Church has progressed in the wrong direction by every departure it has made from Luther. Under the auspices of the lords of the land there has grown up a hierarchy in the midst of the Evangelical Church with dignities and titles. To this Steinmeyer objects as contrary alike to the mind of Luther and of Paul; and he says that it is unworthy of Gerhard to justify these titles "ut externa ministerii facies decorata in oculos hominum incurrat." "Paul," Steinmeyer writes, "sought for the glory of the office in another factor. It is not biblical to endeavour to elevate the doğa of the office by such means. The spirit it is which quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing."

We have noted points in which we disagree with the writer; but there is much with which we heartily concur. It is well worthy of study; for there is thoroughness of treatment, and it is written in a lively and interesting style.

Woman's Work and Worth, in Girlhood, Maidenhood, and Wifehood. Illustrations of Woman's Character, Duties, Rights, Position, Influence, Responsibilities, and Opportunities, with Hints on Self-culture, and Chapters on the Higher Education and Employment of Woman. By W. H. DAVENPORT ADAMS. John Hogg, Paternoster Row.

The title of this book sufficiently indicates its character, and it treats most exhaustively the wide range of subjects it embraces. The great and good women of all ages are introduced in brief but graphic sketches; and the concluding chapters are of special value at the present time. A more interesting and inspiring book to place in the hands of a young girl it would be difficult to find, and it is one which may be read with pleasure and profit by women of all ages.

The publications of the Religious Tract Society continue to maintain their usual standard of excellence. The new volumes of the Leisure Hour and Sunday at Home are replete with interesting matter. The Pocket-books and Almanacs issued by the Society for 1880 are worthy of special attention.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN

EVANGELICAL REVIEW.

APRIL 1880.

ART. I.-Nature of the Divine Inspiration of Scripture.

[The following Notes are to some extent an expansion of a paper read by me to a clerical club. Members of the club expressed a desire and expectation that the paper should be laid before the public. One reason of this desire was that the notes, as submitted to the club, were so aphoristic in form that members desired to see them in print for leisurely consideration. There is nothing in the original notes which the club discussion has induced me to alter in substance. But I now reproduce the paper in the light of that discussion, which means with very important advantages beyond what I had enjoyed in solitary study.]

THE preparation of this paper was originally occasioned by a

suggestion to the effect that those who dogmatise copiously about inspiration do not, as a class, know very well what they are dogmatising about. Not a few good and true men are at this hour persuaded that the dogma of plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture is incompetent in the present state of knowledge and comprehension in our Evangelical Churches.

Under the form of discussion the paper is occupied mainly with definition rather than demonstration. In relation to the subject as regarded by intelligent advocates of a veritable divine inspiration of Scripture all through, my notes are

intended mainly for the purpose of clearing away obscurities which at this time are working mischief, as all darkness is the advancing shadow of death.

The distinction between revelation and inspiration, though continually asserted by one class of theologians, is continually ignored, or rejected as unreal and illusory, by another class. Yet the distinction is founded in the nature of things. Revelation is that through which rational beings come into possession of information; while inspiration is that through which they come to communicate that information-no matter how obtained. Thus, in relation to a scripture or book, the record of a revelation --while the revelation question is, What is the source of the information? the inspiration question is, Who is the author of the book, or scripture, or record?

So Shakespeare, the "all-round" man, after describing "the poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling," as receiving some revelation when it glances "from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," goes on to describe an ulterior process, in which “the poet's pen" records what his eye has seen, so as to "give to airy nothings a local habitation and a name."

It is not necessary here to speak of the revelation as supernatural. Of the information recorded in Scripture a large part may, by the human authors of Scripture, have been obtained from sources within reach of men in the natural use of their faculty of knowledge. For instance, the non-scriptural records appealed to in the Old Testament Scriptures, and the testimonies referred to in the preface of Luke's Gospel, may have been simply human records of matters patent to every human eye looking on the events of the history of God's kingdom. But the supposition that Luke obtained information from other men, who from the beginning had been eyewitnesses of the Word, does not imply that Luke was not the human author of the third Gospel, nor that what is said in that history is not said by him. The supposition that Moses and other Old Testament writers made use of previously existing documents, or unwritten traditions, does not imply that certain scriptures have not Moses and other Old Testament prophets or scribes for their authors. Froude's History of England is not the less Froude's because he makes copious use of materials which had existed long before his time.

