so the translation should rather be, "Lo! the Virgin pregnant, and bearing & Son."

Passing over other matters of less though not little importance, we come to the proposed interpretation of the prophecy. Here, again, has sufficient notice been taken of л, the land, and of the participle P, rendered in both A.V. and R.V. "abhorrest"? The interpretation proposed is the usual one, it makes the land to signify the lands, as though it were in the plural, of Syria and Ephraim, and of the two kings which were the foes of Judah; but П, the land, in the singular, can have but one meaning, the land kar' ¿çoxýv, the land of Canaan, the land promised of old, and now occupied by the tribes of Israel, hence also "both her kings," A.V., and "whose two kings," R. V., must be the kings of Israel and Judah. Before accepting or rejecting this interpretation which is forced upon us by the general use elsewhere of D, let us look at the participle P with the emphatic pronoun Thou attached to it, first as to the construction of the sentence. The A.V. makes "both her kings" depend upon the verb "forsaken"; whereas the R.V., following Delitzsch, Cheyne, and others, makes the "two kings" to depend upon "abhorrest." It is advanced in favour of the latter that this construction is found in Exod. i. 12 and Numb. xxii. 3; but the former has the support of the versions of the LXX., of the Peshitto Syriac, of Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, and St. Jerome with his Jewish assistant. All these authorities agree in this construction, and it is to be presumed that they knew whether it was grammatical and consistent with the sense required. All ancient scholarship, which in several cases involved a vernacular use of the original in some form and to some degree, is on this side. But, secondly, what is the meaning to be given to P? All the Greek authorities give different words, but in this very chapter, ver. 6, we have another instance of this verb, "Let us go up against Judah and vex it." It would seem far more natural to give this verb the same fundamental meaning in both places which are so closely connected, though the forms are different, and so to bring out the sarcasm of the prophet. It is not Syria and Ephraim that vex, but it is thou, Ahaz, that art vexing the land; thou art the true enemy of the land by thy unbelief and disobedience.

Here comes in another objection that has been raised: What sign could the distant birth of Christ be to Ahaz? The answer is plain, as evidenced by the prophet turning away from the king who repudiated his privileges to the "house of David," to which in all its generations the promise was given. The king was endeavouring to bring about the destruction of "the land," but his efforts in that direction would be useless until the destiny of the house of David was fulfilled. The virgin must bear the promised Son, Judah is immortal till that event is accomplished. It matters not whether it is near or far, the family and lineage of David must survive till then. Hence the sign was plain enough, or ought to have been, to Ahaz and the people in general. The closing portion of this section of Scripture fully discloses the destruction

that should befall Judah as well as Israel, but the final fall of Judah is after the birth of Immanuel.

A sign

from Jehovah is always something solemn, and of awful import. All the evasions which have been proposed to escape the Messianic reference both amongst the Jews of the early Christian period and the followers of Gesenius in our own times, show a lamentable want of reverence for this phrase, and for the honour of Him who gave it.

THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT.

HOW DO ERRORS IN THE BIBLE AFFECT ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION.

BY REV. J. J. LIAS, M.A.

BEFORE entering upon the subject of this article I desire to make a trifling addition to the last. I ought to have stated that the idea that numbers were anciently denoted by letters among the Hebrews, as they are at present, is rejected by many scholars. This, however, though it affects the explanation, does not affect the argument. However explained, the errors are there, and they are sufficient to disprove the absolute infallibility and inerrancy still claimed by some persons for the Scriptures.

My present object is to discuss the question how far the Divine authority and inspiration of the Bible are affected by the admission that it is possible for errors to be found in it. It is obvious that this must very much depend upon the limits within which this admission of error is supposed to be confined. That there are such limits, that such admissions may be carried so far as to destroy the general credit of the book, and therefore its claim to inspiration in any sense, can hardly be denied. And one of the dangers which appear to me to beset modern Old Testament criticism is that the critics, often no doubt without observing or intending it, do draw very perilously near to that result. On the other hand, men are endeavouring to maintain a position of stubborn conservatism in reference to this subject from the fear that to grant the possibility of error on any single point will be found ultimately fatal to any doctrine of inspiration whatsoever. The object of this paper is to discover, as far as may be, where the limits within which error is possible may be drawn consistently with the belief in the Divine authority of the Scriptures. In order to do this, we must first of all endeavour to ascertain what is the object for which the Scriptures are given. We shall then more clearly understand how far it is permissible to recognize a human element in them, how far error within their pages is likely to extend, and what is the nature of the residuum of infallible Divine truth which, on any view of inspiration whatever, they must be admitted to enshrine.

