OF PRINCr^ 
 
 
 BS480 .H685 
 
 Hodge, Archibald Alexander, 1823-188^ 
 
 Inspiration / 
 
No. 206. 
 
 INSPIRATION. 
 
 BY 
 
 fsoF. ARCHIBALD A. HODGE, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Prof. BEXJAMI]S' B. WAEFIELD. D.D. 
 
 REPRINTED, BY PERiflSSION, FROM THE " PRESBT 
 TERIAN REVIEW OF APRIL, 1881. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 PRESBYTERIAX BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
 A^D SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK, 
 
 No. 1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 
 
No. 206. 
 
 INSPIRATION 
 
 The word "Inspiration," as applied to the 
 Holy Scriptures, has gradually acquired a specific 
 technical meaning independent of its etymology. 
 At first this word, in the sense of " God-breathed," 
 vvas used to express the entire agency of God in 
 producing that divine element which distinguishes 
 Scripture from all other writings. It was used in 
 a sense comprehensive of supernatural revelation, 
 while the immense range of providential and 
 gracious divine activities concerning the gene- 
 sis of the word of God in human language was 
 practically overlooked. But Christian scholar 
 have come to see that this divine element, which 
 penetrates and glorifies Scripture at every point, 
 has entered and become incorporated with it in 
 very various ways, natural, supernatural and 
 gracious, thiDugh long courses of providential 
 leading, as well as by direct suggestion — through 
 the spontaneous action of the souls of the sacred 
 writers, as well as by controlling influence from 
 Avithout. It is important that distinguishable 
 1* 6 
 
6 INSPIRATION. 
 
 idpas should be connoted by distinct terms, and 
 that the terms themselves should be fixed in a 
 definite sense. Thus we have come to distinguish 
 sharply between Revelation, which is the fre- 
 quent, -and Inspiration, which is the constant, 
 attribute of all the thoughts and statements of 
 Scripture, and between the problem of the gen- 
 esis of Scripture on the one hand, which includes 
 historic processes and the concurrence of natural 
 and supernatural forces, and must account for all 
 the phenomena of Scripture, and the mere fact 
 of inspiration on the other hand, or the superin- 
 tendence by God of the writers in the entire pro- 
 cess of their writing, which accounts for nothing 
 whatever but the absolute infallibility of the 
 rerord in which the revelation, once generated, 
 appears in the .original autograph. It will be 
 observed that we intentionally avoid applying 
 to this inspiration the predicate " influence." It 
 summoned, on occasion, a great variety of in- 
 fluences, 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. 
 It interfered with no spontaneous natural agen- 
 cies, which were, in themselves, producing re- 
 sults conformable to the mind of the Holy Spirit. 
 On occasion it summoned all needed divine in- 
 
INSPIRATION. I 
 
 fluences and suggestions, and it sealed the entire 
 record and all its elements, however generated, 
 with the imprimatur of God, sending it to us 
 as his Word. 
 
 The importance of limiting the word '' inspira- 
 tion " to a definite and never-varying sense, and 
 one which is shown, by the facts of the case, to 
 be applicable equally to every part of Scripture, 
 is self-evident, and is emphasized by the embar- 
 rassment which is continually recurring in the 
 discussions of this subject, arising sometimes from 
 the wide, and sometimes from the various, senses 
 in which this term is used by different parties. 
 The history of theology is full of parallel in- 
 stances, in which terms of the highest import 
 have come to be accepted in a more fixed and 
 narrow sense than they bore at first either in 
 scriptural or early ecclesiastical usage, and w^'th 
 only a remote relation to their etymology ; as, for 
 instance, Regeneration, Sacrament, etc. 
 
 PRESUPPOSITIONS. 
 
 From this definition of the term it is evident 
 that instead of being, in the order of thought, 
 the first religious truth which we embrace, upon 
 which, subsequently, the entire fabric of true 
 religion rests, it is the last and crowning attri- 
 bute of those sacred books from which we derive 
 
8 INSPIRATION. 
 
 our religious knowledge. Very many religious 
 and historical truths must be eetablished before 
 we come to the question of inspiration ; as, for 
 instance, the being and moral government of 
 God, the fallen condition of man, the fact of a 
 redemptive scheme, the general historical truth 
 of the Scriptures, and the validity and authority 
 of the revelation of God's will, which they con- 
 tain — i. e. the general truth of Christianity and 
 its doctrines. Hence it follows that, while the 
 inspiration of the Scriptures is true, and, being 
 true, is a principle fundamental to the adequate 
 interpretation of Scripture, it nevertheless is not 
 in the first instance a principle fundamental to 
 the truth of the Christian religion. In dealing 
 with skeptics it is not proper to begin with the 
 evidence which immediately establishes inspira- 
 tioii, but we should first establish theism, then 
 the historical credibility of the Scriptures, and 
 then the divine origin of Christianity. Nor 
 should we ever allow it to be believed that the 
 truth of Christianity depends upon any doctrine 
 of inspiration whatever. Revelation came in 
 large part before the record of it, and the Chris- 
 tian Church before the New-Testament Scriptures. 
 Inspiration can have no meaning if Christianity 
 is not true, but Christianity would be true and 
 divine — and, being so, would stand — even if God 
 
INSPIRATION. 9 
 
 had not been pleased to give us, in addition to 
 his revelation of saving truth, an infallible record 
 of that revelation absolutely errorless by means 
 of inspiration. 
 
 In the second place, it is also evident that our 
 conception of revelation and its methods must by 
 conditioned upon our general views of God's re- 
 lation to the world, and his methods of influen- 
 cing the souls of men. The only really dangerous 
 opposition to the Church doctrine of inspiration 
 comes either directly or indirectly, but always 
 ultimately, from some false view of God's rela- 
 tion to the world, of his methods of working, and 
 of the possibility of a supernatural agency pene- 
 trating and altering the course of a natural pro- 
 cess. But the whole genius of Christianity, all 
 of its essential and most characteristic doctrines, 
 presuppose the immanence of God in all his 
 creatures, and his concurrence with them in all 
 of their spontaneous activities. In him, as an 
 active, intelligent Spirit, we all live and move 
 and have our being. He governs all his crea- 
 tures and all their actions, working in men even 
 to will and spontaneously to do his good pleasure. 
 The currents, thus, of the divine activities do not 
 only flow around us, conditioning or controlling 
 our action from without, but they none the less 
 flow within the inner current of our personal 
 
10 INSPIRATION. 
 
 lives, confluent with our spontaneous self-move-' 
 ments, and contributing to the effects whatever 
 properties God may see fit that they shall have. 
 
 There is also a real logical and ideal, if not a 
 physical, continuity between all the various prov- 
 inces and methods of God's working : providence 
 and grace, the natural and the supernatural, all 
 constitute one system in the execution of one 
 plan. All these agents and all these methods 
 are so perfectly adjusted in the plan of God that 
 not one interferes with any other, and all are so 
 adjusted and controlled as that each works per- 
 fectly, according to the law of its own nature, 
 and yet all together infallibly bring about the 
 result God designs. In this case that design is a 
 record without error of the facts and doctrines 
 he had commissioned his servants to teach. 
 
 Of the manner in which God may inform 
 and direct a free intelligence without violating 
 its laws we have a familiar analogy in Nature 
 in the relation of instinct to free intelligence. 
 Intelligence is. personal, and involves self-con- 
 sciousness and liberty. Instinct is impersonal, 
 unconscious, and not free. Both exist alike in 
 man, with whom intelligence predominates, and 
 in the higher animals, with whom instinct pre- 
 dominates. In every case the instinct of the 
 creature is the intelligence of the Creator work- 
 
INSPIRATION. 11 
 
 ing through the creature's spontaneity, informing 
 and directing, yet never violating any of the 
 laws of his free intelligence. And in Nature we 
 can trace this all the way from the instinct of 
 the bee, which works mechanically, to the magic 
 play of the aesthetic instincts, which largely con- 
 stitute the genius of a great artist. We are not 
 absurdly attempting to draw a parallel between 
 natural instinct and supernatural inspiration. 
 But the illustration is good simply to show that 
 as a matter of fact God does prompt from with- 
 in the spontaneous activities of his intelligent 
 creatures, leading them by unerring means to 
 ends imperfectly discerned by themselves; and 
 that this activity of God, as in instinct or other- 
 wise, does not in any wise reveal itself, either in 
 consciousness or in the character of the action 
 to which it prompts, as interfering with the per- 
 sonal attributes or the free rational activities of 
 the creature. 
 
 THE GENESIS OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 We allude here to this wide and as yet im- 
 perfectly explored subject only for the purpose 
 of distinctly setting apart the various problems 
 it presents, and isolating the specific point of in- 
 spiration, with which we, as well as the Church 
 in general, are more particularly interested. All 
 
12 INSPIRATION. 
 
 parties of believers admit that ihia genesis of 
 Holy Scripture was the result of the co-operation, 
 in various ways, of the ageney of men and the 
 agency of God. 
 
 The human agency, both in the histories out 
 of which the Scriptures sprang, and in their im- 
 mediate composition and inscription, is every- 
 where apparent, and gives substance -and form 
 to the entire collection of writings. It is not 
 merely in the matter of verbal expression or lit- 
 erary composition that the personal idiosyncra- 
 sies of each author are freely manifested by the 
 untrammeled play of all his faculties, but the 
 very substance of what they write is evidently 
 for the most part the product of their own men- 
 tal and spiritual activities. This is true except 
 in that comparatively small element of the whole 
 body of sacred writing in which the human au- 
 thors simply report the word of God objectively 
 communicated, or, as in some of the prophecies, 
 they wrote by divine dictation. As the general 
 characteristic of all their work, each writer was 
 put to that special part of the general work for 
 which he alone was adapted by his original en- 
 dowments, education, special information and 
 providential position. Each drew from the stores 
 of his own original information, from the contri- 
 butions of oth^ men and from all other natural 
 
t 
 INSPIRATION. 13 
 
 sources. Each sought knowledge, like all other 
 authors, from the use of his owd natural facul- 
 ties of thought and feeling, of intuition and of 
 -logical inference, of memory and imagination, 
 and of religious experience. Each gave evi- 
 dence of his own special limitations of knowl- 
 edge and mental power, and of his personal 
 defects as well as of his powers. Each wrote 
 upon a definite occasion, under special historic- 
 ally grouped circumstances, from his own stand- 
 point in the progressively unfolded plan of 
 redemption, and each made" his own special 
 contribution to the fabric of God's word. 
 
