be solved. Hence, those cha- 
 racteristics of the system which are most within the 
 apprehension and observation of intelligent creatures, 
 
PLENARY VERBAL INSPIRATION. 145 
 
 the countless variety, animate and inanimate, vast and 
 minute, in the works of creation ; the tokens of infi- 
 nite intelhgence, wisdom and goodness in the peculiari- 
 ties and relations of all the diversified forms of life, 
 and the modes of material existence; the types of 
 form, order and dependence in different classes of the 
 animal and vegetable creation; the phenomena of light 
 and vision, of sound and hearing, of sensation and 
 consciousness. And hence also, the peculiarities and 
 relations of men as a bodied race of creatures; and the 
 provision in that form for a personal incarnation of the 
 Infinite in immediate relation with the finite, in sym- 
 pathy and fellowship with man as a creature, with his 
 limited capacity of thought, with his mode of con- 
 ceiving, being conscious of, and expressing thoughts 
 in words. 
 
 The Second Person of the Trinity assuming His 
 subordinate relations as Legate and Revealer, the Lo- 
 gos in the beginning, in whom was life, and all power 
 for the execution of His works, created the heavens 
 and the earth as the scene, and all creatures as sub- 
 jects and instruments of His manifestations. But in 
 none of the particulars of those manifestations, is there 
 any thing more indispensable to their being rightly 
 construed and understood, or more important there- 
 fore to the effectual accomplishment of their object, 
 than the words of their author, which He, as perfectly 
 comprehending His own works in all their relations 
 and issues, caused to be recorded. That He should 
 have needed assistance, or should have employed the 
 agency or instrumentality of man, in the selection of 
 those words — man, who was as incapable of knowing 
 
146 PLENAEY VERBAL INSPIEATION. 
 
 the thoughts to be expressed before the words were 
 imparted to him, as of performing the works to which 
 they relate — is as incredible as that both the works 
 and words were merely human. Without the words, 
 we are without the means of knowing what has been 
 manifested and enjoined; and unless they are the 
 words of God, they can not be an infallible rule to us. 
 
 The Holy Scriptures, though recorded as they were 
 given by inspiration at successive periods, constitute 
 one book, and comprise all that their Divine Author 
 saw fit to communicate to be written in His name, for 
 the permanent use of the Church and the world. But it 
 by no means follows that the portions written prior to 
 the days of David, or to those of Malachi, comprise all 
 the truths or doctrines which had been previously re- 
 vealed, and had entered into the faith and life of the 
 Church ; or that any of the doctrines of faith which 
 were recorded by the successive writers, were then 
 first revealed when they committed them to writing. 
 There had been an untold amount of oral instruction, 
 by which the Spirit had enlightened, sanctified, and 
 guided patriarchs, individual believers — the Church, 
 from age to age, prior to the time of Moses. That in 
 struction being extant and operative in the faith of the 
 Church, and being exhibited and acted out in the ritual 
 of worship, the discipline of families, the practical 
 duties of religion, and the rules of life, was assumed as 
 being already known to those to whom the sacred 
 writings were from time to time communicated. 
 
 Thus the Church was instructed and preserved dur- 
 ing twenty-five hundred years prior to the age of 
 Moses; instructed in all those revealed truths, ordi- 
 
PLENAEY VERBAL INSPIEATION. 147 
 
 nances, institutions, and rules of faitli and life, whicli 
 concerned acceptable worsliij), liolj obedience, and tlie 
 way of justification and salvation, througli the media- 
 tion, atonement, and righteousness of the One Re- 
 deemer, " The Faith once delivered to the Saints," was 
 faith in those communications. " The Divine Mediator 
 having, from the foundation of the world, undertaken 
 the care and salvation of the Church, He it was who 
 immediately dealt with it in what concerned its in- 
 struction and edification." (Owen on Heb. 1 : 1.) 
 