Inspiration distinct from Revelation.

203

It thus appears that the question regarding the source of information recorded in a book is distinct from the question regarding the authorship of the record. And the inspiration question has reference only to the authorship of the record, while the revelation question has reference only to the source of information recorded. On the one hand, though the source of information should be simply human, the authorship of the record, the inspiration of the book, may be divine; e.g., while the genealogies so frequently appearing in Scripture may have originally been prepared simply by men in the ordinary course of political administration, yet the authorship of the Scripture quâ recording them may be properly divine and miraculous, God choosing to place in a record which is distinctively divine. materials obtainable through simply human inquiry. On the other hand, a record may be simply human in its authorship though the source of the information recorded should be truly divine and miraculous. For instance, the great facts of distinctively supernatural revelation are, let us suppose, correctly recorded in the systems of Augustine and Calvin, or in the creeds and confessions of Evangelical Churches; yet the records, in the shape of those utterances of individuals and of Churches, are, in the view of Evangelical Christians, simply human.

The divine inspiration of Scripture means, that of the Record in our hands the author is God, in such a sense that the Bible is properly God's Word, that what the Scripture says is said by Him. To say this is specifically distinct from saying that the revelation comes from Him directly or remotely. For, as we have seen, the source of the material recorded may be different from the authorship of the record. Hence, in relation to the authorship of the record, it does not suffice to speak of presentation, somehow, of truth or view to the human mind, so that this mind is able to apprehend it. After that apprehension -which may be effected through the poet's eye, or the prophet's, or the historian's, or the dogmatist's-there may come in a specifically different thing, the committing of the same to writing, putting the vision on paper. That is what we have now to think about in relation to the record of revelation as distinguished from the revelation recorded.

What we now say of the record, in the sense of supernatural intimation of God's mind by God, may be applicable to other

modes of intimation of God's mind by God. For instance, the symbolism of the Tabernacle and Temple may have resulted, not simply from Divine communication of ideas to men, but from Divine determination of every detail of the symbolism; so that Israel, in looking at the ordinary service of worship, may have been consciously receiving directly the mind of God from God, as truly as when listening to His articulate utterance of the Ten Words at Sinai. Again, when prophets spoke articulate words, it is conceivable that their spoken utterance should be so completely determined by the informing power of God as to make the utterances to be properly His word.

What we thus suggest is that the Bible, the record of revelation, is properly an oracular book. And when we speak of the Bible as an oracular book, we represent the feeling of the whole Christian world in relation to the Bible. This suggestion of theologians is anticipated by the experience of Christians. It is a matter of Christian experience that the Bible is an oracular book. Christendom reposes upon the belief that the utterances of this book are properly oracles of God; and this has been so from the beginning of Christian Church-history. It has been imagined by some that the dogma of divine inspiration of Scripture, as distinguished from divine revelation recorded in Scripture, is of recent origin, dating, say, from the time of Clericus or Spinoza, two hundred years ago; that at this recent period it came into being as a mere makeshift for evasion of difficulties occasioned by the discovery, then made for the first time, of "mistakes" in the Scripture record. But this imagination is a hallucination regarding the relative course of Christian thought, and feeling, and life.

The sort of "mistakes" alleged by Spinoza, and employed by Clericus for subversion of the received doctrine of inspiration, had been alleged by another famous Jew far back in the Middle Ages. The same sort of alleged mistakes had, for the same purpose, been adduced by Theodore of Mopsuestia in the primitive "Age of the Councils." And the received doctrine of inspiration, as meaning that the Bible is a properly oracular book, so far from having been invented as a makeshift for meeting the difficulties occasioned to faith by the speculations even of Theodore, is demonstrably as old as the Christian