 The divine agency, although originating in a 
 different source, yet emerges into the effect very 
 much through the same channels. The Script- 
 ures have been generated, as the plan of redemp- 
 tion has been evolved, through an historic process. 
 From the beginning God has dealt with man in 
 the concrete, by self-manifestations and transac- 
 tions. The revelation proceeds from facts to ideas, 
 and has been gradually unfolded as the prepa- 
 ration for the execution of the work of redemp- 
 tion has advanced through its successive stages. 
 The general providence unfolding this plan has 
 always been divine, yet has also been largely 
 natural in its method, while specially directed to 
 it" ends, and at the same time surcharged along 
 2 
 
14 INSPIEATION. 
 
 portions of its line, especially at the beginning 
 and at great crises, with the supernatural, as a 
 cloud is surcharged with electricity. There were 
 divine voices, appearances, covenants, supernat- 
 ural communications and interventions — the in- 
 troduction of new institutions, and their growth 
 under special providential conditions. The 
 prophet of God was sent with special revela- 
 tions and authority at particular junctures to 
 gather and interpret the lessons of the past, and 
 to add to them lessons springing out of the prov- 
 idential conditions of the present. The Script 
 ures were generated through sixteen centuries cf 
 this divinely-regulated concurrence of God and 
 mftn^of the natural and the supernatural, of rea- 
 son and revelation, of providence and grace. 
 They are an organism consisting of many parts, 
 each adjusted to all the rest, as the " many mem- 
 bers " to the " one body." Each sacred writer was 
 by God specially formed, endowed, educated, 
 providentially conditioned, and then supplied 
 with knowledge naturally, supernaturally or spir- 
 itually conveyed, so that he, and he alone, could, 
 and freely would, produce his allotted part. 
 Thus God predetermined all the matter and form 
 of the several books largely by the formation 
 and training of the several authors, as an organ- 
 ist determines the character of his music as much 
 
INSPIRATION. 15 
 
 when he builds his organ and when he tunes hi? 
 pipes as when he plays his keys. Each writei 
 also is put providentially at the very point of 
 view in the general progress of revelation to 
 which his part assigns him. • He inherits all the 
 contributions of the past. He is brought into 
 place and set to work at definite providential 
 junctures, the occasion affording him object and 
 motive, giving form to the writing God appoints 
 him to execute. 
 
 The Bible, moreover, being a work of the 
 Spirit for spiritual ends, each writer was pre- 
 pared precisely for his part in the work by the 
 personal dealings of the Holy Spirit with his 
 soul. Spiritual illumination is very different 
 from either revelation or inspiration, and yet it 
 had, under the providence of God, a large share 
 in the genesis of Scripture, contributing to it a 
 portion of that divine element which makes it 
 the word of God. The Psalms are divinely- 
 inspired records of the religious experience of 
 their writers, and are by God himself author- 
 itatively set forth as typical and exemplary foi 
 all men for ever. Paul and John and Petei 
 largely drew upon the resources and followed the 
 lines of their own personal religious experience 
 in the intuitional or the logical development of 
 their doctrine ; and their experience had, of course, 
 
16 INSPIRATION. 
 
 been previously divinely determined for that very 
 purpose. And in determining their religious 
 experience God so far forth determined their 
 contributions to Scripture. And he furnished 
 each of the sacred writers, in addition to that 
 which came to him through natural channels, 
 all the knowledge needed for his appointed task, 
 either by vision, suggestion, dictation or eleva- 
 tion of faculty, or otherwise, according to his 
 will. The natural knowledge came from all 
 sources, as traditions, documents, testimonies, 
 personal observations and recollections — by 
 means also of intuitions, logical processes of 
 thought, feeling, experience, etc. ; and yet all 
 were alike under the general direction of God's 
 providence. The supernatural knowledge be- 
 came confluent with the natural in a manner 
 which violated no law of reason or of freedom. 
 And throughout the whole of his work the Holy 
 Spirit was present, causing his energies to flow 
 into the spontaneous exercises of the writer's fac- 
 ulties, elevating and directing where need be, 
 and everywhere securing the errorless expres- 
 sion in language of the thought designed by 
 God. This last element is what we call " Iiispi- 
 ratiou." 
 
 In all this process, except in a small elemeni 
 of prophecy, it is evident that as the sacred writers 
 
INSPIRATION. 17 
 
 were [ree and active iu their thinking and in the 
 expression of their thoughts, so they were con- 
 scious of what they were doing, of what their 
 words meant, and of the design of their utter- 
 ance. Yet, even then, it is no less evident that 
 they all, like other free instruments of Prov- 
 idence, " builded better than they knew." The 
 meanings of their words, the bearing of the prin- 
 ciples they taught, of the facts they narrated, 
 and the relation of their own part to the great 
 organism of divine revelation, while luminous to 
 their own consciousness, yet reached out into in- 
 finitely wider horizons than those penetrated by 
 any thought of theirs. 
 
 STATEMENT OF THE DOCTRINE. 
 
 During the entire history of Christian theol- 
 ogy the word "Inspiration" has been used to 
 express either some or all of the activities of 
 God co-operating with its human authoi-s in the 
 genesis of Holy Scripture. We prefer to use it 
 in the single sense of God's continued work of 
 superintendence, by which, his providential, gra- 
 cious and supernatural contributions having been 
 presupposed, he presided over the sacred writers 
 in their entire work of writing, with the design 
 and effect of rendering that writing an errorless 
 record of the matters he designed them to com- 
 2» 
 
18 INSPIRATION. 
 
 municate, and hence constituting the entire vol- 
 ume in all its parts the word of God to us. 
 
 While we have restricted the word " Inspira- 
 tion " to a narrower sphere than that in which 
 it has been used by many in the past, neverthe- 
 less we are certain that the above statement of 
 the divine origin and infallibility of Scripture 
 accurately expresses the faith of the Christian 
 Church from the first. Still, several points re- 
 main to be more particularly considered, con- 
 cerning which some difference of opinion at pres- 
 ent prevails. 
 
 First Is it proper to call this inspiration " plen- 
 ary " ? This word, which has often been made 
 the occasion of strife, is in itself indefinite, and 
 its use contributes nothing either to the precision 
 or the emphasis of the definition. The word 
 means simply " full," " complete," perfectly ade- 
 quate for the attainment of the end designed, 
 whatever that might have been. There ought 
 not to be on any side any hesitancy to affirm this 
 of the books of the Bible. 
 
 Second. Can this inspiration be properly said 
 to be " verbal " ? The objection to the applica- 
 tion of this predicate to inspiration is urged 
 upon three distinct grounds : 
 
 . (1.) We believe that the great majority of 
 those who object to the affirmation that inspira* 
 
INSPIKATION. 19 
 
 tk/n is verbal are impelled thereto by a feeling, 
 more or less definite, that the phrase implies that 
 inspiration is, in its essence, a process of verbal 
 dictation, or that, at least in some way, the reve- 
 lation of the thought or the inspiration of the 
 writer was by means of the control which God 
 exercised over his words. And there is the more 
 excuse for this misapprehension because of the 
 extremely mechanical conceptions of inspiration 
 maintained by many former advocates of the use 
 of this term "verbal." This view, however, we 
 repudiate as earnestly as any of those who object 
 to the language in question. At the present time 
 the advocates of the strictest doctrine of inspira- 
 tion in insisting that it is verbal do not mean 
 jbhat in any way the thoughts were inspired by 
 means of the words, but simply that the_divine 
 guperintendencfi, which we call inspiration, ex- 
 Jtended to the verbal expression of the thoughts 
 of the sacred writers, as well as to the thoughts 
 themselves, and that hence the Bible, considered 
 as a record, an utterance in words of a divine 
 revelation, is the word of God to us. Hence, in 
 all the affirmations of Scripture of every kind 
 there is no more error in the words of the orig- 
 inal autographs than in the thoughts they were 
 chosen to express. The though la and words are 
 both alike human, and therefore subject to hu- 
 
20 INSPIRATION. 
 
 man limitations, but the divine superinteLilence 
 and guarantee extend to the one as much as the 
 other. 
 
 (2.) There are others who, while insisting as 
 strongly as any upon the presence of the divine 
 element in Scripture, developed through special 
 providences and gracious dealings, religious ex- 
 periences and mental processes, in the very man- 
 ner we have just set forth under the head of the 
 " Genesis of Scripture," yet substantially deny 
 what we have here called " inspiration." They 
 retain the word " inspiration," but signify by' it 
 
 v' the divine element in the revelation, or providen- 
 tial or gracious dealing aforesaid, and they believe 
 that the sacred writers, having been divinely 
 helped to certain knowledge, were left to the nat- 
 ural limitations and fallibility incidental to their 
 human and personal characters, alike in their 
 thinking out their several narrations and expo- 
 sitions of divine truth, and in their reduction of 
 them to writing. This view gives up the whole 
 matter of the immediate divine authorship of 
 
 ' the Bible as the word of God, and its infalli- 
 bility and authority as a rule of faith and prac- 
 tice. We have only the several vei-sions of G^d's* 
 revelations as rendered mentally and verbally, 
 more or less adequately, yet always imperfectly. 
 by the different sacred writers. This ola^s of 
 
INSPIRATION. 21 
 
 objectors are, of course, self-consistent in reject* 
 ing verbal inspiration in any sense. But this 
 view is not consistent either with the claims of 
 Scripture, the consciousness of Christians or the 
 historic doctrine of the Church. 
 
 (3.) There are others who maintain that the 
 Scriptures have been certainly inspired so far 
 forth as to constitute them in all their parts, and 
 as a whole, an infallible and divinely-authorita- 
 tive rule of faith and practice, and yet hold that, 
 while the thoughts of the sacred writers concern- 
 ing doctrine and duty were inspired and error- 
 less, their language was of purely human sug- 
 gestion, and more or less accurate. The question 
 as to whether the elements of Scripture relating 
 to the course of Nature and to the events of his- 
 tory are without error will be considered below : 
 it is sufficient to say under the present head that 
 it is self-evident that, just as far as the thoughts 
 of Scripture relating to any element or topic 
 whatsoever are inspired, the words in which 
 those thoughts are expressed must be inspired 
 also. Every element of Scripture, whether doc- 
 trine or history, of which God has guaranteed 
 the infallibility, must be infallible in its verbal 
 expression. No matter ho^ in other respects 
 generated, the Scriptures are a product of human 
 thought, and every process of human thought 
 
22 INSPIRATION. 
 
 involves language. " The slightest consideration 
 will show that words are as essential to intellect- 
 ual processes as they are t: mutual intercourse. 
 . . . Thoughts are wedded to words as necessa- 
 rily as soul to body. Without it the mysteries 
 unveiled before the eyes of the seer would be 
 confused shadows ; with it, they are made clear 
 lessons for liuman life."* 
 
 Besides this, the Scriptures are a record of 
 divine revelations, and as such consist of words ; 
 and as far as the record is inspired at all, and as 
 far as it is in any element infallible, its inspira- 
 tion must reach to its words. Infallible thought 
 must be definite thought, and definite thought 
 implies words. But if God could have render- 
 ed the thoughts of the apostles regarding doc- 
 trine and duty infallibly correct without words, 
 and then left them to convey it to us in their 
 own language, we should be left to precisely that 
 amount of certainty for the foundation of our 
 faith as is guaranteed by the natural compe- 
 tency of the human authors, and neither more 
 nor less. There would be no divine guarantee 
 whatever. The human medium would every- 
 where interpose its fallibility between God and 
 us. Besides, most believers admit that some of 
 
 * Canon "VVestcott's Introduction to the Study of thi 
 Gospels, 5th edition: Introduction, pp. 14, 15. 
 