 But it must be borne in mind that both in the oral 
 and written instructions of the Great Eevealer, much 
 more was to be accomplished than merely to inculcate 
 those doctrines of faith and rules of obedience which 
 immediately relate to the salvation of men. The pro- 
 phetic office was as closely connected with that of 
 moral and providential Ruler of the world, as with 
 that of Priest and that of King of the redeemed people. 
 He who in the exercise of His prophetic office im- 
 parted the instructions, is He by whom all things in 
 heaven and earth, visible and invisible, were created, 
 who upholds and governs all, and is head over all. 
 In the exercise of His unlimited prerogatives in His 
 physical, moral, and spiritual administrations, the in- 
 finite was constantly to be inculcated under the con- 
 ditions and relations of the finite. Of the invisible, 
 the spiritual, the supernatural, the eternal, no concep- 
 tion or notion whatever could otherwise have been 
 imparted, nor any ground have been furnished for 
 faith in them, or any words supplied expressive of 
 them. But these instructions behooved to be con- 
 sistent in all respects, with all the pcrfcctioiis, purposes, 
 
148 PLENARY VERBAL INSPIRATION. 
 
 prerogatives, and agencies, of the Administrator and 
 Kevealer, tlirougliout the realms of the dependent uni- 
 verse ; and to be such as, in the progress and the final 
 issues of the entire scheme, will appear to all finite 
 intelligencies to be consistent : such, therefore, as will 
 eternally vindicate the ways of God to man. The per- 
 fect rectitude, wisdom, and goodness of the moral and 
 the providential government of God ; the perfect con- 
 sistency of His foreknowledge and ordination, with 
 the freedom of man's will, and all the mysteries of na- 
 ture and grace, time and eternity, will at length be 
 cleared up, or at least so far as to render their consist- 
 ency manifest. 
 
 On this view we may, perhaps, discern some of the 
 reasons why the sacred writings are characterized by 
 such diversified and minute details concerning finite 
 objects and agencies, and why they have in general a 
 historical form, in which those details could be exhib- 
 ited, and made to blend and harmonize, on the one 
 hand with the superhuman^ and on the other with the 
 free will, free agency, dependence, and accountability 
 of man. And in like manner we may perceive how, 
 during the primitive and the patriarchal dispensations, 
 when the natural was also officially the religioxis head 
 of the houseliold, clan, and tribe, a knowledge of all 
 the doctrines of faith, and rules of worship and obedi- 
 ence, might, without a written revelation, be effectually 
 inculcated and preserved, by successive theophanies, 
 and direct personal teachings, of the Divine Eevealer, 
 and by frequent interpositions of retributive justice 
 and miraculous power, as in the punishment of Cain, 
 the deluge, the confusion of tongues, and the destruc- 
 tion of Sodom. 
 
PLENARY VERBAL INSPIRATION. 149 
 
 The entire period from the creation to the Legation 
 of Moses, or rather, perhaps, to the death of Jacob, 
 was pervaded by theophanic manifestations and direct 
 oral instructions. A new dispensation was then in- 
 troduced ; in which to the like manifestations, direct 
 personal teachings, and miraculous interpositions, was 
 added a Theocratic headship and government over the 
 children of Israel. Under this system, a retrospective 
 history of the earlier period, together with new and 
 renewed revelations, enactments, and instructions, was 
 committed to writing. This system, modified from 
 time to time in some particulars, attained its height 
 under the reigns of David and Solomon. Its decline, 
 occasioned by the idolatry and corruption of the tribes, 
 gave occasion to the ministry of the prophets, to exhi- 
 bitions of fallen human nature in new aspects, and 
 to new and varied instructions and manifestations. 
 Throughout the whole of this history, as in the prior 
 oral instructions, the contrast and correlation of Divine 
 and human agencies are exemplified. At the destruc- 
 tion of the first temple the theocratic administration 
 ceased. With the incarnation the system of instruction 
 and manifestation was resumed, or rather the system as 
 begun in Eden was begun anew, under new conditions 
 of visibility. The Logos, who in the beginning mani- 
 fested Ilis Divine nature and His oflicial prerogatives 
 in the creation of all things, now appeared as God 
 manifest in flesh ; taking man's nature into union with 
 His person, for the perfect fulfillment of His ofiices in 
 all His relations as Prophet, Priest, and King. God 
 manifest in flesh ! The Infinite under the conditions 
 and relations of the finite ! " The Logos was made 
 
