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BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP 
 
 AND 
 
 INSPIRATION. 
 
 © 
 
 TWO PAPKRS 
 
 LLEWELYN J. EVANS 
 
 HENRY PRESERVED SMITH. 
 
 m 
 
 CINCINNATI: 
 
 ROBERT CLARKE & CO. 
 
 1891. 
 
Copyright, 1891, 
 By ROBERT CLARKE & CO. 
 
 Et.KrTHOTvrFn by 
 
 CAMPBELL & CO. 
 
 ciNnwATi, OHIO 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following papers were lately read before the 
 
 Presbyterian Ministerial Association of Cincinnati. 
 
 The second w^as prepared at the special request of 
 
 the Association. The first was originally prepared as 
 
 part of a discussion in the Presbytery of Cincinnati of 
 
 the relations of the General Assembly to the teaching 
 
 of Biblical Criticism in our Theological Seminaries. 
 
 By the courtesy of the Association, of which grateful 
 
 acknowledgment is hereby made, it was delivered 
 
 there instead of in the Presbytery. The bulk of the 
 
 matter and form, however, w^as left unchanged ; and 
 
 this statement will serve to account for the literary 
 
 expression of the paper as here presented. 
 
 (iii' 
 
Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration. 
 
 I. 
 
 By LLEWELYN J. EVANS. 
 
 It is the purpose of this discussion to present some of the 
 accepted conclusions of the best Christian scholarship of the 
 day respecting certain features of our sacred Scriptures, as 
 these conclusions bear on the question of the inspiration, in- 
 fallibility, and authority of these Scriptures, and on the 
 rights and obligations of those who are appointed to direct 
 the study of them in our theological schools. It is a question 
 which, whatever we may think of the occasion or the meth- 
 ods which have precipitated it upon us, has been pushed to 
 the front by tendencies and conditions the operation of which 
 it was not within the power of man to stem or to control. 
 Now that the issue is upon us we must meet it, in no temper 
 of suspicion, prejudice, or partisanship, but in a frank, 
 manly, straightforward way, and in a spirit of loyalty to the 
 truth, to our church, and to God. As to the personal form 
 which the issue has taken, as a movement to challenge and 
 to invoke the formal and authoritative condemnation, by the 
 Presbyterian Church of the United States of America, of 
 certain utterances respecting the Scriptures, and Scripture 
 truths, recently made by a prominent theological professor 
 in our church, I shall have very little directly to say. I am 
 
 (3) 
 
4 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 not concerned to justify the utterances of my brother pro- 
 fessor in detail. In that particular, my friend is abundantly 
 able to take care of himself. If, as I confidently hope, the 
 views which are here urged shall obtain from the Church, in 
 its ultimate decision, the recognition which is claimed for 
 them as scriptural, evangelical, confessional, scientific, rev- 
 erent, and indispensable to the satisfactory and permanent 
 solution of the great problems of our age, and to t^ie har- 
 mony of religious faith with scientific and critical processes 
 and results, I have no fear that any one will be wronged. 
 The principles which are at stake are to my mind more vital 
 than any personal issue. The movement of which I have 
 spoken, and the utterances in the press and elsewhere which 
 have accompanied and interpreted its inception and pur- 
 pose, convince me that the time has come for a definite 
 understanding respecting the rights of Christian Scholarship 
 in the Biblical departments of our Theological Seminaries. 
 That is a question in which I may be pardoned for feeling an 
 intense personal interest. It is a question which affects my 
 calling, my work, my very hfe. If there is any thing in 
 which my whole being is wrapped up, it is the study and 
 teaching of the Word of God. If there is any thing that I 
 love with every fiber of every heart-string, it is that blessed 
 old book. If there is any thing for which, so far as I know 
 myself, I would gladly lay down my life, it is that this Book 
 may be known and read throughout the length and breadth 
 of the world as the guide of lost souls to heaven. It is be- 
 cause I believe in this Book with a conviction and love which 
 grow with every year's study of it, that I take my present 
 position. And it is because I believe that, in order the 
 sooner and the better to accomphsh its mission in the world, 
 it must be rescued out of a false position, and be put before 
 the world where it puts itself, that I would fain help in clear- 
 ing off the stumbling-blocks which mistaken zeal has put in 
 the way of inquiring souls, and dig down through the quick- 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATl'JX. 5 
 
 sands of false definitions and untenable theories to what Mr. 
 Gladstone so truly and forcibly calls, ''The impn-gnabk rock 
 of Holy Scripture.^'' 
 
 As I have already said, the time has come for a definite 
 understanding in regard to what I may briefly call the Biblical 
 situation. What have we the right to teach about the Bible? 
 We must come to a clear and cordial understanding in re- 
 spect to that question. I trust it is not vanity that prompts 
 me to hope I may say something that will help to bring about 
 such an understanding. I would fain believe that I am in a 
 position to understand both sides on the question at issue. 
 There is much in the position of the brethren whose course 
 on the particular issue before us I feel constrained to oppose 
 that commands my hearty assent. I honor, I hope I share 
 in their zeal for the supreme authority of the Word of God. 
 In their opposition to every' movement of thought which 
 tends to undermine that authority, I am with them. If I be- 
 lieved that the apprehensions which inspire their present 
 action were well grounded, I would earnestly support it. 
 
 I furthermore believe that it is all-important that there 
 should be the most thorough accord between the work that 
 is done and the instruction that is given in our Seminaries, 
 and the work done and the instruction given in our pulpits 
 and parishes. There should be the most hearty unity of 
 thought, feeling, and action, between theological professors 
 and pastors, in our common work for the Master. I believe 
 it is incumbent on both sides to maintain this entente cordiale. 
 It is incumbent on us as professors so to carry on our work 
 that the hands of our brethren in the field shall be strength- 
 ened. We are under obligation to do nothing that we can 
 consistently avoid doing that will discourage, disturb, embar- 
 rass them in their great and holy mission, and so to train the 
 young men under our care that they shall go forth equi])ped 
 to reinforce them at every point. On the other hand, I 
 claim from my brethren reciprocity in this matter. I ask 
 
6 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSriRATION. 
 
 that they accord to us their confidence, that they beware of 
 unjust suspicions, that they try to understand us in our posi- 
 tion and work. 
 
 Good old Dr. Johnson used to say, " Clear your mind of 
 cant." Let us try to clear our minds of cant, of mist, of 
 prejudice in respect to the issue we are trying. I can not 
 help the conviction that the trouble of the present situation, 
 the ferment, the unsettlement, the alarm which prevails, is 
 due very largely — I will not say altogether, but largely — and I 
 must say mainly, to a vague and inadequate conception of the 
 situation, leading to a confusion of terms and ideas, and re- 
 sulting in mistaking friends for foes. In Matthew Arnold's 
 words : 
 
 "And we are here as on a darkling plain, 
 
 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
 
 Where ignorant armies clash by night." 
 
 There is a good deal of unprofitable mental gymnastics 
 going on, such as Paul was so careful to avoid. Some of our 
 good brethren, I fear, are "beating the air," and quite a 
 number, I am sure, are beating the wrong man. 
 
 There is an uncomfortable lack of definiteness and precis- 
 ion in certain charges which are made. We are hearing 
 much about "errors," " dangerous errors," " erroneous ten- 
 dencies," matters which are "calculated to unsettle faith." 
 What are these "errors?" I suspect, if our brethren who 
 complain of these things should undertake to frame a declara- 
 tion, after the model of the Auburn Declaration, setting forth 
 in black and white, first in the light of Scripture, and then in 
 the light of the Confession, on this side the Error, and over 
 against it the True Doctrine, the case would begin to look very 
 differently from what it does. At all events we should then 
 know precisely where we are, and exactly what we are talk- 
 ing about. Differences often arise from ambiguities. We 
 use the same word in different senses, or we convey the same 
 thought by different phrases, and then appeal to the General 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 7 
 
 Assembly, forsooth, to decide between us ! Then again the 
 world is moving on, and it is getting more and more hard to 
 keep up with it. We are living in an age of specialties, and 
 of specialists. Even among experts, the ninety and nine 
 know not what the hundredth man is up to. They know 
 that they are liable any fine morning to wake up and to find 
 the Babylon of their fine old-fashioned theories blown up 
 with the dynamite of some experiment, and Number One 
 Hundred dancing on the ruins. 
 
 Now it so happens that, in the Providence of God, for 
 better or worse, my lot has been cast in a Theological Semi- 
 nary. It has been a necessity of my position to give some 
 attention to the leading Biblical questions of the day. For a 
 quarter of a century this has been my business. I trust, 
 therefore, it will not be regarded as presumption on my part 
 if I indulge the hope that by something I may say, I may 
 succeed in bringing some of my brethren into closer touch 
 with the best Christian Scholarship of the day touching some 
 of the questions which are involved in the present issue. 
 All I claim for myself is that I think I understand both sides ; 
 and sympathizing as I do with both sides in some things, 1 
 would fain bring them nearer together. And if I make a 
 more liberal use of the first personal pronoun than is gen- 
 erally deemed commendable, you will understand my mo- 
 tive. 
 
 Allow me, then, to premise that in the study of Biblical 
 questions, which my vocation has made necessary, I have 
 both striven to keep an open mind, and earnestly sought the 
 guidance of a wisdom higher than my own. My study of 
 the history of the interpretation and criticism of God's word 
 has shown me, as clearly as it has taught me any thing, that 
 God does lead his people onward in their inquiries of his 
 holy Oracle. I know, as well as I know any thing, that 
 progress, wonderful progress, has been made in my own day 
 in the knowledge of the Word. I do not claim that all 
 
5 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 movement has been progress, or that every " find " has been 
 a gain. I am well aware that in Biblical science, as in every 
 science, there are rash speculations, unproved hypotheses, 
 wild and dangerous vagaries. Some corners of the field are 
 full of will-o'-the-wisps, illusive, unsubstantial, unsafe, gleam- 
 ing, I fear, with a light that is not from heaven. 
 
 But on the other hand, there are conclusions in this field 
 which all whose judgment is worth any thing are agreed in 
 regarding as substantially established. There are other con- 
 clusions which must fairly be conceded to have a strong bal- 
 ance of probability in their favor. These conclusions must 
 be reckoned with. Whether we accept them, or reject them, 
 the data on which they are based must be satisfactorily ex- 
 plained. There are certain ascertained facts — so far as any 
 historical data can be called facts — bearing on the structure 
 of the Bible, bearing on the historical accuracy of particular 
 statements in the Book, bearing on the inspiration of Script- 
 ure — facts bearing, that is, on the mode in which the accu- 
 racy, the infallibility, the inspiration, the authority of Script- 
 ure must be conceived and defined — which can not be set 
 aside by sneers at the Higher Criticism, which can not be 
 offset by vague denunciations of Rationalism, which can not 
 be disposed of at all without satisfying the demands of the 
 most enlightened reason, the requirements of the most thor- 
 ough scholarship, as well as the claims of the devoutest faith. 
 We must reckon with these facts. We must take them into 
 the account. We must assign them their true value. We 
 must make them the basis of our judgments and our deliver- 
 ances. If the theories of other days will not bear the press- 
 ure of these focts, they must go to the wall. There is no 
 help for it. If your definition of inspiration, your definition 
 of the infallibility of the Bible — mark what I say ! not the 
 doctrine, but your definition of the doctrine — if that defini- 
 tion will not stand the test of the established results of criti- 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLvRSmP AND INSPIRATION. 9 
 
 cism, if it will not harmonize with ascertained facts, then so 
 much the worse for the definition. 
 
 Two years ago it was my privilege to attend the sessions 
 of the Free Church Assembly in Edinburgh, when I )r. Dods 
 was elected to the chair of Exegetical Theology in the New 
 College. The candidature of Dr. Dods was -trenuously re- 
 sisted on the ground of his utterances respecting the Script- 
 ures and their inspiration. The attempt was made to prove 
 the unsoundness of his views. How ? From Scripture ? 
 No ! From the Confession of Faith ? Not at all ; but from 
 Dr. Hodge on the Confession. At once, from all parts of 
 the house, the cry was heard: "Dr. Hodge is not the Con- 
 fession." That summed up the situation in Scotland. That 
 sums up the situation here to-day. The Commentary is not 
 the Confession ; the Confession, let me add, is not Scripture. 
 But Dr. Hodge is neither Confession nor Scripture. Or to 
 state the case more broadly : the Scholastic Theology, which 
 Dr. Hodge represents, is neither the Confession nor the 
 Word of God. But there are dearly beloved brethren, 
 throughout the Presbyterian Church, who are laboring under 
 the delusion that, if Dr. Hodge is not the Confession, at 
 least it means, or ought to mean, what Dr. Hodge says. I 
 hope to show, before I get through, that it does mean nothing 
 of the sort. 
 
 But what does Dr. Hodge say is the teaching of the Con- 
 fession ? In brief this: The books of Scripture "are one 
 and all, in thought and verbal expression, in substance and 
 form, wholly the Word of God, conveying with absolute ac- 
 curacy and divine authority, all that God meant them to con- 
 vey, without human additions or admixtures." "All written 
 under it [the Divine influence called inspiration] is the very 
 Word of God, of infallible truth and of divine authority ; and 
 this infallibility and authority attach as well to the verbal e.x- 
 pression in which the revelation is conveyed as to the matter 
 
lO BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 of the revelation itself." ' Or still more comprehensively and 
 explicitly, in a joint article written by Drs. A. A. Hodge 
 and B. B. Warfield, we are told : " The historical faith of the 
 Church has always been that all the affirmations of Scripture 
 of all kinds, whether of spiritual doctrine, or duty, or of 
 physical or historical fact, or of psychological or philosoph- 
 ical principle, are without any error when the ipsissima verba 
 of the original autographs are ascertained and interpreted in 
 their natural and intended sense. "^ 
 
 That statement, I take it, gives us the key to the situation. 
 It is the premise from which have proceeded all the move- 
 ments in our Church which have been directed, during the 
 past ten years, against the affirmations of modern Biblical 
 Criticism. The critics have found that statement of inspira- 
 tion impossible. Therefore their conclusions are denounced 
 as dangerous, rationalistic, or worse. This, however, as I 
 hope to demonstrate, is not the position of our Standards. 
 On this point our Doctors of Divinity are not the Confession. 
 But before coming to that point, I wish to say one or two 
 other things about that statement. 
 
 And first I charge upon it that it is unscientific. It is an 
 abstract, a /;wr/ affirmation, not resting on objective facts, but 
 evolved out of the depths of the dogmatic consciousness. The 
 inductive study of the Word of God was practically unknown 
 at the time when that definition was framed, three hundred 
 years ago. It proceeds from certain postulates respecting what 
 God must do in the matter of inspiration, which are assumed 
 at the outset, without proof, with no adequate basis in the facts 
 of the case, with no support from any positive declaration 
 by God himself. These postulates are the product of the 
 
 ' Commentary on the Confession of Faith, by Dr. A. A. Hodj 
 
 P- 55- 
 
 ''■ The Presbyteiiaa Review, Vol. II, p. 238. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSIMRA HON. n 
 
 Scholasticism of the Post-Reformation age, which had inher- 
 ited the methods, and followed largely in the lines of the 
 Romish Scholasticism of the Middle Ages. Undoubtedly 
 there was incomparably more of the material of Bible truth 
 in the Protestant than in the Romish Scholasticism — for our 
 Schoolmen did read their Bibles, and study their Bibles, and 
 got their theology out of their Bibles— and for the time it 
 was in many ways a grand and mighty theology. But their 
 method — and it is of that I am now speaking — was seriously 
 defective. Such definitions as I have just presented could 
 legitimately rest only on the most exhaustive induction of all 
 the facts and phenomena relating to the revelation of God in 
 his Word ; first collecting and collating these facts, then esti- 
 mating, analyzing, classifying them, and lastly generalizing 
 from them according to the most rigorous laws of the induc- 
 tive process, omitting nothing, inventing nothing, assuming 
 nothing, distorting nothing. Is that the case? Surely it 
 would be a rash and unhistoric claim. The older scholastic 
 theology, which formulated that theory, which has dominated 
 our dogmatic definitions down to the present day, under the 
 influence of which most of us have been trained, knew noth- 
 ing of this inductive process, did nothing of it. 
 
 And now, let me ask, is that safe ground to take ? Is it 
 safe, in this inductive age, to base a scientific definition on 
 unscientific premises, to reach a scientific result by unscien- 
 tific processes, to expose the citadel of your position at a thou- 
 sand points to the strategic attacks of the scientific method? 
 Remember that weakness at any one of those points lets in 
 the enemy. Is it safe to stake the authority of the Script- 
 ures on the absolute infallibility of every one of a thousand 
 particulars, every one of which is subject to the remorseless 
 probings of a science which cares nothing for your theories, 
 cares very little, possibly, for your beliefs, refuses to know 
 any thing but facts? Is that safe, when, according to your 
 
12 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 theory, the loss of one particular means the loss of all."^ 
 Even Drs. Hodge and Warfield make this admission : "There 
 will undoubtedly be found upon the surface [of Scripture] 
 viany apparent affirmations presumably inconsistent with the 
 present teachings of science, with facts of history, or with 
 other statements of the sacred books themselves."" Surely 
 it is not inconceivable that in a number of particulars, or say 
 only in one particular, that presumption of unscientific, un- 
 historic, contradictory teaching may turn out to be more than 
 a presumption. Then what becomes of your theory ? What, 
 on your theory, becomes of the authority of Scripture? 
 
 But I have a still more serious charge to bring against this 
 a priori method in theology when applied to inspiration. For 
 inspiration is a Divine Process. What this process is in its 
 interior nature we can never know. It is God that inspires, 
 as it is God that creates, and we can no more say how God 
 inspires than how God creates. What are the necessary, in- 
 terior, Divine conditions of inspiration ? What do we know 
 about that ? What can we know about that ? All Ave can 
 know about it must be derived from the terms which describe 
 it, the characteristics which it exhibits, the concrete result 
 which it produces, the effects which follow it. And so I 
 charge further upon this a prioj'i definition of inspiration, 
 that it is not only unscientific, but irreverent, presumptuous, 
 lacking in the humility with which we should approach a Di- 
 vine Supernatural Fact. Of course I do not mean to charge 
 conscious irreverence or presumption on those who frame or 
 hold this theory, but remembering that unconscious faults at- 
 tach to the best of men, I believe that Charles Kingsley never 
 said a truer or a finer thini; than that "there is an intimate 
 
 ' "A proved error in Scripture contradicts not only our doctrine, 
 but the Scripture claims, and therefore its inspiration, in making those 
 claims." Drs. Hodge and Warfield, Presbyterian Review, Vol. II, p. 
 245. 
 
 ^ The Presbyterian Review, Vol. II, p. 237. 
 
IRLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 13 
 
 connection between the health of the moral faculties and that 
 of the inductive ones;" and that "God does in science as 
 well as in ethics hide things from the wise and prudent, from 
 the proud, complete, self-contained systematizer like Aristotle, 
 . . . and reveals them to babes, to gentle, affectionate, 
 simple-hearted men, such as we know Archimedes to have 
 been, who do not try to give an explanation for a fact, but 
 feel how awful and divine it is, and wrestle reverently and 
 steadfastly with it, as Jacob with the Angel, and will not let 
 it go until it bless them." ^ 
 
 Now I claim that to say beforehand that inspiration, or any 
 such Divine process, must be this or that, that it must have 
 certain characteristics, is to venture beyond our limits, to 
 step in where angels fear to tread. You may ask : Is not all 
 that God does perfect ? Most assuredly. But who are we, 
 to define that perfection, to formulate its constituents, to, 
 legislate its conditions, to decide beforehand that it must be 
 thus, that it can not be so, that this is indispensable, that im^ 
 possible ? We are told that at the end of each creative Day, 
 God looked on what he had done, "and saw that it was 
 good." And what does God mean by "good"? Absolute, 
 abstract perfection in every particular, flawless regularity in 
 every line and curve, faultless fitness in every limb and joint, 
 infallible inerrancy, no wandering stars, no jostling bodies, 
 music of the spheres, without a jarring note ? That is, no 
 doubt, what a priori speculation would have affirmed. If 
 our friend, the Dogmatist, had stepped upon the scene in 
 time, before telescope, or microscope, or spectroscope was 
 known, that is precisely what he would have laid down for 
 us as the only orthodox view. He would have had his defi- 
 nition of perfection, turned out of his machine, square, 
 rigid, all the sides exactly parallel, every angle ninety de- 
 grees down ^o the infinitesimal, every line as straight as the 
 
 Alexandria and Her Schools, Lecture I. 
 
14 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 shortest possible distance between two points could make it — 
 an exquisite specimen of logical carpentering. "Nothing 
 else " — he would have assured us, with that superb confidence 
 which would be so imposing if it had not so often imposed on 
 us — " nothing else is conceivable, or possible in the prem- 
 ises ; nothing else would be worthy of God. What God calls 
 good must be a perfect jesult, complete, flawless, faultless, 
 infallible in every detail." But look at the record; what do 
 you find ? Irregularities, breaks, misfits, broken joints, de- 
 formities, mutilations, abortions, collisions, discords, imper- 
 fections all the way along ; and God back of it all, God over 
 it all, God through it all, God in it all, pushing on his way, 
 working out his will, and accomplishing— yes, a Perfect Re- 
 sult ! Ah ! brethren, God's Thoughts are not as our thoughts, 
 his ways are not as our ways. The designs by which he 
 works are not patterns for patent-office purposes, not pieces 
 of dilettante china-decoration, not gesthetic models in wax- 
 work, " faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null." No, 
 sirs ! The Patterns of Deity are commensurate with himself, 
 they spread over his eternity, they lose themselves in his in- 
 finitude, they are awful with the glories and glooms of his 
 unsearchable wisdom, they are rugged and ragged and riven 
 with the thunders and lightnings of omnipotence ; they sweep 
 on — a Flood of measureless, resistless might — from the Be- 
 ginning which has no beginning to the End which has no 
 end ; and what seem to us to be flaws or fractures, miscar- 
 riages and mischances, are swallowed up and borne along in 
 the Infinite Tide of his Purpose, the flow of which they no 
 more arrest, or disturb, or weaken, than the shattered foam- 
 bells, or wavering reflows of the Rapids above the Horse- 
 shoe Falls affect the plunge of Niagara. Flaws ? Yes ; but 
 look at the Plan, massive with the lines and the curves of 
 the Infinite and the Eternal, stamped with the symmetries 
 and the sublimities of a Divine Art, charged with the perfect 
 purposes of the Will which never fails. Frictions ? Yes ; 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 15 
 
 but look at the matchless correlations of energy, the actions 
 and interactions of endlessly articulated forces, that deter- 
 mine the balancings of the dew-drops, and swing Jupiters 
 and suns and systems along their vast and mighty courses. 
 Discords ? Yes ; but listen to the Eternal Anthem, the Ju- 
 bilate Deo, that rings from star to star, and ravishes the 
 eternities. 
 
 If now in creation God can work out a perfect result 
 through imperfection, why not in inspiration ? But here — in 
 inspiration — there is another factor to be taken into the ac- 
 count, to wit, the human factor. In the production of Script- 
 ure we are concerned with two co-efficients. It is not God 
 working alone, but God working with human instrumental- 
 ities, and using these instrumentalities, not as dead, passive 
 things, but as free, integral, independent personalities; not 
 as a mechanic uses his tools, not as a magician handles his 
 puppets, but as a Living Spirit, breathing in and through liv- 
 ing souls. 
 
 Now it is a law of the Divine Operation, that in working 
 under finite conditions it respects those conditions; that in 
 using created and limited agencies, it has regard for the lim- 
 itations of those agencies. I am far from saying that no 
 more is accomplished than would be accomplished if the 
 agent were left to itself. What I do hold is that the more in 
 the case, the supra-natural plus, is supernatural, not natural. 
 The process here, as we are all agreed, is a supernatural 
 process, the result is a Divine supernatural result. So much 
 is not questioned. What now ? Just this : While fully recog- 
 nizing the Divine supernatural co-efficient, the Divine super- 
 natural process, and the Divine supernatural result, we must 
 also recognize the lower, finite co-efificient as continuing un- 
 alterably itself. Its qualities, its possibilities, its activities, 
 its inherent limitations remain the same. There is no change 
 of essence, of structure, of elemental potency. An inani- 
 mate agent, when supernaturally commissioned, does not be- 
 2 
 
10 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 come animate. The fire of a miracle is never any thing but 
 fire. The pneuma of a dead wind is never changed, as the 
 Rabbis of old thought, into the pneuma of a living spirit. 
 The irrational brute is not transformed into a rational being. 
 The raven that fed Elijah was nothing more than a bird. 
 Nor does man, when supernaturally influenced, cease to be a 
 man. An inspired man is not God. Dr. Charles Hodge 
 says, most truly and beautifully : "When He ordains praise 
 out of the mouth of babes, they must speak as babes, or the 
 whole power and beauty of the tribute will be lost."^ In- 
 spiration does not change the human personality, does not 
 efface its inherent qualities, does not expunge its limitations, 
 does not change the finite into the infinite, the human into 
 the superhuman. That is the law, the universal law in nature 
 and in history. If we engage in a priori speculation at all, 
 it should be along the line of that law. Reasoning anteced- 
 ently along that line, proceeding from the the actual to the 
 probable, basing our conclusions on what we see through all 
 the works of God, we should expect to find, in the human co- 
 efficient of a supernatural revelation, the inherent limitations 
 of that co-efficient. So far are we from being entitled to say 
 beforehand that God must make his human auxiliary super- 
 humanly infallible in every possible particular, that the very 
 opposite is alone what analogy justifies us in affirming. 
 
 Brethren, let me give another illustration of the danger 
 of such a priori speculation concerning what God must 
 be or do in the revelation of himself; and may God help me 
 to treat the subject with all becoming reverence. The Mys- 
 tery of mysteries in God's revelation of himself to men is the 
 Incarnation. " In the beginning was the Word, and the 
 Word was with God, and the Word was God, . . . and 
 the Word became flesh." That such a thing would be, that 
 such a thing could be, is what no human speculation could 
 
 Systematic Theology, Vol. I, page 157. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 17 
 
 have anticipated, what no human intellect could have deemed 
 possible. But let me suppose that in some way, by some 
 sweet Divine intimation, the thought had come to some de- 
 vout mind, as, for aught we know, it may have come to one or 
 another, that one day God would become man. How would 
 he have conceived it ? How from his narrow premises must 
 he have conceived it? Is is not natural to suppose that he 
 would have formulated his conception something after this 
 fashion : ' ' Will God indeed come down and dwell among 
 men as one of them ? What an august spectacle will 
 that be ! What a transcendent type of manhood in all 
 respects will the world then witness ! What perfection ! 
 What dignity ! What invincible strength ! AVhat unapproach- 
 able, awe-inspiring majesty 1 How immeasurably exalted 
 above all his human fellows will that being be ! How serenely 
 impervious to all the disturbances and distractions of the wel- 
 tering moral chaos around him ! How divinely exempt from 
 all the weaknesses, the imperfections, the' stumblings and 
 strivings of the wretched weaklings to whom he had de- 
 scended ! God a man ! How can I believe it ? But if a 
 man, then surely man at his best ! " A natural expectation, 
 would it not be ? Would the opposite picture have been an- 
 ticipated, have been deemed probable, or even possible? 
 What! an Incarnate God down in the dregs of human 
 existence ! passing through, sharing in the infantile de- 
 pendence, weakness, ignorance, discipline, growth of a 
 creature ! coming up like a root out of dry ground, with no 
 beauty or comeliness, that men should desire him ! bowed to 
 the earth with a burden of unutterable shame and anguish! 
 and sweating great drops of blood in the throes of the con- 
 flict ! trembling with fear and praying with strong cryings for 
 delivery! touched with the feeling of our infirmities! hclj^ed 
 by an angel ! tried in all things like as we are ! learning — yes, 
 learning — obedience by his sufferings! tempted! baffled! 
 groaning! weeping] agonizing! forsaken of the Father! 
 
l8 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 Man's feeble logic could never have grasped this tremendous 
 mystery.' It could never have dreamed it. It would have 
 protested against it. It must have pronounced it impossible. 
 If, then, it would have been a mistake, nay, as we now see, 
 a mistake bordering on blasphemy (see Mat. xvi : 23) to pro- 
 nounce antecedently against an incarnate revelation of God, 
 subject to the limitations of weakness, of ignorance, of bond- 
 age, to the contractions and detractions of that ineffable 
 Kenosis of the Godhead, ought we not to be most reverently 
 slow, most cautious, most humble, in pronouncing against an 
 inspired revelation of God, subject to certain wisely permit- 
 ted limitations of human weakness, ignorance, and fallibility?* 
 What know we of the Divine Thought? How know we 
 what Divine, infallible, and perfect Purpose may be served 
 even by these limitations and fallibilities ? Does not Scripture 
 itself intimate that at least there is such a purpose, and that 
 it does work through just such channels of human frailty? 
 Is not God's strength always made perfect in man's weak- 
 ness? Has not God committed his treasure to earthen ves- 
 sels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of 
 God? Did not God choose "the foolish things of the world, 
 that he might put to shame them that are wise; the weak 
 things of the world that he might put to shame the things 
 that -are strong ; and the base things of the world, and the 
 things that are despised, . . . yea, and the things that 
 are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are ?" 
 If God thus chooses to work out his problems through surds 
 and fractions and zeros, who are we to say him nay? Breth- 
 ren, this is God's way; this is the law. What right have we 
 
 ' It is enough to refer to the Messianic hopes of the Jewish people, 
 their rejection of Christ because his coming was so opposed to all their 
 preconceptions, and to the painful slowness with which even the disciples 
 became reconciled to the reality. How instructive are Peter's remon- 
 strances and Christ's rebuke, as recorded in Mat. xvi : 21-23. 
 