INSPIRATION. ^ 
 
 the prophetical parts of Scripture were verbally 
 dictated. It was, moreover, promised that the 
 apostles should speak as the Spirit gave them 
 utterance. " The word of God came unto the 
 prophet." The Church has always held, as ex- 
 pressed by the Helvetic Confession, II., "that 
 the canonical Scriptures are the word of God." 
 Paul claims that the Holy Spirit superintended 
 and guaranteed his words as well as his thoughts 
 (1 Cor. ii. 13). The things of the Spirit we teach 
 " not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, 
 but which the Holy Ghost teacheth" (^ffuyxptvovzaq), 
 combining spiritual things with spiritual — i. e. 
 spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that it is not clearness 
 of thought which inclines any of the advocates 
 of a real inspiration of the Holy Scriptures to 
 deny that it extends to the words. Whatever 
 discrepancies or other human limitations may 
 attach to the sacred record, the line (of inspired 
 or not inspired, of infallible or fallible) can never 
 rationally he drawn between the thoughts and the 
 words of Scripture. 
 
 Third. It is asked again : In what way, and to 
 what extent, is the doctrine of inspiration de- 
 pendent upon the supposed results of modern 
 criticism as to the dates, authors, sources and 
 modes of composition of the several books ? To 
 
24 INSPIRATION. 
 
 US the following answer appears to be well found- 
 ed, and to set the limits within which the Church 
 doctrine of inspiration is in equilibrium with the 
 results of modern criticism fairly and certainly : 
 The doctrine of inspiration, in its essence — 
 and, consequently, in all its forms — presupposes 
 a supernatural revelation and a supernatural 
 providential guidance entering into and de- 
 termining the genesis of Scripture from the 
 beginning. Every naturalistic theory, there- 
 fore, of the evolution of Scripture, however dis- 
 guised, is necessarily opposed to any true ver- 
 sion of the catholic doctrine of inspiration. It 
 is also a well-known matter of fact that Christ 
 himself is the ultimate witness on whose testimony 
 the Scriptures, as well as their doctrinal con- 
 tents, rest. We receive the Old Testament just 
 as Christ handed it to us, and on his authority. 
 And we receive as belonging to the New Testa- 
 ment all, and only those, books which an apos- 
 tolically-instructed age testifies to have been pro- 
 duced by the apostles or their companions — i. e, 
 by the men whom Christ commissioned, and to 
 whom he promised infallibility in teaching. It 
 is evident, therefore, that every supposed con- 
 clusion of critical investigation which denies the 
 ^apostolical origin of a New-Testament book or 
 the truth of any part of Christ's testimony in 
 
INSPIRATION. 25 
 
 relation to the Old Testament and ita contents, 
 or which is inconsistent with the absolute truth- 
 fulness of any affirmation of any book so au- 
 thenticated, must be inconsistent with the true 
 doctrine of inspiration. On the other hand, the 
 defenders of the strictest doctrine of inspiration 
 should cheerftilly acknowledge that theories as 
 to the authors, dates, sources and modes of com- 
 position of the several books which are not plainly 
 inconsistent with the testimony of Christ or his 
 apostles as to the Old Testament, or with the 
 apostolic origin of the books of the New Testa- 
 ment, or with the absolute truthfulness of any 
 of the affirmations of these books so authenti- 
 cated, cannot in the least invalidate the evidence 
 or pervert the meaning of the historical doctrine 
 of inspiration. 
 
 Fourth. The real point at issue between the 
 more strict and the more lax views of inspiration 
 maintained by believing scholars remains to be 
 stated. It is claimed, and admitted equally on 
 both sides, that the great design and effect of in- 
 spiration is to render the Sacred Scriptures in all 
 their parts a divinely infallible and authoritative 
 rule of faith and practice, and hence that in all 
 their elements of thought and (expression, con- 
 cerned in the great purpose of conveying to men 
 a revelation of spiritual doctrine or duty, the 
 3 
 
26 IKSPIKATION, 
 
 Scriptures are absolutely infallible. But if thisr 
 be so, it is argued by the more liberal school of 
 Christian scholars that this admitted fact is not 
 inconsistent with other facts which they clainj 
 are matters of their personal observation : U 
 wit, that in certain elements of Scripture which 
 are purely incidental to their great end of teach 
 ing spiritual truth, such as history, natural hi8 
 tory, ethnology, archseology, geography, natural 
 science and philosophy, they, like all the besi 
 human writings of their age, are, while for the 
 most part reliable, yet limited by inaccuracies 
 and discrepancies. While this is maintained, it 
 is generally at the same time affirmed that when 
 compared with other books of the same antiquity 
 these inaccuracies and discrepancies of the Bible 
 are inconsiderable in number, and always of 
 secondary importance, in no degree invalidating 
 the great attribute of Scripture — its absolute in- 
 fallibility and its divine authority as a rule of 
 faith and practice. 
 
 The writers of this article are sincerely con- 
 vinced of the perfect soundness of the great . 
 catholic doctrine of biblical inspiration — i. e. 
 that the Scriptures not only contain, but are, 
 THE WORD OF GoD, and hence that all their 
 elements and all their affirmations are absolutely 
 errorless, and binding the faith and obedience of 
 
INSPirtATI02?. 27 
 
 men. Nevertheless, we admit that the questioa 
 between ourselves and the advocates of the view 
 just stated is one of fact, to be decided only by 
 an exhaustive and impartial examination of all 
 the sources of evidence — i. e. the claims and the 
 phenomena of the Scriptures themselves. There 
 will undoubtedly be found upon the surface many 
 apparent affirmations presumably inconsistent 
 with the present teachings of science, with facts 
 of history or with other statements of the sacred 
 books themselves. Such apparent inconsistencies 
 and collisions with other sources of information 
 are to be expected in imperfect copies of ancient 
 writings, from the fact that the original reading 
 may have been lost, or that we may fail to 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. Besides, 
 the human forms of knowledge by which the 
 critics test the accuracy of Scripture are them- 
 selves subject±Q-.£rror, In view of all the facts 
 known to us, we affirm that a candid inspection 
 of all the ascertained phenomena of the original 
 text of Scripture will leave unmodified the an- 
 cient faith of the Church. In all their real 
 affirmations these books are without error. 
 
 It must be remembered that it is not claimed 
 that the Scriptures, any more than their authors, 
 
28 INSPIRATION. 
 
 are omniscient. The information they convey is 
 in the forms of human thought, and limited on 
 all sides. They were not designed to teach phil- 
 osophy, science or human history as such. They 
 were not designed to furnish an infallible system 
 of speculative theology. They are written in 
 human languages, whose words, inflections, con- 
 
 V structions and idioms bear everywhere indelible 
 ^traces of human error. The record itself fur- 
 nishes evidence that the writers were in large 
 measure dependent for their knowledge upon 
 sources and methods in themselves fallible, and 
 that their personal knowledge and judgments 
 were in many matters hesitating and defective, 
 or even wrong. Nevertheless, 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. There is a vast difference be- 
 tween exactness of statement, which includes 
 an exhaustive rendering of details, an absolute 
 
 V literalness, which the Scriptures never profess, 
 and accuracy, on the other hand, which secures 
 a correct statement of facts or principles in- 
 
INSPIRATION. 29 
 
 tended to be affirmed. It is this accuracy, and 
 this alone, as distinct from exactness, which the 
 Church doctrine maintains of every affirmation 
 in the original text of Scripture without excep- 
 tion. Every statement accurately corresponds . 
 to truth just as far forth as affirmed. 
 
 PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 
 
 We of course do not propose to exhibit this 
 evidence in this article. We wish merely to re- 
 fresh the memory of our readers with respect to 
 its copiousness, variety and cogency. 
 
 First. The New-Testament writers continually 
 assert of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, 
 and of the several books which constitute it, that 
 they ARE THE WORD OP GoD. What their 
 writers said God said, Christ sent out the 
 apostles with the promise of the Holy Ghost, 
 and declared that in hearing them men would 
 hear him. The apostles themselves claimed to 
 speak as the prophets of God, and with plenary 
 authority in his name binding all consciences. 
 And while they did so God endorsed their teach- 
 ing and their claims with signs and wonders and 
 divers miracles. These claims are a universal 
 and inseparable characteristic of every part of 
 Scripture. 
 
 Second. Although composed by different hu« 
 3* 
 
30 INSPIRATION. 
 
 man authors on various subjects and occaskns, 
 under all possible varieties of providential con- 
 ditions, in two languages, thiough sixteen cen- 
 turies of time, yet they evidently constitute one 
 system, all their parts minutely correlated, the 
 whole unfolding a single purpose, and thus giv- 
 ing indubitable evidence of the controlling pres- 
 ence of a divine intelligence from first to last. 
 
 Third. It is true that the Scriptures were not 
 designed to teach philosophy, science or ethnology, 
 or human history as such, and therefore they are 
 not to be studied primarily as sources of infor- 
 mation on these subjects. Yet all these elements 
 are unavoidably incidentally involved in the 
 itatementa of Scripture. Many of these, be- 
 cause of defective knowledge or interpretation 
 upon our part, present points of apparent con- 
 fusion or error. Yet the outstanding fact is, that 
 the general conformableness of the sacred books 
 to modern knowledge in all these departments 
 Is purely miraculous. If tliese books, which 
 originated in an obscure province of the ancient 
 world, be compared with the most enlightened 
 cosmogonies or philosophies or histories of the 
 same or immediately subsequent centuries, their 
 comparative freedom even from apparent error 
 is amazing. Who prevented the sacred writers 
 fix)m falling into the wholesale and radical mis- 
 
INSPIRATION-. 31 
 
 takes which were necessarily incidental to their 
 position as mere men? The fact that at this 
 date scientists of the rank of Faraday and Henry, 
 of Dana, of Guyot and Dawson, maintain that 
 there is no real conflict between the really ascer- 
 tained facts of science and the first two chapters 
 of Genesis, rightly interpreted, of itself demon- 
 strates that a supernatural intelligence must have 
 directed the writing of those chapters. This, of 
 course, proves that the scientific element of Script- 
 ure, as well as the doctrinal, was within the scope 
 of inspiration. And this argument is every day 
 acquiring greater force from the results of the 
 critical study of Scripture, and from advanced 
 knowledge in every department of history and 
 science, which continually tend to solve diffi- 
 culties and to lessen the number of apparent 
 discrepancies. 
 
