or the law or the Gospel and the epistles which descends not from the Divine Majesty."

Any amount of similar evidence could be adduced, but it is sufficient to say that up to the Reformation, if even one voice was raised to advance some theory of inspiration, it was too feeble to be heard. The Protestant churches which followed the revival that swept over Europe as the result of the labors of Luther and others, promulgated no new nor unknown doctrine, when they embodied in their Confessions clear and distinct statements of the plenary inspiration and supreme authority of the Scriptures. Thus the Belgic Confession, A.D. 1561, asserts: "We confess that this word of God was not sent nor delivered by the will of man, but that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, as the Apostle Peter saith." The Helvetic Confession, A.D. 1566, declares: "We believe and confess the canonical Scriptures of the holy prophets and apostles of both Testaments to be the true Word of God itself, for God himself spoke to the fathers, the prophets, and the apostles, and still speaks to us by the sacred Scriptures." The Westminster Confession, among other like things, affirms: "The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees, councils, opinions of ancient writings, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture."

Even the Roman Catholic Council of Trent "receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety and reverence all the books of the Old Testament, seeing one God is the author of both. . . . as having been dictated, either by Christ's own word of mouth, or by the Holy Ghost, and preserved in the Catholic Church by a continuous succession." This decision has been recently confirmed by the Vatican Council, 1870, which says: "These books of the

Old and New Testaments are to be received as sacred and canonical in their integrity with all their parts, as they are enumerated in the decrees of the said Council, and are contained in the ancient Latin edition of the Vulgate. These the Church holds to be sacred and canonical, not because having been carefully composed by mere human industry they were afterwards approved by her authority, nor merely because they contained revelations with no admixture of error, but because having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their authority, and have been delivered as such to the Church herself."

There was no controversy, therefore, between the Protestant and Roman Church with regard to the plenary inspiration of the Bible. The former justly assailed the latter, because she attached equal importance to traditions, because she overlaid the word of God with unscriptural doctrines and ceremonies, and because she had departed from the faith in several essential particulars; but amid all of her errors she has never denied that the Scriptures were given directly by the Holy Ghost. Indeed, it was largely owing to Luther's influence and to his rash treatment of the epistle of James and the Apocalypse, that lax views of inspiration began to prevail; and the outgrowth of these views was the most monstrous heresy. Erasmus and Grotius undertook to decide what in Scripture is given by the Spirit, and what the writers were sufficient of themselves to discover and record; and these in turn were followed by Spinoza and Schleiermacher and others, who went to a greater length, until rationalism pervaded and devastated the German Church.

When this rationalism invaded England, impiously attacking the infallibility of the Bible, and asserting the existence of many errors in the sacred pages, those who defended it were weak enough to admit the errors, and

then claimed that there were different kinds and degrees of inspiration, as the inspiration of excitement, the inspiration of invigoration, the inspiration of superintendence, the inspiration of guidance, and the inspiration of direct revelation. Thus, after many centuries had passed, during which the people of God in the Jewish and the Christian dispensation had accepted the sacred book in all its parts, as coming immediately from Him and dictated by His Spirit, the first theory of inspiration made its hateful appearance. Happily it has passed away, and is no longer mentioned; but it must be borne in mind that it was invented to account for supposed imperfections and errors and mistakes in the sacred Scriptures.

So it is with all the theories adopted by false teachers and their adherents; and hence such theories are essentially infidel in their origin, tendencies, and results. Of none is this more true than of the popular theory, now held by the wiseacres, who "think above that which is written," and who tell us that while the thoughts are inspired, the words are uninspired. No one, unless he is anxious to believe as much of the Bible as suits him, unless he is willing to set aside those portions of the Bible that do not please him, unless he wants to make room for any opinion of his own, unless he is ready to abandon the whole field to the enemy, could have ever conceived an idea so utterly absurd. As Dean Burgon has said: "You cannot dissect inspiration into substance and form. As for the thoughts being inspired, apart from the words which give them expression, you might as well talk of a tune without notes, or a sum without figures. No such dream can abide the daylight for a moment. No such theory of inspiration is even intelligible. It is as illogical as it is worthless; and cannot be too sternly put down." As Professor Gaussen has said: "This theory of a divine revelation, in which you would have the inspiration of the

thoughts, without the inspiration of the language, is so inevitably irrational that it cannot be sincere, and proves false even to those who propose it. ... Though the words are those of man, say they, the thoughts are those of God. And how will they prove this to you? Alas, by attributing to this Scripture from God, contradictions, mistakes, proofs of ignorance! Is it then the words alone they attack? And are not these alleged errors much more in the ideas than in the words? So true it is that we cannot separate the one from the other, and that a revelation of God's thoughts ever demands a revelation of God's words also."

It is a marvel that Christians, and especially Christian preachers and professors in colleges and theological seminaries, can be so easily bamboozled by the devil as to accept and propagate a theory, so ridiculous in itself, and so easily exposed in its glaring nonsense. The first theory of different kinds and degrees of inspiration, now exploded, had at least the merit of asserting that a portion of the Bible was given by the direct inspiration of God; but this wretched theory of inspired thoughts, and uninspired words, leaves no part inspired, throws wide open the door to all manner of infidelity, and casts us back for the hope of salvation upon a book that may contain nothing more than old wives' fables. How can you catch the thought? how can you get at the thought? what is the thought to you, if it is expressed in language subject to all the folly, to all the ignorance, to all the mistakes, to all the inherent disposition of men to "go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies"? So far as we are concerned, we can reach the thoughts only through the words, and if the latter have upon them the stamp of human infirmity, the former can do us no good, and we might as well throw our Bibles into the fire, and ourselves into the gulf of despair.

Many who see that no such dream can abide the daylight for a moment, that it is not even intelligible, that it is as illogical as it is worthless, in their anxiety to avoid faith in what God's Word says of itself, have devised a new theory of late, which they call Dynamic Inspiration,-whatever in the name of common sense that means. If they are asked for an explanation, they cannot for their lives give it, but content themselves with high-sounding phraseology which seems to them eminently satisfactory. But where does the Dynamic lodge? Is it in the thoughts, or in the words, or in both? Surely every one must see that it accounts for nothing, that it signifies nothing, and that it is an empty term leaving the subject of inspiration just where it was before. It would be vastly better to confess our ignorance of the method God took to give us an inspired book, than to hang over the sacred Scriptures a meaningless word, and then imagine that we have fathomed the mystery of His infinite wisdom.

There is another theory, called the mechanical, and even the most reverent students of the Bible seem to agree that this cannot be true. But precisely the same objection lies against the great mass who reject it, and perhaps the few who accept it, that can be urged against all other theories. That is to say, it is a theory, and for this very reason it is worthless. No man has a right to affirm that God used the men through whom He communicated His revelations, just as we use a printing-press, or type-writer, or other mechanical contrivance to express our thoughts, and no man has a right to affirm that He did not so use them, because the Scriptures do not inform us how they were inspired. If it had been written that the prophets and apostles were mere machines, employed for the transmission of God's thoughts and words, we would be bound to believe it; and had it been written that they were not machines, we would be bound to believe that also. But inasmuch as it