helped and respected as the children of God and our brethren. We are all the children of a common Father. A nation can never be civilized with its masses brutalized. It is the one opportunity of the ages to win the world by genuine friendship, earnest devotion to truth, sincere loyalty to the eternal principles of the gospel of Christ, the Alpha and Omega of which is heroic love.

ARTICLE II.

THE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.

BY PROFESSOR FRANK HUGH FOSTER, D. d.

V.

THE NATURE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIPTURES.

GIVEN the authority of the Scriptures, the nature and limitations of that authority will be found, not by some a priori principle, which must amount to a mere guess, but by an examination of the phenomena presented by the Scriptures, or of their statements about themselves, if there are any such to be found.

Upon the general claim of the Scriptures to possess authority, there can be no doubt to the most superficial reader. The command, Search the Scriptures, and the further command, Obey the Scriptures, are implicitly or explicitly written upon their every page. But if they were not, the whole impression of the Bible is a claim to authority. Its different books constitute a unit in their supreme impression of sin, of ruin, and of salvation by God through spiritual union with himself. In this single impression made by these different writings, there is an air of entire certainty and absoluteness, which constitutes in and of itself a claim to authority.

But, now, where does that authority lie? For what is authority claimed? The reply is, For the final form which the teaching and institutions of the Scriptures take.

Between the Old Testament and the New, the relation is that of the preparative and rudimentary to the final and com

plete. The law was a "schoolmaster" to bring us to Christ. Within this twofold and progressive book, the revelation which God made was progressive. His triune nature, his love, the universal purposes of his mercy, the method of salvation, were all only gradually revealed, and hence only partially apprehended at first. The conceptions of the people as to truth and duty were consequently progressive, and hence necessarily imperfect in the early stages of the revelation. For example, polygamy was practised by David without thought of wrong, and was even sanctioned by God (2 Sam. xii. 8), but it was not contemplated in the original constitution of things, nor can it be regarded in one instructed in the lofty morality of the New Testament as permissible. So the commendation lavished upon the deed of Jael in slaying Sisera could not be bestowed upon one who should in this day, when we possess the teaching of the New Testament, commit a similar deed, which, because committed under so great light, would be nothing better than a foul murder. The sentiments expressed in the so-called "imprecatory Psalms"-"Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the rock"are not upon the level even of the book of Proverbs, which utters the warning, "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he is overthrown"; to say nothing of the New Testament, "Thou shalt love thine. enemies."

To be sure, these psalms have been variously defended as normal expressions of right feeling. Some of the explanations are ingenious; but they do not satisfy the mind. Apart from the notion that it is necessary to maintain the perfection of Scripture by such arguments, they would never have been made. They are a kind of steadying of the ark. Not every expression of the Bible taken in isolation from its place in the sacred volume is perfect. The grand onward sweep of revelation, and the ultimate form of the teaching, are elements which must never be left out of the account.

For revelation comes to its apex in Jesus Christ. He fulfils-fills full-the Law and the Prophets. Nothing surpasses him. Here the Bible reaches its culmination of teaching and impression. It is for this culmination that absolute divine authority is to be claimed for the Scriptures.

There is another statement to be made. The authority claimed is authority as to the central message of salvation and the things involved in it, and is, therefore, authority in the moral and religious sphere.

It cannot be doubted that so much at any rate is claimed. The only question is, whether much more is not also claimed. Particularly, does not the Bible claim authority for its history?

Undoubtedly, in the main, it does. It states a great number of historical facts in a way to demand our acceptance of them. They are so inextricably bound up with the central message of the Bible, that they must be accepted if that is, and implicitly the same claim is made for them as for it. If Jesus Christ never lived, if the miraculous birth, the temptation, the crucifixion, the resurrection, the mission of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the conversion of the first church, the missionary labors of Paul, and those great preparatory facts of the Old Testament-the call of the Jewish people, the deliverance from Egypt, the sacrificial system, the establishment of the Kingdom, the captivity, the return-are not facts, no one would be so foolish as to try to maintain the claims of evangelical Christianity. And if the appeal be made to historical criticism to ascertain whether these statements of the Scriptures can be maintained before that tribunal,—since the whole method of treating the general theme pursued in these articles consists in an appeal to facts,-it may be declared, though time cannot here be taken to substantiate the statement, that no sufficient reason can be alleged for doubting the historical character of these great facts related by the Scriptures.

As to this position little question will be raised. But the further question rises, Whether the Scriptures claim for themselves historical infallibility, so that every historical statement which they make, of however little importance and however remote a bearing upon the central message of the Bible, is to be received, simply because they make it, as infallibly true?

It is first to be noted that the biblical writers make no express claim to any such infallibility. True, it is taught by some theologians that such a claim is involved in the very word "inspired" which is employed of the Scripture. The consideration of this reply to our statement may properly be deferred till the subject of inspiration is reached in the regular development of the theme. But certainly, aside from such considerations, there is no claim for historic authority as such. The whole treatment of historic themes in the Bible may be said to be unhistoric, to be governed, that is to say, by other considerations than those which govern the mere historian. All biblical history is history with a purpose,—didactic history,—and the purpose is always one, to promote the salvation and sanctification of men. Should the Chronicler be shown, in magnifying the prosperity of a faithful Israel, to have exaggerated the size of her armies or the importance of her victories, the main object of his contention, that faithfulness to God's commands exalteth a nation, would not be impaired, except the entire structure of his historical statements were disproved, and it were shown, for example, that the nation was really retrograding while he said, for sake of proving his point, that it was advancing.

And when we look at the facts, there is evidence of historical fallibility in the Bible. Dr. Charles Hodge himself admits that this fact, if shown to be such, would invalidate his doctrine of inspiration. "It is, of course," he says, "useless to contend that the sacred writers were infallible, if in point of fact they err. Our views of inspiration must be determined