 Fourth. The moral and spiritual character of 
 the revelation which the Scriptures convey of 
 God, of the person of Christ, of the plan of re- 
 demption and of the law of absolute righteous- 
 ness, and the power which the very words of the 
 record, as well as the truths they express, have 
 exercised over the noblest men and over nations 
 and races for centuries, — this is the characteristic 
 self-demonstration of the word of God, and has 
 sufficed to maintain the unabated catholicitv of 
 
32 INSPIRATION. 
 
 the strict doctrine of inspiration through all 
 change of time and in spite of all opposition. 
 
 Fifth. This doctrine of the inspiration of Script- 
 ure, in all its elements and parts, has always 
 been the doctrine of the Church. Dr. Westcott 
 has proved this by a copious catena of quota- 
 tions from Ante-Nicene Fathers in Appendix B 
 to his Introduction to the Study of the Gospels. 
 He quotes Clemens Romanus as saying that 
 the Scriptures are "the true utterances of the 
 Holy Ghost." He quotes Tertullian as say- 
 ing that these books are " the writings and the 
 words of God," and Cyprian as saying that the 
 ** gospel cannot stand in part and fall in part," 
 and Clement of Alexandria to the effect that the 
 foundations of our faith " we have received from 
 God through the Scriptures," of which not one 
 tittle shall pass away without being accomplished, 
 " for the mouth of the Lord the Holy Spirit 
 spake it." Dr. Westcott quotes Origen as teach- 
 ing that the Scriptures are without error, since 
 " they were accurately written by the co-opera- 
 tion of the Holy Ghost," and that the words of 
 Paul are the words of God. 
 
 The Roman Church (Can. Cone. Trid., Sess. 
 .IV.) says, " God is the author of both " Testa- 
 ments. The second Helvetic Confession repre- 
 sents the whole Protestant Reformation in saying 
 
INSPIRATION. 33 
 
 (Ch. I.) : " The canonical Scriptures are the true 
 word of God," for ** God continues to speak to 
 us through the Holy Scriptures." The West- 
 minster Confession says : " It pleased the Lord 
 at sundry times and in divers manners to reveal 
 himself and to declare his will unto his Church, 
 and afterward ... to commit the same wholly 
 unto writing." It declares that the Scriptures 
 are in such a sense given by inspiration that they 
 |)ossess a divine authority, and that "God is 
 their author," and they "are the word of 
 God." 
 
 It is not questionable that the great historic 
 churches have held these creed definitions in tho 
 sense of affirming the errorless infallibility of 
 the Word. This is everywhere shown by the 
 way in which all the great bodies of Protestant 
 theologians have handled Scripture in their com- 
 mentaries, systems of theology, catechisms and 
 sermons. And this has always been pre-eminently 
 characteristic of epochs and agents of reforma- 
 tion and revival. All the great world-moving 
 men, as Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley, White- 
 field and Chalmers, and proportionately those 
 most like them, have so handled the divine 
 Word. Even if the more lax doctrine has the 
 suffrage of many scholars, or even if it be true, 
 it is nevertheless certain that hitherto in nine- 
 
34 INSPIRATION. 
 
 teen ceuturies it has never been held by raen 
 who also possessed the secret of using the word 
 of God like a hammer or like a fire. 
 
 LEGITIMATE PRESUMPTIONS. 
 
 In testing this question by a critical investi- 
 gation of the phenomena of Scripture, it is evi- 
 dent that the stricter view, which denies the 
 existence of errors, discrepancies or inaccurate 
 statements in Scripture, has the presumption 
 in its favor, and that the onus probandi rests 
 upon the advocates of the other view. The lat- 
 ter may fairly be required to furnish positive 
 and conclusive evidence in each alleged instance 
 of error until the presumption has been turned 
 over to the other side. The primd facie evidence 
 of the claims of Scripture is assuredly all in 
 favor of an errorless infallibility of all script- 
 ural affirmations. This has been from the first 
 the general faith of the historical Church and of 
 the Bible-loving, spiritual people of God. The 
 very letter of the Word has been proved from 
 ancient times to be a tremendous power in hu- 
 man life. 
 
 It is a question also of infinite importance. 
 If the new views are untrue, they threaten not 
 only to shake the confidence of men in the 
 Scriptures, but the very Scriptures themselves 
 
INSPIRATION. 35 
 
 as an objective ground of faith. We have seen 
 that the Holy Spirit has, as a matter of fact, 
 preserved the sacred writers to a degree unpar- 
 alleled elsewhere in literature from error in the 
 departments of philosophy and science. Who 
 then shall determine the limit of that preserving 
 influence? We have seen that in God's plan 
 doctrine grows out of history, and that redemp- 
 tion itself was wrought out in human history. 
 If, then, the inspiration of the sacred writei*s 
 did not embrace the department of history, or 
 only of sacred and not of profane history, who 
 shall set the limit and define what is of the es- 
 sence of faith and what the uncertain accident ? 
 It would assuredly appear that, as no organism 
 can be stronger than its weakest part, if error 
 be found in any one element or in any class of 
 statements, certainty as to any portion could 
 rise no higher than belongs to that exercise of 
 human reason to which it will be left to dis 
 criminate the infallible from the fallible. 
 
 The critical investigation must be made, 
 and we must abide by the result when it is un- 
 questionably reached. But surely it must be 
 carried on with infinite humility and teachable- 
 ness, and with prayer for the constant guidance 
 of the gracious Spirit. The signs of success will 
 neve.r be presumption, an evident sense of Intel- 
 
36 INSPIRATION. 
 
 lectual superiority, or a want of sympathy witli 
 the spiritual Church of all ages or with the 
 painful confusion of God's humble people of 
 the present. 
 
 With these presumptions and in this spirit 
 let it (1) be proved that each alleged discrep- 
 ant statement certainly occurred in the original 
 autograph of the sacred book in which it is said 
 to be found. (2) Let it be proved that the in- 
 terpretation which occasions the apparent dis- 
 crepancy is the one which the passage was evi- 
 dently intended to bear. It is not sufficient to 
 show a difficulty, which may spring out of our 
 defective knowledge of the circumstances. The 
 true meaning must be definitely and certainly 
 ascertained, and then shown to be irreconcilable 
 with other known truth. (3) Let it be proved 
 that the true sense of some part. of the original 
 autograph is directly and necessarily inconsistent 
 with some certainly-known fact of history or 
 truth of science, or some other statement of 
 Scripture certainly ascertained and interpreted. 
 We believe that it can be shown that this has 
 never yet been successfully done in the case of 
 one single alleged instance of error in the woRit 
 OF God. 
 
INSPIRATION. 37 
 
 CRITICAL OBJECTIONS TRIED. 
 
 It remains only to consider more in detail 
 some of the special objections which have been 
 put forward against this doctrine in the name 
 of criticism. It cannot be, indeed, demanded 
 that every one urged should be examined and 
 met, but it may be justly expected that the 
 chief classes of relevant objections should be 
 briefly touched upon. This, fortunately, is no 
 illimitable task. There are, as already stated, 
 two main presuppositions lying at the base of 
 the doctrine, essential to its integrity, while to 
 them it adds one essential supposition. The pre- 
 suppositions are — 1. The possibility of supernat- 
 ural interference, and the actual occurrence of 
 that interference in the origin of our Bible; 
 and, 2. The authenticity, genuineness and histor- 
 ical credibility of the records included in our 
 Bible. The added supposition is — 3. The truth 
 to fact of every statement in the Scriptures. 
 No objection from the side of criticism is rele- 
 vant unless it traverses some one of these three 
 points. The traditional view of the age and 
 authorship of a document or of the meaning of 
 a statement may be traversed, and yet no con- 
 flict arise with the doctrine of a strict inspira- 
 tion. But criticism cannot reach results incon- 
 4 
 
38 INSPIRATION. 
 
 sisteDt with the genuineness and authenticity of a 
 document judged according to the professions of 
 that document or the statements or implications 
 of any other part of Scripture, or incompatible 
 -with the truth of any passage in the sense of 
 that passage arrived at by the correct applica^ 
 tion of the sound principles of historico-gram- 
 matical exegesis, without thereby arraying her- 
 self in direct opposition to the Church doctrine 
 of inspiration. All objections to that doctrine 
 based on such asserted results -of criticism are 
 undoubtedly relerantP Our duty is, therefore, 
 to ask what results of criticism are claimed 
 which traverse some one of the three assertions 
 — of a supernatural origin for the Scriptures, 
 of genuineness and authenticity for its books, 
 and of absolute freedom from error of its state- 
 ments. 
 
 1. The Authenticity and Integrity of thb 
 Books of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments, AS they have come down to us. 
 The first point for us to examine would nat- 
 urally be the bearing upon the Church doctrine 
 of inspiration of the various modem critical 
 theories concerning the origin and present integ- 
 rity of the several books of the Old and Ne^ 
 Testaments. This is at present the most moment 
 
INSPIRATION. 39 
 
 ouy question which agitates the believing world. 
 The critical examination of all the most inti- 
 mate phenomena of the text of Scripture is an 
 obvious duty, and its results, when humility, do- 
 cility and spiritual insight are added to compe- 
 tent learning and broad intelligence, must be 
 eminently beneficial. It is obvious, however, 
 that this department of the subject could not be 
 adequately discussed in this paper. It is con- 
 sequently postponed to the near future, when it 
 is intended that the whole subject shall be pre- 
 sented as fully as possible. 
 
 In the mean time, the present writers, while 
 they admit freely that the traditional belief as 
 to the dates and origin of the several books may 
 be brought into question without involving any 
 doubt as to their inspiration, yet confidently 
 affirm that any theories of the origin or author- 
 ship of any book of either Testament which 
 ascribe to them a purely naturalistic genesis, 
 or dates or authors inconsistent with either their 
 own natural claims or the assertions of other 
 Scripture, are plainly inconsistent with the doc- 
 trine of inspiration taught by the Church. 
 Nor have they any embarrassment in the face 
 of these theories, seeing that they believe them 
 to rest on no better basis than an over-acute 
 criticism overreaching itself and building on 
 
40 INSPIRATION. 
 
 fancies. Here they must content themselvea 
 with reference to the various critical discussions 
 of these theories which have poured from the 
 press for detailed refutation of them. With 
 this refutation in mind they simply assert their 
 conviction that none of the claims or assertions 
 of the Scriptures as to the authenticity of a sin- 
 gle book of either Testament has hitherto been 
 disproved. 
 
 II. Detailed Accuracy of Statement. 
 
 We are next confronted with objections meant 
 to traverse the third of our preliminary state- 
 ments, consisting of bold assertions that, what- 
 ever may have been their origin, our Scriptures 
 do exhibit phenomena of inaccuracy, that mis- 
 takes are found in them, errors committed by 
 them, untrue statements ventured. Nor is this 
 charge put forward only by opponents of reve- 
 lation : a Van Oosterzee, as well as "a Tholuck, 
 a Neander, a Lange, a Stier," admits "errors 
 *and inaccuracies in matters of subordinate im- 
 portance." * It is plain, however, that if the 
 Scriptures do fail in truth in their statements 
 of whatever kind, the doctrine of inspiration 
 which has been defended in this paper cannot 
 stand. But so long as the principles of historico- 
 * See Yan Oosterzee's Dogr-iatics, p. 205. 
 