150 PLENARY VERBAL INSPIRATION. 
 
 flesh," says tlie Evangelist, " and dwelt among us ; and 
 we belield his glory, the glory as of the only begotten 
 of the Father, full of grace and truth." In the exer- 
 cise of His prophetic office He based His announce- 
 ments and instructions on "the Scriptures" — His 
 words, recorded in the Old Testament. His official acts 
 and His personal teachings are recorded in the Gospels. 
 In the other books of the New Testament are contained 
 His teachings by the inspiring agency of the Spirit 
 through the instrumentality of men. During His per- 
 sonal ministry He manifested His Deity in union with 
 His humanity by the miraculous exercise of His own 
 power, by His acts of omniscience, by rising from the 
 dead, by visibly ascending to heaven ; and both by 
 His immediate and His mediate teachings and acts. 
 His citations of Scripture, and His fulfillment of types 
 and predictions. He demonstrated His personal iden- 
 tity with the Jehovah of the ancient dispensations. 
 And finally, in the "Eevelation which God gave unto 
 Him to show unto His servants," He declares Him- 
 self the Alpha and Omega of the entire system, the 
 beginning and the end, the First and the Last, the 
 Root and the Offspring of David ; announces the 
 future concerning the Church and the world ; and 
 closes the canon of Scripture by an emphatic and aw- 
 ful warning against adding to, or taking aught from 
 His words. In short, as He was officially, in all ex- 
 ternal manifestations and instructions, the Revealer of 
 God, and as His manifestations and instructions are 
 made known to us only by means of His written words, 
 it follows that in their relation to us. His words are at 
 least of equal importance with His works. 
 
PLEXAKY VERBAL IXSPIRATIOX. 151 
 
 A Divine revelation, teacliing wliat man is to believe 
 concerning God, and wliat duties He requires of man, 
 must, on the one hand, truly represent man according to 
 the constitution which God has given him ; and on the 
 other, must exhibit such representations of God, as 
 man, in conformity with the laws of his mind, would 
 be able to apprehend, and by analogy, ascribe to the 
 author of his constitution. As man's nature and facul- 
 ties are finite, his capacities of knowledge, of thought, 
 and of consciousness, are limited. The Infinite, there- 
 fore, must be represented by such forms of finite ex- 
 pression, in works and words, as he can apprehend, 
 sufficiently to educe and regulate his faith. Such ex- 
 pressions will, from the nature of the subject, indicate 
 existence and realities indefinitely beyond what they 
 distinctly disclose. They will enable him to see " as 
 through a glass darkly," and to believe both in what 
 he sees, and in what that indicates and necessarily im- 
 plies. The reality of his apprehension and of his be- 
 lief, will be infallibly ascertained to him by his own 
 consciousness. 
 
 Now, the mind, in the act of thinking, conditions 
 that of which it thinks — as for example, in respect to 
 time, as being present, past, or future ; as to degree, as 
 being, relatively, in some respect more or less ; and 
 so, as to all the attributes, qualities, modes, and rela- 
 tions of that which is the subject of thought. This 
 process is realized to our consciousness in the ivords in 
 which we think. Apart from the words, we have no 
 consciousness of the thoughts. It is therefore absurd 
 to suppose the mind to select — whether %vith or with- 
 out guidance — words whereby to express thoughts of 
 