 ' See the extract from Mr. Gladstone below, p. 60 f. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSl'lRATloN. 19 
 
 to say where that law shall stop? to decide how much 
 of the earthen vessel shall count as a factor ? how much or 
 how little of the human folly, weakness, nothingness, is com- 
 patible with the Divine Purpose ? God is not limited as to 
 his means and methods in communicating his will to men. 
 Had a literal, stereotyped, incorruptible infallibility in every 
 jot and tittle of the record been an indispensable requisite, 
 God had a thousand resources at his command for securing 
 such a record. That he chose men, yes, men, with all their 
 ignorance and weakness and fallibility; that he intrusted his 
 revelation to their stammering tongues and to their stumbling 
 pens ; that he deposited the interpretation of his eternal ways 
 in earthen vessels, which could not escape the corruptions 
 and mutilations of time ; simply shows that a literal, particu- 
 laristic infallibility is of less moment in the sight of God than 
 some other things ; of less worth, perhaps, than the thrill of 
 a human touch, the glow of a red-hot word, the pulse of a 
 throbbing heart, the lightning of a living eye, the flash of a 
 soul on fire; of less worth — who knows? — than the faltering 
 of the pilgrim's foot, dearer to heaven than the lordly step 
 of Gabriel. If I righdy interpret Paul in the Tenth Chapter 
 of Romans, and elsewhere, it is one chief glory of the Gos- 
 pel as compared with the Law that it is not a formal, stereo- 
 typed letter, but a personal voice, a living heart, a breathing 
 soul, the effluence of a divinely magnetized personality, an 
 epistle written not with ink but with the spirit of the living 
 God.' Calvin E. Stowe was not far from right when he said : 
 " It is not the words of the Bible that were inspired. It is 
 not the thoughts of the Bible that were inspired. It is the 
 
 iSee Rom. x : 8-10, 14-18; xji : i f., 5 f.; I Cor. i: 4f-. '7 <"• (21); '• = 
 If.; iii: gf.; ix : 2; xii : 4f. (12, 13, 27) ; 2 Cor. ii : 14; iii : 2f.; iv : 
 6f. (13); vi: If.; Gal. i: 15, 16; Eph. i: 17 f. (19, 23); ii : 10; iii: 
 20, 21 ; V : 7 f.; Phil, i: 7, 20, 27 f.; ii : 15 f.; Col. i : 3 f. (6), gf.; ii: 
 6f.; iv: 5; I Thes. i : 8 ; ii : 12, 13 ; 2 Thes. i: 3 f., 11 f. Cf. I Pet. 
 ii: 5 f., g{., II f., 15 f.; iii : i f., 15 f.; iv : 10 f. 
 
20 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 men who wrote the Bible that were inspired." ' I feel con- 
 strained, accordingly, to protest against the a priori assump- 
 tion that God can not or will not inspire men without making 
 them infallible as himself, as unscientific, against all analogy, 
 irreverent, and presumptuous, as well as unscriptural and 
 contradicted by the facts. 
 
 In all humility, therefore, instead of dictating what God 
 must do, let us inquire reverently what God has done, how 
 God has spoken ; in what form, really, actually, concretely, 
 practically, the revelation of his will has come to men. It is 
 a theme on which volumes might be written. I can at this 
 time only single out a few salient points. And as my own 
 particular field of study is the New Testament, I will limit 
 the present discussion to that field. There is this advantage, 
 also, in looking at this department of the subject : that if the 
 theory I am opposing is valid anywhere, it applies to the New 
 Testament; if it breaks down there, it will hold nowhere. 
 
 I must call attention at the outset to the disadvantage under 
 which the defense even of the best attested conclusions of 
 modern criticism labors from the serious lack of acquaintance 
 with these conclusions which the attacks made upon them 
 generally betray. Most of the discussions which have come 
 under my notice in our religious journals and elsewhere 
 evince a quite inadequate appreciation of the present situa- 
 tion as touching Biblical Science. As against the conclusions 
 of to-day, they are for the most part as ineffectual as the guns 
 of i860 would be against an iron-clad ship or fort of 1890. 
 These three decades have effected an enormous change, a 
 revolution, in fact, in the problems to be solved, in the diffi- 
 culties to be removed, in the positions to be assumed in the 
 defense of the truth. 
 
 Let me give one illustration : These thirty years have wit- 
 nessed the birth and early growth of one new and most im- 
 
 * History of Books of the Bible, p. 19. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 2 1 
 
 portant branch of Biblical Science. I refer to Uiblical The- 
 ology, the very chair out of which the utterances have pro- 
 ceeded which have occasioned the present agitation. Thirty 
 years ago that science, as it is understood and prosecuted to-day, 
 was unknown. It is a young discipline as yet, with much work 
 before it, but entering vigorously on its career, blazing its way, 
 proceeding on lines of its own, working by methods of its own, 
 and elaborating results which have their distinct place and value 
 in the science of the Bible. Young as it is, it has already ac- 
 complished marvels. It has opened up new vistas of thought, 
 established new starting-points of inquiry. It has pro- 
 pounded, and is daily propounding new questions to solve. 
 It is necessitating new solutions of old questions. It is bring- 
 ing old facts into new foci, as well as bringing new facts to 
 light. It is putting old truths under new lights, and if not 
 discovering new truths, it is at least compelling new and 
 larger statements of the old eternal verities. Its conclusions 
 can not fail to have a most important and decisive bearing 
 on the religious and theological thought of the future. And 
 yet I have seen in our religious journals articles and para- 
 graphs criticizing, and even resenting, the claims put forth 
 in behalf of Biblical Theology, as though the advocates of 
 that science were advertising some special patent of their 
 own, or vaunting some special quality of their personal the- 
 ology, to the disparagement of every other. The same sort 
 of objection, proceeding from the same want of familiarity 
 with the subject, has often been urged against the "Higher 
 Criticism," as though it arrogated for itself a higher level than 
 your criticism or mine. Those whom I am now addressing 
 have seen and heard such complaints respecting these sci' 
 ences. They have seen it argued not so very long ago that 
 the champions of Biblical Theology were arrogating quite too 
 much for their favorite study; that all sound theology is Bibli- 
 cal Theology, Hodge's Theology, Shedd's Theology, and the 
 rest. But can this sort of thing be accepted as competent 
 
22 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 criticism ? Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology are 
 distinct disciplines, as much so as Logic and Mathematics. 
 Mathematics may be logical, but Mathematics is not Logic. 
 Systematic Theology may be biblical, but it is not Biblical 
 Theology. I beg your pardon for dealing in such truisms; I 
 only regret that it seems to be necessary. Biblical Theology 
 was hardly in its cradle when Dr. Charles Hodge wrote his 
 three volumes of Systematic Theology, and I know of no 
 dogmatic system that can be said to exhibit any distinct con- 
 sciousness or trace of the influence of the sister science. 
 The methods of the two are in fact well-nigh incompatible. 
 Dogmatic Theology is largely deductive ; Biblical Theology, 
 inductive. The former aims to be systematic and logical; 
 the latter critical and exegetical. The one deals with re- 
 vealed truth chiefly in its abstract forms; the other, in its 
 concrete, historic, and personal expressions.^ Systematic 
 Theology lumps all the books of the Bible together, arranges 
 their miscellaneous contents around some philosophic center, 
 or along certain logical lines, picking out one passage here, 
 another passage there, as the exigency on the one side, and 
 the fitness on the other, seem to justify ; disregarding, or at 
 most regarding only in a very meager way, the different con- 
 nections, the variant types, the remote and often antithetic 
 points of view, the gradual evolutions, the higher and lower 
 planes of thought and belief. Biblical Theology studies the 
 Bible as Astronomy studies the heavens ; each star or planet — 
 Sirius, Mars, Mercury, Venus — in its own place, orbit, life, 
 development, movement, the minor systems, Jupiter and Sa- 
 turn, with their moons, the constellations, asteroids, nebulae, 
 and all that tells the story of the heavens. So Biblical The- 
 
 1 See Reuss's History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age, 
 Introduction, Chap. I, "Scholastic and Biblical Theology." Weiss's 
 Biblical Theology of the New Testament, Introduction, § i, "The 
 Problem of the Science." 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 23 
 
 ology looks at and inquires into each separate star, the pro- 
 phetic and apostolic clusters, the major and minor systems, 
 the binaries, asteroids, satellites, and star-dust, uttering mean- 
 while the prayer of the saintly Herbert : 
 
 " Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine, 
 And the configuration of tlieir glorie ! 
 Seeing not only how each verse doth shine, 
 But all the constellations of the storie." 
 
 Dogmatic Theology subjects Scripture to the logical cate- 
 gories, the metaphysical terminology, the polemic accentua- 
 tions, the ecclesiastical dogmas, which eighteen centuries of 
 uninspired reflection and speculation on the contents of 
 Scripture have imposed on our interpretation of the same. 
 Biblical Theology takes us direct to the fountain-head, to the 
 original material as it is in itself, as it lies in its providential 
 environment, as it gushes out of the living well-spring, as by 
 the divine ordering of time and place and person it pours its 
 living contribution into the great River of Life. 
 
 The theology of the schools is based on the principle of 
 systematic self-consistency. It is a logical unit; and by an 
 instinct of self-preservation it ignores it if it can, it excludes 
 as far as it can, or if it must recognize, it belittles and atten- 
 uates all it can the antithetic truths which would imperil the 
 unity of the system. The Arminian dogmatism does this 
 with the Calvinistic side of the Gospel. The Calvinistic 
 dogmatism does the same with the Arminian side. One 
 Dogmatik says : " I am of Cephas." It fails of absorbing the 
 best part of Peter, and leaves out Apollos altogether. 
 Another says : " I am of Paul." It excludes John, and leaves 
 out one whole side of Paul, absorbing his particularism per- 
 chance, but failing to assimilate his universalism. But the 
 Theology of the Book and of its books is weighted with no 
 such logical embarrassments. It aims to ascertain what n^ery 
 inspired teacher has to say, and all that each inspired teacher 
 says, all of Peter, all of John, all of James, all of Paul, their 
 
24 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 antinomies, their ajta^ Xs^ofieva, and their iLnaq vooufteva^ 
 their polarities and their parodoxes, their provinciaHsms, as 
 also their large spiritual cosmopolitanisms. 
 
 It is not strange that the conclusions of Biblical Theology- 
 should at times seem suspicious to those who have read their 
 Bibles only through the glasses of a one-sided dogmatism. 
 There are more things in the heaven and earth of the younger 
 science than have been dreamed of in the philosophy of the 
 other. There are aspects of Redemption, of which Paul, for 
 example, is full, a race-redemption,* cosmic reconciliation,^ 
 the re-unification of the universe,^ of which your scholastic 
 theology knows little or nothing. Dogmatism gives us one 
 phase of sanctification, as we find it predominantly perhaps 
 in Paul, as a subjective, progressive process, predicated of 
 the Christian in this life. But what of other statements in 
 Paul, such as that, " He who began a good work in you will 
 perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ " ?* What of the ob- 
 jective sanctification of the Epistle to the Hebrews? What 
 of " the purification of heaven " itself in that Epistle ? What 
 of the objective-subjective sanctification of the Apostle John, 
 in which there is no recognition of progress even in this 
 life, but which is presented as a single absolute fact? If 
 now, by the study of Biblical Theology, I have been aided 
 to the better appreciation of these many-sided representations 
 of Divine Truth, am I to be shut up to the one-sided interpre- 
 tation of a theology to which this method of studying the 
 Word was unknown? Is all of Divine Truth in our sys- 
 tematic theology? Is it all in the Confession of Faith? 
 
 ' Rom. V. 8 ; xi : 32 ; xv ; 8 f.; I Cor. xv : 22 ; 2 Cor. v : 15 ; i Tim. 
 : 10; Tit. ii : il. And cf. Gal. iii : 8; Phil, ii : lO ; i Tim. ii : 4-6. 
 2 Rom. xi : 15 (cf. v. 12) ; 2 Cor. v: 19. 
 
 » Eph. i: 10, 21-23 ; iv : 10; I Cor. xv : 24-28; 2 Cor. v : 17 f.; Phil, 
 i : 21 ; Col. i : 20. 
 ♦ Phil, i: 9; cf. I Cor. i: 8. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSl'lRA lli )N. 
 
 ^5 
 
 While going with these helps as far as tliey take us, are we 
 never to go a step further ? 
 
 Biblical Theology is of special importance in thus unfold- 
 ing to us the compositeness of Bible truth, and in giving us 
 the key to its rich and suggestive variations.' It puts us 
 moreover in touch with the man who speaks to us in the name 
 of God. We feel that in Peter, in John, in James, we have 
 an inspired man, not a divinely-manipulated automaton. We 
 come to understand why, in discussing the same subject, Paul 
 says this, and says it thus; James says that, and says it so; 
 why the first Evangelist gives this report of our Lord's dis- 
 courses, the fourth Evangelist that report ; why the second 
 Gospel puts such a fact in this light, the third Gospel in 
 another. This Novum Organum of Biblical Theology, call- 
 ing to its aid Criticism, the Higher and the Lower,* puts us 
 in possession of the human personal ecjuation in the Lispired 
 Word, as we had never possessed it before. It reveals to us 
 what Farrar calls "The Messages of the Books;" nay more, 
 the mission of each writer, known and unknown ; and helps 
 us to see how even in his idiosyncracies, even in his limita- 
 tions, each is fitted for his particular place and task. Take 
 the Apostle Jude, for example. Look at him as illuminated 
 by Biblico-Theological lights. What an interesting picture ! 
 What a vivid personality ! With his intense Hebraism, his 
 prophetic fire, his weird imagination, his antique eloquence, 
 the apocalyptic tinge of his representation, his mental limita- 
 tions even, his inability to get entirely outside the literary en- 
 vironment in which his mind has always moved, with its le- 
 
 > See especially Weiss, Bibl. Theol. of the N. T., Introduction, ? i, 
 (c). See also the excellent remarks which follow, (d), showing how 
 a complete Scriptural systematic theology must build on this composite 
 basis, uniting all the variations in a larger synthesis, which shall so far 
 as possible harmonize all, without suppressing any. 
 
 » For a list of helps (in English) to the study of New Testament 
 Criticism and Theology, see Appendix at the end of the paper. 
 
tf6 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 gendary exegesis and its apocryphal ingredients — but what of 
 that ? What is a cobweb on the mane of a Hon ? What is a 
 fleck of soot, a speck of unassimilated carbon, hovering 
 around the beacon-fire which warns the ship at sea off the 
 rocks ? What is a touch of mediaevalism in Dante's Divine 
 Comedy, or an anachronism in Milton's Paradise Lost? 
 What if one or two minor details in Jude are to be estimated 
 in the light of the man's literary environment, and qualified 
 by the clearer teaching of the larger Word ? Was he any 
 the less a prophet and an apostle ? Did not the Divine Light 
 irradiate even these minute opaquer spots? Nay, did not 
 even the relative crudity, which a more advanced New Tes- 
 tament Christianity soon left behind, have its own peculiar 
 value and force for the time being, and for those whom he 
 was specially addressing, and even by virtue of its being no 
 more and no other than it was ? 
 
 In this connection let me note very briefly the vast gain 
 which has accrued to the critical faculty itself by the use of 
 the improved critical methods of the present ; the deeper in- 
 sight, the increased delicacy and tact, the more facile appre- 
 hension of clues and their leadings, the finer appreciation of 
 habits and drifts of thought, of undertones of sentiment and 
 experience, of the modulations of mood and passion, of the 
 nuances of phrasing and expression, of color, atmosphere, 
 tone, grouping, treatment; — the culture, in short, of those 
 literary instincts and methods, the possession of which makes 
 our age, however deficient in creative power, pre-eminent in 
 critical skill. That there has been a palpable gain within the 
 last half century in the application of expert tests to the criti- 
 cism of the Bible on the literary side, no competent and 
 fair-minded judge will deny. 
 
 But I pass on to consider more specifically the results ob- 
 tained by the application of these tests to the Gospel record 
 in the New Testament, and the significance of these results 
 for our conception of the inspiration of that record. After 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 27. 
 
 a century of exhaustive investigation and sharp discussion, 
 the most sober-minded and trust-worthy critics are now 
 rapidly reaching a consensus of judgment on this most im- 
 portant and vital subject. Certain conclusions may be re- 
 garded as established to the point of the highest reasonable 
 probability. I will try to formulate these as briefly as possi- 
 ble, in so far as they are vital to the decision of the question 
 before us.' Beginning with the Synoptic Gospels,* it is now 
 generally admitted that in the form in which we have them, 
 they are derived immediately from certain written sources. 
 These are mainly two : (i) A Fact — Source, consisting chiefly 
 of deeds, incidents in the life of our Lord, together with such 
 conversational or other remarks as naturally accompany them, 
 to which may be added a few short discourses, parables, 
 and the like. In its purest form this Source is identified 
 with the principal groundwork of our Mark. It is found 
 also as the pragmatic groundwork of Matthew and Luke. 
 (2) A Word — , or Logia — Source, consisting mainly, though 
 not exclusively, of sayings and discourses of Christ, which we 
 find in its earliest and most historic form in Luke, but in its 
 fullest and most elaborate form in our Matthew, to whom the 
 earliest tradition (represented by Papias) accredits it. The 
 primary material of these Sources is unmistakably Apostolic, 
 using the word in its broader New Testament sense.' It pro- 
 ceeds from credible eye witnesses and inspired servants of 
 the Word. This is directly asserted by Luke (i, if.) and con- 
 
 ^ For the authorities see Appendix. 
 
 * The limits of the occasion for which the paper was prepared ]>re- 
 vented the carrying out of my original purpose to compare the Synop- 
 tic form of the Gospel with the Johannean. Those who are familiar 
 with the most decisive conclusions of criticism on this head are well 
 aware how greatly they would have strengthened the argument. 
 
 » For which consult Bp. Lightfoot's Excursus on " The name and of- 
 fice of an Apostle" in his Commentary on Galatians. 
 
28 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 firmed throughout by the internal characteristics of all the 
 Gospel narratives. 
 
 This Double-Source Theory is now all but universally re- 
 garded as the key to the solution of the Synoptic problem.^ 
 
 In addition to these two main Sources, there are other 
 special documents peculiar to each Evangelist, notably Luke, 
 as examples of which we may take the opening chapters re- 
 specting our Lord's birth and childhood, and ch. xv, with its 
 immortal triad of parables. 
 
 These documentary sources, particularly the first two, were 
 called forth by the inadequacy of the primitive oral tradition, 
 for either the perpetuation or the dissemination of the Gospel 
 record. They came to be of especial service in the instruc- 
 tion of catechumens ; and perhaps the most satisfactory ex- 
 planation of the definiteness, uniformity, and universality, 
 which they acquired, and which made it possible for them to 
 supersede all other like documents of that age, is to be found 
 in the catechumenical use that was made of them.^ 
 
 ^ There is still room as yet for differences of opinion respecting the 
 precise relations to each other of the original groundworks and present 
 canonical forms of the Gospels. These differences do not affect, how- 
 ever, the more essential points in respect to which substantial unanim- 
 ity prevails. See Prof. Bruce on " the increasing concensus among 
 critics of all schools and countries," and on the way in which "the 
 question is being gradually narrowed." The Presbyterian Review, Vol. 
 V, p. 630. And compare Prof. Sanday's article, "A Survey of the 
 Synoptic Question," in The Expositor of February, 1891, p. 87 f., and 
 especially his Second Article in the March number, entitled "Points 
 Proved or Probable," p. 179 f. 
 
 ' The proem of Luke's Gospel will be found especially instructive 
 at this point. It will be noted that Luke recognized the twofold 
 source of the record mentioned above. He accurately describes the 
 former when he says that " Many have taken in hand to draw up a 
 narrative concerning the facts " {irepl rav irpayfiaruv), as transmitted 
 from the original '^eye-witnesses" (ol an' apxfj^ avrdKTai). He well 
 describes the latter when he states his own object to be that Theoph- 
 ilus " might know the certainty of the words wherein he was catechet- 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 29 
 
 Looking at the way in which the Synoptic Evangelists have 
 made use of these documents, we find that the versions to 
 which they had access respectively, while substantially identi- 
 cal, must have varied in some details. There is internal evi- 
 dence also that each adjusted and edited the material in his 
 own way. Mark, e. g., has stamped the groundwork of his 
 Gospel with many vivid touches which may be distinctly 
 traced to the personality of Peter. There are visible indica- 
 tions of Luke's own hand touching up the record in his Cios- 
 pel, not seldom producing a marked variation from the more 
 original type as exhibited in ALatthew or Mark. He has a 
 way also of supplying a "motive" for an incident or a 
 parable, which is lacking in the other Evangelists, and which, 
 however, it be explained, at least increases the perplexity 
 of the harmonizer. Matthew has a way of elaborating a par- 
 ticular discourse, or of grouping parables or facts, on other 
 than strict historic lines. The Sermon on the Mount, e. g., 
 as found in Matthew, can not be regarded as a verbatim re- 
 port of a single coiinected discourse, but rather as in the be- 
 ginning, indeed, a memorable discourse, the historic form ot 
 which has been more clearly reproduced by Luke, which 
 Matthew has enlarged by the addition of cognate remarks 
 made at other times and places, and systematized into a more 
 complete ideal presentation by Christ of the principles and 
 laws of his kingdom. So also in the report of our Lord's 
 eschatological discourse, Matthew has, by the introduction of 
 a single word, ^'■immediately after the tribulation of those 
 days" (xxiv, 29), foreshortened, in a material way, the per- 
 spective of the whole phophecy, putting Christ's final coming, 
 in accordance with the expectation of the Apostolic age, in 
 
 ically instructed " [irtpi wk KaTrjxrfim ^6y<Jv). This last clause is also 
 significant as to the catechetical function of the earlier Gospel records. 
 Let it be noted, furthermore, that Luke's statement as to the primary 
 sources of the material of these documentary records stamps them 
 with the authority of credible and inspired witnesses. Ch. i, 2. 
 
30 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 the immediate future.' Thus it will be seen that the editorial 
 elaboration and adaptation of the source-material has tended 
 in the aggregate result to multiply and intensify the individual 
 peculiarities and divergences of the Synoptics rather than to 
 bring them into closer correspondence. 
 
 But back of these documentary sources lies the oral tradi- 
 tional Gospel, the first form which the Gospel record neces- 
 sarily assumed, which, of course, disappeared with the first 
 generation of Palestinian Christians, and soon passed over 
 into the written documentary form. The theory that our 
 Gospel record was the direct transcription of this oral Gospel, 
 which was for a time quite prevalent, has now been aban- 
 doned by all the leading critics as inadequate to account for 
 the facts, although it is not denied that there are features of 
 the record for which the recognition of its influence would 
 still help to account.^ 
 
 Once more : Back of all these sources, oral and written, 
 lies the important fact, now unquestioned, that our Lord's 
 discourses were spoken in Aramaic, and that to this lan- 
 guage must be referred the great bulk of the original material 
 of our Gospels. The first form of the oral Gospel was un- 
 doubtedly Aramaic. The first form of the Logia-Source was, 
 according to the express testimony of Papias, Aramaic. The 
 basis of the other main Source was Aramaic, as we may 
 reasonably infer from the study of Mark, its purest representa- 
 
 1 Whether, as in the text, the insertion of ivdeuc; be atributed to the 
 editorial elaboration of Matthew, or its omission to the editing of 
 Mark and Luke, the effect in either case on the prophetic perspective 
 can not be ignored. 
 
 * It should be noted that a single direct oral prototype of our written 
 Gospel record is forbidden by the fact that already the New Testament 
 record reflects three types of the tradition, to wit : the Marco-Petrine, 
 the Matthaean (Logia), and the Johannean, leaving out of the account 
 the indefinite floating mass of Agrapha, the study of which has at last 
 been initiated by the recent work of Resch. 
 
BIBMCAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 3' 
 
 tive. The same was true, doubtless, of most of the other 
 special documents, e. g., those of Luke, to which reference 
 has been made.' 
 
 This is the account which the best modern criticism gives 
 of the composition of the Synoptic Gospels. How does this 
 account bear on the interpretation of the record, and on our 
 conception of the mode of its inspiration ? 
 
 First let us note that we have here the complex result of a 
 complex process. Our study of the Gospels, and especially 
 of " the Harmony of the Gospels," has made each one famil- 
 iar with the lack of perfect correspondence between the Gospel 
 narratives. The synoptic story, I need not say, is full of 
 breaks, leaps, omissions here, additions there, transpositions 
 all the way along,^ with many variations in matters of detail, 
 which by no means affect the substance of the record, but 
 which are an endless and often insoluble perplexity to those 
 who are in search of an exact literal harmony ; Osiander, e.g., 
 one of the earliest of our rigid modern harmonists, finding it 
 necessary, in order to maintain the perfect consistency of the 
 record, to introduce Peter's wife's mother as three times 
 falling ill of a fever, of which Christ three times healed her. 
 We are all familiar with these characteristics. But the point 
 I would emphasize is this : the prevalent critical view of the 
 structure of the Gospel record puts a totally new aspect on 
 the problem of solving the irregularities and discrepancies. 
 So long as it was held that the " original autograph " of each 
 Gospel was throughout the original production of the author 
 
 1 On this feature of the case see the very interesting series of arti- 
 cles by Prof. Marshall, now publishing in The E.xpositor on " Tht Ara- 
 maic Gospel. ^^ 
 
 * " The Gospels, and especially the first three, can in no sense be re- 
 garded as methodical annals. It is, therefore, difficult, and perhaps im- 
 possible, so to harmonize them in respect to time as in all cases to arrive 
 at results which shall be entirely certain and satisfactory." Robinson's 
 Harmony of the Four Gospels in Greek. Introduction to the Notes. 
 3 
 
32 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 whose name it bears, that Matthew wrote out all the Gospel 
 under his name, as Plutarch, e. g., wrote out each of his 
 Lives; that Mark did the same, either from information sup- 
 plied by Peter or by simply condensing Matthew; that Luke 
 at least wrote out an original recast of Matthew and Mark, 
 with additions from sources of his own — for this was substan- 
 tially the old theory — it might perhaps be urged, with a show 
 of reason, that these differences, being known to the authors, 
 were intentional and susceptible of an explanation to their 
 minds, if not to ours;^ that they were in large measure only 
 a question of order, of expansion, of condensation, of sup- 
 plementation. Even then it was a serious task to reconcile 
 these divergences in such a way as to meet the requirements 
 of a verbal inspiration.^ With the present conclusions of 
 criticism, however, such an explanation is utterly out of the 
 question.' A recourse to the ipsissima verba of the original 
 autograph fails us out and out. For the great bulk of the 
 Gospel material there is no original autograph. There never 
 was one. There was no ipsissima verba report of our Lord's 
 words taken down on the spot. They passed into the mem- 
 ory of those who heard them, and that in their Aramaic form. 
 The two basal records, the Fact-record and the Word-record, 
 were gradually organized out of those memories. What of 
 
 ^ ♦' Such apparent inconsistencies and collisions with other sources 
 of information are to be expected in imperfect copies of ancient writ- 
 ings ; from the fact that the original reading may have been lost, or 
 that we may fail tc realize the point of view of the author, or that we 
 are destitute of the circumstantial knowledge which would fill up and 
 harmonize the record." Drs. Hodge and Warfield : Presbyterian Re- 
 view, Vol. II, p. 237. 
 