INSPIBATIOX. 41 
 
 grammatical exegesis are relied on to determine 
 the meaning of Scripture, it is impossible to 
 escape the fact that the Bible claims to be thus 
 inspired. And thus it is not a rare thing to find 
 the very theologians who themselves caunot be- 
 lieve in a strict inspiration yet admitting that 
 the Scripture writers believed in it * We can- 
 not, therefore, occupy the ground on which these 
 great and worthy men seem to us so precariously 
 to stand. A proved error in Scripture contra- 
 dicts not only our doctrine, but the Scripture 
 claims, and therefore its inspiration in making 
 those claims. It is therefore of vital import- 
 ance to ask. Can phenomena of error and untruth 
 be pointed out? 
 
 There is certainly no dearth of " instances " 
 * Thus Tholuck : " Yet his [the author of Hebrews] 
 application of the Old Testament rests on the strictest 
 view of inspiration, since passages where God is not the 
 speaker are cited as words of God or of the Holy Ghost 
 (i. 6, 7, 8; iv. 4, 7 ; vii. 21 ; iii. 7 ; x. 15)."— OW Tesior 
 ment in the New, in Bibliotheca Sacra^ xi. p. 612. So also 
 Richard Rothe : " It is clear, then, that the orthodox the- 
 ory [i. e. the very strictest] of inspiration is countenanced 
 by the authors of the New Testament." So also Canon 
 Farrar: "He [Paul] shared, doubtless, in the views of 
 the later Jewish schools — the Tanainr and Amoraim — 
 on the nature of inspiration. These views . . . made 
 the words of Scripture coextensive and identical witb- 
 the words of God." — Life of Paul, ii. p. 47. 
 4« 
 
42 INSPIRATION. 
 
 confidently put forward. But it is abundantly 
 plain that the vast majority of them are irrele- 
 vant. We must begin any discussion of them, 
 therefore, by reasserting certain simple propo- 
 sitions, the result of which will be to clear the 
 ground of all irrelevant objections. It is to be 
 remembered, then, that — 1. We do not assert 
 that the common text, but only that the original 
 autographic text, was inspired. No " error " can 
 be asserted, therefore, which cannot be proved to 
 have been aboriginal in the text. 2. We do not 
 deny an everywhere-present human element in 
 the Scriptures. No mark of the effect of this 
 human element, therefore — in style of thought 
 or wording — can be urged against inspiration 
 unless it can be shown to result in untruth. 3. 
 We do not erect inspiration into an end, but hold 
 it to be simply a means to an end — viz. the ac- 
 curate conveyance of truth. No objection, there- 
 fore, is valid against the form in which the truth 
 is expressed, so long as it is admitted that that 
 form conveys the truth. 4. We do not suppose 
 that inspiration made a writer false to his pro- 
 fessed purpose, but rather that it kept him in- 
 fallibly true to it. No objection is valid, there- 
 fore, which overlooks the prime question : What 
 was the professed or implied purpose of the 
 writer in making this statement? These few 
 
INSPIRATION. 43 
 
 simple and very obvious remarks stt aside the vast 
 majority of the customary objections. The first 
 throws out of court numbers of inaccuracies in 
 the Old and New Testaments as either certainly 
 or probably not parts of the original text, and 
 therefore not fit evidence in the case. The 
 second performs the same service for a still 
 greater number, which amount simply to the 
 discovery of individual traits, modes of thought 
 or expression, or forms of argumentation in the 
 writings of the several authoi-s of the biblical 
 books. The third sets aside a vast multitude, 
 drawn from pressure of language, misreading of 
 figures, resurrection of the primary sense of 
 idioms, etc., in utter forgetfulness of the fact that 
 no one claims that inspiration secured the use of 
 good Greek in Attic severity of taste, free from 
 the exaggerations and looseness of current speech, 
 but only that it secured the accurate expression 
 of truth, even (if you will) through the medium 
 of the worst Greek a fisherman of Galilee could 
 write and the most startling figures of speech a 
 peasant could invent. Exegesis must be histor- 
 ical as well as grammatical, and must always 
 seek the meaning intended, not any^meaning that 
 can be tortured out of a passage. The fourth in 
 like manner destroys the force of every objection 
 which is tacitly founded on the idea that partial 
 
44 IN'SPIRATION. 
 
 and incomplete stalemente cannot be inspired, no 
 documents can be quoted except verbatim, do 
 conversations reported unless at length, etc., 
 and which thus denies the right of another to 
 speak to the present purpose only, appeal to the 
 sense, not wording of a document, give abstracts 
 of discourses, and apply, by a true exegesis, the 
 words of a previous writer to the present need. 
 The sum of the whole matter is simply this: No 
 phenomenon can be validly urged against verbal 
 inspiration which, found out of Scripture, would 
 not be a valid argument against the truth of the 
 writing. Inspiration securing no more than this 
 — truth, simple truth — no phenomenon can be 
 urged against verbal inspiration which cannot be 
 proved to involve an indisputable error. jn 
 
 It is not to be denied that such phenomena are 
 asserted to be discoverable in the Scriptures. Is 
 the assertion capable of being supported by facts ? 
 That is the only question now before us. And it 
 thus becomes our duty to examine some samples 
 of the chief classes of facts usually appealed to. 
 These samples — which will, moreover, all be 
 chosen from the New Testament, and all at the 
 suggestion of opponents — must serve our present 
 needs. 
 
INSPIRATION. 
 
 45 
 
 niiTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL ACCURACY. 
 
 1. It is asserted that the Scripture writers are 
 inaccurate in their statements of historical and 
 geographical facts, as exhibited by the divergence 
 existing between their statements and the infor- 
 mation we derive from other sources, such as pro- 
 fane writers and monuments. When we ask for 
 the proofs of this assertion, however, they are 
 found to be very difficult to produce. A genera- 
 tion or two ago this was not so much the case ; 
 but the progress of our knowledge of the times 
 and the geography of the region in which our 
 sacred books were written has been gradually 
 wiping out the " proofs " one by one, until they 
 are at this day non-existent. The chief (and 
 almost the only) historical errors still asserted to 
 oxist in the New Testament are— the " fifteenth 
 year of Tiberius" of Luke iii. 1 ; the enrollment 
 during Cyrenias's governorship of Luke ii. 2 ; 
 and the revolt of Theudas of Acts v. 36. It is 
 not denied that these statements present diffi- 
 culties, but it is humbly suggested that that is 
 hardly synonymous with sajdng that they aie 
 proved mistakes. Ij Herod died in the spring 
 of A. U. c. 750 (which seems wellnigh certain), 
 and if, in Luke iii. 23, the "about" be deemed 
 not broad enough to cover two years (which is 
 
46 INSPIRATION. 
 
 fairly probable), and if Luke iii. 1 means to date 
 John's first appearance (as again seems prob- 
 able), and if no more than six months intervened 
 between John's and Jesus' public appearance 
 (which, still again, seems probable),— then it is 
 admitted that the " fifteenth year of Tiberius " 
 must be a mistake — -provided that, still further, 
 we must count his years from the beginning,,' of 
 his sole reign, and not from his co-reguaucy with 
 Augustus; in favor of which latter mode of 
 counting much, has been, and more can be, 
 urged. Surely this is not a very clear case of 
 indubitable error, with its five ifs staring us in 
 the face. Again, if the Theudas mentioned in 
 Acts is necessarily the same as the Theudas 
 mentioned by Josephus, then Luke and Josephus 
 do seem to be in disaccord as to the time of his 
 revolt ; and if Josephus can be shown to be, in 
 general, a more accurate historian than Luke, 
 then his account must be preferred. But neither 
 of these ifs is true. Josephus is the less ac- 
 curate historian, as is easily proved ; and there 
 are good reasons — convincing to a critic like 
 Winer and a Jew like Jost, neither certainly 
 afiected by apologetical bias — to suppose that 
 Acts and Josephus mention different revolts. 
 Where, then, is the contradiction? 
 The greatest reliance is, however, placed on the 
 
INSPIRATION. 4^ 
 
 third case adduced — the statement of Luke that 
 Jesus was born at the time of a world-enroll- 
 ment which was carried out in Syria during the 
 governorship of Cy renins. Weiss* offers three 
 reasons why Luke is certainly incorrect here, 
 which Schurerf increases to five facts — viz. : 1. 
 History knows nothing of a general empire- 
 census in the time of Augustus ; 2. A Roman 
 census would not force Joseph to go to Bethle- 
 hem, nor Mary to go with him ; 3. Nor could it 
 have taken place in Palestine in the time of 
 Herod; 4. Josephus knows nothing of such a 
 census, but, on the contrary, speaks of that of 
 Acts V. 37 as something new and unheard of; 
 and, 5. Quirinius was not governor of Syria dur- 
 ing Herod's life. This has a formidable look, 
 but each detail has been more than fully met. 
 Thus, Objection 1 turns wholly upon an argu- 
 mentum e silentio, always precarious enough, and 
 here quadruply so, seeing that (1) an empire- 
 census is just such a thing as Roman historians 
 would be likely to omit all mention of, just as 
 Spatian fails to mention in his life of Hadrian 
 the famous rescript of that monarch, and all 
 contemporary history is silent as to Augustus's 
 geometrical survey; (2) "We have no detailed 
 
 * Meyer's Markus und Lukas, p. 286 (ed. 6). 
 t N. T. ZeiigesckicJUe, pp. 268-286. 
 
48 INSPIRATION. 
 
 contemporary history of this time, the inaccurate 
 and gossipiug Suetonius and Josephus being our 
 only sources of information; (3) Certain oft- 
 quoted passages in Tacitus and Suetonius ac- 
 quaint us with facts which absolutely require 
 such a census at their base ; and (4) We have 
 direct, though not contemporary, historical proof 
 that such a census was taken, in statements of 
 Cassiodorus and Suidas. Objection 2 gains all 
 its apparent force from a confusio verborum. 
 Luke does not represent this as a Roman census 
 in the sense that it was taken up after Roman 
 methods, but only in the sense that it was ordered 
 ultimately by Roman authority. Nor does he 
 represent Mary as being forced to go to Bethle- 
 hem with Joseph ; her own choice, doubtless, de- 
 termined her journey. The same confusio ver- 
 borum follows us into Objection 3. It may be 
 improbable that Herod should have been so far 
 set aside that a census should have been taken 
 up in his dominions after Roman methods and 
 by Roman officials ; but is it so improbable that 
 he should be ordered to take himself a census 
 after his own methods and by his own officials ? 
 Josephus can give us the answer.* Whatever 
 may have been Herod's official title, whether rex 
 
 * Cf. Ant, XV. 10, 4 ; xvi. 2, 5 ; 4, 1 ; 9, 3 ; xvii. 2, 1 ; 
 2, 4 ; 5, 8 ; 11, 4, etc., for Herod's status. 
 
