In a line with the fact, again it is said that the word came to the writers without any study-" suddenly" as to Amos (chap. vii. 15), where he is taken from following the flock.

Again: When the word thus came to the prophets they had not the power to conceal it. It was "like a fire in their bones" which must speak or write, as Jeremiah says, or consume its human receptacle.

And to make this more clear, it is said that holy men. were pheromenoi, "moved" or rather carried along in a supernatural, ecstatic current - a delectatio scribendi. They were not left one instant to their wit, wisdom, fancies, memories, or judgments either to order, or arrange, or dispose, or write out. They were only reporters, intelligent, conscious, passive, plastic, docile, exact, and accurate reporters. They were like men who wrote with different kinds of ink. They colored their work with tints of their own personality, or rather God colored it, having made the writer as the writing, and the writer for that special writing; and because the work ran through them just as the same water, running through glass tubes, yellow, green, red, violet, will be yellow, violet and green, and red.

God wrote the Bible, the whole Bible, and the Bible as a whole. He wrote each word of it, as truly as He wrote the Decalogue on the Tables of stone.

Higher criticism tells us the "New Departure" tells us, that Moses was inspired, but the Decalogue not. But Exodus and Deuteronomy, seven times over, declare that God stretched down the tip of His finger from heaven and left the marks, the gravements, the cut characters, the scratches on the stones (Exod. xxiv. 12). "I will give thee Tables of stone, con.. andments, which I have written' (Exod. xxxi. 18). "And He gave unto Moses, upon Mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone

written with the finger of God" (Exod. xxxii. 16). "The Tables were the work of God and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables" (Deut. iv. 12, 13). "The Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire, and He declared unto you His covenant, even ten commandments, and He wrote them upon two tables of stone" (Deut. v. 22). "These words the Lord spake and He wrote them in two Tables of stone and delivered them unto me" (Deut. ix. 10). "And the Lord delivered unto me two Tables of stone written with the finger of God!"

Seven times, and to men to whom writing is instinct; to beings who are most of all impressed, not by vague vanishing voices, but by words arrested, fixed, set down; and who themselves cannot resist the impulse to commit their own words to some written deposit, even of stone, or of bark, if they have not the paper; seven times, to men, to whom writing is instinct and who are inclined to rely for their highest conviction on what they have styled "documentary evidence," i. e., on books;-God comes in and declares, "I have written!"

The Scriptures, whether with the human instrument or without the human instrument, with Moses or without Moses, were written by God. When God had finished, Moses had nothing else to do but carry down God's autograph. That is our doctrine. The Scriptures, if ten words, then all the words-if the Law, then the Gospels -the writing, the writings, He Graphe-Hai Graphaiexpressions repeated more than fifty times in the New Testament alone-this, these were inspired.

3d. But if the words were inspired, then every pen-stroke, mark, scratch, “jot," "tittle" was inspired-every Hebrew vowel-point down to the Seghol and the Sheva.

The question as to literal and autographic inspiration will always move back, inch by inch, in discussion, until

it has reached and finally confronted the crucial defense of the Reformers-THAT OF THE VERY POINTS.

The New Testament hangs for authority upon the Old Testament, and the Old Testament hangs upon the points.

It is perfectly well understood by us all that the consonants are characters or letters in the Hebrew, and that the vowels are placed over these, within them, but especially beneath them in the form of marks or points.

These points determine the words, and the words determine the sentence. Whether a word be a noun or a verb; or, if a noun, what noun? if a verb, what verb? passive or active, past, present, or future?-all this, in a given particular case, may depend on the points.

Take as an illustration, in the Hebrew the word

to esteem. This, by change of the vowels, becomes y a gate; a porter; vile; to shudder; y the hair; fear, horror. All seven words, verb, noun, or adjective, to be distinguished only by the points. Take as another illustration, in the English, the word Broad," for instance. The consonants are B. R. D. Now for the vowels-Bard, Bird, Beard, Board, Aboard, Brad, Braid, Bred, past of to breed-Bread, an article of food--Broad, Abroad, Brood. Twelve words, at least with three consonants.

The manuscript is theopneustic, not the man. The inspiration of the Vowel-points-part of that manuscript

is therefore seen to be integral, vital. Of course, if the pen-strokes are inspired upon the parchment, the words are. Give the pen-strokes, and you give the words. The establishment of the Points will, therefore, always be the establishment of the Church doctrine of exact, direct, chirographical inspiration; and not only this, but also the establishment of one straight, permanent, received, and changeless text; and this Dr. Ginsburg, himself the

foremost laborer against that text, as equally against the vowel-points, most readily admits.

The constant, uniform tradition of the Jews, affirming that the points came down from Moses, and the giving of the Law, was a tradition unbroken down to the year 1538, twenty-one years after Luther had nailed up his Theses. The points were then denied by Elias Levita, a rationalistic Jew, who stood alone against the sentiment. of his whole nation, at the time of writing his book.* “It is to the Massoreth Ha Massoreth of Levita," as Dr. Ginsburg admits, "that we owe the present modern controversy concerning the antiquity and inspiration of the Points." "The rejection of the Points," as he admits, "by men of laxer tendency, following Levita, produced most lamentable effects, especially so far as the criticism of the Old Testament is concerned "+-effects, indeed, we may add, from which we have not yet recovered, but which, in spite of all the resistance of a sound and a loyal conservatism, are still seen working themselves out in the popular, so-called, "Higher Criticism" of the day. "It was," continues Dr. Ginsburg, "the unwarrantable liberty taken with the text, first started by Capellus, following in the wake of Levita, and the resort to all sorts of emendations and conjectural readings, in order to sustain the peculiar and the preconceived fancies of different individuals and schools, which converted the controversy about the Vowel-points into an Article of Faith in the Reformed Church of Switzerland, and led to the enacting of a law in 1678 that no person should be licensed to preach the Gospel in the churches, unless he publicly declared that he believes in the integrity of the Hebrew text, and in the Divinity of the very Vowel-points."

* Buxtorf, Tractatus de Punc. Origine.

+ Massoreth Ha Massoreth, p. 61.

The last Doctrinal Confession of the Reformed Church of Switzerland, the Formula Consensus of 1675, drawn up by Heidegger and Turrettin, and which fitly closes the period of the great Calvinistic confessions, says as follows:

"In particular, do we accept the Hebrew Codex of the Old Testament, which comes to us from the hands of the Jewish Church, to which were formerly committed the 'Oracles of God'; and we firmly maintain it, not only as to the consonants, but also as to the vowels, sive ipsa puncta, the very points; the words as well as the things, as theopneustos-God-breathed-part of our faith, not only, but our very life."

The question is settled for us, however, not by Confessions, but by the Book itself.

THE BIBLE TESTIFIES THE INSPIRATION OF THE POINTS.

1. It says, with reference to the Tables of the Law, that they were the work of God absolutely; and that the writing was the writing of God--the whole of it; and that it was graven of God-every scratch of it. See Exod. xxxii. 16.

2. Our Saviour tells us that part of these scratches were "jots," or yodhs, and "tittles," or little pointed marks, and that not one of these shall pass away. These words of Christ, "jot," "tittle" (see Matt. v. 18), are no repetition of some common and exaggerated proverb, and they are no tautology. They mean, in all Divine intention and emphasis, just what they say, and they refer to the specimen of the two Tables, not only, but to the whole scope of Scripture as well. "Seeing our Saviour," says Fulke, the great champion of Protestantism, "seeing our Saviour hath promised that never a prick (i. e., a vowel-point) of the Law shall perish, we may understand