 * It may be well to state here once for all that in this paper the ex- 
 pression " verbal inspiration " is in such connections as the above used 
 for brevity, according to a common usage, to designate the dogma 
 
 of absolute verbal inerrancy. It will be seen further along that I my- 
 self hold strongly to the theopneustic quality of the words as well as 
 thoughts of Scripture. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 33 
 
 the ipsissi?na verba in that organizing process?' With the in- 
 creasing demand for exactness, perpetuity, and a wider cir- 
 culation, the record gradually took the written form. How 
 about the ipsissimd verba in that process? How close the 
 correspondence between the oral and the written form? 
 Who knows ? What modifications may have taken place ? 
 Who knows? Soon came the need for a Greek record. 
 Gradually the primary Aramaic material took on a secondary 
 Greek form. How about the ipsissima verba in that process? 
 Did absolutely no modification take place ? How do we 
 know that ? What changes may have come into the colla- 
 tion, the combination, the didactic and catechetical adapta- 
 tion, the dissemination of the various numerous records?* 
 We know nothing of all this. We only know that without a 
 standing ipsissima verba miracle running through every step 
 of all these processes, an ipsissima verba result would have 
 been impossible. What right have we to affirm that such a 
 miracle was wrought ? Where is the evidence ? Nay ! every 
 advance which criticism has made in the examination of the 
 Gospel record has only made it more and more certain that 
 the varying representations of the record can be accounted 
 for only as being the inevitable accompaniments of human 
 fallibility in the complex processes through which the record 
 reached its final form. It is now as certain as any thing can 
 
 > To relegate this traditional stage of the Gospel record to the cate- 
 gory of *' Revelation," and to limit " Inspiration " to the written formu- 
 lation, would be the height of logical fatuity and self-contradiction. If 
 an ipsissima verba inspiration was needed anywhere, it surely was 
 needed in laying the foundations of the record. It was the conscious- 
 ness of this, doubtless, which led Drs. Hodge and Warfield to contra- 
 dict their own logic and sharp discriminations by saying of the super- 
 intendence which they indentify with the essence of inspiration that it 
 " attended the entire process of the genesis of Scripture." See below, 
 p. 34, n. 2. 
 
 * Compare Luke, i: I. 
 
34 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 well be as a matter of historical record, that when one evan- 
 gelist says that two blind men were healed by Christ near 
 Jericho, while another mentions but one ; when one describes 
 the healing as taking place on the way into Jericho, the other 
 on the way out, these variations are to be taken at their face 
 value, as representing diversities in the sources, as the honest, 
 but immaterial contradictions of honest human testimony, 
 when subjected to the complicated and trying conditions 
 through which the Gospel witness has passed, divergences, 
 which, so far from discrediting the essential fact, the miracle, 
 only corroborate it to every candid judgment.^ 
 
 But it is claimed that inspiration is not necessarily con- 
 cerned with this process of building up the record, but with 
 the final formulation of it.^ I hope to show further along 
 
 1 The same remark applies to the divergences found in the narratives 
 of the healing of the centurion's servant (Mat. viii : 5 f.; Lk. vii : if.), 
 and of the demoniac of Gadara (Mat. viii ; 28 f ; Mk. v: if.; Lk. viii: 
 26 f.) ; the calling of the Capernaum Apostles (Mat. iv : 18 f.; Mk. i: 
 16 f.; Lk. V : if.); the raising of Jairus's daughter (Mat. ix : 18 f.; Mk. 
 v : 22 f.; Lk. viii : 41 f.). 
 
 2 "/« many cases these gifts [Revelation and Inspiration] were sep- 
 arated. Many of the sacred writers, although inspired, received no 
 revelations. This was probably the fact with the historical books of 
 the Old Testament. The evangelist Luke does not refer his knowl- 
 edge of the events which he records to revelation, but says he derived 
 it from those ' which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and min- 
 isters of the Word.' // is i?7imaterial to tis where Moses obtained his 
 knowledge of the events recorded in the book of Genesis ; whether 
 from early documents, from tradition, or from direct revelation. No 
 more causes are to be assumed for any effect than are necessary. If the 
 sacred writers had sufficient sources of knowledge in themselves, or in 
 those about them, there is no need to assume any direct revelation. It is 
 enough for us that they tvere rendered infallible as teachers.'^ Dr. Charles 
 Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. i, p. 155. "Inspiration is that di- 
 vine influence which, accompanying the sacred writers equally in all 
 they wrote, secured the infallible truth of their writings in every part, 
 both in idea and expression, and determined the selection and distribution 
 
IBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 35 
 
 what an utterly inadequate and unscriptural view of insjjira- 
 tion this gives us. For the i)resent I am concerned with the 
 Hterary and critical aspect of the position. 
 
 Note to begin with how strange it is that if an ipsissima 
 
 of their material according to the divine purpose." [Observe that noth- 
 ing is said of the inspiration of the material. That is not assumed as 
 necessary.] By what some writers, as Doddridge, Lee, etc., have 
 called "the inspiration of sttpetintendence,^^ is ^' meant />reeisc/y what 
 we [Dr. A. A. Hodge] have given above as the definition of inspiration:'' 
 Dr. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, pp. 67, 69. Drs. A. A. 
 Hodge and B. B. Warfield, in their joint article, '■^ distinguish sharply 
 between Revelation, which is the frequent [but not constant], and In- 
 spiration, which is the constant attribute of all the thoughts and state- 
 ments of Scripture, and between the problem of the genesis of Scripture 
 on the one hand, which includes historic processes and the concurrence 
 of natural and supernatural forces, and must account for all the phe- 
 nomena of Scripture, and the mere FACT OF INSPIRATION on the other 
 hand, or the superintendence by God of the writers in the entire process of 
 their writing, WHICH ACCOUNTS for nothing whatever but the ab- 
 solute INFALLIBILITY of the record in which the revelation, once gene- 
 rated, appears in THE ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPH. It will be observed that 
 we intentionally avoid applying to this inspiration the predicate 'influ- 
 ence.' It summoned on occasion a great variety of influences, but its 
 essence was superintendence. This superintendence attended the entire 
 process of the genesis of Scripture, and particularly the process of the 
 FINAL COMPOSITION OF THE RECORD." The Presbyterian Review, Vol. 
 II, p. 225 f. I can not resist the temptation to call attention to the ex- 
 traordinary logical confusion into which owx par nobile fratrum dogmat- 
 icorum plunge in the last sentence. After " distinguishing sharply " be- 
 tween " the genesis of Scripture, and the mere fact of inspiration," or its 
 equivalent and "essence," to wit, "superintendence," we are gravely 
 assured that " this superintendence " [which is " the essence " of inspira- 
 tion] attended the entire process of the genesis of Scripture [which is to be 
 " sharply distinguished " from inspiration] !! And strange to say this 
 confusion comes immediately after this solemn warning: "It is im- 
 portant that distinguishable ideas should be connoted by distinct 
 terms, and that the terms themselves should be fixed in a definite 
 sense ! " Review, p. 225. 
 
36 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 verba infallibility, secured by a supervision which is the 
 essence of inspiration, was essential, the record as it stands 
 should present so many difficulties on that theory. We have 
 heard of prohibition which does not prohibit, of protection 
 which does not protect. Have we here an infallible super- 
 visory inspiration which does not inspire infallibility? It 
 looks very much like it, if we are shut up to the ipsissima 
 verba theory. 
 
 Mark again that the difficulties which criticism finds are by 
 no means explicable as lapses of the pen. They are too 
 closely bound with the warp and woof of the record. Struc- 
 tural variations,' dislocations of the narrative,'^ the transposi- 
 tion of events,^ in some instances the duplication of the same 
 
 ^ As in the reports given respectively by Matthew and Luke of the 
 Sermon on the Mount. Mat. v : 7 ; Lake vi : 20 f. Compare also the 
 structure, introductions, contents, and forms of the discourses, etc., re- 
 corded in Mat. xii : 22 f.; Mk. iii : 20 f.; Lk. xi: 14 f.; also in Mat. x: i f.; 
 Mk. vi: 7 f.; Lk. ix : I f.; also in Mat. xviii : 1-35 ; Mk. ix: 33-50; Lk. 
 ix : 46-50. 
 
 * E. g. in Mat. (x : i f. ) the ordination of the Twelve comes some 
 time (cf. xi : i f.) before the events recorded in ch. xii: 1-21 ; whereas 
 in Mark (ii : 23-iii : 12) and Luke (vi : I f . ) they follow, though at 
 no very long interval. Again the contents of ch. viii-ix come consid- 
 erably_ before (cf. ix : 35 f.; xi : i f., 20 f.) the events of ch. xii ; whereas 
 in Mk. and Lk. the order is totally reversed, the events of Mat. xii 
 being recorded in Mk. ii : 23 f.; iii: 1-35; Lk. vi : 1-19 (/. c. Mat. 
 xii: 22 f. not until Lk. xi : 14 f.), and the events of Mat. viii: i8-ix: 
 26, in Mk. iv : 35-v : 43, and Lk. viii : 22 f. Again the calling of Mat- 
 thew, which in Mark (the same order substantially in Luke) comes be- 
 fo-e the contents of ii : 23-v : 21, in Matthew comes after the parallel 
 parts of the record. 
 
 ' Note e. g. in Mat. the position of the Galilean tour, comparing the 
 context of Mat. iv: 23 f. with the context of Mk. i: 35 f.; Lk. iv: 
 42 f.; the place of the Sermon on the Mount in Mat. (v: i f. ), as com- 
 pared with its place in Lk. vi : 20 f.; the order of the three tempta- 
 tions in Mat. iv: I f., as compared with Lk. iv: I f. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 37 
 
 event or saying in the same narrative,' these surely are not 
 transcriptional deviations from the original autograph. 
 
 Still further, on the ipsissi/na verba original autograph theory, 
 textual criticism, as it restores to us the purer, more original 
 form of the text, should tend to eliminate these discrepancies, 
 and to bring the various representations into closer harmony 
 with each other. What is the fact ? The very reverse. The 
 more corrupt the text the smoother it is, the more in harmony 
 with itself, the more do we find both of verbal and material 
 assimilation in parallel passages. The older and purer the 
 text, the rougher we find it, the more striking are its indi- 
 vidualities, the more sharply accentuated are the differences, 
 the less conformity do we find to a standard of infallible ex- 
 actitude. 
 
 Let me give you one or two examples : In Mark, i : 2 f . we 
 have two Old Testament citations from two prophets, the first 
 from Malachi, and the second from Isaiah. In the received 
 text these citations are introduced with the formula: "As it 
 is written in the prophets." The true reading, however, is: 
 "As it is written in Isaiah the prophet."'^ Here the false read- 
 ing gave us absolute inerrancy. The true reading gives us at 
 least an inexactitude, which, whatever else may be said of it, 
 is not unqualifiedly favorable to the affirmation that the name 
 " Isaiah " in the New Testament always meant one particular 
 man, and nobody else. 
 
 Again : in Mark ii : 26, we read in the Authorized Version 
 (following the Received Text) that David "went into the 
 house of God in the days of Abiathar, the high-priest." As 
 a matter of fact, Abiathar was not the high-priest at the time, 
 but Abimelech. The explanation which a literalistic exegesis 
 has commonly offered of the statement is that Abiathar be- 
 
 * Cf. e. g. Mat. V : 29 f. with xviii : 8 f.; ix : 32 f. with xii : 22 f.; v : 24 
 with xxiii : 22. 
 
 * So of course the Revised Version. 
 
38 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 came high-priest afterward, and that he is called so here by 
 anticipation. And we may grant that, following the less au- 
 thentic text, such an explanation, though not the most prob- 
 able, was not impossible. But unfortunately Textual Criti- 
 cism comes in, and proves that the passage should read — 
 " when Abiathar was high-priest"^ — which puts the old ex- 
 planation out of court at once. Transcription had corrected 
 the historical inaccuracy out of the text ; criticism, doing its 
 duty honestly, has put it back. 
 
 Once more: in Matthew (xix : 17), where the ruler asked 
 our Lord : ' ' Good master, what good thing shall I do that I 
 may have eternal life ? " Christ answered, according to the 
 Received Text: " Why callest thou me good?" Mark and 
 Luke both give precisely, verbally, the same answer. So far 
 the theory of verbal inspiration is safe. But unfortunately 
 here again Textual Criticism finds that Matthew's text should 
 read — "Why askest thou me concerning that which is 
 good?"^ — a difference not only in the words, but in the 
 thought, and indeed in the point and pith of the answer. 
 Thus we see that the tendency of a more exact knowledge 
 of the text is to accentuate the individuality and variations 
 of the records, so far as the nearest approach even to our 
 original autographs enables us to judge. 
 
 And now is it supposed that we solve all the difficulties 
 connected with the preHminary processes in the building of 
 the record, by throwing the responsibiUty for inerrancy on 
 the final revision ? Shall we say that the inspiration of the 
 Gospel of Luke, e. g., is to be sought for not in the material, 
 not in the documents which he confessedly used, but in the 
 editorial compilation and elaboration of the material ? ^ 
 Surely this is a most unsatisfactory solution. Of all the make- 
 
 ^ So the Revised Version. 
 
 ' So here again the Revised Version. 
 
 ' See note 3, p. 34. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRAI ION. 39 
 
 shifts to which the theory of absolute inerrancy compels its 
 adherents, this is to my mind the weakest. Inspiration a 
 mere matter of editing and proof-reading, of correction and 
 revision, crossing out and touching up with the pen an unin- 
 spired record, and so making an inspired thing of it! I chal- 
 lenge this conception here and now as unworthy, degrading, 
 belittling, as more hostile to a robust, living faith, than any 
 thing I know of short of rationalism ! Inspiration — what is 
 it? Thf,opneustia ! The Breath of God! The Life of 
 God! The pulsation of God's thought and heart all the way 
 throug If you do not give me that, you give me stone for 
 bread. "The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit 
 and are life." The idea that inspiration resolves itself into 
 the correction of a date,' substituting one man's name for 
 another, changing a number, inserting a caption — important 
 a§ such particulars may be in their way — such an idea of in- 
 spiration is suitable only for Theology in Lilliputia. 
 
 But as a matter of fact where are we? What have 
 we? Have we an infallible revision? Have we an iner- 
 rant result? Have we a New. Testament, or an Old Tes- 
 tament, with absolutely no mistake, no inaccuracy, from 
 beginning to end? I know of no respectable critic who 
 claims that. Every body will admit that in the processes of 
 transcription and transmission, at least, some error has crept 
 into the book, some contradiction, some inaccuracy, which, 
 as the matter stands, can not be accepted as the e.xact state- 
 ment of that particular matter. But is not that virtually to 
 give up the whole position ? What is inspiration for ? Surely 
 to advantage the reader.' But what is the value of an infal- 
 lible editorship which does not secure a permanently infallible 
 
 1 " God gave His Word, not for the private use of the fifty or sixty 
 chosen men to whom it was first revealed, but for the salvation of the 
 innumerable company of the redeemed." Dr. E. P. Humphrey, Sec- 
 ond General Council of the Presbyterian Alliance, 1880, p. 109. 
 
40 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 text? Here is an error which has been in the text for fifteen 
 centuries, and which there can not be much doubt will stay 
 there now for all the centuries to come. What difference 
 does it make, so far as the readers of the past fifteen cen- 
 turies and the readers of all future centuries are concerned, 
 whether the error was in the original autograph or not ? How 
 does it affect the value of the record to-day, for you and for 
 me, to say that the error which is there to-day was not there 
 eighteen hundred years ago ? Your inerrant autograph is an 
 abstraction ; your inerrant text is an abstraction. Does God 
 hang his revelation on an abstraction ? Does the present er- 
 ror destroy the inspiration of the Bible as we have it ? We 
 all say not. Then why should the original error destroy the 
 inspiration of the Bible as it was first given ? If absolute 
 verbal infallibility was essential to inspiration, does not the 
 loss of that infallibility imply the loss of that inspiration ? If 
 it was essential that the first copy should be inerrant in ev- 
 ery possible particular, if without such inerrancy it could 
 have no authority, why is not the same inerrancy essential to 
 every copy, and where does the authority of our present 
 copies come from? You say: "A single error breaks down 
 the Bible." ^ One comes up and points out an apparent error. 
 Drs. Hodge and Warfield are constrained to admit that it has all 
 the .appearance of an error,^ but that if we only had the orig- 
 inal autograph, etc. He is a busy man, and cares very little 
 for hypothetical abstractions and replies : " On your own theory 
 the Bible has all the appearance of being broken down by what 
 has all the appearance of being an error. When you find your 
 original autograph I shall be pleased to hear from you." 
 You get the General Assembly to declare that unless God 
 
 1 "A proved error in Scripture contradicts not only our doctrine, but 
 the Scripture claims, and therefore its inspiration in making those 
 claims." Drs. Hodge and Warfield, 7Vie Presbyterian Revieiv, Vol. II, 
 
 P- 245- 
 
 * See note i, p. 32. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSFIRM ION. 
 
 41 
 
 gave an absolutely errorless Bible, he gave no Bible at all. 
 Your people construe that to mean that unless you have an 
 absolutely errorless Bible, you have no Bible at all. What 
 have you or they gained? I thank God that I am not shut 
 up to any such conclusion; and, most of all, I thank (]od 
 that when an inquiring soul comes to me with his difficulties, 
 I do not have to shut him up to any such conclusion. There 
 are spots on yonder sun ; do they stop its being a sun ? Why, 
 science tells me that they are a part of the solar economy, 
 and that the sun is all the more a sun for the spots. How do' 
 I know that it may not be so with the Bible ? 
 
 But the theory that all the errors in the text are surrep- 
 titious, that none of them are to be referred to the original 
 autographs, is one which honest criticism finds itself unable 
 to accept. Some of course might be accounted for in this 
 way, but that the vast majority, and especially that those 
 which present the most serious difficulties are later corrup- 
 tions, is utterly out of the question. I have already shown 
 how this theory fails us in the Gospels. Let us take one ex- 
 ample out of the Epistles. In Galatians iii : 17 Paul says 
 that the Law came 430 years after the Covenant with Abra- 
 ham. But according to three express historical statements 
 found elsewhere, to wit, God's prediction to Abraham (Gen. 
 xv; 13), the statement of the book of Exodus (xii : 40), and 
 the statement of Stephen (Acts vii: 6), the sojourning of the 
 children of Israel in Egypt, and their bondage there contin- 
 ued 400, or 430 (so Ex. /. c.) years, to which must be added 
 the 200 years between the covenant with Abraham and 
 Jacob's descent to Egypt, making more than 600 years from 
 the Abrahamic covenant to the giving of the Law. Accord- 
 ing to the Hebrew Bible, and according to Stephen, Paul's 
 chronology is at fault by about 200 years. And unfortu- 
 nately we are precluded from falling back here on that con- 
 venient abstraction, the original autograph, by the unques- 
 tionable fact that, according to his customary rule. Paul is 
 
42 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 here following the Septuagint, which has added certain words 
 to the Hebrew text in Exodus (/. c.) so as to make the 430 
 years include the sojourning in Canaan, along with the so- 
 journing in Egypt. Now as a question of criticism, biblical 
 and historical, I can not help believing that the Hebrew text 
 and Stephen are right here, and that the Septuagint and Paul 
 are wrong. What am I to do ? If I instruct my class that 
 Paul's statement is infallibly inspired, I put Stephen in the 
 wrong, I have the Old Testament passages to explain, and I 
 have serious historical difficulties to remove.^ Will you blame 
 
 ' Of these difficulties the most serious and the only one to which I 
 will now refer, lies in the extraordinary multiplication of the children 
 of Israel in Egypt. The facts of the case, as given in Genesis and 
 Exodus, are the following: i. The number of the Israelites at the 
 beginning of the sojourn in Egypt was seventy souls. Gen. xlvi: 27. 
 — 2. The number who went forth out of Egypt is given at "six hun- 
 dred thousand on foot that were men, beside children" (Ex. xii ; 37). 
 This would give about three millions for the entire number. — 3. This 
 remarkable increase had taken place under the most grievous oppres- 
 sion and bondage. Ex. i : 7-14. — 4. In the face also of concerted 
 methods of extermination. Ex. i : 15-22. Many of the negative crit- 
 ics of the Bible, basing their deductions on the traditional chronology 
 represented by the Septuagint, which limits the sojourn of the Israel- 
 ites in Egypt to 230 years, have questioned the entire narrative. So 
 among others Bp. Colenso, who argued the case very skillfully and 
 forcibly from that point of view. Prof W. H. Green, D.D., of Prince- 
 ton, in his book: "The Pentateuch vindicated from the aspersions of 
 Bp. Colenso," thus disposes of the argument. Respecting the Sept. 
 reading of Ex. xii: 40, he says: "The gloss thus put upon this pas- 
 sage in Exodus, as it seemed to have the authority of an inspired 
 apostle in its favor in Gal. iii : 17, and as the genealogy of Moses, Ex. 
 vi : 16-20, appeared to preclude the supposition that 430 years were 
 spent in Egypt, became the well nigh universal view of the case. It 
 still has its advocates, though the leading Biblical scholars of Europe have 
 abandoned it.'''' On the passage in Galatians, Dr. Green says: "This 
 language of the apostle, however, does not appear to us to be decisive 
 of the point at issue. The interval of time is only incidentally men- 
 tioned. Precision of statement regarding it was of no consequence to his 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLAKSHli' AND INSl'IRAllON. 43 
 
 me if, instead of putting an artificial forced construction on 
 such a passage in the interests of an a priori theory, I prefer a 
 straightforward, manly, sober, reverent view of the difficulty, 
 like that which Prof. Beet has taken in his Commentary: 
 " The above discussion warns us not to try to settle (juestions 
 of Old Testament historical criticism by casual allusions in the 
 New Testament. AH such attempts are unworthy of scien- 
 tific Biblical scholarship. By inweaving his words to man in 
 historic fact, God appealed to the ordinary laws of human 
 credibility. These laws attest with absolute certainty the 
 great facts of Christianity. And upon these great facts, and 
 upon these only, rest both our faith in the Gospel and in God, 
 and the authority of the Sacred Book. Consequently . . . 
 our faith does not require the absolute accuracy of every his- 
 torical detail in the Bible, and is not disturbed by any error 
 in detail which may be detected in its pages. At the same 
 time our study of the Bible reveals there an historical accu- 
 racy which will make us very slow to condemn as erroneous 
 even unimportant statements of Holy Scripture. And in spite 
 of any possible errors in small details or allusions, the Book 
 itself remains to us as — in a unique and infinitely glorious 
 sense — a literary embodiment of the Voice and Word of 
 God." I most heartily say Amen to every line of that state- 
 ment. It is the only tenable position to take. 
 
 argument." And on the chronology itself Dr. Green' delivers this 
 judgment: "The evidence is, we think, conclusive that the abode in 
 Egypt lasted ^^o years. This is the statural sefise of Ex. xii : 40, and 
 none would ever think of extracting a different meaning from it, but for 
 reasons found outside of the verse itself . . . The verse makes no 
 allusion to Canaan, but only to Egypt." In a subsequent chapter he 
 shows how a term of 430 years in Egypt meets all the requirements of 
 the narrative touching the multiplication, of the nation, etc. His 
 whole argument is a striking illustration of the fact that honest criti- 
 cism yields in the end the best apologetic results. See pp. Iijf, 
 141 f., of "The Pentateuch Vindicated." 
 
44 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 This illustration brings up another point of importance in 
 Biblical criticism. I refer to the use made of the Old Testa- 
 ment in the New. Without going into detail, let me call at- 
 tention to the fact, that almost every possible way in which 
 an Old Testament passage can be cited, is adopted.^ As a 
 rule, the citations follow the Septuagint, sometimes closely, 
 sometimes loosely. Sometimes the Seventy as cited is an 
 exact translation of the original. Sometimes it is a free, but 
 faithful, rendering, giving the sense rather than the words. 
 Sometimes it is hardly a translation at all, but a paraphrase. 
 Sometimes it gives a sense quite different from the original. 
 In making the citation, the New Testament writer sometimes 
 quotes the Septuagint verbatim. Sometimes he changes a 
 word or two. Sometimes the change brings the passage into 
 closer conformity to the original Hebrew. Sometimes the 
 change introduces a variation both from the Hebrew and from 
 the Septuagint. Sometimes the writer gives a new translation 
 of the Hebrew, apparently his own. I appeal to every can- 
 did student of these facts, whether they comport with the 
 notion of a rigorous verbal infallibility. To my mind they 
 are quite conclusive of the contrary. Calvin himself, re- 
 ferring to the deviation of the Seventy, as cited in Heb. xi : 
 21 from the Massoretic Hebrew text, says of the Apostolic 
 use of the Old Testament : "The Apostle does not hesitate 
 to accommodate to his own purpose (non dubitat suo institute 
 acconwdarc) what was commonly received. He wrote, in- 
 deed, to the Jews; but to those who, being dispersed through 
 various countries, had exchanged their national language for 
 Greek. We know that in such a matter the Apostles were 
 not very scrupulous {iion adeo ftiisse scrupulosos) ," by which 
 of course Calvin means that they were not careful about exacti- 
 
 See D. M. Turpie's The Old Testament in the New, p. 266 f. 
 
BIBLICAL SCIIOLAKSHIP AND INSriKATlON. 
 
 45 
 
 tude in all matters of detail. " In the thing itself," he add-. 
 " there is but little difference." ' 
 
 I have thus far sought to show that the theory of an 
 ipsissima verba infallibility in Scripture fails when brought 
 to the test of the best assured conclusions of criticism. 
 It remains to take a brief look at the positive side of 
 the question. For, allow me to say, that to us, even 
 as to you, nay to us even more than it can be to you, 
 who say with Drs. Hodge and Warfield that "the es- 
 
 ' It may be well lo add here that rigid in some respects as was Cal- 
 vin's dogma of inspiration as set forth in his Institutes, though by no 
 means as rigid as the later dogma, his attitude became very much freer 
 when brought face to face with the particular problems of criticism. 
 So rationalistic, indeed, did his treatment of the Old Testament seem 
 to the more orthodox Lutherans of his day, that they charged him 
 with Judaizing. One of them calls him Calvinus Judaizans (Aeg. 
 Hunnius, Vit. 1593). Another accuses him of interpreting the passages 
 about the Messiah and the Trinity in the sense of the Jews and the 
 Socinians (see reff. in Reuss, History of the N. T., § 550). To the 
 phrase, Iva tzlrjpudrj, in connection with O. T citations, he gave so 
 elastic an interpretation that this, too, was denounced as rationalistic. 
 (See Tholuck on Calvin as an Interpreter, Bibl. Repos. ii, p. 541 ff. ) 
 He recognizes an occasional inaccuracy in the text. On Mat. xxvii : 
 9, he says : " The passage itself plainly shows that the name of 
 Jeremiah has been put down by mistake instead of Zechariah." He 
 is, at least, not anxious to trace it back to the original autograph. 
 " How the name of Jeremiah crept in, he says, I do not know, nor do 
 I give myself much trouble to inquire (nee anxie laboro)." On Luke 
 xxiv: 36, and elsewhere, he recognizes contradictions, but uniformly 
 dismisses them as of no importance, leaving as they do the substance 
 of the narrative unaffected. He doubts the Petrine authorship of the 
 Second Epistle, and can not be prevailed upon to acknowledge Paul 
 as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews {ego ut Pauliim agnoscam 
 auctorem addtici neqiteo). " Only in his very earliest writings," says 
 Reuss {Hist, of the N. T., §335), "does he follow tradition." He 
 was, in fact, a pioneer of the Higher Criticism, and it is only too evi- 
 dent that if the question of confirming his election to one of our Bibli- 
 cal chairs were to come before us to-day, he would fail of getting a 
 unanimous vote. 
 