INSPIRATION. 49 
 
 aocius or, as seems more probable (one stage 
 lower), rex amicus Ccesaris, it is certuin that he 
 felt bound to bow to the emperor's every whis- 
 per ; so that if Augustus desired statistics as to 
 the regna (and Tacitus proves he did), Herod 
 would be forced to furnish them for his regnum. 
 Objection 4 again is easily laid : Josephus not 
 only mentions nothing he could escape which 
 exhibited Jewish subjection, but actually passes 
 over the decade 750-760 so slightly that he can 
 hardly be said to have left us a history of that 
 time. That he speaks of the later census of 
 Acts V. 37 as something new is most natural, 
 seeing that it was, as carried on by the Roman 
 officials and after Roman methods, not only ab- 
 solutely new, and a most important event in 
 itself, but, moreover, was fraught with such his- 
 torical consequences that it could not be passed 
 over in silence. Objection 5 is the most import- 
 ant and difficult, but not, therefore, insuperable. 
 It states, indeed, a truth: Quirinius was not gov- 
 ernor of Syria until after Herod's death. But 
 it must be noted, on the one hand, that Zumpt 
 has proved, almost, if not quite, to demonstra- 
 tion, that Quirinius was twice governor of Syria, 
 the first time beginning within six months after 
 Herod's death ; and, on the other, that Luke 
 does not say that Christ was born while Cyre- 
 
 6 
 
60 IXSPURATION. 
 
 uius was governor of Syria. What Luke says is» 
 that Christ was born during the progress of a 
 census, and then defines the census as the first 
 which was carried on when Cyrenius was gov- 
 ernor of Syria. If this census was begun under 
 Varus and finished under Quiriuius, Christ may 
 have been born, according to Luke, at any time 
 during the progress of this census. This, be- 
 cause Luke ii. 2 is not given to define the time 
 of Christ's birth, but more narrowly to describe 
 what census it was which had in verse 1 been 
 used to define the time of Christ's birth.* Thus, 
 doubtless, it is true that Christ was born under 
 Varus, and yet during the course of the first Qui- 
 rinian census ; and thus Schiirer's fifth objection 
 goes the way of all the others. 
 
 The wonderful accuracy of the New-Testa- 
 
 * Take an example: If one should say of any event, 
 that it occurred during our war with Great Britain, and 
 tlien add, " I mean that war wherein Jackson fought," 
 would he necessarily refer to an event late in tlie war, 
 after Jackson came to the front ? Not so, because the 
 war alone defines the time of the event, and Jackson 
 onlj which war. So in Luke the census alone defines the 
 time of Christ's birth, and Quirinius only which census. 
 It ought to be added that there are at least three other 
 mpithods of explaining Luke's words, all possible, and 
 none very improbable, on the supposition of any one 
 of which conflict with history is impossible. 
 
INSPIEATION. ;61 
 
 merit writers in all, even the minute and inci- 
 dental, details of their historical notices can- 
 not, however, be made even faintly apparent 
 by a simple answering of objections. Some 
 sort of glance over the field as a whole is neces- 
 sary to any appreciation of it. There occur in 
 the New Testament some thirty names — empe- 
 rors, members of the family of Herod, high 
 priests, rabbis, Roman governors, princes, Jew- 
 ish leaders — some mention of which might be 
 looked for in contemporary history or on con- 
 temporary monuments.* All but two of these — 
 and they the insignificant Jewish rebels Theudas 
 and Barabbas — are actually mentioned ; and the 
 New-Testament notices are found, on compari- 
 son, to be absolutely accurate in every, even the 
 most minute, detail. Every one of their state- 
 ments has not, indeed, passed without challenge, 
 
 ♦These are: Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius — Herod 
 Antipas, the two Philips, Archelaus, Agrippa L, Agrip- 
 pa II., Herodias, Herodias' daughter, Bernice, Drusilla 
 — Annas, Caiaphas, Ananias — Gamaliel — Quirinius, 
 Pilate, Felix, Festus, Gallic, Sergius Paulus — Aretas 
 (Candace), Lysanias — [Theudas], Judas of Galilee [Bar- 
 abbas]. Candace seems to represent a hereditary title, 
 not a personal name; Theudas and Barabbas are not 
 named in profane sources. Cf. the (incomplete) list 
 and fine remarks of Rawlinson {Hist. Evidences, Boston, 
 1873, p. 195 sq.). 
 
52 INSPIRATION. 
 
 6ut challenge has always meant triumphant 
 vindication. Some examples of what is here 
 meant have been given already ; others may be 
 added in a note for their instructiveness,* Now, 
 the period of which these writers treat is absolute- 
 ly the most difficult historical period in which to 
 be accurate that the world has ever seen. Noth- 
 ing was fixed or stable ; vacillation, change, was 
 everywhere. The province which was senator- 
 ial to-day was imperial to-morrow — the bound- 
 aries that were fixed to-day were altered to-mor- 
 row. That these writers were thus accuriate 
 in a period and land wherein Tacitus failed to 
 attain complete accuracy means much. 
 
 We reach the same conclusion if we ask after 
 * It Wcos long boldlj asserted that Luke was in error 
 in making Lysanias a contemporary tetrareh with the 
 Herodian rulers. But it is now admitted that Josephus 
 mentions an earlier and a later Lysanias, and so corrobo- 
 rates Luke; and inscriptions also have been brought for- 
 ward which supervindicate Luke's accuracy, so that 
 even M. Kenan admits it. Again, it was long contend- 
 ed that Luke had inaccurately assigned a proconsul to 
 Cyprus ; but this was soon set aside by a reference to 
 Cyprian coins of Claudius's time and to Dion Cassius, 
 liv. 4; and now Mr. Cesnola publishes an inscription 
 which mentions the veritable proconsul Paulus whom 
 Luke mentioned {Cyprus, p. 425). So with reference to 
 the titles of the rulers of Achaia, Pliilippi, Ephesus, etc 
 (See in general Lee on Inspiration, p. 364, note 2.) 
 
INSPIRATION. 
 
 63 
 
 their geographical accuracy. In no single case 
 have they slipped here, either; and what this 
 means may be estimated by noting what a mass 
 of geographical detail has been given us * Be- 
 tween forty and fifty names of countries 'can be 
 counted in the Kew-Testaraent pages; every one 
 is accurately named and placed. About the 
 same number of foreign cities are named, and 
 all equally accurately. Still more to the pur- 
 pose, thirty-six Syrian and Palestinian towns 
 are named, the great majority of which have 
 been identified,! and wherever testing is possible 
 
 * Compare the efibrts of a real forger with the accu- 
 racy of these autoptic writers— e. g. of Prochorus, as 
 given in Zahn's Acta Joannis, p. Hi. Only nine real 
 places can be found in a long list of geographical names 
 invented for the need. Thus, to the little Patmos a num- 
 ber of cities and villages is ascribed which would require 
 a Sicily or Cyprus to furnish ground to stand on. 
 
 t These names are : *^non, *Antipatris, f Arimathea, 
 *Azotus, *Bethany, fBethany beyond Jordan, *Bethle- 
 hem, llBethphage, gBethsaida, gCana, ^Capernaum, ^Cse- 
 sarea, -Cssarea Philippi, *Chorazin, IJDalmanutha, *Da- 
 mascus, tEmmaus, *Ephraim, ^Gadara, *Gaza, gGerasa, 
 *Jericho, ^Jerusalem, *Joppa, fJouda, fKerioth, *Lyd- 
 da, *Magdala, *Nain, ^Nazareth, ^Salim, *Seleucia, *Sy- 
 char, ^Tiberias, *Tyre. Those marked ^ are pretty cer- 
 tainly identified ; those f, with great probability ; those 
 §, with a choice between the two places ; and those ||, as 
 to their neighborhood. There are, besides, some names 
 6* 
 
54 INSPIRATION. 
 
 the most minute accuracy emerges. Whether 
 due to inspiration or not, this unvarying accu- 
 racy of statement is certainly consistent with 
 the strictest doctrine of inspiration. 
 
 COMPLETE INTERNAL HARMONY. 
 
 2. Another favorite charge made against these 
 writers is, that they are often hopelessly inconsist- 
 ent with one another in their statements ; and this 
 charge of disharmony has sometimes been push- 
 ed so far as to make it do duty even against 
 their historical credibility. But when we begin 
 to examine the instances brought forward in 
 support of it, they are found to be cases of dij- 
 Jicult, not of impossible, harmony. And it is 
 abundantly plain that it must be shown to be 
 impossible to harmonize any two statements on 
 any natural supposition before they can be as- 
 serted to be inconsistent. This is a recognized 
 principle of historical investigation, and it is 
 the only reasonable principle possible, unless 
 we are prepared to assert that the two state- 
 ments necessarily contain all the facts of the 
 case and exclude the possibility of the har- 
 
 qnoted from the Old Testament — e.g. || Gomorrah, *Eama, 
 *Sarepta, *Shechem, j|Sodom. Also some other geo 
 graphical names— e.^. *The brook Kedron, *Jordan, 
 *the Mount of Olives and *the Sea of Galilee, etc. 
 
INSPIRATION. 66 
 
 monizing supposition. Having our eyes upon 
 this principle, it is not rash to declare that no 
 disharmony has ever been proved between any 
 two statements of the New Testament. The 
 best examples to illustrate the character "of the 
 attempts made to exhibit disharmony, and the 
 rocks on which these attempts always break, are 
 probably those five striking cases on which Dr. 
 Fisher most wisely rests his charge against the 
 complete harmony of the four evangelists — viz. 
 the alleged disharmony in the accounts of the 
 place and phraseology of the Sermon on the 
 Mount, the healing of the centurion's son, the 
 denials of Peter, the healing of the blind man, 
 at Jericho, and the time of the institution of 
 the Lord's Supper.* But that in each of these 
 most natural means of harmonizing exist, and 
 are even in some instances recognized as possi- 
 ble by Dr. Fisher himself. President Bartlett has 
 lately so fully shown in detail f that we cannot 
 bring ourselves to repeat here the oft-told tale. 
 Take one or two other examples: for instance, 
 look at that famous^ case alleged in the specifi- 
 cation of the hour in John xix. 14 and Mark 
 XV. 25. The difficulty here, says Dean Alford, 
 b insuperable, and with him Meyer et at. agree, 
 
 * Beginnings of Christianity, p. 460 sj. 
 
 f Princeton Review, January, 1880, p. 47 sq. 
 