152 PLENARY VERBAL INSPIRATION". 
 
 which it was already conscious in words. To suppose 
 it to select other words, is to suppose it to have other 
 thoughts differing from the former as much as the new- 
 ly-selected words differ from the former words. If 
 thoughts are conveyed to the mind, by written cha- 
 racters, by vocal utterances, or by Inspiration, they, to 
 be consciously received, must be conveyed in words. 
 To suppose the recipient to select the words, is to sup- 
 pose that the thoughts were not conveyed to his con- 
 sciousness; but that both thoughts and words were 
 original with him, and in that case to say that he se- 
 lected the words, is merely to say that he selected the 
 thoughts, since he could not be conscious of the" 
 thoughts apart from the words. If then — as in re- 
 spect to our capacity of thought being limited to the fi- 
 nite, the conditioned, the relative — our own conscious- 
 ness is the proper test ; then the cherished notion of 
 some of the most orthodox and most excellent of men, 
 that the sacred writers selected the words whereby to 
 express the thoughts of the Divine mind, is erroneous 
 and delusive. 
 
 The question whether the Holy Scriptures are the 
 words of God, as being in the original texts His utter- 
 ances of His own thoughts, communicated by Him to 
 those whom He appointed to write them, and therefore 
 His words in the same sense that the written words of 
 men are theirs, is a question of fact to be decided by 
 evidence. It is not self-evident. It is not a mere mat- 
 ter of faith, independently of evidences intelligible to 
 the understanding, and of convictions resulting from 
 study or from the inward illumination of the Spirit. 
 Hence their Di\dne Author not only asserts, ever and 
 
TLEXAKY VEKBAL INSPIRATIOX. 153 
 
 anon, that the words are His, but He exhibits a variety 
 of evidences and demonstrations addressed to the rea- 
 son and conscience of man, that they are indeed His. 
 The controversy, verbal and actual, between Jehovah 
 and the worshipers of idols, false prophets, Satan, hy- 
 pocrites, and unbelievers, turns upon the question whe- 
 ther or not the words of Scripture are His words ? 
 That controversy manifests the antagonism between 
 good and evil — between Infinite good and^ni'te evil. 
 Tlie words employed in Scripture respecting it, imply, 
 on the part of their author, a perfect knowledge of in- 
 finite goodness, and of finite evU, and of their relations, 
 and how they can coexist. Of such knowledge, man is, 
 by his limited faculties, utterly incapable ; and he is 
 therefore utterly incompetent to be the author of the 
 words of Scripture respecting it. The use of those 
 words therefore proves that they are the words of God. 
 
 Were we called on to believe nothing which we can 
 not conceive of as being finite, then the universe, visi- 
 ble and invisible, should be as conceivable as any of 
 its several parts. There should be no distinction in 
 reality, or as an object of conception, or as an object 
 of reasoning, between the infinite and the finite ; and our 
 consciousness should be no evidence either as to what 
 we conceive, or as to what we believe. TVe should be 
 reduced to the necessit}- of concluding that there was 
 no universe out of our own minds. The philosophy 
 and dogmatism which have this issue, are sufficiently 
 notorious. 
 
 Were we called on to believe respecting things finite 
 only what wc perfectly comprehend, and what our 
 reason dictates, we could have no fixed and settled 
 
154 PLENARY VERBAL IXSPIRATIOX. 
 
 faith wliatsver. For -what single thing, external or 
 internal, do we perfectly comprehend ? The rational- 
 ism and infidelity which lead to this issue, are abund- 
 antly common. 
 
 But while the heathen are left to these alternatives, 
 and show by their systems of theory and practice, the 
 absolute necessity of revelation, the Scriptures, as the 
 words of the Omniscient Creator, require us to receive 
 them as His testimony, and to believe them solely on 
 His authority. They require this with respect to one 
 portion of their contents, as much, and on the same 
 ground, as with respect to any other portion ; as much 
 with respect to what is historical as with respect to 
 what is doctrinal, preceptive, and prophetic ; as much 
 with respect to things finite as with respect to things 
 infinite. Man is no more constituted to be his own 
 original instructor in any of these things as they relate 
 to his spiritual, moral, and accountable being, than he 
 is constituted to be his own moral governor, his own 
 saviour, and his own final judge. The Creator Him- 
 self, therefore, who gave man his constitution, gave 
 His own authoritative and infalhble words in the Holy 
 Scriptures, for the instruction and direction of the 
 finite, dependent, fallible creature.