46 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 sence of inspiration was superintendence," inspiration has 
 a very positive side ; is a massive, all-controlling, over- 
 whelmingly predominant fact, throughout the very warp and 
 woof of the Bible from beginning to end. Inspiration is not 
 to be measured by the trifles which have passed under our re- 
 view. A trifle, to be sure, may be a fact ; and if a fact, it is 
 a sin to deny it, whether small as an atom or big as Jupiter. 
 And if anywhere we are to bow before the facts, it is in the 
 sphere of Divine truth. It is not, as Prof. Briggs says, a 
 pleasant task to point out errors in Scripture. We do it only 
 as the interests of truth require, because we dare not handle 
 the word of God deceitfully. Nothing is worth saving that 
 can not be saved honestly, not even that Book. But we are 
 at an infinite remove from taking these as the measure of the 
 Bible. Cromwell showed his manliness in ordering the 
 painter to put in his portrait the wart on his face ; but who 
 would dream of judging Cromwell by his wart ? What are 
 these trifling inaccuracies in Scripture when compared with 
 the Burden of the Book? If one of the Gospel records 
 varies from another in respect to the details of a miracle, 
 what difference does it make if the Miracle remains ? If there 
 are minor incongruities in the narratives of Christ's appear- 
 ances after his resurrection, is not the Fact of his resurrection 
 made all the more certain even by these incongruities ? If 
 Paul" did — in very respectable company, too — make a mistake 
 of two hundred years in stating his argument to the Galatians, 
 what has that to do with the argument ? Does it weaken in 
 the slightest the sledge-hammer blow with which he crushes 
 Jewish legalism dead forever? If Stephen transposes certain 
 Old Testament incidents, or confuses certain names, does 
 that affect the convicting power of his terrific arraignment of 
 an apostate Israel ? Was not the power of the Holy Ghost 
 in every word that he spoke, even when least accurate?^ 
 
 ' It is one of the pitiful subterfuges of the mechanical theory tliat 
 Stephen was not, or may not have been inspired. Luke, forsooth, \\\ 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 47 
 
 Suppose that one of his hearers had undertaken to reply to 
 him, saying: "You have said that Abraham left Haran 
 after the death of his father, Terah ; whereas, if you study 
 the figures in Genesis, you will find that Terah must have 
 lived fifty years or more in Haran after Abraham left. You 
 were mistaken also in saying that Abraham bought the 
 sepulcher of the sons of Hamor in Shechem. If you look 
 into the matter a little more closely, you will find that that 
 was Jacob, and that Abraham bought his purchase at Hebron 
 of Ephron the Hittite." But would that have silenced 
 Stephen ? Such a criticism on such a speech would have 
 been like flinging a feather in the teeth of a cyclone. 
 
 God has not been afraid to commit the excellency of his 
 treasure to earthen vessels. He is not alarmed lest the weak- 
 ness of the vessel should be a damage to the treasure. He 
 has not shrunk from risking his truth on the liabilities of tradi- 
 tions, translations, transcriptions, and their inevitable accom- 
 paniments of fallibility. He has not been concerned lest the 
 popular misconceptions of a pre-Copernican astronomy, or of 
 
 his account of the external circumstances attending the discourse, was 
 inspired, but Stephen not ! And this in face of all that the inspired 
 Luke says about Stephen, that he was "full of grace and power" 
 (Ac. vi: 8) ; that his opponents " were not able to withstand the wis- 
 dom and the Spirit by which he spake " (vi : 10): that during this 
 same address, " all that sat in the council, fastening their eyes on 
 him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel " (vi: 15); that 
 his unbelieving hearers were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on 
 him with their teeth" (vii: 54); that at the close, Stephen himself, 
 "being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven and 
 saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God " 
 (vii : 55 f). This man's inspiration, an open question at the least, to 
 be denied if the exigencies of an infinitesimal literalistic inspiration 
 requires it; but the words of the annalist, who thus introduces the dis- 
 course : "And the high priest said, Are these things so? And he 
 said," potent with the essence itself of inspiration— supervision ! Is 
 not such a theory self-condemaed ? 
 4 
 
48 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 a pre-Lyellian geology, or of a pre-Linncean botany should 
 compromise his Revelation of Himself. I thank God that it 
 is so. I rejoice that Divine as is the Book, Divine as no other 
 book is, it is still so thoroughly human, so beautifully threaded 
 with the fiber of human nerve, thought, and sensibility, so 
 sweetly veined with the crimsoned channels of the heart's 
 blood, life, and experience. I rejoice that, supernatural as it 
 is, supernatural as no other book is, it is still so thoroughly 
 natural, that its literary life and growth blend so lovingly 
 and harmoniously with the currents and processes of the 
 world's divinely appointed life and growth. I rejoice that 
 God when he speaks in the language of earth and by the 
 mouth of his servants comes so low down that he is not 
 ashamed to use bad grammar, is not afraid of a barbarism 
 or a solecism, does not shrink from an archaism, or an 
 anachronism, does not disdain an antediluvian setting for 
 the doctrine of the Creation or the Fall, or what a scientist 
 might derisively call a Kindergarten formula for the truth of 
 Providence, or the Judgment. He does not hang eternal 
 issues on details that are relatively insignificant. He has not 
 so poised the Rock of Ages that the Higher or Lower Crit- 
 icism, with pick-ax or crow-bar, digging out a chronological 
 inaccuracy here, or prying off a historical contradiction there, 
 is going to upset it. The critic may be all right, the crow- 
 bar may be all right, but the Rock of Ages is all right, too, 
 and it will stand fast forever. Do not, I beseech you, charge 
 upon God the priggish precision which makes as much of a 
 mole-hill as of a mountain. God does not care to be hon- 
 ored in that way. Do not degrade him by requiring that 
 he should poise before his earthly children as an intolerant, 
 if not intolerable. Pedant, who insists on his fs and q's with 
 no less vigor and pertinacity than on his godlike SHEMA — 
 "Hear, O Israel!" or on his everlasting AMEN — "Verily, 
 verily, I say unto you !" 
 
 But what of the positive bearing of the conclusions of crit- 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRAIION. 
 
 49 
 
 icism on our conception of inspiration ? Take e. g. its con- 
 clusions in respect to the structure and contents of the 
 Synoptic Gospels. What do they teach us as to the fact of 
 inspiration ? They teach us that it is a much larger fact than 
 the scholastic notion which resolves it into mere supervision. 
 Its scope is much wider. It is the note of a supernatural 
 age ; an age in which supernatural forces were at work on an 
 extensive scale; in which supernatural facts had been wit- 
 nessed by multitudes, and had stamped their impressions on 
 thousands of living souls; an age when supernatural charis- 
 mata abounded in the church ; an age of miracles, of super- 
 natural healings, of supernatural tongues. It was pre-emi- 
 nently an age of prophetic inspiration, in which the Old Tes- 
 tament predictions were fulfilled: "And it shall be in the last 
 days, saith God, I will pour forth of my spirit upon all flesh ; 
 And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, And your 
 young men shall see visions, And your old men shall dream 
 dreams ; Yea, and on my servants and on my handmaidens 
 in those days will I pour forth of my Spirit ; And they shall 
 prophesy."^ It was an age in which there was an order of 
 prophets in the church and a gift of prophesying in the 
 churches. It was an age when Luke could say that 
 '''■ mariy have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning 
 these matters which have been fulfilled [or fully established] 
 among us;" an age which furnished Luke with that inimitable 
 story of the Infancy, written nobody knows by whom, per- 
 haps, as Alford suggests, by Mary, the mother of our Lord, 
 but as plenarily inspired, before Luke ever got hold of it, as 
 any thing that Peter or John ever wrote; an age which fur- 
 nished the fragment at the end of Mark, written nobody 
 knows by whom, but attesting itself to the consciousness of 
 the Church to-day as throughout the centuries as the inspired 
 
 Acts, ii : 14 f. 
 
50 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 Word of God, as truly and as fully such as all of Mark ; * an 
 age which furnished the pericope of the woman taken in 
 adultery, written nobody knows by whom, but as full of Jesus 
 as the diamond is full of the sun ; " an age of inspired 
 Christian hymns, some of which have found their way into 
 the record, sung nobody knows by whom, but sweet and 
 grand as the apocalyptic melodies of heaven's own Alleluias; ' 
 an age when, as the appendix to John's Gospel declares, if 
 all the facts known respecting Christ were written, the world 
 itself would not contain the books that should be written ; an 
 age when we know not how many inspired records and epis- 
 tles were written and lost ; * an age which built up mighty 
 Christian traditions, not like the dead, dry petrifactions of 
 Judaism, but fresh, living, burning traditions, to which the 
 Apostles could appeal as instinct with vital energy and au- 
 thority.^ Think you that in such an age there would be any 
 lack of inspiration for building up the Gospel record ? Look at 
 the quantity and the quality of the inspiration which this view 
 gives you; not the pedantic, pedagogical supervision of "jots 
 and tittles," but the grand, living expression of " the powers of 
 the World to Come;" not an occasional spurt or spasm, but a 
 great dynamic, ecumenical fact; not the flow of a few Arte- 
 sian wells, but a mighty tide, surging out of the great super- 
 
 ' See Revised Version at Mark, xvi : 9 f. 
 
 * See Revised Version at John, vii : 53-viii: 11. 
 
 ' See I Cor. xiv: 26 ; Col. iii : 16 ; Eph. v : 19. See exx in the songs 
 of Mary, Zacharias, and Simeon (Lk. i: 46 f., 67 f.; ii : 29 f. in Revised 
 Version and Westcott and HortJ; also, Eph. v : 14 ; I Tim. iii: 16, in 
 Westcott and Hort. Cf. Acts, iv : 24 f. See Winer's Grammar of the 
 N. T. Diction, § 68, 3, 4. 
 
 * See I Cor. v : 9 ; 2 Cor. x : 10 ; xi : 28 ; 2 Thes. ii : 15; iii : 17; Phil, 
 iii: 18; (Col. iv : 16? more probably the extant Ep. to the Ephesians); 
 3 John, in: 9. See Salmon's Introduction to the N. T., Lecture XX. 
 
 5 See Luke, i : 2 ; i Cor. xi : 2, 23 ; 2 Thes. ii : 15 ; iii : 6 ; 2 Tim. i : 
 13 ; 2 Peter, ii : 21 ; iii : 2 ; Jude, 3, 17. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 51 
 
 natural deep. What a broad, impregnal)le base you have 
 here for the Gospel record ! What a great cloud of witnesbcs! 
 What palpable energy and vitality of conviction palpitating 
 through every line of the manifold testimony ! What over- 
 whelming, convincing power in the consentaneous strength 
 of the Gospel witness to its own transcendent facts, when this 
 witness is found to rest on no artificial support, is secured by 
 no mechanical uniformity, but comes to us through what 
 Prof. Beet calls "the ordinary laws of human credibility,"' 
 bearing these marks of honesty, independence, frankness, 
 individuality, spontaneity, internal verisimilitude, which every- 
 where and always guarantee the truth of human testimony ! 
 Is it not the claim and glory of the Gospel Story that it 
 combines the dignity and authority of a heavenly recital with 
 the piquant frankness, the homelike naivete of the conversa- 
 tional fireside tale, here and there, it may be, contradicting 
 itself in small matters, breaking out into artless variations 
 and impulsive inconsistences, but all the more surely therL4)y 
 winning its way to the faith and love of the heart ? 
 
 The most important question of all still remains to be con- 
 sidered. What is inspiration — not in itself, but as a fact, as 
 a characteristic of the Bible ? In giving my answer to this 
 question, I know no better course to take than to follow the 
 line of thought in the First Chapter of our Confession of 
 Faith, perhaps the noblest Chapter in that immortal docu- 
 ment. Let me ask your attention to what is most essential in 
 that magnificent statement of the truth respecting Scripture. 
 "Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and 
 providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and 
 power of God, as to leave men ine.xcusable ; yet they are not 
 sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his .will, 
 which is necessary unto salvation." Let us ponder that state- 
 ment a moment. Why was Scripture given ? The answer 
 of our Confession is: Because "the light of nature was not 
 sufficient." Sufficient for what? "To give [a certain] 
 
52 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 knowledge." Knowledge of what ? Of botany ? chemistry? 
 geography ? By no means. The light of nature is sufificient 
 for that. It is not sufficient however ^^ for ihe knowledge ov 
 God "—that Great Infinite Being with whom as spiritual im- 
 mortal beings we have to do; ''and of his will" — that ex- 
 pression of God's eternal thoughts and purpose which most 
 essentially concerns our spiritual welfare and our eternal des- 
 tiny; and still more explicitly, "not sufficient for thai knowl- 
 edge of God which is necessary " — for what ? For science ? 
 for art? for civilization? necessary to fill a cyclopaedia? to 
 equip a college graduate ? — nay, ' ' but which is necessary unto 
 SALVATION." What is all secular knowledge compared with 
 " that knowledge of God which is necessary unto salvation? " 
 That was the great need of the world ; it was to supply that 
 need that when the light of nature failed man, God inter- 
 posed. '■'■Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, ^ and 
 in divers manners TO REVEAL HIMSELF;" mark that! 
 Not in the first instance to give a book, not to transmit a rev- 
 elation about Himself, not to write, or cause to be written, a 
 series of definitions, logical categories, abstract propositions 
 relating to his person, his nature, his attributes; but "to r^- 
 z'^«/ Himself" — actually, factually, in living deed, as well as 
 by the living word ; by Theophanies, by Covenants, by Dis- 
 pensations; by orders, institutions, structures, legislative, ad- 
 ministrative, civil, religious; by sacrifices and sacraments, 
 Urim and Thummim, blood and Shekinah; by mediations of 
 grace and life most various, touching, and sublime, didactic, 
 devotional, priesdy, prophetic; by dream, vision, psalm, 
 svmbol, type, miracle — a golden chain of divine manifesta- 
 tions and interpositions reaching down through the centuries; 
 every new link charged with more of God — God in it all — 
 God Himself — God in person ; the Power of God, the Heart 
 of God, the Life of God in every thing ; and all for salva- 
 
 ' Rev. Version, "by divers portions. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 53 
 
 TiON 1 Emphasize that again ! Revelation and Redemption — 
 twin divinities, advancing together, side by side, step by step, 
 every step ablaze with Deity ! the Divine Processes widening 
 with the suns, more, and more, and ever more of God in 
 every thing until at last the climax is reached — the Word be- 
 comes flesh; the Son of God is born on earth, lives — suffers — 
 dies — rises again — ascends to the right hand of the Majesty 
 on high, to reign King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, God 
 blessed forever. Amen ! 
 
 Here in these great Facts, these great historic processes, 
 these theophanies of glory, these miracles of power and love, 
 these supernatural interventions of redeeming Grace, we have 
 God revealing Himself. That precisely, as our Confession 
 puts it, is the primal fact. Here you have the material of the 
 Word of God, the stuff of inspiration, the substance of the 
 Gospel. Paul's definition of the Gospel is just that: "The 
 Power of God unto Salvation." Not a thing of power, not 
 a mighty system, not a tremendous engine, but Dunamis, 
 Power, God's Power, Personal Omnipotence, at work as 
 Omnipotence, saving the world. " My Father worketh hith- 
 erto, and I work.'" That is Redemption. That is Revela- 
 tion for Redemption. The life of the Revelation is there, 
 the power of the Revelation is there, in that Divine Working; 
 not in words, not in definitions, not in abstract statements — 
 how much of God can you put into words? How much of 
 the Eternal can you pack into a definition ? How much of 
 the Infinite can you squeeze into a dogma ? — No, not in these, 
 but in those stupendous supernatural forthputtings of God 
 Himself, which blazon their way all along from Eden to 
 Golgotha. 
 
 So much for the first step — the redemptive revelation of 
 Himself by God. "It pleased the Lord," first of all, thus 
 "to reveal himself, and to declare his will unto his Church." 
 What next? "And aftemiard," mark the order, the depend- 
 ence, and the purpose, " and afterward for the better preserv- 
 
54 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 ing and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure es- 
 tablishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption 
 of the flesh, and the maUce of Satan, and of the world, to 
 commit the same wholly unto writing, which maketh the holy 
 scripture to be most necessary ; those former ways of God's 
 revealing his will unto his people being now ceased." The 
 Bible is thus the written record of the revelation. What, 
 then, is the object of the record ? Generically and primarily 
 the object of the record is the same with the object of 
 the revelation, to wit: Salvation. Specifically the record 
 is given for three purposes subordinate to the great 
 generic purpose : (i) To interpret the revelation, or, in the 
 language of the Confession, "to declare God's will" in the 
 revelation. For man, alas! is ignorant, blinded, besotted 
 by sin, and needs to have this wondrous Divine Drama of 
 Redemption explained. (2) To perpetuate the revelation: 
 "those former ways of God's revealing his will having now 
 ceased." (3) To apply the revelation ; or to make it effectual 
 against the trinity of evil, the world, the flesh, and Satan. 
 
 What now is the function of inspiration? In a word, it is 
 to mediate the revelation ; to interpret, to record, to apply 
 it; to put us, to put all generations, under the immediate 
 power of those Divine Realities ; so far as possible to bring 
 us face to face with this incomparable drama of Power and 
 Love Divine, face to face 7vith God revealing Himself. All 
 through the ages the Spirit of God was teaching one and 
 another to understand, to interpret, to record, to apply that 
 wondrous process. There, then, you have the revela- 
 tion; here the inspiration. There the supernatural history; 
 here the supernatural record. There the fact ; here the story. 
 There Sinai; here Exodus. There Bethlehem, Galilee, Cal- 
 vary, Olivet; here Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. There 
 Pentecost ; here the Acts. And as the Revelation was 
 building, so the Book was building. As that became high 
 and broad, this became rich and full. And so the Book 
 
HIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 55 
 
 became the double of the deed. By the divine correlation 
 of energy, the life and power of the one became the life and 
 power of the other. The Facts burn in the Words. The 
 living History throbs in the living Record. And so to-day, 
 and throughout all time, in all that makes the Bible the 
 power of God unto salvation, it is the Voice of God, the 
 Word of God, the supreme, the only, the infallible au- 
 thority.' 
 
 That is what the Bible teaches concerning itself It is part 
 of the supernatural, divine process of saving a lost world, of 
 rehabilitating a ruined humanity. Inspiration is the formal 
 factor in that process, as Revelation is the material factor. 
 Thus regarded I have no hesitation in saying that the Bible is 
 inspired wholly, inspired through and through. The men are 
 inspired, as Prof. Stowe said. The thoughts are inspired, as 
 Prof. Briggs says. The words are inspired, as Prof Hodge 
 has said. These are " the sacred writings which are able to 
 make wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Jesus 
 Christ.'^ " Every scripture is inspired of God, and profitable 
 for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for discipline which 
 is in righteousness; that the man of God maybe complete, 
 furnished completely unto every good work." That is what 
 inspiration is for, for training and completing in the divine 
 life. How can error in chronology, or physical science, affect 
 that process? "The words that I have spoken unto you are 
 spirit, and are life." Yes! in these inspired words there is a 
 
 * I take pleasure in referring to the admirable statement of this his- 
 toric and literary relation of Revelation and Inspiration in Drs. Hodge 
 and Warfield's Article on Inspiration in the Presbyterian Review, Vol. 
 II. For more complete and systematic discussion of the subject, see 
 Dr. G. P. Fisher's Nature and Object of Reiielation (Scribner : N. 
 York); Dr. A. B. Bruce: The Chief End of Rr.'elation (Hodder & 
 Stoughton) ; Dr. G. T. Ladd : The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, and 
 What is the Bible (C. Scribner's Sons, N. Y.) ; Dr. W. Sanday: Tht 
 Oraxles ^ 6></ (Longmans, Green &Co.). 
 
56 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 divine pneumatic power such as no other words have. They 
 are Spirit-words, Life- words. "Which things we teach, not 
 in words that man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit 
 teacheth." What things ? Read the context. ''Whatever 
 things God prepared for them that love him." "The deep 
 things of God." "The things that were freely [graciously] 
 given to us of God." These are the things about which In- 
 spiration concerns itself. God's things, God's deepest things, 
 God's best things, the things which have the most, the best, 
 the deepest of God in them. ^^ These things," says the Apos- 
 tle of God in them, "we teach in words which the Spirit of 
 God teacheth." Most assuredly! Who can doubt it? I 
 believe in that declaration of Paul's with all my heart. I 
 could not help believing it if Paul had never said it. As I 
 read what the Bible says about God, about Christ, about the 
 Spirit, about man, sin, salvation, about holiness, duty, life, 
 death, eternity, I feel to the depths of my being that the 
 very words thrill with divinity ; they glow with the ardors of 
 the heaven above me ; they are instinct with the power of an 
 endless life; the majesty of eternity is in their rhythm; deep 
 calleth unto deep in the thunders of their diapason ; the pathos 
 of the blessed Comforter is in their stillest smallest voice ; the 
 very balm of Paradise is shed upon them ; even upon their 
 anomalies rests the glory of the Shekinah ; as they pass before 
 my eye they are radiant with the One Altogether Lovely ; as 
 they echo in my heart-strings they are vocal with God. 
 
 It is most strange to me that our theologies have not before 
 now found the secret of inspiration in that transcendent pas- 
 sage of Paul from which I have just cited a few lines; the 
 clearest, the fullest, the profoundest treatment of the subject 
 that has ever been given. Let me give the whole passage 
 (i Cor. ii: 6-16): " Howbeit we speak wisdom among them 
 that are fully grown : yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of 
 the rulers of this world, who are coming to nought : but we 
 speak God's wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIKAIION. 
 
 57 
 
 been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds unto 
 our glory : which none of the rulers of this world hath known ; 
 for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lurd 
 of glory : but as it is written : things which eye saw not, and 
 ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man, 
 whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him. 
 But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit : for the 
 Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For 
 who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit 
 of the man, which is in him? even so the things of God none 
 knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received not the 
 spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God; that we 
 might know the things that were freely given to us of God. 
 Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wis- 
 dom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; combining spir- 
 itual things with spiritual words [or, mg. — interpreting spirit- 
 ual things to spiritual men]. Now the natural [or: unspiritual, 
 Gr. psychical] man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 
 God : for they are foolishness unto him ; and he can not know 
 them, because they are spiritually judged [or, e.xamined]. But 
 he that is spiritual judgeth [or, e.xamineth] all things, and he 
 himself is judged [or, examined] of no man. For who hath 
 known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him ? 
 But we have the mind of Christ." 
 
 That is inspiration. How then shall we characterize it? 
 "Verbal" inspiration? " Supervisional?" "Official?" "Ple- 
 nary?" "Dynamic?" Why not take Paul's word at once, 
 which sums up what is most real in all these designations ? 
 "Pneumatic Inspiration!" There you have it all. There 
 you have not only Paul's word, but Christ's. "The words 
 that I have spoken unto you are Pneuma." Make that your 
 watchword, and you can hold the fort against all comers. 
 
 Fneutnatic Inspiration : what does it mean ? 
 
 I. The Spirit of God is the primary, the vital, the essen- 
 tial factor. 
 
58 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 2. The Spirit of man is the coefficient; that in man which is 
 the organ of God, and of all Divine Reality. 
 
 3. The contents of inspiration are /«^2^;««//(r r^«////(?j. And 
 what does the Apostle say of these? i. They have their 
 foundations in the depths of the Godhead. They are "the 
 deep things of God." ii. They are above and beyond all 
 secular science. "Not of this world [or, age: aicov^ saecu- 
 liwt\, iii. They are the embodiment of a Divine Philosophy. 
 *' We speak God's Wisdom." iv. They are attained through 
 a divine initiation. " In a mystery." v. They date from the 
 past eternity. "Foreordained before the worlds." vi. They 
 fill the future eternity. " Prepared for them that love him." 
 vii. They are supra-sensual. "Eye saw not, ear heard not." 
 viii. They are supra-psychical. "The natural [psychical] man 
 receiveth them not." ix. They are supra-rational. "Which 
 entered not into the heart of man." x. They are the pecu- 
 liar province of the Spirit, who "explores the depths of God." 
 "None knoweth them save the Spirit of God." xi. They are 
 freighted with Divine Grace. "Freely given to us of God." 
 xii. They culminate in spiritual perfection. "Unto our 
 glory." 
 
 4. The processes by which they are apprehended are pneu- 
 matic. "They are spiritually judged." 
 
 5_. The utterances, by which they are expressed, are pneu- 
 matic, theopneustic. "In words which the Spirit teacheth." 
 "Combining spiritualities with spiritualities." 
 
 6. And to crown all this all-pervading, all-assimilating 
 Pneuma is the Mind of the Lord. "We have the mind of 
 Christ." 
 
 Pneumatic inspiration ! Is it not just that ? Do you ask 
 for characteristics of inspiration ? There they are. Tests of 
 inspiration ? What more could you wish for ? Safeguards 
 of inspiration ? Are these not enough ? If these will not 
 guarantee the inspiration of the Bible, what will ? Accord- 
 ing to our Confession, the inspiration of Scripture is a self- 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AN'I) INSPIRAllON. 
 
 59 
 
 witnessing fact. '*We maybe moved and induced by the 
 testimony of the Church to a high and revered esteem for 
 the holy Scripture; and the heavenhness of the matter, the 
 efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent 
 of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all 
 glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of 
 man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, 
 and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it 
 doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God ; yet, 
 notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the in- 
 fallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward 
 work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness, by and with the 
 word, in our hearts." "The Supreme Judge, ... in 
 whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy 
 Spirit, speaking in the Scriptures."' Does not that which is 
 of the Spirit evidence itself? With this pneumatic concep- 
 tion of the Book, can we be in doubt about the inspiration, 
 about the quality, contents, scope, purpose of the inspiration ? 
 Can we have any trouble about verifying it? The Bible is a 
 pneumatic Book. The groundwork, the substance, all that 
 makes the Book what it is, is pneumatic* The warp and 
 woof of it IS ptieufna. Its fringes run off, as was inevitable, 
 into the secular, the material, the psychic. Can we not, as 
 persons of common intelligence even, much more with the 
 internal witness of the Spirit to aid us, discriminate between 
 the fringe and the warp and woof? Do not the "spirit- 
 ualities" and the "heavenlinesses " of Scripture distinguish 
 themselves from all that is lower, as the steady shining of the 
 everlasting stars from the fitful gleaming of earth's fire-flies? 
 
 1 The Confession of Faith, Chap. I, Sees. V, X. Comi)are The 
 Larger Catechism, Qii. 2, 3, 4, and answers. 
 
 » See The Larger Catechism, Qu. 5 (The Shorter Catechism, Qu. 3) 
 and answer, "^m. What do the Scriptures principally teach ? Ans. 
 The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, 
 and what duty God requires of man." 
 
6o BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 Even if the task of discriminating were immeasurably harder 
 than it is, we should not complain. God lays on us in many 
 matters, in matters, too, of great practical moment, the re- 
 sponsibility of separating the things that differ. "Why even 
 of yourselves judge ye not what is right ? " This responsi- 
 bihty is a part of life's discipline. It is not God's way to do 
 all our thinking for us. His training is not a process of 
 cram. 
 
 Let me ask your attention to these weighty words of Mr. 
 Gladstone: "No doubt there will be those who will resent 
 any association between the idea of a Divine Revelation and 
 the possibility of even the smallest intrusion of error in the 
 vehicle. But ought they not to bear in mind that we are 
 bound by the rule of reason to look for the same methods of 
 procedure in this great matter of a special provision of Divine 
 knowledge for our needs as in the other parts of the manifold 
 dispensation under which Providence has placed us ? Now, 
 that method or principle is one of sufficiency, not perfection, 
 of sufficiency for the attainment of practical ends, not of 
 conformity to ideal standards. Bp. Butler, I think, would 
 wisely tell us that we are not the judges, and that we are 
 quite unfit to be the judges, what may be the proper amount, 
 and the just condition of any of the aids to be afforded us in 
 passing through the discipline of life. I will only remark 
 that"this default of ideal perfection, this use of a twilight in- 
 stead of a noonday blaze, may be adapted to our weakness, 
 and may be among the appointed means of exercising our 
 faith. But what belongs to the present occasion is to point 
 out that if probability and not demonstration marks the 
 divine guidance of our paths in life as a whole, we are not 
 entitled to require that when the Almighty in his mercy 
 makes a special addition by revelation to what he has already 
 given to us of knowledge in Nature and in Providence, that 
 special gift should be unlike his other gifts, and should have 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 6l 
 
 all its lines and limits drawn out with mathematical pre- 
 
 cision. 
 
 That is, the only rational, the only philosophic, the only 
 Scriptural ground to take. It is the ground of our Con- 
 fession. The inspiration of the Bible is pneumatic, not 
 psychic, not secular. The infallibility of the Bible is pneu- 
 matic, not psychic, not secular. It is the infallibility of prac- 
 tical sufficiency, not the infallibility of absolute ideality. It 
 is an "infaUible rule," standard measure. What does that 
 mean ? I have a yard-stick, a three-foot rule. As such it is 
 perfect, all sufficient. If I make a mistake in measuring 
 yards or feet with it, it will be altogether my own fault. .Vnd 
 yet, perhaps, it is notched, it is cracked, some of the inch 
 lines are blurred ; one or two may possibly be slightly inexact. 
 If I were to apply the microscope to it, I should no doubt 
 find flaws in it. If I were to try it for microscopic measure- 
 ments, it would fail me. But, as a yard-stick, as a three-foot 
 measure, it is infallible. So with the Bible. Its infallibility 
 is not a microscopic infinitesimal infallibility respecting all 
 particular things in the heavens above or in the earth beneath, 
 or in the waters under the earth. It is an infallible rule of 
 faith; i. e., of Christian faith, of Gospel faith, of the faith 
 which is necessary to salvation. 
 
