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here in the body, received, believed in, incorporated into ours, gives strength to God's pilgrims through this world. We are only to walk where He walked before us. But not His life simply. "Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire." Christ's precious, spotless life, to avail for us, must pass through the fire. If we are to enjoy God's favor, Christ must bear the wrath due to our sin without the least mitigation. God made Him to be sin for us. Let Him eat the passover in haste, too; His loins girded, His staff in His hand, and His shoes on His feet. How impressive the picture of a stranger and pilgrim here, journeying to the rest which remaineth for the people of God! And the seven days' feast of unleavened bread to follow, with no leaven even in the houses. What a comment on "Be ye holy as He which hath called you is holy in all manner of conversation!"

It is one mind, one truth, one Christ from Genesis to Revelation.

In conclusion, we have God's word. How shall we in

terpret it to others? Let its life-giving, cleansing, enlightening, and strengthening power be experienced in our inmost souls, as men of God perfect, that is, fullgrown, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. Let each of us have a message to carry to others of what God through His word has done for us and how He has had mercy upon us. Let His whole word be translated by the power of the Spirit into our daily, our whole life, of spirit, soul, and body. Be saints, children of light, walking in the light as God is in the light-Christ's living epistle, known and read of all men.

Have a simple, happy, childlike confidence in our Father's word, and a sublime assurance of its final vindication and victory over all its foes. If men do and will oppose, as we know they will, let us be gentle to all such, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing them, in

Christlike pity to those whom the god of this world hath so blinded that they believe not. Christ himself wept over such. And in fullest, richest, sweetest fellowship with Him, with our Father, and with the Holy Spirit, may we ever walk, vessels meet for the Master's use, ever exemplifying His truth, His power resting on us, and we glorifying Him in our life, and, if He so will, in our death.

ALLEGED OBJECTIONS TO INSPIRATION

CONSIDERED.

WASHINGTON GARDNER.

IN the treatment of our theme, it is important that we first determine what is to be understood by inspiration, that we may the more intelligently comprehend and consider the alleged objections thereto.

"Divine inspiration of the sacred volume," has been declared to be "the first basis of Christian faith."* "It may be best defined," says another, "according to the representations of the Scriptures themselves as an extraordinary divine agency upon teachers while giving instruction, whether oral or written, by which they were taught what and how they should speak."

Still another says: "It is the imparting of such a degree of divine influence, assistance, or guidance as enabled the authors of the several Books of Scripture to communicate religious knowledge without error or mistake." In the Book itself it is asserted that "Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." And that "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God."§ We are not unmindful that this rendering of the last quoted passage is questioned, and that good authorities. may be cited in favor of a different translation. We are

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also aware that very good authority exists for the translation as given.

We may say at the outset, that here, upon the word of God itself as found in both the Old and the New Testaments, do we discover the standard of inspiration which we propose to set up, and against which the objections we are to consider are alleged. In this discussion, Inspiration is not to be confounded with Revelation. While it is asserted that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, it is not asserted that all Scripture is revealed from the same source. All that was known was of course unrevealed, while all that was knowable, but unknown to the writer, and all that was unknowable, but which God desired to make known, were revealed; so that inspiration embraces revelation, as the whole embraces all its parts.

It is conceded that God inspired the doctrines set forth in the Bible, but that the biographical and historical details are of man. With the advocates of this position, the theory is that the doctrines were unknown and unknowable to unassisted man, and that therefore God was consistent with Himself in revealing them; on the other hand, it is alleged that the biographical and historical portions of the Book were either known to the writers or were within the domain of acquirable information, and as "God does not set up His divine torch in human study," nor "pour His light in quarters which man's eye and man's labor can reach," He is only consistent with Himself in withholding inspiration from man in that part of the Bible the contents of which he knew or might have known.

This objection is so well answered by Garbett in "God's Word Written," that we quote at length. The effect of this allegation

-"that the Scriptural writers were inspired in delivering the great doctrines of revelation relative to the nature of God and the salvation of man, but were not inspired in regard to

the biographical and historical facts; that the jewel of divine truth, in short, is of God, but that its historical setting is of man. But the effect of this theory is to deprive of their heavengiven authority those very portions of Scripture which constitute the evidence for the veracity of the whole, and in which alone such evidence could conceivably be afforded.

"That God in giving a revelation should supply at the same time some internal means of verifying it, will be admitted to be congruous not only with the gracious character of God, but with the mode of action He has actually adopted. It would be strange if God had provided in miracles and in prophecy an attestation to the authority of Scripture, and yet had afforded no means of ascertaining its truth. No Christian will doubt that the whole fabric of evidence possessed by us to prove the Bible to be a revelation from God, has been intelligently provided. It has not grown by chance, but has been schemed by the mind of God, ordered by His goodness and framed by His wisdom. But of this scheme the confirmation of its truth by the testimony of secular history and archæological discovery, constitutes an important portion. But this proof lies altogether in the historical details of Scripture, not in its doctrines. We have no possible means of putting to any practical test its doctrines, such as the Trinity of persons in the Godhead; the union of two natures in Christ; the justification of the sinner by faith; or the person and operations of the Holy Ghost. We cannot climb up into heaven to see the eternal realities to which the revealed doctrines correspond. We accept them because we find them contained in a revelation we believe to have come from God. But we have no possible means of proving them. We have means of testing the accuracy of historical facts; and in these facts, therefore, it is natural that God should supply the means of verifying His own words. The historical portions of the Scripture are inseparably identified with the doctrinal, and form component parts of one and the same revelation, invested with one and the same authority."*

It is urged that it is beneath the majesty of God to take note of details in unimportant and temporal human affairs, such as surround the great doctrines evolved from the

* Pages 286-7.

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