56 INSPIRATION. 
 
 But even Strauss admits that it would be can- 
 celled "if it were possible to prove that the 
 Fourth Gospel proceeds upon another mode of 
 reckoning time than that used by the Synoptics." 
 And that it is possible to prove this very thing 
 any one can satisfy himself by noting the four 
 places where John mentions the hour (i. 39 ; iv. 
 6, 52; xix. 14); whence it emerges that John 
 reckons his hours according to the method prev- 
 alent in Asia Minor* — from midnight, and not 
 from daybreak. Thus all difficulty vanishes.f 
 The disharmony claimed to exist between Matt. 
 xxvii. 6-8 and Acts i. 18, 19 is also voided by a 
 naive kind of admission ; Dean Alford, for in- 
 stance, asserting in one breath that no reconcil- 
 iation can be found consistent with common hon- 
 esty, and in the next admitting that the natural 
 supposition by which the passages are harmo- 
 nized is "of course possible." This admis- 
 sion, on the recognized principles of historical 
 criticism, amounts simply to a confession ^at 
 
 * That this was the custom in Asia Minor is evident 
 from Marturium Polyc, c. 21, etc^ Cf. also (in general) 
 Pliny, Nat. Hist., ii. 77, and Plutarch, Quaest Bom.^ 
 Ixxxiii. 
 
 t Cf.Townson's Discourses, Discourse 8; McClelland's 
 N. T., vol. i., p. 737 sg.; Westcott on John, p. 282; Lee 
 on Inspiration, p. 352 ; where this subject is fully dis- 
 cussed. 
 
INSPIRATION. 57 
 
 no disharmony ought to be asserted in the 
 case. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the two most important 
 and far-reaching instances of disharraouy alleged 
 of late years are — that asserted between the nar- 
 ratives of the events preceding, accompanying 
 and following the birth of our Lord given by 
 Matthew and Luke, which is said to prove the 
 historical untrustworthiness of both (!) narra- 
 tives ; and that asserted between the accounts of 
 Paul's visits to Jerusalem and his relations to the 
 Twelve in Acts and Galatians, which is said to 
 prove the unhistorical character of Acts. In the 
 brief space at our disposal it is not possible to 
 disprove such wholesale charges in detail. It 
 must suffice, therefore, to point out the lines on 
 which such a refutation proceeds. In the first 
 instance the charge can be upheld only by the 
 expedient of assuming that silence as to an event 
 constitutes denial of that event, supported by 
 criticisms which tacitly deny a historian's right 
 to give summary accounts of transactions or 
 choose his incidents according to his purpose in 
 writing. Any careful examination of the pas- 
 sages involved will prove not only that they are 
 not inconsistent, but rather mutually supplement- 
 ary accounts ; * but also that they actually imply 
 
 * The events recorded by Luke are — 1. Annunciation 
 
68 INSPIRATION. 
 
 2)nf another, and prove the truth of each other 
 by a series of striking undesigned coincidences.* 
 
 to Zachariah ; 2. Annunciation to Marj (in the sixth 
 nionth thereafter) ; 3. Mary's visit to Elizabeth (extend- 
 ing to three months later) ; 4. Birth of John (after 3) ; 
 5. His circumcision (eight days after 4) ; 6. Journey of 
 Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem ("in those days"); 
 
 7. Birth of Jesus (while at Bethlehem) ; 8. Annuncia- 
 tion to the shepherds (the same day) ; 9. Visit of the 
 shepherds (hastening) ; 10. Circumcision of Jesus (eight 
 days after) ; 11. Presentation (thirty-three days later) ; 
 12. Return to Nazareth (when all legal duties were per- 
 formed). The events recorded by Matthew are — A. 
 Mary is found with child (before she is taken to Joseph's 
 house); B. Annunciation to Joseph; C. Mary is taken 
 home by Joseph ; D. Visit of the Magi (after Jesus* 
 birth at Bethlehem) ; E. Flight into Egypt (after their 
 departure) ; F. Slaughter of the innocents (when Herod 
 had discovered that the wise men had gone) ; G. Death 
 of Herod ; H. Return from Egypt to Nazareth (after 
 Herod's death). These events dovetail beautifully- 
 into one another, as follows ; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, A, B, C, 6, 7, 
 
 8, 9, 10, 11, D [12 (E, F, G, H)]. It is only neces- 
 sary to assume that 12 includes E, F, G and H compend- 
 
 ^ 'ously, and all goes most smoothly. Other arrangements 
 are also possible — «. g. the first half may b^ varied to 
 I, 2, A, B, C, 3, 4, 5, 6, or to 1, 2, A, 3, B, C, 4, 5, 6 ; and 
 the second half to 9, 10, D, 11 [12— (E, F, G, H)], or 
 even to 9, 10, D, E, F, G, half H, 11, half H— 12. lu 
 the face of so many possible harmonizations it certainly 
 cannot be asserted that harmony is impossible. 
 
 * Thus the account in the one of the annunciation to 
 
INSPIRATION. 59 
 
 And when it is added that the choice of the ma- 
 terial which each writer has made can in each 
 incident be shown to have arisen directly out of 
 the purpose of the writer, it may be seen what a 
 load the assertion of disharmony must carry. 
 
 Joseph, and that in the other of that to Mary, which are 
 often said to be irreconcilable with one another, actually 
 prove each other's truth. Both assume exactly the same 
 facts at their bases — viz. that Mary conceived a child 
 snpernaturaliy, and remained a virgin while becoming 
 a mother. Moreover, if Luke's narrative be true, then 
 something like what Matthew records must have hap- 
 pened ; and if Matthew's be true, something like what 
 Luke records must have happened. Two things need- 
 ed explanation: why Mary was not crazed at finding 
 herself so strangely with child, and how Joseph, be- 
 ing a just man, could have taken her, in that condi- 
 tion, to wife. Luke's narrative explains the first, but 
 leaves the other unexplained ; Matthew's explains the 
 second, but leaves the first unexplained. It is ad- 
 mitted that there was no collusion here. How does 
 it happen, then, that the two so imply one another? 
 Again, Matthew doe? not mention where Jesus' parents 
 lived before his birth, but only states that after that 
 birth they intended to live in Bethlehem, and, after 
 having been deterred from that, chose Nazareth. Now, 
 why this strange choice? Luke, and Luke alone, sup- 
 plies the reason : Nazareth was their old home. Still, 
 again, that Luke calls Mary Joseph's "betrothed" 
 in ii. 5 is not only remarkable, but totally inexplicable 
 from Luke : we can only understand it when we revert 
 
60 INSPIEATIOX. 
 
 The asserted contradiction between Acts and 
 Galatians is already crumbling of its own weight. 
 Thus Keim, certainly no very " apologetic " critic, 
 has shown very clearly that the passage in Gala- 
 tians has suffered much eis-egesis in order to make 
 out the disharmony,* and sober criticism will 
 judge that even he has done inadequate justice 
 to the subject. We cannot enter into details in 
 80 broad a question : it will be sufficient, how- 
 ever, to call attention to the fact that no dis- 
 harmony can be made out unless — (1) Violence 
 be done to the context in Galatians, where Paul 
 professes to be giving an exhaustive account, 
 not of his visits to Jerusalem, btU of his op- 
 portunities to learn from the apostles. Any 
 visit undertaken at such a time as to furnish no 
 such opportunity (and Acts xii. was such) ought, 
 therefore, to have been omitted. (2) Convenient 
 forgetfulness be exercised of the fact that while 
 the context shows that Paul uses " apostles " in 
 the narrow sense in Gal i. 19, yet this is not 
 true of Acts ix. 27 ; but, as Luke's usage shows, 
 the contrary may very well be true (Acts xiv. 
 4, 14). So that it is in no sense inconsistent for 
 Paul to say that he saw but one apostle, and 
 
 to Matt. i. 25 and the preceding verses. These are bnt 
 samples. 
 
 * In Aus der Urchristenthum (1878). 
 
IKSPrRATION. ^1 
 
 Luke that he saw several. (3) Misuuderstand- 
 ing be fallen into as to the nature of the " de- 
 cree " of Acts XV. 20, and its binding force to 
 churches not yet formed and not parties to the 
 compromise. (4) Misrepresentation be ventur- 
 ed as to the testimony of Galatians as to Paul's 
 relations to the Twelve, which Paul represents 
 to have been most pleasant (Gal. ii. 3, 7-10), but 
 which are made out to have been unpleasant 
 through misinterpretation of phrases in Gal. il 
 2j 3, 4, 6, 9, etc. (5) Incredible pressure of the 
 detailed language of both Galatians and Acts be 
 indulged in. (6) And, finally, a tacit denial be 
 made of the possibility of truth subsisting 
 through differences in choice of incidents aris- 
 ing from the diverse points of view of the two 
 writers. In other words, an unbiased compari- 
 son of the two accounts brings out forcibly the 
 fact that there is no disharmony between them 
 at all. Taking these examples as samples (and 
 they are certainly fair samples), it is as clear as 
 daylight that no single case has as yet been ad- 
 duced where disharmony is a necessary conclu- 
 sion. Therefore all charges irom this side fall 
 to the ground. 
 9 
 
62 INSPIRATION. 
 
 CORRECT APPLICATION OF THE OLD 
 TESTAMENT. 
 
 3. Another favorite charge against the exact 
 truth of the New-Testament Scriptures is drawn 
 from the use of the Old Testament in the New, 
 and especially the phenomena of its quotation. 
 Here also, however, most of the objections urged 
 prove nothing but a radical lack of clear think- 
 ing on the part of those who bring them. For 
 instance, Dr. Davidson argues * that the verbal 
 variation which the New-Testament writers al- 
 low themselves in quoting the Old Testament is 
 conclusive against verbal inspiration, for "the 
 terms and phrases of the Old Testament, if 
 literally inspired, were the best that could have 
 been adopted," and therefore the New-Testament 
 writers " should have adhered to the ipsissima 
 verba of the Holy Spirit (seeing they were the 
 best) as closely as the genius of the Hebrew and 
 Greek languages allowed." Here, however, a 
 false view of inspiration is presupposed, and 
 also a false view of the nature and laws of quo- 
 tation. Inspiration does not suppose that the 
 words and phrases written under its influeuce are 
 the best possible to express the truth, but only 
 that they are an adequate expression of the 
 * Hevmeneutics, p. 513- 
 
INSPIRATION. 63 
 
 truth. Other words and phrases might be 
 equally adequate — might furnish a clearer, more 
 exact, aud therefore better, expression, especial- 
 ly of those truths which were subordinate or in- 
 cidental for the original purpose of the writing. 
 Nor is quotation to be confounded with transla- 
 tion. It does not, like it, profess to give as ex- 
 act a representation of the original, in all its 
 aspects and on every side, as possible, but only 
 to give a true account of its teaching in one of 
 its bearings. There is thus always an element 
 of application in quotation ; and it is therefore 
 proper in quotation so to alter the form of the 
 original as to bring out clearly its bearing on the 
 one subject in hand, thus throwing the stress' on 
 the element in it for which it is cited. This 
 would be improper in a translation. The laws 
 which ought to govern quotation seem, indeed, to 
 have been very inadequately investigated by those 
 who plead the New-Testament methods of quo- 
 tation against inspiration. We can pause now 
 only to insist — (1) That quotation, being essen- 
 tially different from translation, any amount of 
 deviation from the original, in form, is thorough- 
 ly allowable, so long as the sense of the original 
 is adhered to ; provided only that the quoter is 
 not professing to give the exact form ; (2) That 
 any adaptation of the original to the purpose in 
 
64 INSPIBATION. 
 
 hand is allowable, so loDg as it proceeds by a 
 true exegesis, and thus does not falsify the orig- 
 inal ; (3) That any neglect of the context of the 
 original is allowable, so long as the purpose for 
 which the quotation is adduced does not imply 
 the context, and no falsification of sense is in- 
 volved. In other words, briefly, quotation ap- 
 peals to the sense, not the wording, of a previous 
 document, and appeals to it for a definite and 
 specific end; any dealing with the original is 
 therefore legitimate which does not falsify its 
 sense in the particular aspect needed for the 
 purpose in hand.* The only question which is 
 relevant here, then, is. Do the New-Testament 
 writers so quote the Old Testament as to fal- 
 sify it? 
 