 That, as I have shown, is the teaching of Scripture itself 
 That is plainly the teaching of our Confession. It is so in- 
 terpreted by the most competent authorities. Dr. Laidlaw, 
 Professor of Theology in the New College in Edinburgh, in a 
 recent address on "The Westminster Confession in the 
 light of the present desire for revision," speaking fof the 
 Chapter on the Scriptures, says that "it refrains from de- 
 tailed specification as to the authorship, age, or literary char- 
 acter of the canonical books. Not making these matters 
 
 1 The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture. By W. E. Gladv 
 Philadelphia, J. D. Wattles, p. 1 1 f . 
 
62 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 essential to faith, it thus leaves open what has been called, 
 perhaps rather broadly, the whole field of Biblical Criticism. 
 It deals in the same manner with all details as to mode and 
 degree of inspiration, which could be consistently left open 
 by those who accept the Scriptures as the infallible rule of 
 faith and duty. Once more, while claiming for the original 
 Scriptures such immediate inspiration and such providential 
 care as fits them for their purpose, it has refrained from such 
 assertion of verbal inerrancy as Biblical scholarship dis- 
 allows.'" 
 
 The leaders of English and Scotch Presbyterianism are 
 well nigh a unit on this point. Dr. Blalkle, the President of 
 the Presbyterian Alliance, and of whom I need say no more, 
 was solicited last year to sign a paper condemning the views 
 of Dr. Bruce and Dr. Dods. He declined to do so on the 
 ground that while strongly maintaining the fact of inspiration, 
 he could not accept the rigid view which takes inspiration to 
 mean Inerrancy. "Well known facts in the actual structure 
 and contents of Scripture seem to me to forbid it."^ Dr. 
 Rainy Is well known as Principal of the Free College of 
 Edinburgh and the leader of the Free Church. Last year, 
 in a speech in the Free Assembly, he thus defined his per- 
 sonal position. I quote from an abstract in the British 
 Weekly of June 6, 1890: "He started with the inerrancy 
 of Scriptures, even In details, as that which he was Inclined 
 to hold. Only he refused to impose it on others ; out and 
 out he refused to do so, especially upon his students. He 
 did so partly because he thought such matters despicable, but 
 also because Scripture Itself did not seem to have It 
 much at heart to make them sure of accuracy of this kind ; 
 rather, it seemed conspicuously to refuse to do so, and any 
 quotations to the contrary were mistakes." In the English 
 
 ' British Weekly, November 13, 1890, p. 34. 
 * British Weekly, October 30, 1890, p. 3. 
 
BIBLTCAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 63 
 
 Presbyterian Church, during the recent discussions of the 
 New Confession of Faith, Principal Dykes, of the Presby- 
 terian College in London, the leading theologian of the 
 Church, Dr. Munro Gibson, who is accepted as the incoming 
 Moderator, and other leaders, pronounced decisively against 
 the theory of inerrancy. Two years ago, when Dr. Dods 
 was nominated for the Exegetical Chair of New College, 
 Edinburgh, declarations like the following were quoted 
 against him: "I believe the Scriptures contain an infallible 
 rule of faith and life. I believe they are the authoritative 
 records of the revelations which God has made, but it is 
 impossible to affirm that all the statements contained in 
 Scripture are strictly accurate, impossible, that is, to claim 
 for Scripture an absolute infallibility." Pie was elected by an 
 overwhelming majority. That is enough to show where the 
 Free Church stands on this particular issue. 
 
 Brethren, our Church can not afford to go beyond Scripture, 
 beyond our own Confession, or beyond our sister churches, 
 on this question. "We hear about "dangerous errors," views 
 and utterances which tend to unsettle faith. Let me tell you 
 where the danger lies, as it confronts me in my work from 
 year to year. It lies in putting the Bible in a false position, 
 in claiming for it what it does not claim for itself. It lies in 
 a priori assumptions respecting inspiration and infallibility, 
 which are not borne out by the facts. It lies in holding up 
 your iron-clad dogma of verbal inspiration and literalistic in- 
 fallibility against the advances made by an humble, prayerful, 
 reverent investigation and criticism of Scripture as the Word 
 of God. I have nothing to say in behalf of a bald agnostic, 
 materialistic naturalism, or of an arbitrary, capricious ration- 
 alism, which, with a priori dogmatism, denies the superna- 
 tural, belittles or expunges sin and salvation, eliminates out 
 of history God's Revelation of Himself, evaporates nut of 
 the Bible its pneumatic inspiration, chops up its contents into 
 lifeless fragments, and sweeps away book after book into the 
 5 
 
64 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 abyss of legend and myth. When the Biblical Criticism of 
 our theological seminaries is found to be engaged in that 
 business, when it comes in conflict with the Bible's own 
 claims to pneumatic inspiration, then it will be time to sound 
 the alarm, then it will be time for action. But on the other 
 hand, a dogma of inspiration, and of the authority of Scrip- 
 ture, which, in its mistaken zeal, refuses to recognize accom- 
 plished results, antagonizes the most enHghtened, devout, and 
 believing Biblical scholarship of the day, puts the ban on all 
 inquiry which will not bow to its rigid literalism and mechan- 
 icalism, such a dogma is in our day, whatever it may have 
 been in the past, an obstruction to faith, a menace to the 
 unity and peace of the Church, an arrest of the healthy 
 growth of Christian science, and a serious blight on the free, 
 robust, symmetrical development of the Christian life. You 
 protest against the unsettling of faith. You do well. But 
 they also do well who protest against keeping up needless 
 barriers to faith. You condemn criticism which destroys be- 
 lief in the Scriptures as the Word of God. But beware of 
 including in your condemnation the criticism which helps to 
 make such belief in the Scriptures possible. You may be 
 sure that as long as you tie up faith in the Bible with faith in 
 a secular inspiration, as long as you hang the infallible au- 
 thority of Scripture as the rule of faith on the infallible accu- 
 racy of every particular word and clause in the Book, as long 
 as you exalt the Bible to the same pinnacle of authority in 
 matters respecting which God has given us clearer, fuller, 
 more exact revelations elsewhere, as in matters respecting 
 which the Bible is the only revelation, the irrepressible con- 
 flict between faith and science will go on, and the Drapers 
 and Whites of each generation will have their new chapters 
 to add to the record. Every new discovery in science or in 
 archaeology that seems to contradict some particular statement 
 will produce a panic. Every advance in criticism will tend 
 to unsettle the faith of somebody whom your teaching has led 
 
KIUI.ICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 65 
 
 to confound the form with the substance. Having learned 
 from you that the shell is part of the kernel, and finding that 
 he can not keep the shell, he will end by throwing away both 
 shell and kernel. 
 
 For one I mean to do my part in putting an end to this 
 mistaken defense of Divine Revelation. Shipwrecks of faith 
 without number have been caused by it. It is the very thing, 
 according to his own confession, that made an unbeliever of 
 the most brilliant scholar of France, perhaps of the world to- 
 day, Ernest Renau. It is very thing that drove into infidelity 
 the strongest champion of the popular infidelity of England, 
 who died the other day in his unbelief, Charles Bradlaugh. 
 So testifies his own brother, a believer. But for this the iri- 
 descent declamation of Robert Ingersoll in our own country, 
 with his " Mistakes of Moses," would collapse like a pricked 
 balloon. The Christianity of our day can not afford to fight 
 the battle of the Book along that line. The Presbyterianism 
 of our country can not afford to put itself in antagonism to 
 the most enlightened as well as devout Christian scholarship 
 of the day. It can not afford to put the yoke of bondage to 
 an exploded relic of post-Reformation scholasticism on the 
 consciences of our young men, alive as they are to the gains 
 of reverent and careful study of the Book, and sensitive as 
 they can not fail to be to the humiliation of such bondage. 
 It can not afford to silence the larger, profounder, more Scrij> 
 tural restatements of revealed truth made imperative by im- 
 proved methods of Biblical research. Nor can it afford to 
 precipitate any issue on our churches, the surest result of 
 which will be to foment suspicion, to drive out the spirit of 
 charity and of justice, to gender misunderstanding and alien- 
 ation between our chairs of instruction and our pulpits and 
 pews, and to widen the gap between honest inquiry and earn- 
 est faith. 
 
Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration. 
 
 II. 
 
 By henry preserved SMITH. 
 
 The natural theory concerning an inspired book is illus- 
 trated by the Mohammedans. The prophet of Mecca, in his 
 observation of Jews and Christians (in whom he recognized 
 worshipers of the true God, discovered their Scriptures to be 
 the source of their religion. He classified them therefore as 
 "book-people," and endeavored to construct a similar sacred 
 code for his own followers. The result is the Koran, whose 
 contrast with the Bible is in many respects remarkable. 
 Throughout this book God appears as the speaker. Its con- 
 tents are made known to the prophet by direct revelation, and 
 it is never tired of emphasizing its own infallibility. Yet the 
 discrepancies are so marked that they did not escape the no- 
 tice of the author himself, and he propounded the theory, 
 afterward elaborated by the commentators, that a later revela- 
 tion must abrogate an earlier one. He confessed forgetful- 
 ness also,^ and in one instance avowed that Satan had insinu- 
 ated a false revelation into his mind.^ 
 
 ^ "Whatever verses We cancel or cause thee to forget, We give thee 
 better in their stead, or the like thereof." — Koran, II, lOO, quoted by 
 SirWilliam Muir, The Cordn, p. 41. 
 
 ^ The " two Satanic verses," cf. Muir, Life of Mahomet (1877), p. 
 86 sqq. 
 
 (66) 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. C7 
 
 The transmission of this book is well known. No particu- 
 lar care was taken of the revelations during the author's life, 
 or for some time after his death. As the number of his 
 "companions " was diminished by death, the danger of losing 
 the revelations became evident, and with the lapse of time 
 discrepancies in the various readings became marked. War 
 threatened to break out between parties who swore allegiance 
 to different readings.' One of Mohammed's amanuenses 
 was therefore commissioned to collect the fragments " from 
 date-leaves and tablets of white stone, and from the breasts 
 of men," to which other traditions add from fragments 
 of parchment or paper, pieces of leather, and the shoulder 
 or rib-bones of camels or goats. As this standard text was 
 corrupted by careless copyists, probably under the influence 
 of still Hving tradition, the Caliph Othman had an authorized 
 edition made by a committee of scholars. "Transcripts [of 
 this] were multiplied and forwarded to the chief cities in the 
 empire, and the previously existing copies were all, by the 
 Caliph's command, committed to the flames.'^ The text was 
 still unvocalized, the points not being added until about fifty 
 years later. 
 
 Now the point I wish to make is this : We have full knowl- 
 edge of these details concerning the Koran ; we know its dis- 
 crepancies, its careless editing, the violent means taken to 
 secure uniformity in its text, the late origin of its vowel points ; 
 the Arab scholars know these also, for it is from them that we 
 get the information. Yet the Arab theory maintains the fol- 
 lowing points : 
 
 1. The Koran is eternal in its original essence and a neces- 
 sary attribute of God. 
 
 2. It was written down in heaven on a " treasured tablet," 
 
 ^ Or different wordings, for the transmission was still largely oral. 
 '■ Muir, Mahomet, p. 557. 
 
68 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 from which it was communicated piecemeal to Mohammed by 
 the angel Gabriel. 
 
 3. It is written in an Arabic style which is perfect and un- 
 approachable. ' ' The best of Arab writers has never suc- 
 ceeded in producing its equal in merit." 
 
 4. Every syllable is of directly divine origin. This in- 
 cludes the unintelligible combinations of letters put at the 
 head of certain Suras. 
 
 5. Its text is incorruptible, "and preserved from error and 
 variety of reading by the miraculous interposition of God 
 himself" To account, however, for the slight variants which 
 actually exist, the Koran is said to have been revealed in 
 seven dialects. 
 
 6. As being the truth of God, it is the absolute authority, 
 not only in religion and ethics, but also in law, science, and 
 history.^ 
 
 The point I make is : This is the kind of Bible we should 
 like to have God give us, and when we construct for our- 
 selves a theory of revelation we do it along these lines. 
 Allow me to illustrate by a brief review of theories which 
 have been held concerning the Old Testament. We natu- 
 rally begin here with the Jew. 
 
 First, however, let us remark that the clear distinction 
 which our theologians make between revelation and inspira- 
 tion is a comparatively modern distinction. Inspiration natu- 
 rally goes w^h revelation. It is the divine method of revela- 
 tion. A superintendence of the record as distinct from the 
 giving of the truth did not occur to the ancients, because 
 they did not reflect upon the record, except as containing the 
 truth. Revelation and mspiration then are not distinguished. 
 The earliest Jewish testimonies concern themselves with the 
 
 ■• The authorities for these statements are, besides those already 
 quoted, Noldeke, Geschichte des Qorans ; Hughes, Dictionary of 
 Islam ; Palmer, the Qur'dn (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. VI). 
 
BIRLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 69 
 
 Imw as contained in the book. This law seems to be identi 
 fied with the heavenly Wisdom.* It is, therefore, as the Mo- 
 hammedan would say, one of the attributes of God. When 
 God would build the world, he looked upon the Tora as a builder 
 looks upon the plan of a building.* This plan was delivered 
 into the hands of Moses at Sinai by the angels in the form of 
 a written book. This preference of the Law to the other 
 Scriptures is very natural to the Jew, and its consequence is 
 the distinction of two grades of inspiration. " Holy Scripture 
 came into being by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and is 
 therefore derived from God, who speaks therein. Neverthe- 
 less, there are within the Scripture different grades of inspira- 
 tion; in that the Law is the primary revelation, the other 
 Scriptures are secondary." 
 
 In inquiring into the history of this doctrine of inspiration, 
 we are struck, however, by the variety of opinion that has 
 prevailed. Although the Jews give a higher place to the 
 Law, yet at a later time they dignified the other books by 
 making them also a part of the revelation to Moses. " Rabbi 
 Isaac said : "all that the prophets were to prophesy later they 
 received from Mt. Sinai, for so Moses declares, Deut. .xxi.x: 
 i5." ■* On the other hand, that Ezra may not be deprived of 
 the glory belonging to him, later opinion made him the 
 author of the whole Hebrew Bible, it having been lost during 
 the captivity. So the Fourth Book of Esdras declares (xiv : 
 19-22) that the Law has been burned, and Ezra prays that it 
 may be restored by him. God grants his desire, ordering 
 him to provide five amanuenses. When he goes into the 
 open country with the amanuenses, God gives him a cup to 
 drink. When he has drunk, he dictates to the scribes the 
 
 1 Sirach, XXIV, 22. The reference to Baruch, IV, I, given by 
 Weber, does not seem to assert the existence of the Law/w/w eternity, 
 though it asserts that it will endure forever. 
 
 « Bereshith Rabba, I. 
 
 * Shemoth Rabba, XXVIII. 
 
7© BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 twenty-four books of the Old Testament and seventy others 
 which he is ordered to keep secret. The fact that such va- 
 rious views could be held shows how impossible it is to speak 
 of any established or settled view of revelation or of inspira- 
 tion at this early time. 
 
 If we come down to the later period, however, we shall 
 discover a theory of inspiration which is definite enough, 
 though it still refuses to distinguish inspiration from revela- 
 tion. It starts with the Law as given at Mt. Sinai. It iden- 
 tifies this with the received text of the punctuators. It 
 affirms that even the form of the letters {litercz finales, beih at 
 the beginning of Genesis) was ordained by God. "As Moses 
 ascended the mountain he found God making the ornamental 
 points [Ketharim] of the letters [in the Law]." The ex- 
 traordinary points, the Qeri and Kethibh, the division into 
 paragraphs by spaces — these all were in the divine model just 
 as in a Hebrew Bible of the present day. Some scholars, 
 however, were more radical and affirmed that the vowel 
 points (and, of course, with them the sacred text) were given 
 to Adam in paradise. Others believed the points to have 
 been added by Ezra and the so-called Great Synagogue. 
 Mediating theologians tried to combine the different views. 
 Azariah de Rossi supposed the points first communicated to 
 Adam in paradise and transmitted by him to Moses, to have 
 been "partially forgotten and their pronunciation vitiated 
 during the Babylonian captivity ; that they had been restored 
 by Ezra, but that they had been forgotten again in the wars 
 and struggles during and after the destruction of the sacred 
 Temple ; and that the Massorites, after the close of the Tal- 
 mud, revised the system and permanendy fixed the pronun- 
 ciation by the contrivance of the present signs."' 
 
 To judge of the success of this author by general experi- 
 ence, we may conjecture that his well-meant attempt brought 
 
 ^ Ginsburg, The Massoreth Ha-Massoreth of Elias Levita, p. 
 
 53- 
 
BIDLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSIMRA lloN. 71 
 
 upon him the hatred of both parties. The general opinion 
 of later Jewish authorities is to the effect that Ezra called a 
 convention of elders and scribes on his return from the (ai>- 
 tivity — the prototype of the later Sanhedrim. This Great 
 Synagogue first considered the subject of the Canon— gather- 
 ing the sacred text into one volume and rejecting uninsfjired 
 writings. They then deliberated on the text, marking off the 
 verses, settling on the correct reading, the use of the vowel 
 letters and the Qeri and Kethibh. They further added the 
 points, both the vowel points and accents. As if this were 
 not enough, they made also the Aramaic translations called 
 the Targums and added the Massora proper ; that is to say, 
 they counted the number of letters, words, and verses in each 
 book, noted these figures in the margin, marked the middle 
 word and verse in each book, and called especial attention to 
 unusual forms, that the scribes might make no mistake. This 
 work, we may suppose, they stamped as authentic and took 
 measures to have it correctly transmitted.' 
 
 The influence of this theory upon Christian thinkers will 
 be noticed later. The theory itself is certainly rigid enough, 
 and its method would clearly secure an authentic Scrijiture. 
 The only trouble with it is that it is entirely unsupported by 
 facts. The Great Synagogue never had any existence. It 
 has arisen from a misunderstanding of Ezra's activity in the 
 great popular assembly, the account of which is contained in 
 Neh. viii. Ezra's work at that time was, no doubt, of un- 
 speakable moment. But in the account we have, it is a 
 thoroughly practical one, instructing the people in the Law 
 and pledging them to its observance. Of settling the Canon 
 we do not hear a word, and, indeed, we are tolerably certain 
 that the whole Canon was not settled until a much later date. 
 If Ezra (the Great Synagogue never existed, as I have said) 
 
 1 Buxtorf, Tiberias, cc. X, XI. Schnedcrniann, Die Controversc 
 les L. Cappellus mit den Buxtorfen u. s. w., p. 27- 
 
72 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 did not even settle the Canon, much less can we suppose that 
 he attended to the scrupulosities of the Massora. Concern- 
 ing the vowel points, we know that they were not invented 
 until somewhere near the eighth century of our era, and that 
 the Massora is a growth of many centuries. Finally, the sur- 
 prising uniformity of the Hebrew text has been secured by 
 the loss or destruction of all copies that differed from one au- 
 thorized model. But this model was settled upon certainly 
 after the first Christian century. 
 
 We are discussing the subject of inspiration, and it might 
 seem at first sight as if all this Jewish theory was irrelevant. 
 Let us notice, therefore, where we are. I suppose I am right 
 in saying that we mean by inspiration the divine influence 
 exerted upon the minds of the writers of the Bible, which led 
 them to choose and shape their material so as to make the 
 result the authoritative rule of faith and practice. The Jew- 
 ish theory concerning the Great Synagogue was shaped by 
 the same interest which leads us to formulate a doctrine of 
 inspiration. And when Elias Levita showed the late origin 
 of the vowel points, he was violently accused of what would 
 be called among us "low views of inspiration." 
 
 But I wish to go further, and as some object to the asser- 
 tion that such a thing as bibliolatry is possible, to call your 
 attention to some other theories which have been held by the 
 Jews, and have also had large influence in the Christian 
 church. The Jews were in dead earnest when they argued 
 that the Bible is the Word of God, and therefore every item 
 in it is true. They went further, and concluded that every 
 item in it is important truth and worthy of God. In apply- 
 ing the theory to the facts they would not be misled by ap- 
 pearances. It does indeed seem that some of the statements 
 are trivial, and taken in their literal sense they make diffi- 
 culties. The obvious conclusion is that they contain a deeper 
 sense. The search for this deeper sense leads to the whole 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHir AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 73 
 
 system of allegorical interpretation of Scripture. Besides 
 this, some things in Scripture are ambiguous or obscure. 
 If we are to reach the truth we must have a guide. The 
 hypothesis of an inerrant Word leads to the ilemand for an 
 inerrant interpretation. The rabbinical authorities postulate 
 both a deeper sense and an authoritative interpretation. The 
 latter is provided in the so-called Oral Law, which, though 
 embodied in comparatively late written documents, was held 
 to be in fact as old as Moses, having been transmitted orally 
 from him to the time of its written redaction, a period of 
 about seventeen centuries. This view of the Mishna' (or 
 even of the whole Talmud) has been maintained until com- 
 paratively recent times.^ "We can not suppose that God 
 would give an imperfect Law. An authorized interpretation 
 is therefore needed, which we have in the Talmud (Oral 
 Law). It is natural, therefore, that we [Jews] hold to this 
 that we may not grope in darkness." This view is even now 
 the view of orthodox Judaism, and it is in substance as old 
 as the New Testament. For we see that at that time the 
 "traditions of the elders" had usurped the place of the di- 
 vine Law. It could hardly be otherwise. The Oral Law, as 
 the alleged interpretation of the written command, must be 
 immediately obeyed — it was itself the medium through which 
 the written Law was obeyed. The simple Word was insuffi- 
 cient, while the traditional decision exactly met the particular 
 need. The latter was therefore the more important. This 
 is declared by a recent Jewish authority to be "a universally 
 recognized principle: the decisions of the Scribes are viore 
 weighty than those of the Law." The logical result, therefore, 
 of this theory of inerrancy was to substitute for the Scripture 
 the alleged authorized interpretation. 
 
 The decisions of the wise, however, were concerned with 
 
 » Gfrorer, I, 250 ; Weber, 87 ; Jost, Geschichte des Judentums, I, 0.?. 
 * Creizenach, quoted by Hartniann, 514. 
 
74 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 practical matters, points of casuistry, such as always arise 
 under a code of morals. On the other side, much even of 
 the Tora is not embraced under the head of command or 
 prohibition. To make use of this, the system of allegory was 
 developed. "The fondness of the Jews for allegorical ex- 
 position found its support in the belief that the excellence of 
 the Tora lay in the inexhaustible spring of varied interpreta- 
 tions indicated in the assertion that the revelation was first 
 given in seventy languages. This variety was deduced from 
 Jeremiah, xxiii: 29: 'My words are as a fire and as a ham- 
 mer that breaks the rock in pieces.' Who can count the 
 fragments into which the stone is shattered by a strong arm, 
 and who can count the sparks sent forth by the fire ?" ' Be- 
 sides the theory that each passage has seventy meanings, we 
 hear that Moses himself expounded each section in forty-nine 
 difierent ways. This delirium reaches its height in the later 
 assertion which makes each verse of the Law to contain no 
 less than six hundred thousand meanings, if we may trust 
 the authority of Eisenmenger.'^ But not to insist upon this, 
 the methods of obtaining some of the admitted seventy 
 meanings are calculated to show the small value of such a 
 theory. One of these methods is the so-called Gematria, 
 based on the numerical value of the letters. This value was 
 calculated for any word, and the resulting number was put 
 into the place of the word, or if this gave no sense any other 
 word whose component letters gave the same sum might be 
 substituted in its place. The numerical value of a single 
 letter might be significant. The large ^ {= 70) in Deut. 
 vi: 4, is one of the arguments for the theory of seventy 
 senses just considered. The letters might be interchanged 
 
 Hartmann, 534, quoting from Rashi on Gen. xxxiii : 20, and Ex. 
 II. The same in substance from the Talmud, Weber, 84. 
 Eisennienger, Eiudecktes Judenthum, I, 458. 
 
RinHCAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRAI lUN. 75 
 
 by Athbash or Albam.' A word might be taken as the basis 
 of an acrostic, each of its letters taken as the initial of a new- 
 word, or it might be made into another by an anagram. In 
 this way, from the first word of Genesis it was discovered 
 that the world was created on a New Year's day,* and a word 
 in Gen. ii, 4, shows that the earth was created for the sake 
 of Abraham. 
 
 It is clear that this is simply exegetical legerdemain, and it 
 need not detain us longer. Its main value is that it shows 
 where a high theory of the value of revelation may land us. 
 It is in line with the declaration of the Rabbis that God him- 
 self studies the Law three hours every day.^ It brings with 
 it almost inevitably the magical application of Scripture ex- 
 emplified in the use of its verses as charms or amulets, in re- 
 gard to which we may be pardoned for asserting that they 
 have no more real efficiency than a leaf from the mass-book. 
 But these extravagancies aside, the more sober form of the 
 theory carried out in the allegorical interpretation of Scripture 
 has been so important in the history of the Church that we 
 may profitably look at it a little more closely. The most 
 prominent exponent of it among the Jews was Philo of Alex- 
 andria, and his influence in the early church can scarcely be 
 estimated. As a devout Jew, Philo accepted the Old Testa- 
 ment as the Word of God, whose inspiration extended to the 
 most minute particulars, placing the highest value upon the 
 Law as he put Moses above the other prophets. He docs 
 not confine his theory to the Hebrew text, but extends it to 
 the Greek translators. " He accepts the story which ascribes 
 to the translators of the Pentateuch a miraculous concurrence 
 m the choice of words. He speaks of the translators them- 
 selves as 'hierophants and prophets,' and maintains that the 
 
 1 A for Z, B for Y, and so on, would represent the Athbash in En- 
 glish. A for N, B for O, and so on, the Albam. 
 » Reuss, 721; Buxtorf, Tiberias ( 1620 , p. 163. 
 •■' Weber, p. 17. 
 
76 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 Hebrew and Greek Scriptures are such that they must be 
 admired and reverenced ' as sisters or rather as one and the 
 same both in the facts and in the words.' He fully acts upon 
 this belief, and . . . accords to the Greek text as profound 
 a veneration and faith as if it had been written by the finger 
 of God himself." ' On this basis Philo proceeds to discover 
 the hidden truth by means of the allegorical method. All 
 true wisdom is contained in this reservoir. Consequently, 
 the Greek philosophy must have been derived from it. And 
 the results obtained by his method are really those of Greek 
 philosophy. His general system we may pass by for the 
 present. What interests us is his theory of interpretation. 
 This is that each verse of Scripture has, besides its natural 
 grammatical or literal meaning, a secondary or higher sense. ^ 
 This latter is the more important — the reality of which the 
 literal sense is only the shadow. To, show what he means, 
 let me quote the following : ' ' The paradise in Eden is the 
 type of virtue. The stream which waters it is Goodness 
 which divides into the four streams of the four cardinal vir- 
 tues." ' Again, " the five cities of the Plain destroyed by 
 the divine punishment for the abominations of their in- 
 habitants are the five senses, the instruments of sinful 
 pleasure." The four ingredients of the incense (Exod. xxx, 
 33) represent the four natural elements. The incense itself 
 ascending to God represents the adoration of the universe 
 made up of these elements. In the great allegorical com- 
 mentary to Genesis, " the leading thought is that the history 
 of mankind as related in Genesis is in fact an imposing psy- 
 chology and ethic. The different men described (good and 
 
 ' Drummond, Philo, I, 15. 
 
 ' This theory was not, of course, original with Philo, but already in 
 use. — Cf. Schurer, Geschichte des Judischen Volkes, II, 871 ; Hart- 
 mann, 536. 
 
 3 Hartmann, 579. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 77 
 
 bad) are the different conditions of the soul." ' Astonishing 
 as this appears to us, there can be no doubt that it was em- 
 ployed in all seriousness by a devout and profound thinker, 
 who supposed he was engaged in developing the meaning of 
 the Word as intended by God himself. And it concerns us 
 here to notice that this method of exegesis was compelled by 
 the rigidity of the theory in connection with the nature of the 
 facts of the record. The difficulty of interpreting the lan- 
 guage of Scripture literally was such that the exegete took 
 refuge in the higher sense. The theory of the later Rabbis, 
 that the sacred text " could contain nothing derogatory to the 
 Deity and that it could contain nothing contrary to sound 
 reason," was Philo's also. "Adam and Eve could not have 
 hidden themselves from God, for God has interpenetrated 
 the universe and left nothing empty of himself; and, there- 
 fore, the account refers only to the false conception of the 
 wicked man. ... To suppose that God really planted 
 fruit trees in Paradise when no one was allowed to live there, 
 and when it would be impious to fancy that he required them 
 for himself, is *a great and incurable silliness.' The refer- 
 ence, therefore, must be to the paradise of virtues with their 
 appropriate actions implanted by God in the soul." ' One is 
 tempted to quote more at length, but these examples are suffi- 
 cient to show how the allegorical sense must, under the claim 
 of doing the highest honor to the Word of God, really nullify 
 its natural and legitimate meaning. 
 
 From Philo the transition is natural to the Christian Church, 
 in which, indeed, Philo was honored almost as one of the 
 Fathers. Before, however, we inquire into methods of inter- 
 pretation, let us notice the significant fact that no one of the 
 ecumenical councils of the undivided church makes faith in 
 the Scriptures a test of orthodoxy. Belief in the "Holy 
 
 ' Schiirer.II, 839. 
 '' Drummond,!, 19. 
 
78 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 Ghost who spake by the prophets " is professed in one early 
 creed, but the indefiniteness of the expression shows how 
 little need was felt of a definition as to the nature of the 
 written Word. It was after the middle of the fourth century 
 before the church felt the need of officially defining even the 
 extent of the Canon, and this was done in provincial synods 
 only, and the Apocrypha were included in the Old Testament. 
 In fact, as has been said, " it did not at all seem at first as 
 though Christ would found his church upon a Scripture, or 
 even as though the elaboration of a sacred record were an 
 essential feature of its foundation.'" The church was, in 
 fact, founded upon the spoken words of the Apostles, and 
 after the Apostles had been removed from their earthly activ- 
 ity the tradition of their words was distinct enough to serve 
 as a guide. But, of course, the Old Testament had its place 
 as a means of instruction, and with it the method of instruc- 
 tion illustrated in Philo. The Episfle of Barnabas discovered 
 in the three hundred and eighteen servants of Abraham a pre- 
 diction of the crucified Jesus. ^ The method reminds us of the 
 Gematria of the Jews. Clemens of Alexandria sees in the four 
 colors of the Tabernacle, the four natural elements. Abra- 
 ham's three days' journey to the place of Moriah represents 
 the three stages of development of the human soul. This 
 author, indeed, says in so many words that the whole Scrip- 
 ture has only allegorical sense.* 
 
 Origen, the most learned man of the time, perhaps the 
 most learned man of antiquity, adopts this theory to the full. 
 He distinguishes a twofold or threefold sense, and values the 
 allegorical exposition because the simple grammatical mean- 
 ing of many passages is incredible or unworthy of God. 
 
 ^ Thiersch quoted by Dietzsch. Studien und Kritiken, 1869, p. 472. 
 
 * Diestel, Geschichte des Alten Testamentes in der Christlichen 
 Kirche, p. 31. 
 
 * Hartmann, p. 558. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 79 
 
 The Latin Fathers accepted the same theory. Ambrose 
 speaks of a threefold sense— historical (literal), mystical, and 
 moral. If the literal sense gives us a contradiction, the solu- 
 tion is found in the other senses. Augustine's generally 
 sober judgment follows the same path, though his allegories 
 are rather types. Esau and Jacob are types of Jew and 
 Christian. Abel represents the slain Christ, Seth the risen 
 Christ, Joseph the ascended Christ. Ham is "the sly gen- 
 eration of the heretics." Isaac, blind in his old age, pre- 
 figures the blindness of the Jews. The rock twice smitten 
 with the rod points to the cross of Christ, because two pieces 
 of wood [rods] joined together make a cross. Even Jerome, 
 whose work^as translator made him especially sensitive to 
 the literal meaning, follows the allegorical method in his ex- 
 position. At the same time, he confesses that many diffi- 
 culties are to him insoluble. It is of no use to puzzle our- 
 selves too much with the literal sense, for the letter killeth. 
 In the chronology, especially, he finds such discrepancies 
 and confusion that he leaves the subject to the dilettanti.' 
 
 These examples will suffice to show that the Church before 
 the Reformation had no apprehension of the problem before 
 us. In a general way, inspiration was held as connected 
 with revelation. But it was attributed to the Apocrypha of 
 the Old Testament as well as to the canonical books. It 
 was, indeed, attributed to many pseudepigrapha and even to 
 heathen poets and philosophers. But apostolic tradition at 
 first, and afterward the voice of the Church, was regarded as 
 equally inspired, and this tradition furnished the authority in 
 faith and morals upon which all men leaned. And when the 
 difficulties of the Scripture record forced themselves upon the 
 careful student, they were explained by a supposed mystical 
 or spiritual sense. In the Middle .A.ge, the line was not 
 sharply drawn between Scripture and the Fathers. Hugo of 
 
 Diestel, pp. 89 and 98. 
 
 6 
 
8o BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 St. Victor, who is more reserved than many others, ranks as 
 authorities (i) the Gospels, (2) the other books of Scripture, 
 (3) the decretals and canons of the Church, {4) the writings 
 of the Fathers. The latter contain the same truth with the 
 others, only more clear and more expanded.' The Roman 
 Catholic Church stands on this ground to-day. The Council 
 of Trent formally asserts that it receives and venerates with 
 equal piety and reverence all the books of the Old and New 
 Testaments, as also the traditions dictated by Christ's own 
 word of mouth or by the Holy Ghost and preserved in the 
 Catholic Church by a continuous succession. Recent publi- 
 cations show that this church also holds in substance to the 
 allegorical method of exposition. I will simply call attention 
 here to some examples which have fallen under mv eye : 
 Eve is a type of the Virgin Mary. Sarah is a type of wisdom 
 and virtue, and Hagar a type of philosophy, the handmaid 
 of theology. Keturah's descendants represent the heretical 
 sects of New Testament times. Abraham seeking a bride 
 for his son is a type of God the Father, who also seeks a 
 bride (the Church) for His Son. Eliezer, who is sent on this 
 errand, is the representative of the twelve Aposdes. The 
 well at which Rebecca is found corresponds to the water of 
 baptism, and the presents brought by Eliezer are the divine 
 Word and the good works of the saints. Jacob's words, " I 
 am Esau, thy first born," can not be called a lie — they are a 
 mysterium — in a tropical sense they are true. Jacob, in using 
 them, is a type of the Gentiles, who claim and receive the 
 adoption and blessing belonging to the Jewish people. Jacob 
 had two wives. So Christ calls the Jew and the Gentile. 
 Leah, the tender-eyed, is the blinded Israel. Pharaoh, who 
 commanded the midwives to kill the Hebrew babes, is a type 
 of Satan, who tries to destroy the virtues by means of human 
 science and wisdom, which often lead to heresies. Deborah 
 
 1 Diestel, p. 178. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 8l 
 
 (the Synagogue) incites Barak (Israel) to battle against Sisera 
 (Satan) and routs his forces. Jael (the Church) meets him, 
 stupefies him with milk (prayer), and slays him with the nail 
 (of the Cross). Samson even is made a type of Christ. 
 Now, these examples are taken from a book published with 
 the approval of Roman Catholic authorities ' within the last 
 ten years, and written by a professor of theology in a distin- 
 guished university. They show with perfect clearness how 
 the lofty profession of finding all truth in the Bible really 
 unfits one to discover the real truth of the Bible. It is this 
 virtual nullifying of Scripture by tradition against which the 
 Protestant Church protests. To this church we now turn 
 our attention. 
 
 The principle of the Reformation, I need not remind you, 
 is a double one. Its two parts are Justification by faith and 
 the Authority of Scripture alone in matters of faith and life. 
 Of these two the former is the vital principle, the second is 
 regulative. In Luther's own experience they developed in 
 this order. He first experienced justification by faith. In 
 order to maintain his Christian life, he had to defend it 
 against the champions of the Church. At first he supposed 
 he had also the authority of the Church on his side. But in- 
 vestigation showed him that this authority was at least 
 divided. In this way he was driven back upon Scripture 
 alone. Luther's theory was in substance this: Christ is pre- 
 sented to the sinner in the Gospel either as heard in the 
 church or as read in the Bible. He is immediately recog- 
 nized as the needed Savior and as the Son of God. He is 
 appropriated by faith, and the believer is justified and 
 adopted into the family of God. Up to this point it is clear 
 that nothing more is claimed for the written Word than that it 
 gives a historically credible account of the life of Christ. 
 
 ' Zschokke, Hiblische Frauen des Alten Testamcntcs. Krciburg, 
 1882. 
 
82 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 The peculiar normative quality of the Word comes out 
 in the subsequent life of the believer and the church. 
 Questions of doctrine and of duty arise. There will 
 be perplexities in the individual heart as well as differ- 
 ences between different members of the church. To settle 
 these the appeal is to the written Word. It is clear that 
 Luther would claim no further infallibility for the Bible than 
 this, and, indeed, he expressly declares as much in his judg- 
 ment of the Canon. He proposes this rule : What proclaims 
 Christ is Scripture. " What does not proclaim Christ is not 
 apostolic, though written by St. Peter or by St. Paul. What 
 proclaims Christ is apostolic, though it were written by Judas, 
 Annas, Pilate, or Herod." On this internal evidence he would 
 include the first book of Maccabees in the Canon, as he 
 would exclude the epistle of James. He can not bear the 
 book of Esther because it judaizes so. In regard to the 
 epistle to the Hebrews, he takes the middle ground: ''Al- 
 though the author does not lay the foundation of faith, which 
 is the Apostle's work, yet he builds thereon gold, silver, and 
 precious stones, as St. Paul says. If now some wood, hay, 
 or stubble is intermixed, this shall not hinder our receiving 
 the precious doctrine with all honor — nevertheless we may 
 not make this equal to the apostolic epistles."' It is quite 
 in accordance with this, that the first doctrinal treatise of the 
 Reformation — Melanchthons Loci — had no section on the 
 doctrine of Scripture at all, while even in the later editions 
 he only treats briefly the difference between the Old Testa- 
 ment and the New.'^ The early Swiss reformers stand on the 
 same ground. " The Word of God in Christ is the highest 
 authority. Zwingli finds church councils enough in the 
 words of Christ." Bullinger says in one instance that the 
 writers of the Bible are sometimes led astray by defective 
 
 ^ Luther's Vorreden zur Heiligen Schrift. 
 
 * Klaiber in the Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theol. II, p. 3. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIKATION. 83 
 
 memory.' Calvin, as we might expect, is more full on the 
 doctrine of Scripture, yet he does not give a clear statement 
 as to the connection of inerrancy and inspiration, and, in 
 fact, recognizes the difficulties in the case. He does not 
 hesitate to affirm that the Scriptures are written in " a humble 
 and contemptible style." Three Evangelists (he adds later) 
 "recite their history in a low and mean style. Many proud 
 men are disgusted with that simplicity, because they attend 
 not to the principal points of doctrine. " ' In his commentaries 
 he concedes minor errors and discrepancies of the writers 
 (compare Tholuck, p. 131). What Calvin emphasizes, in 
 full accord with Luther, is the testimony of the Holy Spirit. 
 "The testimony of the Spirit is superior lO all reason [/. e., 
 to the Evidences usually adduced for Scripture]. For as God 
 alone is a sufficient witness of himself in his own Word, so 
 also the Word will never gain credit in the hearts of men till 
 it be confirmed by the internal testimony of the Spirit. It is 
 necessary, therefore, that the same Spirit who spake by the 
 months of the prophets should penetrate into our hearts to 
 convince us that they faithfully delivered the oracles which 
 were divinely intrusted to them. . . . Some good men 
 are troubled that they are not always prepared with clear 
 proof to oppose the impious when they murmur with im- 
 punity against the divine Word, as though the Spirit were 
 not, therefore, denominated a seal and an earnest for the 
 confirmation of the faith of the pious; because, till He 
 illuminate their minds, they are perpetually fluctuating amidst 
 a multitude of doubts. Let it be considered, then, as an un- 
 deniable truth, that they who have been inwardly taught by 
 the Spirit feel an entire acquiescence in the Scripture, and 
 that it is self-authenticated, carrying with it its own evidence, 
 and it ought not to be made the subject of demonstration and 
 
 Quoted by Tholuck Zeilschr. fur Chiistl, Wi^sciiM-liaft, I, 139. 
 Institutes, I, VIII, X, and XI. 
 
84 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 arguments from reason ; but it obtains the credit which it de- 
 serves with us by the testimony of the Spirit." ^ There can 
 be no doubt that these words of Calvin correctly state the 
 position of the reformers. They are the source of the state- 
 ments of the Protestant creeds on this subject, nearly all of 
 which emphasize the testimony of the Holy Spirit, and no 
 one of which ventures to affirm the inerrancy of Scripture 
 apart from matters of faith and doctrine, unless it be the 
 Swiss Formula Consensus, of which I shall speak later.^ If, 
 now, we ask, what it is that we are assured of by this testi- 
 mony, we shall agree that it is the articles of sin and law and 
 grace which Melanchthon makes the subjects of his Loci. 
 Or, as the Heidelberg Catechism says : Three things are 
 necessary for me to know : first, the greatness of my sin and 
 misery ; second, how I am redeemed from all my sins and 
 misery ; third, how I am to be thankful to God for such re- 
 demption. These are the things which the Holy Spirit sets 
 before us in Scripture, and moved by that same Holy Spirit, 
 we recognize in the portraiture the divine author and accept 
 the Word as His. "All in this book is tributary to sin and 
 salvation; all leads up to Calvary." This I heard from one 
 of our own pulpits recently, and this is in harmony with the 
 voice of the Evangelical Church in her creeds and con- 
 fessions. 
 
 But because we recognize the divine authorship of the doc- 
 trine set forth in the Bible, does it follow that we have a 
 guarantee for every detail of its historical statement ? Be- 
 cause you recognize the voice of God addressing you as a 
 sinner, and freely inviting you to Christ, can you therefore 
 assert, for example, that the list of Dukes of Edom, in Gen- 
 esis (ch. xxxvi), is exactly and absolutely correct ? This is 
 
 1 Institutes, VII, IV and V. 
 
 ^ The Irish Articles which, however, were soon superseded by the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, affirm the Canonical Books to be of " most cer- 
 tain credit " as well as of the highest authority. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 85 
 
 the question which confronts us when we come to make the 
 Bible a historical study. It is evident that the great reform- 
 ers would have answered the question in the negative, and 
 they would have declared that whether this list were correct 
 or not made no difference as to the main question. The fol- 
 lowing generation of theologians, however, did not so answer 
 the question. From the inspiration of the Bible they deduced 
 its historical accuracy on every point. The reasons for this 
 are not far to seek. After the Council of Trent, the Roman 
 Catholic polemic became sharper. It became the endeavor 
 of the Roman Catholic party to show the necessity of tradi- 
 tion and the untrustworthiness of Scripture alone. This led 
 the Protestants to defend the Bible more tenaciously than be- 
 fore. In addition, the scholastic philosophy, though almost 
 contemptuously rejected by Luther, still influenced the minds 
 of men. The thick quartos of Gerhard, as has been recently 
 said, would lose a good part of their dimensions were they 
 deprived of what was borrowed from Thomas Aquinas. 
 We are here concerned simply with the effect of this move- 
 ment upon the doctrine of Holy Scripture. This doctrine 
 was of course more sharply formulated. It was extended to 
 the style of the writers. It affirmed that each book of 
 the Canon must have been formally approved and joined to 
 the others as soon as written. It went great lengths m affirm- 
 ing the perspicuity of Scripture, or if it admitted the difficulty 
 of some passages, it explained them as God's method of stim- 
 ulating study by curiosity, or even as the divine arrangement 
 for impressing upon the laity due respect for the learning of 
 the ministry. Finally the errorless transmission was made 
 equally a matter of logical deduction. That I may not be 
 suspected of exaggeration, let me give you a few details. It 
 was denied by Voetius "that any examination or reflection 
 was necessary on the part of the inspired writer in regard to 
 that which was written, since it was given him immediately 
 
86 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 and in an extraordinary manner," ' contradicting Luke i : 1-4. 
 Even the language and style of the Bible must be wholly 
 faultless. Diversity of style was denied or explained as a 
 matter of divine choice simply. "The Holy Spirit had a 
 preference \singularc7n gustuni\ for the style of Polybius; 
 therefore he chose this among all then existing Greek styles." * 
 Quotations already made show how much more correct was 
 Calvin's view. " Whatever is related by the Holy Scriptures 
 is absolutely true \i^€rissima\, whether it pertains to doctrine, 
 morals, history, chronology, topography, or nomenclature ; and 
 there can be, there must be, no ignorance, carelessness or for- 
 getfulness attributed to the amanuenses of the Holy Spirit in 
 writing the sacred books." ^ The consequence is drawn with 
 rigor — there can be no error in the transmission no more 
 than in the original. For where would be the certainty or 
 truth of Scripture, were there any errors of transmission? 
 So far we have been describing the Lutheran view. The 
 same tendency is visible in the Reformed Church. But it is 
 worth noting that this period of stringent devotion to the in- 
 fallibility of Scripture is the period of the bitterest polemic 
 among the Protestant Churches. Calovius, the most con- 
 sistent upholder of this doctrine of inspiration, was one of the 
 bitterest enemies of the Calvinists, hated them worse than he 
 did the Roman Catholics, used his influence to put them 
 down by the civil power, and attacked with all the virulence 
 of a strong and uncompromising nature Calixtus, who tried 
 to find a modus vivendi with the other churches. Nor should 
 we forget here that this was the century m which the Coper- 
 nican system triumphed in astronomy, and that among its 
 opponents were found these theologians who opposed to it 
 
 1 Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, I, 171. 
 
 ^ Calovius quoted by Klaiber, Zeitsch. Luther. Tlieol., 1864, 23. 
 ' Quenstedt quoted by Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, p. 
 294. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSi'lKATlON. 87 
 
 indubitable proofs from Scripture.' In the Reformed churches 
 there was the same tendency to emphasize the divine factor 
 in inspiration. The influence of the two JJuxtorfs in the 
 Swiss churches led to an especial emphasis on the Jewish the- 
 ories of the Old Testament Canon. It was held that the 
 Canon was settled by the Great Synagogue, and that the 
 points were a part of the revelation to Ezra, from whom also 
 the Massora was derived. 
 
 The ascription of the points to Adam even was rc\ ivcd by 
 some zealous theologians. The younger Buxiorf found it 
 difficult to decide between Adam, Moses, and Ezra as the 
 original punctuator. The discussion of this point led to the 
 ado])tion of the Swiss Formula Consensus, in 1675, which de- 
 clared the vowel points to be inspired. This is the only 
 Protestant creed, however, which took such a stand, and it 
 was of only local importance, and even in Switzerland it had 
 but temporary validity. It is evident then that these higl. 
 and stringent theories were never the theories of the church. 
 In fact, there never were lacking men in the Evangelical 
 churches who protested against them or who refused to ac- 
 cept them. The history of the doctrine of the Hebrew vowel 
 points is instructive in this regard, and for this reason I ven- 
 ture to call attention to it somewhat more at length. 
 
 As there may be some laymen interested in this matter, let 
 me explain that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are, in their 
 original force, all consonants. The vowels are supplied by 
 smaller signs, called points, placed in, over or beneath the letters. 
 The three letters ktl may represent, therefore, a number of dif- 
 ferent forms, as katal, kittel, kotel, kuttal. In practice however 
 the context is nearly always sufficient to decide what word is 
 intended in a particular place, and no difficulty is felt by the 
 practiced scholar in reading unpointed texts, and these are in 
 use in all Hebrew books except the Bible. For the sake of 
 
 So Calovius and Voetius, cf. Gass, pp. 342. 461 
 
50 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 accuracy, however, the Bible is generally written (and printed) 
 with the points. As we have seen, the later Jewish theory 
 ascribes these points to Ezra, if not to Moses or Adam, and 
 this opinion was embraced by the Buxtorfs and others, who 
 felt that God could not have committed his Word to an un- 
 certain script. The attack on this view was made about the 
 same time by two men. One of them, Morinus, was a Ro- 
 man Catholic, and he was (at least, partially) moved by a de- 
 sire to overthrow the security of the Protestants, and to prove 
 the necessity of the tradition of the Church, in order to a 
 correct interpretation of the Bible. But he called attention 
 to facts overlooked by the Protestants, and so far forth aided 
 to a correct solution of the problem — eventually that is, for his 
 polemic tone hindered at first a correct estimate of his argu- 
 ments. The other champion of the late origin of the points 
 was Ludovicus Cappellus, professor in the French Protestant 
 College, at Saumur. He was at first, as he avows, of the 
 opinion of Buxtorf. Against his will, he was forced by facts 
 to the opposite conclusion. His observations were embodied 
 in a treatise,^ the MS. of which was sent to Buxtorf the elder 
 for his opinion. As this distinguished scholar advised against 
 the publication, Cappellus sent the manuscript to Erpenius, a 
 distinguished Dutch orientalist, and Erpenius published it at 
 once, with a preface of his own, but without the author's 
 name. The history of the younger Buxtorfs attack and Cap- 
 pellus's rejoinder need not be given in detail. But we may 
 learn something from the method of argument pursued. It 
 is, on Cappellus's side, partly a careful examination of the 
 reasons adduced by the advocates of antiquity, partly the 
 marshaling of facts by them overlooked or not allowed due 
 weight. For example, it had been alleged that the points are 
 necessary to the correct understanding of the text. But this 
 
 1 Arcanum Punctationis Revelatum. Republished in one volume, 
 folio, with the Notae Criticae and the Vindiciae Arcani, 1689. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRAlluN. 89 
 
 is by no means so. Modern Hebrew, as well as Syria.- and 
 Arabic, are constantly read and printed without points, and 
 no difficulty is felt in reading and understanding them by 
 those familiar with the languages. Again, the opinion (jf the 
 Jews had been alleged. But this is by no means unanimous, 
 and in fact the weight of authority is rather against the an- 
 tiquity than for it. Klias Levita, himself no mean scholar, 
 was sustained by Kimchi and other distinguished authorities. 
 And among the authorities cited by Bu.xtorf some were ccr 
 tainly of very recent date. So far the reply to allegations. 
 Now positive arguments are the following; first, the argu 
 ment from silence. The points are not mentioned by Jerome 
 or by the Talmud. Buxtorf might reply indeed: "They 
 may have existed, nevertheless." And indeed the silence of 
 an author concerning a fact may not prove the non-existence 
 of the fact. But in some circumstances the argument from 
 silence is very weighty indeed. Jerome had frequent occa- 
 sion to discuss points of Hebrew grammar. He mentions 
 the letters and their occasional ambiguity. Had the points 
 existed, he would surely have mentioned them ; and so of the 
 Talmud, which often discusses the different possible mean- 
 ings of Bible verses. Again, the fact that the Jews use an 
 unpointed roll of the Law in the synagogue, shows that the 
 points are not ancient. Ecclesiastical customs, as we know, 
 are conservative — tenacious of old forms. Had the points 
 been introduced by Ezra, they would have been introduced 
 everywhere. The unpointed synagogue rolls are survivals 
 of ancient custom. Another argument is the complication 
 of the system itself. It is entirely too elaborate to be the in- 
 vention of a single age; it bears all the marks of having 
 grown up through several generations. To all these argu- 
 ments Buxtorf can only reply by hypotheses designed to ad- 
 mit what he was compelled to admit, but at the same time to 
 show how his theory might be held nevertheless. His main 
 
90 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 argument was the danger to the Christian faith of the new 
 hypothesis. 
 
 As I have said, it is now known as definitely as any historic 
 facts can be known that Cappellus was right. The points 
 were not invented until after the redaction of the Talmud, and 
 they were then gradually developed through two or three 
 centuries. The reasons which establish this fact are those 
 urged by Cappellus himself. Notice, they are critical reasons, 
 mainly belonging to what we now know as the lower criticism 
 to be sure, but critical nevertheless. And, indeed, it is often 
 difficult to draw the line between the lower criticism and the 
 higher. Criticism is simply the careful examination of the 
 facts to discover what they really teach. It takes no asser- 
 tions without examining the grounds on which they are made. 
 And having carefully examined the facts, it seeks for the 
 hypothesis which will most naturally explain them all. 
 
 The point we have reached is the high water mark of the 
 doctrine of inspiration. We have discovered that the early 
 church had no doctrine of inspiration in our sense of the 
 word inspiration. Its affirmations are invalidated by a theory 
 of allegory which completely overshadows and destroys the 
 true sense of Scripture. The reformers who swept this away 
 were concerned with the testimony of the Holy Spirit, which 
 assures us of matters of doctrine and duty in the Word of 
 God, with no interest m affirming historic inerrancy. The 
 extreme development of Protestant dogmatics in the seven- 
 teenth century, in opposition to the Roman Catholic polemic, 
 led to unwarranted emphasis of the divine side of Scripture 
 and an almost total ignoring of the human side. This the- 
 ology, in strict logic, as it supposed, affirmed the perfection 
 of style of the Bible, its freedom from grammatical errors, 
 the absence from it of accommodation to human limitations, 
 its strict accuracy even in the matter of natural science, to- 
 pography, and chronology, and finally its miraculous preserva- 
 tion from transmissional corruption by means of the Masso- 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. Qr 
 
 retic system.' The majority of these points are now uni- 
 versally given up. 
 
 It is of more importance to note that this extreme theory 
 was always the theory of some theologians only. There al- 
 ways were evangelical and devout men who did not accept it. 
 But that I may not weary you with historical details, let me 
 come down to the practical point of the teaching of to-day. 
 I shall probably not be wrong in assuming that so much of 
 the theory of verbal inerrancy as can be held at the present 
 day is held, stated, and defended by Prof. Gaussen, late of 
 Geneva, whose book on inspiration ' has in our theological 
 world almost the dignity of a classic. I will endeavor to 
 state his theory. 
 
 Prof. Gaussen states his case in this way (p. 40): "The 
 Scriptures are given and guaranteed by God even in their 
 very language." As an alternate statement of the same thing 
 he gives: "The Scriptures contain 710 error; that is, they say 
 all they ought to say, and only what they ought to say." 
 You will notice that the point upon which the whole theory 
 turns is the definition of the word error. It is clear that the 
 author means error of any kind, for later he admits "that if 
 it be true that there are, as is said, erroneous statements and 
 contradictory accounts in the Holy Scriptures, their plenary 
 inspiration must be renounced." (P. no.) The alleged 
 errors which he discusses under this head, and the existence 
 of which he denies, are discrepancies in the Gospel narrative, 
 points of chronology, and matters of physical science. In 
 regard to the last named he says : "We freely admit that if 
 there are any physical errors fully proved in the Scriptures, 
 the Scriptures could not be from God. But we mean to 
 
 ' No one seems to have been staggered by the fact that the Old Tes- 
 tament alone received such a remarkable system for its preservation. 
 
 » Theopneusty, or the Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scrijxurcs. 
 Translated by E. N. Kirk. Ne'v York, 1842. 
 
92 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 show there are none, and we shall dare to challenge the ad- 
 versaries to produce one from the entire Bible." He then 
 proceeds to show the accuracy of the expression in Joshua, 
 "the sun stood still in the midst of heaven." There is, then, 
 he says, "rjo physical error in Scripture, and this great fact, 
 which becomes more admirable in proportion as it is more 
 closely contemplated, is a striking proof of the inspiration 
 which has dictated to their writers even in the choice of the 
 least expression." There would seem to be no doubt, there- 
 fore, of the meaning of this author. I have always supposed 
 Dr. Charles Hodge to mean the same thing when he says 
 (Theol., I, 152) that the Scriptures are "free from all error, 
 whether of doctrine, fact, or precept." If what the sacred 
 writers assert, he says later (p. 163), '■'■God asserts, which, as 
 has been shown, is the Scriptural idea of inspiration, their as- 
 sertions must be free from error." Again, he says, "the 
 whole Bible was written under such an influence as preserved 
 its human aMthors from all error, and makes it for the Church 
 the infallible rule of faith and practice." Notice there are 
 two statements here. Had Dr. Hodge contented himself 
 with affirming that the whole Bible was written ' ' under such 
 an influence as makes it for the church the infallible rule of 
 faith and practice," no one could have objected. The other 
 clause is the one to which we object, and whose application 
 to the Old Testament I affirm to be impossible. Drs. Hodge 
 and Warfield, in their well-known article, say: "It is evi- 
 dent, therefore, that every supposed conclusion of critical in- 
 vestigation which denies the apostolic origin of a New Testa- 
 ment book, or the truth of any part of Christ's testimony in 
 relation to the Old Testament and its contents, or which is 
 inconsistent with the absolute truthfulness of any affirmation of 
 any book so authenticated, must be inconsistent with the true 
 doctrine of inspiration;" and again: "the historical faith of 
 the Church has always been that all affirmations of Scripture 
 of all kinds, whether of spiritual doctrine or duty, or of phys- 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSI'IRAIKiN. 9j 
 
 ical or historical fact, or of psychological or philosophical 
 principle, are without any error when the ipsissima verba of the 
 original autographs are ascertained and interpreted in their 
 natural and intended sense." ' These statements arc exactly 
 in line with those of the authors quoted above, except that 
 they make a reservation concerning the transmission of the 
 documents. Now, these authors (p. 237) admit that this 
 statement is to be tried by the facts, and it is to the facts of 
 the Old Testament that I propose to go. First, however, 
 allow me a word of personal explanation. Some years ago, 
 when a candidate for ordination, I received as a text for my 
 trial sermon the well-known passage of II Timothy, "All 
 Scripture is given by inspiration of God." In that sermon I 
 took the very ground of the authors I have been quoting. 
 For more than fifteen years since that time I have been en- 
 gaged in the direct daily study of the Old Testament. It has 
 been my duty to familiarize myself with the facts of the rec- 
 ord, and as well with the statements of scholars about those 
 facts. I well recall the reluctance which I felt to read some 
 books which departed from " the views commonly received 
 among us," and on reflection I can not convict myself of un- 
 due sympathy with German mysticism or rationalism. IJut I 
 have felt it my duty to know facts, and I sincerely believe 
 that the truth of God is evident in all the facts of his Word. 
 But in the examination of facts to which I now proceetl, re- 
 member that it is my desire to give no one pain. And I ask 
 you not to take my statement, but to examine the record 
 itself. Dr. Charles Hodge well says (I, p. 11): "Almost all 
 false theories in science and false doctrines in theology are 
 due in a great degree to mistakes as to matters of fact." 
 Three classes of facts seem to have been ignored by the ad- 
 vocates of an inerrant inspiration. 
 