 Many writers who have pleaded the phenom- 
 ena of the New Testament against verbal in- 
 spiration yet answer this question in the nega- 
 
 * Still further : the amount of freedom with which a 
 document is dealt with will be greater in direct propor- 
 tion to the thoroughness with which it is understood. 
 If a quoler feels doubtful as to his understanding of it, 
 he will copy it word for word ; if he feels sure he 'un- 
 derstands it fully and thoroughly, he will allow himself 
 great freedom in his use of it; and if he is the author 
 of the original document, still more. If he is conscious 
 of having supernatural aid in understanding it, doub^ 
 less the amount of freedom would be greatest of all. 
 
INSPIRATION. 65 
 
 tivfc. Tims, Mr. Warington admits that there 
 are " no really inapposite quotations " — " the 
 pertinency of the quotations .may be marred by 
 their inaccurate citation, but pertinent, notwith- 
 standing, they always are. In a word, while . . . 
 the letter is often faulty, the spirit is always 
 divinely true."* This is simply to yield the 
 only point in debate. Others, however, of not 
 such clearness of sight, do not scruple to assert 
 that the New-Testament writers do deal so loose- 
 ly with the Old Testament as to fall into actual 
 falsification, and this mainly in two particu- 
 lars: they quote passages in a sense different 
 from that which they bore in the Old Testa- 
 ment, and they assign passages to wrong sources. 
 As an example of those who make the first 
 charge we may take Prof. Jowett, who is never 
 .weary of repeating it. f But when we ask for 
 his proof, it is found to rest on four false assump- 
 tions, tacitly made : that difference in form means 
 difference in sense, that typology is a dream, that 
 application through a true exegesis is illegiti- 
 mate, and that all adoption of language binds 
 one to its original sense. Thus Prof. Jowett 
 has difficulty in finding apposite examples, 
 
 * Jnapiration, p. 107. 
 
 t See St. FauCs JEpp., etc., vol. i., p. 353 sq. : Lon- 
 don, 1855. 
 
 6» 
 
66 INSPIRATION. 
 
 and those he does finally fix upow fail on ex- 
 amination.* Dr. Sanday, in his excellent class- 
 
 * The following are his examples : Eom. ii. 24, " where 
 the Avords are taken from Isaiah, but the sense from Eze- 
 kiel." Possibly a true criticism ; what is illegitimate in it? 
 Note, however, that this is "probably not a formal quota- 
 tion, but an expression of Paul's own thought in Old-Tes- 
 tament words, and hence the " as it is written " succeeds 
 (not precedes) the quotation ; this " as it is written " may 
 therefore refer to Isaiah as quoted, or to Isaiah and 
 Ezekiel, or to Ezekiel alone, now remembered by the 
 apostle. (Compare Beet with Philippi Meyer in. loc.) 
 Rom. ix. 33, where only a composition of two passages 
 takes place, which are rightly " harmonized," as Prof. J. 
 admits, in Christ. 1 Cor. iii. 19, where the words are 
 altered from the Psalm to suit the context indeed, but 
 also in direct agreement with their context in the Psalm, 
 so that no alteration in sense results. Eora. x. 11, which 
 is called an "instance of the introduction of a word [Traf] 
 on which the point of the argument turns," but which 
 is simply a case of true exegesis and application to the 
 matter in hand. The same passage, and without the 
 TTCf, had already been quoted in this context (ix. 33) ; 
 Paul now requotes it, calling attention to the force of the 
 unlimited 6 iriorevuv by emphasizing its sense through an 
 introduced Trdf, and confirming his interpretation imme- 
 diately by an additional Scripture (verse 13). Compare 
 Luke xviii. 14, as given in Matt, xxiii. 14, as an exam- 
 pie of like explanation. 1 Cor. wrr. 21, which is ad- 
 mitted to be a case "of addition rather than alteration," 
 and any objection to which must rest on a tacit denial 
 of typology, which even Meyer admits to be historically 
 
INSPIRATION. 67 
 
 [ficatioD of New-Testament quotations as to 
 
 justifiable here. Rom. x. 6-9, presenting alterationa 
 which "we should hesitate to attribute to the apostle but 
 for other examples, which we have already quoted, of 
 similar changes," but which, even if considered as a 
 quotation, is defensible enough ; then how much more 
 so when we note that it does not profess to be a quota- 
 tion, and is probably nothing more than the expression 
 of the apostle's thought in old and beloved words! 
 1 Cor. XV. 45, " a remarkable instance of discrepancy 
 in both words and meaning from Gen. ii. 7." Quite 
 true, and therefore neither in words nor meaning taken 
 from Gen. 7. Prof. J. has simply neglected to note that 
 the quotation extends only to ^(Jaav, (Cf. Meyer in loc.) 
 Kom. X. 13, where the charge of change of meaning 
 rests only on a misunderstanding of Mai. i. 2, 3. Eom. 
 iii. 10 sq., "a cento of quotations transferred by the 
 apostle [from their original narrow reference] to the 
 world in general." As if Eccles. vii. 21, Ps. xiii. (xiv.) 
 12 were not already as universal as anybody could make 
 them, and as if the choice of passages throughout was 
 not admirably adapted to Paul's purpose, which was to 
 prove that all men are sinners — yes, even the Jews. 
 Rom. xii. 20, which requires no remark. And finally 
 six allegories, which are immediately admitted not to be 
 allegories in the only sense of the word which would be 
 to their disadvantage — i. e. in the sense of an interpre- 
 tation which treated the literal sense of the words as 
 unimportant, in which sense of the word no allegory 
 occurs in the New Testament. These "allegories" are, 
 Bome of them, simple illustrations, some typical inter* 
 pretatlons. 
 
68 INSPIEATION. 
 
 their form * cites two passages only m hich can 
 be plausibly asserted to be cases of mistaken 
 ascription — viz. Mark i. 2 and Matt, xxvii. 9, 
 10. The first of these ought not to present 
 any difficulty. The form of the sentence shows 
 that the actual words of the citation are paren- 
 thetical in essence: Mark declares that John 
 came preaching in accordance with a prophecy 
 of Isaiah, and then inserts, parenthetically, the 
 words referred to, adding also a parallel proph- 
 ecy of Malachi. That he gives more evidence 
 than he promised ought surely to be no objec- 
 tion ; it is enough that, having promised a 
 prophecy from Isaiah, he does give it. This 
 is strengthened by the fact that the prophecy 
 quoted from Malachi is actually based on, and 
 largely drawn out of, Isaiah, so that Isaiah is 
 actually the ultimate source of both the proph- 
 ecies given, and that from Malachi can be right- 
 ly looked upon as simply a further explanation 
 of what is essentially Isaiah's. The quotation in 
 Matt, xxvii. 9, 10, on the other hand, docjs pre- 
 sent a difficulty, and is indeed, in whatever as- 
 pect it be looked upon, a very puzzling case. It 
 presents the extreme limit of paraphrase of the 
 original, and it is exceedingly difficult to assign 
 all its parts to their proper originals. It is plain, 
 * Gospels in the Second Century, pp. 16-25. 
 
INSPIRATION. 69 
 
 however, that Zech. xi. 13 was strongly coloring 
 the writer's thoughts when he wrote it. Yet he 
 ascribes it to Jeremiah. Here, it is said, is a 
 clear case of erroneous ascription. This judg- 
 ment, however, takes no account of the exceed- 
 ing difficulty of ascribing the words actually 
 quoted to Zechariah alone. There seem to be 
 but three ways in which the passage can be 
 plausibly understood, and no one of these implies 
 an error on Matthew's part. We may either (1) 
 understand the words as a very free paraphrase 
 of Zech. xi. 13, and then appeal to the fact that 
 in the Talmudic arrangement Jeremiah stood 
 first in the " book of the prophets," so that Jere- 
 miah here stands as general title for the whole 
 book — with Lightfoot, Scrivener, Cook, Schaff- 
 Riddle, etc ; or (2) take the reference in v. 9 as 
 intended for Jer. xviii., xix. — apart from which 
 passage, indeed, the quotation following cannot 
 be understood — and suppose the quotation itself 
 to be deflected to the words of Zechariah, so that 
 the passage becomes analogous to Mark i. 2, and 
 is meant to call attention to both Jeremiah and 
 Zechariah — with (in general) Hengstenberg, 
 Hofmann, Thrupp, Fairbairn, etc,; or (3) we 
 may, with Lange, find the originals of the words 
 in four passages in Genesis, Zechariah and Jer- 
 
70 rNSPIRATIOX. 
 
 emiah, the key to the whole being Jer. xxxii. 6-: 
 8. Whichever of these views may be accepted 
 is of uo moment so far as the present question 
 is concerned ; each alike is consistent with the 
 evangelist's truth, and therefore with his in- 
 spiration. 
 
 With these examples we must close. It is 
 only necessary to add the caution that the pas- 
 sages dealt with are supposed by Mr. Jowett and 
 Dr. Sanday to be the most striking and difficult 
 ones that could be put to the apologist out of the 
 two hundred and seventy-eight quotations which 
 the Kew Testament makes from the Old. It is 
 surely not presumptuous, then, to assert that Mr. 
 AVarington's wisdom is apparent, and that it is 
 true that the New-Testament quotations always 
 preserve the ^n^e of the Old-Testament pas- 
 sages. 
 
 And with this, this paper must close. It has 
 been possible, of course, to examine only sam- 
 ples of critical objection. But those that have 
 been examined are samples, and have been select- 
 ed wholly in the interests of the objection. These 
 laid, therefore, and all are laid. The legitimate 
 proofs of the doctrine, resting primarily on the 
 claims of the sacred writers, having not been 
 rebutted by valid objections, that doctrine stands 
 
...A 
 
 INSPIRATION. 7i 
 
 doubly proved. Gnosis gives place to epignosis, 
 faith to rational conviction, and we rest in the 
 jo}iul and unshaken certainty that we possess a 
 Bible written by the hands of men indeed, but 
 
 ^. a'lso\ graven with the finger of God. 
 
Princeton Theological Seminanr Libraries 
 
 1 1012 01245 6804 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
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 HIGHSMITH #45115