 Presbyterian Review, 1881, pp. 236 and 238. The italics .ire 
 
94 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 I. The first class is the least important and may be said not 
 to bear upon inerrancy. It includes the cases where writings 
 have been included in the books of those who were not their 
 authors. I will not take up the Pentateuch which has re- 
 cently been discussed at length by others. The hypothesis 
 of a redactor there has met with so little favor that it may 
 be well to strengthen his position by showing his activity 
 elsewhere. Look first at the Minor Prophets. We have 
 them, as you know, in twelve separate books. They are, 
 however, in the Hebrew Bible one book. It is clear that 
 an editor has gathered together what prophetic fragments 
 were in circulation in his time and united them in one roll. 
 His activity was confined to arranging them in order. He 
 may have added the titles in some cases, but his knowledge 
 of the authors was slight. That Joel was the son of Pethuel ; 
 that one fragment was a vision of Obadiah, and that one con- 
 tained the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi— these are 
 very slight additions to our knowledge. Suppose, now, he 
 found a fragment without the author's name and inserted it 
 in the series. It would not have been distinguished externally 
 from the work of the author immediately preceding. This is 
 what the critics suppose actually to have taken place. In the 
 book assigned to Zechariah there is a sharp distinction in 
 style and situation between the first eight chapters and the 
 rest of the book. The second half is assigned to an older 
 prophet. Strictly speaking the hypothesis does not contra- 
 dict the doctrine of inerrancy, and I should not have alluded 
 to it except to prepare the way for a similar case which has 
 made no small scandal in the theological world. I allude, of 
 course, to the book of Isaiah. Divest your mind of precon- 
 ceptions now and look at this case. Let us suppose the re- 
 dactor of the book of the Minor Prophets to have had a 
 book of Isaiah which included only the first thirty-nine 
 chapters of our book of that name. He has also in his 
 possession the magnificent evangelical prophecy which is 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 95 
 
 more familiar to us th^n almost any other part of the Old 
 Testament. He does not know the author's name, or per- 
 haps it is not safe to have it known. What more likely 
 than that he should make of it an appendix to the book of 
 the kindred prophet — the two together make up a roll about 
 the size of the book of the Twelve. This would not be out 
 of harmony with the process of gathering the other book, and 
 the only way in which it would violate the strictest theory of 
 inspiration is in making appear as Isaiah's what is not his. 
 But it will be replied, as has so often been repHed, this is 
 a merely gratuitous hypothesis, one of those wild vagaries of 
 the German seekers after novelty of which we have had so 
 many. Let us look, therefore, at the arguments by which 
 the critics support their vagary. 
 
 In the first place, it is known that the earliest order of 
 the prophetical books in the Old Testament Canon was Jere- 
 miah, then Ezekiel, then Isaiah. The only reason for de- 
 parting from the chronological order that can be suggested is 
 that the Book of Isaiah was felt to be an anthology like that 
 of the Minor Prophets. 
 
 Secondly, it is rather curious that a narrative piece (chap- 
 ters xxxvi-xxxix) should be found in the middle of the Book 
 of Isaiah. Such a notice would come more naturally at the 
 close of the book. We actually find one at the end of Jere- 
 miah. There is nothing extravagant in the supposition, there- 
 fore, that the redactor of Isaiah's works had concluded his 
 book with this historical notice, and that the last twenty-seven 
 chapters were added to a book already complete. 
 
 The third argument, from style, is of course less obvious 
 to the English reader, but I think even the English reader 
 will discover differences. 
 
 Lastly, the situation in the second part of the book is en- 
 tirely different from that in the first part. Read over the first 
 chapter of Isaiah as a characteristic sermon of the j)rophet. 
 Note the commanding tone in whit h he calls heaven and 
 7 
 
g6 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 earth to hear his arraignment of Israel. Look at the Israel 
 he depicts in its pride and sinfulness and hypocrisy. " Hear 
 the word of Jehovah, rulers of Sodom ! Give ear to the in- 
 struction of our God, people of Gomorrha ! To what pur- 
 pose is the multitude of your sacrifices, saith Jehovah? I 
 am sated with holocausts of rams and the fat of fatlings ; and 
 the blood of bulls and lambs and goats I do not delight in. 
 When ye come to see my face — who hath required this at 
 your hands, to trample my courts ? Bring no more vain ob- 
 lations ; incense is an abomination to me ; new moon and 
 Sabbath the calling of assembly — I can not abide iniquity 
 with festive meeting." Now, after reading this chapter, turn 
 to the fortieth: "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith 
 your Lord ! Speak to the heart of Jerusalem and cry unto 
 her that her term of service is completed, that her guilt is 
 pardoned, that she hath received of the hand of Jehovah 
 double for all her sins. Hark ! One cries in the wilderness : 
 prepare the way of Jehovah, level in the desert a highway for 
 our God. Every valley shall be filled up and every mountain 
 and hill brought low, and the steep shall be made level and 
 the rough country a valley. And the glory of Jehovah shall 
 be revealed, and all flesh shall see it, for the mouth of Je- 
 hovah has spoken." Now, what I say is: Read through 
 this whole second part. Note how God comforts his mourn- 
 ing people, promises to deliver them, speaks to Zion as deso- 
 late and forsaken, a captive and an outcast, promises to 
 bring back her children, to rebuild her walls, to punish her 
 oppressors. Read this and you will feel that the message 
 could have come with appropriateness to the people in the 
 captivity and not to the people of Isaiah's time whose situa- 
 tion was so different. This is at any rate the conclusion of the 
 majority of the critics. No one denies the genuineness of the 
 prophecy; no one denies that it is a genuine prophecy that 
 is, and this being admitted, it gains in force and beauty on 
 the critical theorv. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 97 
 
 Now, if we admit the critical conclusions in this case, the 
 question is whether they affect the doctrine of inerrancy. I 
 do not see that they do, that is to say, they do not show the 
 inaccuracy of any statement of Scripture, though they show 
 the inaccuracy of the arrangement of Scripture. I pass to a 
 more serious case. As you are well aware, the book of 
 Psalms is generally ascribed to David. The reason is that a 
 number of individual Psalms bear his name in the title. 
 Probably] no one now goes to the length of some of the 
 Rabbis and Fathers in supposing that David wrote the whole 
 book. But as in the original the titles form a part of the text, 
 there has been a strong disposition among conservative com- 
 mentators to vindicate their accuracy. But the critical con- 
 clusion is different in regard to a number of them. I will 
 adduce only one, Psalm, cxxxix, which is ascribed to David 
 both in the Hebrew and in the Seventy. But only a 
 slight knowledge of the language is necessary to see that it 
 is entirely different in style from any other Psalm attributed 
 to David. The difference is not of a kind that exists between 
 the various compositions of the same man. The language is 
 the language of another epoch. If you were to find a poem 
 of Burns published in Shakespeare's works, you would not 
 suppose it Shakespeare's. Shakespeare is versatile, to be 
 sure. He could vary his style to suit any exigency. But 
 you know he never wrote like Burns. Now this is not an 
 exaggerated statement of the case with this Psalm. I have 
 one more instance under this head — the book of Ecclesiastes. 
 As you are already familiar with the problem, I will only say 
 that the posterilic authorship was announced by Luther, and is 
 accepted by as orthodox scholars as Delitzsch and Ginsburg. 
 In fact, the argument is as strong as it can possibly be from 
 style and vocabulary. To suppose Solomon the author of 
 the book, is about like supposing Spenser to have written In 
 Memoriam. There can be no question on the other side 
 that the author assumes the character of Solomon. So th..t 
 
9b BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 we have a clear case of a sacred writer writing under an as- 
 sumed name. Many Bible students see nothing improper in 
 an inspired writer using any form of literature, and after 
 Bunyan's immortal allegory, fiction would seem not to be an 
 unworthy vehicle of spiritual truth. But if we admit this, 
 then the theory, that every statement of an inspired writer is 
 without error in its natural and legitimate sense can not be 
 maintained. 
 
 2. For my second class of facts, I will ask you to look at 
 the historical books from Joshua to Kings, inclusive. We 
 have here a series of books which give a connected narrative 
 for the period from the conquest of Canaan to the Exile. Of 
 course, it is conceivable that such a narrative should be made 
 after the method of an official register. Each scribe would 
 add to the book a sketch of his own time and pass it on to 
 his successor. It has been supposed by some that the 
 Hebrew records were kept in this way, but the theory is with- 
 out support from the facts. The continuity of the narrative 
 from Joshua to Zedekiah has been secured by editing. The 
 method of the redactor is quite plain. He has made up his 
 story by extracts from already existing documents, making 
 very little change of himself, but inserting an occasional note 
 which serves to make the connection clear. As he refers us 
 to the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah (or Israel as the case 
 may be), it is clear that one of his sources was an extensive 
 historical work bearing this title. But the fact of compilation 
 is clear in other places than those in which he mentions his 
 authority. Take for example the book of Judges. Chapter 
 ii, 6, reads: "Now, when Joshua had sent the people 
 away, the children of Israel went every man unto his in- 
 heritance." Then follows the mention of the death and 
 burial of Joshua. It is clear that this was originally the be- 
 ginning of the book. And the book of which this was the 
 beginning extended through chapter xvi. It was strictly a 
 book of the Judges. Itself, however, was a compilation as 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP ANT) INSPIRATION. OO 
 
 is evident from the varying character of its parts. This book, 
 after it was finished, received two supplements ; one, the story of 
 Micah, the other, of the war against Benjamin. These belong 
 chronologically at the beginning of the book, for one is 
 dated when Jonathan, the son of Gershom, and, therefore, 
 grandson of Moses, was still a young man, which could not 
 have been long after the death of Joshua. In the other. 
 Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of .\aron, is High 
 Priest, and this must have been about the same time. The 
 book received also a preface, giving an account of the 
 gradual conquest of the land. Let me call your attention to 
 one section only of this preface. It is i, 10-15, ^"^ it con- 
 tains the account of the conquest of Hebron by Caleb. The 
 same account is contained in Joshua, xv, 13-19. In one 
 case Joshua gave Hebron to Caleb ; in the other the children 
 of Judah went against it " after the death of Joshua." It is 
 clear that we have here an inaccuracy in one of the narra- 
 tives. The difficulties in the history of David are well known. 
 In one chapter he is already a warrior when invited to the 
 court to play before Saul. Saul loves him and makes him 
 his armor bearer. In the other he is a stripling who comes 
 providentially into camp in time to meet the giant, and ap- 
 pears to be wholly unknown to Saul. I know the latter ac- 
 count is not in the Seventy in the earliest form of that version. 
 But this only shows the extreme freedom with which the tc\t 
 was treated at a very late date, and even leaving out the j)art 
 not in the Seventy, we still have serious discrepancies. 
 
 It is not to emphasize these discrepancies that I call atten- 
 tion to these facts at this point, but to show the extreme diffi- 
 culty of applying the theory of inerrancy to documents of 
 this kind. The theory is that "all affirmations of Scripture 
 of all kinds are without any error." Now, what are "the 
 affirmations of Scripture " in the cases we have been consid- 
 ering? The theologians are careful to tell us that inerrancy 
 does not guarantee the truthfulness of the words of Satan in 
 
lOO BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 Gen iii, or of the speeches of Job's friends in their argument 
 with him. 
 
 What shall we say of the books we have been discussing? 
 Where is the point of inerrancy ? Is it in the originals from 
 which the narrative has been cempiled ? Is it in the arrange- 
 ment ? Is it in the notes of the redactor ? Or is it in all 
 these ? Some of the advocates of inerrancy have declined to 
 postulate inerrant transmission, because it would call for a 
 standing miracle. The continuous influence which would se- 
 cure original inerrancy for all the documents would be just 
 such a standing miracle. The Song of Deborah was com- 
 posed, let us say, 1300 years B. C. The final touches to the 
 books we are considering were given not earlier than the Ex- 
 ile, which began about 600 B. C. The materials which are 
 now in our historical books, therefore, were composed during 
 a period of seven hundred years. Was there a standing 
 miracle during all this time ? Or shall we assume that the 
 final redactor received the gift of inerrancy, so that he 
 changed the language of his sources so as to leave no inaccu- 
 racies? Of,. this, again, there is no evidence. For, arguing 
 on the basis of individual style, we discover that the redactor 
 has generally left unaltered the documents he has embodied 
 in his narrative. His supervision has generally gone only so 
 far as to make an occasional note or insert a connecting 
 phrase. Or does his inerrancy extend simply to the reproduc- 
 tion, so that our confidence extends only to the accuracy of his 
 quotation ? This, indeed, is what the critics generally accept. 
 But it is far from what the advocates of inerrancy claim. 
 Unless we can assume the standing miracle, the historical 
 sources of the Old Testament need, in order to discover the 
 truth of events, the same sort of analysis, sifting, and cross- 
 questioning that must be given to other sources of history. 
 And this analysis, sifting,, and cross-questioning is precisely — 
 higher criticism. 
 
 Before we leave this point, let us look at another phase of 
 
niBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRAMON lOI 
 
 it. Several books of the Old Testament— notably the 
 Psahus, Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes— labor under the 
 same difficulty of discovering where the statements of the 
 author are — those statements which are free from error. 
 Take the book of Job, for example. It presents us the 
 picture of a grand trial. The pious sufferer has to contend 
 with fears within as well as fightings without. It is not only 
 the speeches of his friends which contain error, Job him- 
 self loses sight of God. He doubts His justice and His love. 
 The author does not make his own opinion heard. He lets 
 the situation speak to us. The value of the book lies not in 
 any assertion even of God Himself — sublime as is the truth 
 He speaks. No ; the value of the book of Job lies in the 
 spectacle of a human soul in the direst affliction working 
 through its doubts and at last humbly confessing its weakness 
 and sinfulness in the presence of its Maker. The inerrancy 
 is in the truth of the picture presented. It can not be located 
 in any statement of the author or of any of his characters. 
 The same is true of the Psalms. They present us a picture 
 of pious experience in all its phases. We see every variety 
 of soul in every variety of emotion. The assertions of the 
 authors can not be taken for absolute truth. Nor can the 
 authors, though doubtless all w^ere sincere believers in God, 
 be taken as sinless models for the Christian. Only Christ is 
 that. The Psalms present us a record of actur.l experience 
 of believers in the past. We can study and profit by this 
 experience all the more that it has in it human weakness. 
 The subjects of the experience doubtless had the power of 
 correctly expressing their feelings, but that is not the iner- 
 rancy which has been claimed for them, and which the theo- 
 logians desire. The imprecations which have been such a 
 stumbling block to some are enough to prove this point. 
 
 3. So far we have noticed the difficulty of applying the 
 theory of inerrancy. We are in a position, however, to go 
 further. We have, as you know, two parallel histories in the 
 
I02 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 Old Testament. One is contained in the books from Genesis 
 to II Kings ; the other is contained in the books of Chronicles. 
 These latter, indeed, once were joined with Ezra and Nehe- 
 miah, so as to form a continuous narrative (if narrative it may- 
 be called, where so much is simply genealogical) from Adam 
 to the Persian monarchy. But this does not now concern us. 
 For our present inquiry, we are interested in the two forms of 
 the history oi Israel as presented on the one side in the books 
 of Samuel and Kings and on the other in the books of Chroni- 
 cles. The study of these books shows the method of the au- 
 thors with a definiteness which leaves nothing to be desired. 
 We see that the Chronicler had before him our book of Kings as 
 one of his sources. He takes from it what suits his purpose. 
 What he takes he generally transfers without material change. 
 He omits a good deal which does not answer his purpose, 
 and he inserts a good deal from other sources. He pursues 
 exactly the plan that is, which we suppose to have been fol- 
 lowed by the other historical writers. Now compare the fol- 
 lowing passages : 
 
 II Sam. viii: 4. And David took I Chron. xviii : 3. And David 
 
 from him 1,700 horsemen and 20,- took from him 1,000 chariots, and 
 
 ODD footmen. 7,000 horsemen, and 20,000 foot- 
 men. 
 
 x: 16. The children of Ammon xxix : 6. Hanun and the children 
 
 sent and hired the Syrians of Beth of Ammon sent 1,000 talents of 
 
 Rehob and the Syrians of Zobah silver to hire them chariots and 
 
 20,000 footmen, and the King^of horsemen. So they hired them 
 
 Maacah with 1,000 men, and the 32,000 chariots and the King of 
 
 men of Tob 1,200 men. Maacah and his men. 
 
 x: 18. David destroyed of the xix: 18. David destroyed of the 
 
 Syrians 700 chariots. Syrians 7,000 chariots. 
 
 xxiv:9. There were in Israel xxi : 5. There were of all Israel 
 
 800,000 valiant men who drew 1,100,000 that drew sword and 
 
 sword, and the men of Judah were Judah was 470,000 that d 
 
 rew 
 
 500,000. 
 
 sword. 
 
 xxxiv: 24. So David bought the xxi: 25. So David gave to Or- 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 '03 
 
 threshing floor and the oxen for nan for the place 600 shekels of 
 
 50 shekels in silver. gold by weight. 
 
 I Kings, iv: 26. And Solomon IT Chron. ix : 25. And Solomon 
 
 had 40,000 stalls for horses. had 4,000 stalls for horses and 
 chariots. 
 
 xvi:2. The height [of the house] iii : 4. The height [of the porch) 
 
 30 cubits. 120 cubits. 
 
 vii : 26. It [the brazen sea] held iv: 5. It received and licld J.'xx) 
 
 2,000 baths. baths. 
 
 Now, it will be said at once that these are all discrepancies 
 in numbers which are very liable to corruption, and that, 
 therefore, these are all cases of error in transmission. But I 
 ask you to notice that these are all but one, cases in which the 
 larger number is in the text of the Chronicler. Where the 
 age of a king or the length of his reign is concerned I have 
 not taken account of the difference. But in matters of sta- 
 tistics it is curious that the errors should be nearly all one 
 way. Remembering that the Chronicler was much further 
 away in time from the events narrated, we find it natural that 
 he should have an exaggerated idea of the resources of his 
 country in the days of her glory. In the case of David's 
 purchase of the field of Oman, he finds the price a niggardly 
 one for a prince to pay. He, therefore, does not hesitate 
 (supposing that a mistake has been made) to put in a larger 
 sum. Of course, we need not lay this to the charge of the 
 final redactor of the book. He had probably before him other 
 written elaborations of the history in which his exaggerated 
 idea of the past was already embodied. The personal equation 
 is as difficult to suppress in the historian as is individuality of 
 style. Why should one be overruled any more than the other ? 
 The Chronicler lived in a time when the Mosaic Law had 
 taken substantially the position we find it occupying in 
 the New Testament times. Piety was to him the observance 
 of this law. He looked back through this medium to David 
 and Solomon and the good kings of their line. He had lost 
 
I04 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 all interest in the Israel of the Ten Tribes, because they had 
 disappeared from his vision or lived only in the heretical 
 Samaritans of his time. Now, we all know how difficult it 
 is to picture to ourselves a different piety from our own. 
 Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, we picture to ourselves 
 as an enlightened Christian of the nineteenth century. We 
 do not like to confess that he was guilty of deception, or that 
 Jacob, the Prince of God, took an unfair advantage of his 
 own brother. So with the Chronicler. He could think of 
 David only as a saint of his own pattern. Therefore, he 
 does not copy from the older history the shadows that rest 
 upon David's life. His adultery, the trouble with Amnon, the 
 usurpation of Absalom and of Adonijah, the charge of ven- 
 geance delivered to Solomon — these are left out of his history 
 altogether. To him David is the nursing father of the legiti- 
 mate priesthood and the virtual builder of the Temple. But 
 you will say this does not give us error in the record. Let 
 me, then, call attention to the following : 
 
 I Kings ix : ii. Solomon gave II Chron. viii : 2. The cities 
 
 Hiram 30 cities in the land of Gal- which Hiram gave Solomon, Solo- 
 
 ilee. mon built them and caused the 
 
 children of Israel to dwell there. 
 
 XV : 14. But the high places II Chron. xiv : 3. For he took 
 
 w^ere not taken away. Neverthe- away the strange altars and the 
 
 less, the heart of Asa was perfect high places (cf. v: 5: Also he 
 
 with the Lord all his days. took away out of all the cities of 
 
 Judah the high places). 
 
 These certainly look on their face like direct'contradictions, 
 and if we allow for the personal equation of which I have 
 spoken we can easily explain them. It would be hard in- 
 deed for a Jew of the Persian period to imagine Solomon giv- 
 ing away the sacred territory of Israel to the heathen king. 
 Rather must he suppose the mighty Solomon to be the re- 
 cipient of gifts of territory. The same line of reasoning is 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOt.ARSHII' AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 105 
 
 followed in the second quotation. The high places were the 
 old sanctuaries of Jehovah, regarded as legitimate before the 
 building of the Temple even by the author of the book of 
 Kings (i Kings iii : 2), and used without reserve by Samuel. 
 As time went on they fell more and more into disrepute, and 
 after the Exile the requirements of the Law were carried out, 
 and the only sanctuary of the people was the temple at Jeru- 
 salem. The remembrance of the high places was only that 
 of illegitimate places of worship. The Chronicler and his 
 generation could not imagine a good king as even tolerating 
 them. Hence the change in his account. Allow me to call 
 your attention to one more instance. If you will compare 
 the two accounts of the coronation of the young King Jeho- 
 ash, which are found in 2 Kings xi: 4-16, and 2 Chron. xxiii: 
 1-15, you will be struck by some remarkable differences. As 
 you will remember, the Queen Mother had, on the death of 
 Ahaziah, slain all the male members of the royal family except 
 the infant Jehoash, and had herself seized the kingdom. The 
 young prince who escaped the massacre was kept in conceal- 
 ment until his seventh year, when, by the efforts of Jehoiada, 
 the High Priest, he was seated upon the throne, and the 
 usurping queen was slain. The account in the book of Kings 
 is as follows : 
 
 "And in the seventh year Jehoiada sent and fetched the 
 captains over hundreds of the Carites and of the Runners 
 and brought them to the House of Jehovah and made a 
 covenant with them and made them take an oath and. 
 showed them the king's son. And he commanded them 
 saying: This is the thing ye shall do. The third |)art 
 of you that come in on the Sabbath and keep the guard 
 of the palace . . . and the two parts of you that go 
 forth on the Sabbath and keep the guard of the Hou.se of 
 Jehovah [shall come] unto the king. And ye shall surround 
 the king each with his weapons in his hand, and he that comes 
 within the ranks shall be put to death, and yc shall be with 
 
I06 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 the king when he goes out and when he comes in. And the 
 captains of hundreds did according to all that Jehoiada the 
 Priest commanded them. And they took each his men — 
 those coming in on the Sabbath with those going out on the 
 Sabbath and came to Jehoiada the Priest (and the Priest gave 
 them David's armor of state) and the Runners stood each 
 with his weapons in his hand from the south side of the House 
 to the north side of the House about the House and the altar, 
 round about the king. And he brought out the king and 
 placed upon him the diadem and the testimony and made 
 him king and anointed him. And they clapped their hands 
 and said: Long live the king!" 
 
 The history here is so plain there can be no mistaking. 
 The principal actors are the officers of the body-guard with 
 their men. This body of soldiers is divided, as was the case 
 also in David's time, into three companies. These take their 
 turn in guarding the Temple and the palace, one-third being 
 on duty at one point and two-thirds at the other. The Sab- 
 bath is the day when they exchange one post for the other, 
 and it is probable that on that day, when the multitude at the 
 temple is larger, two companies are on duty there and only one 
 company at the palace, while during the week the reverse is the 
 case. Jehoiada, after showing the three centurions that the 
 rightful heir to the throne is still alive, agrees that the company 
 on 'duty at the temple, instead of going down to the palace, 
 shall remain. When the other two companies come up from 
 the palace, therefore, the whole body-guard will be around the 
 young king, and Athaliah will be left without soldiers. The 
 plan is carried out, and Athaliah, hearing the noise, comes un- 
 attended to the temple, because she has no soldiers at her com- 
 mand. This account, then, makes the matter the business 
 of the body-guard, with which (except the High Priest) priests 
 and people have nothing to do. How now does the Chron- 
 icler see the incident? In his account the Carites and Run- 
 ners disappear. Jehoiada counsels indeed with certain cap- 
 
niBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSI'IRATION. 107 
 
 tains of hundreds, but who they are does not distinctly 
 appear. Instead of collecting troops, they go about the 
 country and gather all the Levites and the heads of fathers' 
 houses. It is a matter in which the whole people therefore 
 take part. The account goes on : 
 
 "And all the congregation made a covenant with the king 
 in the house of God. And he said unto them : Behold the 
 king's son shall reign as Jehovah hath spoken concerning the 
 sons of David. This is the thing which ye shall do. The 
 third part of you that come in on the Sabbath of the Priests 
 and of the Levites shall be at the outer gates. And a third of 
 you shall be in the palace, and a third part in the gate Jesod, 
 and all the people shall be in the courts of the house of Jehovah. 
 But let them not come mto the House except the priests and 
 those ministering to the Levites — they may come in because 
 they are holy; and let all the people keep the guard of Je- 
 hovah. And let the Levites surround the king each with his 
 weapons in his hands, and he that cometh into the house shall 
 be put to death, and let them be with the king when he com- 
 eth in and when he goeth out. And the Invites and all Judah 
 did according to all that Jehoiada the Priest commanded." 
 
 Now it is perfectly clear that there is a discrepancy in the 
 two accounts. In one the main (in fact the only) actors be- 
 sides Jehoiada are the royal guard. They come into the 
 temple, they surround the king, they guard him and pro- 
 claim him king, and they kill Athaliah. In the other account 
 the body-guard is not even mentioned. The captains of hun-. 
 dreds seem to be Levitical chiefs. They gather the Levites 
 from the whole country. These do exactly what in the other 
 account is attributed to the mercenaries. Yet in spite of the 
 conspiracy being known to all the Levites and all Judah, 
 Athaliah has no inkling of it and comes unattended into the 
 temple. The account in Kings is the original, and the devi- 
 ations are due to the point of view of the Chronicler. In 
 the time before the exile, as we know from various sources, 
 
Io8 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 there was no scruple (in practice at least) against the entrance 
 of foreigners into the temple. Ezekiel distinctly denounces 
 this as one of the customs of the time before the captivity, 
 " Thus saith the Lord God : O ye house of Israel, let it suf- 
 fice you of all your abominations in that ye have brought in 
 aliens uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh to be 
 in my sanctuary to profane it when ye offer my bread, the 
 fat and the blood." The earlier kings, therefore, had guarded 
 the temple with their own troops. But the stringency with 
 which the later Jews guarded the temple from profanation 
 made the Chronicler unable to realize this. Especially that a 
 High Priest should have called upon the royal troops for serv- 
 ice in the temple seemed to him incredible. He supposed 
 the Levites must have been called upon for this service, and 
 hence he substituted them in the text.' It is clear that we 
 can not ascribe freedom from error to the statements of a 
 book compiled in this way. You will say then it should be 
 cast out of the Canon. To which I reply, by no means. 
 The book of Chronicles is invaluable to us not for what it 
 directly teaches, but for the light it throws indirectly upon its 
 own time. What the Jews of the Persian monarchy were 
 thinking, how they regarded the older history, how they were 
 preparing the way for the Scribes and Pharisees, for the cruci- 
 fixion and the Roman war, for the Talmud and Barkochba — - 
 
 1 As some questions have been raised by my assertions about the 
 Chronicler, I will add that of course I do not suppose him guilty of 
 intentional falsification of the record. He had before him, it would 
 appear, a considerable literature which had commented on the history 
 in the spirit of the time — his changes are made from these documents. 
 The ideas which govern this literature were a part of the mental furni- 
 ture of the Chronicler himself. His inspiration, which made him 
 a source of religious edification to his contemporaries, and which 
 makes his work still a part of the infallible rule of faith, did vot correct 
 his historical point of view any more than it corrected liis scientific point 
 of view, which no doubt made the earth the center of the solar system. 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSIIRAI ION. 109 
 
 tnis is made known to us in the book of Chronicles and by 
 almost no other book of the Bible. But it is made known to 
 us by reading between the lines ; that is to say, by consider- 
 ing and weighing not what the author says of others, but by 
 what he betrays of himself. What is the truth of history, 
 my friends? Is it simply the narrative of events definitely 
 defined, and labeled, and arranged in order ? Is it a cata- 
 logue of kings, of each of which it records that he was 
 born and made war and died? Is it not rather a 
 series of pictures each of which describes an age with its 
 thoughts, its aspirations, its ideals? If so, sacred history can 
 not be made up by a string of inerrant statements. It must 
 show unconsciously and by suggestion the spirit that informs 
 the church of God and makes it live and grow. To secure 
 us an inerrant chronicle of dates and names would not give 
 us this history. To give us the pictures of the men drawn 
 by themselves is to give us this history. To discover these 
 pictures, and to locate them, and set them in their true light, 
 is the work of Biblical Theology working by criticism. 
 
 And now I must be prepared to hear an objection urged 
 against the view here presented. If we can not trust the 
 Bible to be accurate in minor details we can not trust it in 
 any thing. If we must give up one we must give up all. In 
 reply to this I say, first, that a very large number of able 
 and evangelical theologians do not admit this. Many of 
 those who hold the most rigid theory of inspiration say ex- 
 pressly that the admission of chronological or historic a! er- 
 rors would not invalidate the infallible authority of the Bible. 
 To substantiate this let me name Richard Baxter who for 
 himself says that he believes all errors now in the text to 
 have come in by transmission. I quote from the "Reasons 
 for the Christian Religion " the following : 
 
 " But those men who think that these human imperfections 
 of the writers do extend further, and may a]. pear in some by- 
 passages of chronologies or history which are no part of the 
 
no BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 rule of faith and life, do not hereby destroy the Christian 
 cause. For God might enable his apostles to an infallible 
 recording and preaching of the Gospel, even all things neces- 
 sary to salvation, though he had not made them infallible in 
 every by-passage and circumstances any more than they were 
 indefectible in life. As for them that say, ' I can believe no 
 man in any thing who is mistaken in one thing, at least, as 
 infallible, they speak against common sense and reason; for 
 a man may be infallibly acquainted with some things who is 
 not so in all. A historian may infallibly acquaint me that 
 there was a fight at Lepanto, . . . who can not tell me 
 all the circumstances of it. . . . I do not believe that 
 any man can prove the least error in the holy Scripture in 
 any point according to its true intent and meaning ; but if he 
 could, the Gospel, as a rule of faith and life in things neces- 
 sary to salvation, might be, nevertheless, proved infallible by 
 all the evidences before given." ^ Without investigating a 
 large number of theologians who are quoted ^ as making sim- 
 lar concessions, I will only call your attention to the fact that 
 Christian Apologetics declares that the great things of Script- 
 ure can be proved without assuming the inerrancy of the rec- 
 ord at all. President Patton, of Princeton, holds this view, 
 as is well known. " I must take exception to the disposition 
 on the part of some (he says) to stake the fortunes of Chris- 
 tianity on the doctrine of inspiration. Not that I yield to 
 
 * The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, London, 1830, 
 Vol. XXI, p. 349. 
 
 ' The author of the article, Inspiration, in McClintock and Strong's 
 Cyclopaedia, says : "Others have gone so far as to avow that the value 
 of the religious element in the revelation would not be lessened if er- 
 rors were acknowledged in the scientific and miscellaneous matter 
 which accompanies it. Among those who have held this form of the 
 theory are Baxter, Tillotson, Doddridge, Warburton ; Bishops Horsley, 
 Randolph, and Whately, Hampden, Thirlwall, Bishop Heber, Dr. 
 Pye Smith, Thomas Scott, and Dean Alford." 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSI'IRATION. m 
 
 any one in profound conviction of the truih and importance 
 of the doctrine. But it is proper for us to bear in mind the 
 immense argumentative advantage which Christianity has 
 aside altogether from the inspiration of the documents on 
 which it rests.'" According to President Patton, then, so far 
 from its being true that, unless the Bible be inerrant in every 
 detail, we must give up its testimony to the matters of greater 
 weight — so far from this being true, we might give up the in- 
 spiration altogether, and still have the assurance of these 
 greater matters. 
 
 But, when a thing is said to be unthinkable, the best way 
 to answer the assertion is to show that it has been thought. 
 Some say they can not conceive a Bible that can be relied on 
 in matters of faith and morals, without making it infallibly 
 true on points of chronology, history, and natural science. 
 To this I reply : Many men have received the Bible, and do 
 receive the Bible, as their infallible authority who do not 
 actually attribute to it, and who have not actually attributed 
 to it, inerrancy in minor matters. This is true, as I have al- 
 ready said, of the Reformers. It is dangerous to cite a Ger- 
 man in this connection. But the time was when Tholuck 
 was honored in America as a defender of the faith. Tholu< k 
 declared himself decidedly* against the absolute inerrancy 
 of Scripture. Among living theologians, Luthardt has earned 
 the gratitude of the Protestant Church at large by his fruitful 
 labors in varied fields of research. Luthardt declares that 
 the older theology "certainly went too far." Van Oo.sterzee" 
 was, during his life, the representative of the Orthodox party 
 
 ' Patton, The Inspiration of the Scriptures, p. 22. 
 
 * In the article cited above. I might add here that amor{j those who 
 do not assert inerrancy, "but limit inspiration to such matters as di- 
 rectly pertain to the proper material of revelation, ;. e., to strictly re- 
 ligious truth," are to be found (accordini,' to McClintock and Slrong) 
 John Howe, Bishop Williams, Burnet, Lowth, Bishop Watson, Law, 
 Barrow, Conybeare, Bloomfield, and others. 
 
112 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 in the Reformed church of Holland, yet he declares that 
 ' ' errors and inaccuracies in matters of subordinate import- 
 once are undoubtedly to be found in the Bible. A Luther, 
 a Calvin, a Coccejus, among the older theologians; aTholuck, 
 a Neander, a Lange, a Stier, among the more modern ones, 
 have admitted this without hesitation."' And in our own 
 country there has recently been published a book, by a care- 
 ful investigator, which, while an able defense of "Super- 
 natural Revelation," declines to assert inerrancy.'^ The 
 author says: "As to the meaning of deo-vzoazo^ [in i Tim. 
 iii : i6], there is not, and can not be any material difference 
 of opinion. The chief difference relates rather to the object 
 and degree of inspiration, whether it is the writings or the 
 writers that are inspired ; and whether the inspiration secures 
 absolute infallibility or not. From the word itself, however, as 
 Ellicott, Warrington, and others properly insist, we can not 
 infer a verbal inspiration, such as the older theologians 
 taught" (p. 299, sq.; the italics are mine). Again, after de- 
 fining the "deliverance of the Christian judgment in favor 
 of the general and special trustworthiness of the New Testa- 
 ment in its descriptions [note 1] of Christ and the Christian 
 revelation," the author goes on to say: "Does this mean 
 now that every thing, without exception, that is found in the 
 Scripture is to be accepted as absolute, unadulterated truth? 
 Is all critical inquiry into the historical and scientific accuracy 
 or logical soundness of Biblical utterances to be cut off? By 
 no means. The Bible was written by imperfect and fallible 
 men; and it is only by the use of the rational and critical 
 
 1 Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, I, p. 205. It is worth noting 
 that the latest defense of inerrancy comes from Germany, by Rohnert, 
 noticed in the Independent, of March 5, 1891. 
 
 * Supernatural Revelation, an Essay concerning the basis of the 
 Christian Faith, by C. M. Mead, Lectures on the L. P. Stone Founda- 
 tion, delivered at Princeton Theological Seminary. 
 
WinJCAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION'. 113 
 
 judgment that Christians have come to regard it of ex<_c|>- 
 tional trustworthiness. 
 
 "If the same method of examination should reveal occasional 
 instances of discrepancy and error, this would k nothing more 
 than what might be expected, unless it has been demonstrated 
 that the writers were so inspired as to make them absolutely in- 
 falliblt. But no such demonstration has ever been made " 
 (P- Zh'' sq-)- 
 
 But if you still feel that the concession of minor errors en- 
 dangers the spiritual truth, let me ask you to notice the sim- 
 ilar line of argument that might have been followed in the 
 past, but which has not actually resulted in the overthrow of 
 the Scriptures or of the Church. 
 
 Suppose an inquirer comes to you with the question how 
 you know the Old Testament Apocrypha not to be part of 
 the Bible. You explain to him the history of the Jewish 
 Canon and the testimony of the New Testament. He asks, 
 "has the Church not actually accepted these books as 
 Scripture at some periods of its history, and have not some 
 eminent theologians used them as the Word of God?'' You 
 will be compelled to answer in the affirmative. If, now, 
 your inquirer says, " well, if God can not guarantee his 
 Word so that His Church can tell exactly what it is, then I 
 can not be sure that any of it is His," how will you answer 
 him ? Surely you would not admit that this uncertainty, even 
 in a matter of such importance as the extent of the Canon, 
 invalidates the Bible. 
 
 Or if a Bible student comes to you with the Revised Yer- 
 sion and complains that the Bible has been mutilated by the 
 omission of the passage concerning " three that bear witness 
 in heaven," what will you do? You will explain the process 
 of transmission by manuscript. You will tell him that the 
 verse is no part of the original Scripture, but has crept mto 
 some copies by mistake. If now he says, " if God ran not 
 secure his Word from errors of copyists, I can not rely ui)on 
 
114 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 any part of it," what will you say? You will not admit this 
 argument either, though it is precisely your own in case of 
 admitted historical errors. 
 
 But, again, if one inquire why the Revised Version gives 
 so many marginal renderings, some quite different from the 
 text, you may be compelled to explain to him that the 
 Hebrew is in some respects an imperfect language; that it 
 has but two tenses for example, so that the time of an action 
 is often difficult to define as exactly as we should like; that, 
 moreover, the Hebrew script was at first very defective, and 
 though it has been admirably supplemented by the system of 
 points, yet there is reason to think the points sometimes in 
 the wrong. After all this, he might take your line of argu- 
 ment and say : " If God could not express this revelation 
 more accurately than that, I can not depend upon it at all." 
 But would he be right ? 
 
 Now, all these are admittedly true. The Canon had no 
 such authentication (so far as we know), as we should have 
 insisted upon had it been a human document to be handed 
 down as an authority. The text has not been preserved from 
 error in transmission, and it was committed to a language of 
 limited powers of expression and to a script peculiarly liable 
 to ambiguity. But we all hold that it is, nevertheless, to us 
 the infallible rule of faith and practice. If we suppose that 
 the human factor, even in the autographs, showed traces of 
 human fallibility, I do not see that that invalidates the rule 
 of faith. 
 
 But now I want to call your attention to certain grave con- 
 sequences of insisting that inspiration implies absolute iner- 
 rancy. The first is that this insistance may drive some to an 
 litter rejection of the whole revelation, because they suppose 
 themselves to discover a single contradiction in the Scriptures 
 themselves or a single statement that conflicts with the estab- 
 lished facts of natural science or of profane history. Dr. 
 Evans has already alluded to this, and I will not enlarge 
 
Bini.ICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND IN'SPIRA IK )N. 
 
 •»5 
 
 upon it. Only it should be observed that the chances for 
 error in the Old Testament are much greater than in the 
 New Testament. The Old Testament took form in a cruder 
 state of society and its books cover a much greater jjcriod 
 of time than is the case in the New Testament. We shouUl 
 naturally expect greater difficulties in the Old Testament. 
 The caution exercised with regard to a priori theories in re- 
 gard to the New Testament commends itself with double 
 force when we come to the Old. 
 
 A second danger of insisting upon the doctrine of iner- 
 rancy is that it reverses the order of the two principles of the 
 Protestant Church. As we have seen, the vital principle of 
 the Reformation was Justification by Faith. The formative 
 principle was the sufficiency of Scripture as the Rule of Faith. 
 If, now, you invert them and put the Scripture first, do 
 you not endanger the faith in Christ ? In practice I do not 
 believe this is done. If an iaquirer comes to a pastor, he is 
 not met with the demand to believe the Scripture to be in- 
 fallible in its every statement, but with the exhortation to be- 
 lieve in the Lord Jesus Christ, and this on the ground of the 
 simple historical testimony of the Scriptures as the testimony 
 of honest witnesses. But, is not the central point in the 
 Christian life the central point in theology also ? And I will 
 confess here the surprise with which I discovered what I think 
 to be a grave defect in the theology of the distinguished Dr. 
 Hodge. If you will read that author's discussion of the sub- 
 ject of Faith, you will acknowledge, I think, that it suffers 
 from just this defect. Dr. Hodge defines faith as "the per- 
 suasion of the truth founded on testimony," and then adds: 
 "The faith of the Christian is the persuasion of the truth of 
 the facts and doctrines recorded in the Scriptures on the tes- 
 timony of God.*' ' A little later he says that the faith whi. h 
 secures eternal life " is founded not on the external or the 
 
 Systematic Theology, III, pp. 67, 68. 
 
Il6 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 moral evidence of the truth, but on the testimony of the 
 Spirit with and by the truth to the renewed soul." Further 
 on he gives the correct definition : " To believe that Christ 
 is God manifest in the flesh . . . is to receive Him as 
 our God. This includes the apprehension and conviction of 
 His divine glory and the adoring reverence, love, confidence, 
 and submission, which are due to God alone." But how this 
 can be reconciled with the other definition, I do not see. 
 But suppose they mean the same thing. Dr. Hodge, as we 
 have seen, declares all the assertions of Scripture free from 
 error. If, now, faith is believing the facts and doctrines 
 recorded in the Scriptures on the testimony Oi God, the life 
 of faith becomes simply a mental effort to hold on to these 
 facts. The young Christian studies his Bible and finds some 
 things which seem to him contradictory. According to this 
 theory, he must believe there is no error or he loses his 
 Christian faith. He must hold on to the Bible (it will be 
 said) no matter what science says or secular history, or the 
 evidence of his own common sense. This is not the faith of 
 Luther or of Paul or of the Shorter Catechism which declares 
 that " Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we re- 
 ceive and rest upon ///;// alone for salvation as he is offered to 
 us in the Gospel." What the pastor in his ministrations de- 
 sires to awaken and foster in his converts is t]iis faith in Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 All Scripture is God-inspired — true ! But the remarkable 
 thing is that the text affirms more than this. All Scripture is 
 not only God-inspired, but all Scripture is ^'profitable for 
 teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction, which is 
 in righteousness : that the man of God may be complete, 
 furnished completely unto every good work." This seems to 
 me the hardest part of it. I find no difficulty in supposing 
 the list of Dukes of Edom God-inspired, even though in the 
 original autograph it had some names wrongly placed. But 
 do you make it profitable for instruction in righteousness? 
 
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHU' ANU INbl'lRATION. u; 
 
 Do you make it profitable' to yourself for completely furnish- 
 uig yourself to every good work? U not, you can not 
 lightly condemn me for not drawing your deduction from iuj 
 inspiration. Surely, you would not allow me to censure you 
 lor not practicing upon your own confession of it5 profjt- 
 
 ' Every one knows that the profitableness of all Scripture is not real- 
 ized in ordinary Christian experience. A brilliant lecturer says that 
 once, when eating a very fine shad, one of the company began to nucs- 
 t.on h.m about his faith in Scripture. The questioner held up one 
 difficulty after another and asked, " What do you do with this.>" The 
 reply was: "1 treat it as I do the bones in my fish-I quietly lay ,t 
 one side." In practice, this is what every one docs. The soul does 
 not /eeJ on genealogical tables or lists of forgotten kings, no matter 
 how strenuously it believes that they are all profitable for instruction 
 in righteousness. Nor does the preacher make use of these in his 
 work— though there is a tradition that a sermon was once preached on 
 the "nine and twenty knives" brought up from the captivity, and 
 another on "the night-hawk, the owl, and the cuckoo," from the list 
 of unclean birds. In practical Christian experience and edification, 
 some things in the Bible are quietly left at one side. 
 
 Now, if a comparative anatomist were to study the shad, the bones 
 would become of the first importance to him. It would hardly be 
 necessary for the bystander to remonstrate with him for spending so 
 much time on the bones which contain no nutriment. But we, as stu- 
 dents of the Scripture, are precisely i» this condition. We suppose 
 the very things which the ordinary Christian may quietly leave unused 
 — we suppose these to throw light on the siruc/ttre o( Scnplure. When 
 we bring them forward with this purpose, we are met by the assertion 
 that these can not be what they seem to be — discrepancies can not 
 exist. In other words, it is persistently asserted that there can be no 
 bones in the fish — that it is all good ; therefore we must swallow 
 bones and all, or at least must pound the bones fine by some reconcil- 
 ing hypothesis and then declare them good meat. 
 
 The Lord Jesus at one time met the disciples when they were hun- 
 gry and gave them a piece of fish broiled on the coals. Were he to 
 bring me such a gift, I should expect to find it excellent fish. Should 
 I therefore expect to find it unlike any other fish in structure? 
 Would it be disloyalty to him to stop and look for the bimes ? 
 
Il8 BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 ableness. How to make all Scripture profitable is at least as 
 important a question and it is a more practical question than 
 how to establish its absolute inerrancy. 
 
 And here is to the theological teacher the most serious 
 question of all. To insist upon a constant assertion and de- 
 fense of the inerrancy of Scripture is to turn the whole 
 science of exegesis into a study of harmonistics. No doubt 
 infidelity is constantly alleging contradictions and discrepan- 
 cies that do not exist. For that reason, I would be slow to 
 urge those which I suppose to exist. But to spend one's 
 time in hypotheses designed to show how discrepancies may 
 be reconciled is generally a fruitless task. 
 
 The truth frankly acknowledged is the truth's own best de- 
 fense. But it is to be expected that we will discover some 
 new truth. It is the duty of the special student to announce 
 the discovery. That he will sometimes be hasty, sometimes 
 will be one-sided, is to be expected. And it is to be expected 
 that his positions will be attacked. It is desirable that they 
 be attacked, for it is by discussion that the truth is advanced. 
 I am sure no one in a theological chair in the Presbyterian 
 Church could object to the sharpest discussion of his pub- 
 lished views. Indeed, he would welcome it, as a means of 
 clarifying his own statements. But the discussion ought to 
 discuss statements and not persons. In this revision year, 
 we have heard much of the liberty given by the subscription 
 to our standards. Is this a liberty to those only who agree 
 with us, to those only who do not believe the Pope of Rome 
 to be Antichrist, or even to those only who investigate the 
 problems of theology " in order to vindicate the truth as held 
 by our Church ?" These questions must be answered by our 
 pastors and elders, for they bear rule in the House of God. 
 For one, I can say I want to have them answered rightly, 
 not only for my own sake and the sake of the institution I 
 serve, but for the sake of the whole Church of God and for 
 
BIHLICAL SCHOLAkSlIII' AND INSriKA I KjN. h^ 
 
 the sake of His truth. And so I end where my friend began. 
 In order to progress, there must be sympathy and confidence 
 between pastors and professors. The work is one. Our 
 aim is one. We must all account to the one Lord, "whose 
 we are and whom we serve." May He help us to know His 
 truth and to do His will ! 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 I. 
 
 'The following article from the British Weekly of April 25, 
 1890, has been slightly abbreviated, but without altering the 
 substance : 
 
 THE ENGLISH PKESHYTKRI ANS AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 We f3rwarded the new Article on Inspiration, which, for 
 convenience sake, may be reprinted, to four eminent professors 
 of theology in Scotland. They have kindly sent us the criti- 
 cisms which follow the Article. 
 
 "We believe that God, Who manifests Himself in creation 
 and providence, and especially in the spirit of man, has been 
 pleased to reveal His mind and will for our salvation at suc- 
 cessive periods and in various ways ; and that this Revelation 
 has been, so far as needful, committed to writing by men in- 
 spired of the Holy Spirit, in the Scriptures of the Old and 
 New Testaments, which are therefore to be devoutly studied 
 by all as God's written Word or message to mankind; and 
 we reverently acknowledge the Holy Spirit speaking in the 
 Scriptures to be the Supreme Judge in questions of faith and 
 duty." 
 
 CRITICISMS. 
 
 I. It seems to me to be a fair and distinct statement <»f the 
 
 (lai) 
 
doctrine of the Reformers, who held Scripture to be the Word 
 of God, and of Divine authority as the rule of faith and duty, 
 but did not hesitate to admit inaccuracies or error in it on 
 matters not affecting these. It does not, I think, commit 
 those who accept it to the view that there can be no error at 
 all in Scripture, even of the most trivial kind, and, like the 
 Westminster Confession, it makes no difference in regard to 
 infallibility between Scripture as originally given and as we 
 have it now. It seems compatible with any results of a rev- 
 erent and believing criticism as to the authorship, date, and 
 character of the several parts of Scripture that do not imply 
 bad faith in the inspired writers. 
 
 2. The English article consists of four propositions, (i) It 
 affirms that God has made a fourfold revelation of Himself, 
 (a) in creation, (d) in providence, (c) in the spirit of man, and 
 likewise, (d) a revelation designed for the salvation of man, 
 implying that the other three revelations are insufficient for 
 this purpose. 
 
 It affirms that the Scriptures are to be devoutly studied by 
 all as "God's written Word or message to mankind. A writ- 
 ten word or message might seem at first to exclude the idea 
 of even a slight inaccuracy. But this could only be if the 
 word or message was dictated to the writers. The article says 
 that the writers were inspired of God, but this conveys a dif- 
 ferent idea from that of dictation. An inspired written mes- 
 sage is not equivalent to a dictated written message. A dic- 
 tated written message leaves no room for even the slightest 
 inaccuracy; not so with an inspired written message. If the 
 message had been dictated by the Spirit of God, it would 
 have been blasphemy to ascribe to it the slightest vestige of 
 inaccuracy. But seeing that the message was not dictated 
 but inspired, the case is different. It is open to us to deduce 
 from the record itself whether any place was left for any inac- 
 curacies arising from such causes as imperfect human obser- 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 »»3 
 
 vation or imperfect human memory. It is certainly the con- 
 viction of many believing men that under the inspiration of 
 the Holy Ghost, there was left room for these. It is a con- 
 viction that harmonizes with the most profound reverence for 
 the Spirit of truth ; for it holds that it is more honorable to 
 Him to ascribe the undoubted discrepancies of Scripture to 
 the imperfection of human instruments than to any other 
 cause that can be assigned. 
 
 3. I think that the careful statements, concerning Hc^ly 
 Scripture, in the Westminster Confession itself, can be shown 
 to be free from the perils and difficulties of the inerrancy- 
 theory as held by the advocates of verbal or literal inspiration. 
 This recast paragraph, though a very general, is a fairly suc- 
 cessful reproduction of the Westminster statement. In my 
 view, therefore, it steers entirely clear of the dangerous posi- 
 tion which would stake the Divine character of the Bible on 
 literal or verbal inerrancy. It would have done so equally 
 well, had it even laid more stress on the infallible truth and 
 supreme authority of Scripture. 
 
 4. Another venerable and eminent theologian sends us a 
 long letter on the Article, but it is not written with a view to 
 publication. He warmly approves of the creed, and depre- 
 cates the raising of any question of literal infallibility, main- 
 taining that it is not the duty of the Church to say that there 
 are errors in Scripture, even although it knows that there 
 are 
 
 IT. 
 
 As a help to such of our readers as may desire suggestions 
 respecting the best and most available authorities (in English) 
 on New Testament Criticism and Theology, the following 
 brief list is appended : 
 
124 APPENDIX. 
 
 For Criticism — Bleek's Introduction to the New Testament 
 (2 vols.: Clark); Reuss : History of the New Testament (2 
 vols.: Houghton); Weiss: Manual of Introduction to the New 
 Testament (2 vols.: Hodder); Salmon: Introduction to the 
 Study of the Books of the New Testament (Young); Dods : 
 Introduction to the Study of the New Testament (Hodder); 
 * Weiss : Life of Christ (Clark); Schiirer : History of the Jewish 
 People in the Time of Christ ; Lightfoot : Supernatural Re- 
 ligion (a reply); Sanday: Gospels in the Second Century 
 (Macmillan); Westcott : Introduction to the Study of the Four 
 Gospels (Macmillan); A. Wright: The Composition of the 
 Four Gospels ; Rushbrooke's Synopticon (Macmillan); Schaff: 
 Companion to the Greek Testament (Harper); Westcott and 
 Hort : The New Test, in the Original Greek (Vol. II : Har- 
 per); Immer : Hermeneutics of the New Test. (Andover); 
 Charteris: The N. T. Scriptures: their claims, history, and 
 authority (Carter); Articles in Smith's Bible Dictionary, En- 
 cyclop. Britannica, Schaf-Herzog Encyclopaedia, McClintock 
 and Strong (esp. on Gospels, Acts, Apocalypse, Matthew, 
 Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, Jude, Hebrews); A. 
 B. Bruce: The Presbyterian Review, October, 1884. For 
 German and foreign literature, see esp. Holtzmann's Einleit- 
 ung in das N. T. 
 
 For New Test. Theology — Bernard's Progress of Doctrine 
 in the N. T. (Macmillan); Reuss: History of Christian The- 
 ology in the Apostolic Age (2 vols. : Hodder); Weiss : Biblical 
 Theology of the New Testament (2 vols.: Clark); Schmid : 
 Biblical Theology of the N. T. (Clark); Van Oosterze : The- 
 ology of the N. T. (Dodd); J. P. Thompson : Theology of 
 Christ (Scribner); Pfleiderer: Paulinism (2 vols.: Williams); 
 Irons : Christianity as taught by St. Paul ; Lias : Doctrinal 
 System of John ; Gebhardt: The Doctrine of the Apocalypse; 
 Delitzsch : Biblical Psychology ; Beck : Biblical Psychology ; 
 Harless: Christian Ethics; Cremer's Bibiico-Theological Lex- 
 
AHHKNDIX. 125 
 
 icon of the N. T. Greek (5th German Ed.; 2d Engl. Ed,, 
 with Supplement). 
 
 See more fully the Catalogue of Hooks in Briggs's Biblical 
 Study. 
 
 For the Old Testament, the following may be consulted : 
 Isaac Taylor, Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry, N. V., 1862. 
 Stanley, Lectures on the Jewish Church, N. Y., 1871. 
 Cheyne, The Hallowing of Criticism, 1888. Sanday, The 
 Oracles of God, 1S90. Oehler, Theology of the Old Testa- 
 ment, N. Y., 1883. Von Orelli, The Old Testament Proph- 
 ecy of the Consummation of God's Kingdom (Scribner and 
 Welford). Briggs, Biblical Study. Cross, Hints to English 
 Readers of the Old Testament. Schultz, Old Testament 
 Theology, is promised in an English translation shortly. 
 Green, Moses and the Prophets (a reply to W. Robertson 
 Smith's Prophets of Israel). 
 
 On special points of Biblical Theology : Riehni, Messianic 
 Prophecy, 1875. Briggs, Messianic Prophecy, N. Y., 1S86. 
 Laidlaw, The Bible Doctrine of Man, Edinburgh, 1879. 
 Cave, The Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice, Edinburgh, 
 1891. 
 
 On critical problems in particular books : Murray. Origin 
 and Growth of the Psalms, N. Y., 1880. Cox, Commentary 
 on Job, London, 1880. Plumptre, Ecclesiastes, Cambridge, 
 1 881. Wright, The Book of Koheleth, London, 1883. 
 Wright, Zechariah and His Prophecies, London, 1879. 
 Cheyne, The Prophecies of Isaiah, London and New York, 
 1881. Driver, Isaiah and His Times. Delitzsch, Commen- 
 tary on Isaiah (new edition), 1891. G. A. Smith, The Hook 
 of Isaiah, 1891. Delitzsch, New Commentary on Genesis, 
 1891. 
 
 Special problems are treated by : George Smith, Chaldean 
 Genesis; and Assyrian Epyonym Canon, 1875. Schradcr, 
 The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, 1889, 
 
126 APPENDIX. 
 
 etc. Toy, The Quotations of the Old Testament in the New 
 Testament. 
 
 The structure of the Pentateuch has been exhaustively 
 discussed by Profs. Harper and Green in Hebraica, 1889 and 
 1890.