To pursue such a line of inquiry we must recur to the view of inspiration laid down in the first of this series of papers. We saw there that the Christian Church, while regarding the Scriptures with the deepest reverence, had never officially propounded any theory of inspiration. We might have gone further. It may seem an astounding statement, but it is nevertheless a true one, that the Christian Church as a whole has never officially discussed the question of what books the Scriptures consist, and is not, to this very moment, committed to any catalogue of them. This fact seems decisive against the idea that we receive the Bible on the authority of the Church. Rather, the Church may be said to have left the investigation of the evidence for each particular book to the conscience of the individual, and thereby to have taught that the authenticity and canonicity of the Scriptures rested entirely on testimony, and not in any way whatever on authority. The ground on which the Scriptures have been handed down to us would therefore seem to be, not the infallibility of the writers in every detail, nor the infallibility of the Church which has handed them down to us as embodying her teaching, but the accuracy of the information concerning God's relation to man which they contain. And this accuracy depends, not on any interposition of the Divine Spirit miraculously preserving the writer from all error, but from his position as the accredited ambassador from God to man, which gave him the necessary information on the points on which he was commissioned to instruct us. Thus the Pentateuch, if we are to accept it as an authentic account of God's dealings with man, must have been written by some one officially competent to inform us what the teaching of Moses really was. The historical books claim to be written by, or founded on the works of, acknowledged prophets and seers. The prophetic and poetic books carry their own credentials with them, as the work of men divinely commissioned to proclaim Divine truth. And the books of the New Testament were either written by, or under the supervision of, men authoritatively selected by Jesus Christ to proclaim His Gospel to mankind.

It is here, it seems to the present writer, that the character and tendencies of the Higher Criticism require to be closely watched. It is not that the right of the Scriptures to occupy the position they have so long occupied in the eyes of Christendom ought not to be fairly and scrupulously tested. But in the inquiry we ought carefully to bear in mind what is and what is not consistent with the Christian position. We ought carefully to distinguish between criticism ab extra and criticism ab intra-such criticism as we undertake previous to accepting the Christian system, and such criticism as is consistent with having accepted it. It must, of course, be admitted that the entire rejection of the Old Testament is theoretically compatible with a firm belief in Christ. And yet the instinct of the Christian Church in the second century in the case of Marcion emphatically condemned such a position as heretical. It was felt that if Christianity were not a part of a Divine plan for the education and salvation of the world-the completion. and crown of previous revelations of the Divine Will-belief in Christ would

rest on an insecure foundation. And so in these days, if we admit that the history of the Divine education of the world, so scrupulously and solemnly handed down to us, contains serious inaccuracies on matters of considerable, if not vital, importance, we may find that the admission, even if it be not ultimately fatal to Christianity, may introduce elements which may injuriously modify our conceptions of it. The existence in Scripture of a human and fallible element must henceforth, there can be little question, be frankly acknowledged. The question of the extent of that element is one which requires the fullest and most anxious consideration, in view of the important consequences which are involved in it.

Though recent critical researches have been welcomed by many with a sense of relief, because they have diminished the strain imposed on rational faith by a narrow doctrine of literal inspiration, yet there are many honest and manly thinkers who are apprehensive lest the reaction be carried too far. It was not long ago that such apprehensions found expression in a report on religious education presented to the House of Laymen in connection with the Convocation of Canterbury. The decline of reverence for Scripture is there represented as partly due to the manner in which "religious teachers parade the human factor in the composition of Scripture in a way which is assuredly out of all proportion with truth." The caution is one well worth noting. We must not allow ourselves to forget that it will be found easier to deprive our laity of any feeling of reverence whatever for some portions of Scripture than to restore such reverence when once lost.

Thus, then, while admitting the existence of errors in the Bible, we may nevertheless find it necessary in the interests of truth to circumscribe their limits. Errors there may be in minor matters of fact, such as numbers, names, and dates, and even possible exaggerations in points of secondary importance, through the power of a vivid imagination. There may be interpolations, again, from other sources, of details which cannot be regarded as historical. What in the sacred narrative, once more, is treated as miraculous, may frequently, from a modern scientific point of view, be relegated to the domain of special providences. Ordinances authoritatively imposed under the law may be abolished under the Gospel. Nay, even the morality of the Old Testament may in some cases be set aside through the enlargement of our views consequent on the revelation of Jesus Christ. But where it would seem necessary to the present writer to draw the line would be at the direct teaching concerning God's education of man contained in the sacred page. There, it seems to him, it is necessary to the Christian position to contend that error would not be found. Thus, if the Old Testament informs us that the revelation of God was made in a certain way, that the "commandments, statutes, and judgments" therein contained were handed down throughout the Israelitish history, that in consequence of the neglect of these precepts first Israel, and then Judah, fell under the displeasure of the Almighty, and that the former was finally rejected, and the latter restored to a position shorn of all its splendours, then we are not at liberty to reconstruct

the history on critical grounds, and to reject the account given in the Bible of God's dealings with His people, unless we are prepared to go further and reject the inspiration of the Old Testament altogether. This position is entirely independent of any critical inquiry as to the origin and date of the books. It matters not by whom they were written, or at what date they assumed their present shape, so long as they are competent teachers on the subject on which alone we need their guidance-the dealings of God with man. But if once they are discovered to be insufficient teachers on this vital point, then the human element overpowers the Divine. They are reduced to a level with other writings. And if the information in the historical books be full of serious inaccuracies, those books at least are reduced to a lower level than other histories, and their claim to Divine inspiration becomes, to use a mathematical phrase, so infinitesimal that it may safely be neglected altogether. Nor is this position in any way absurd or illogical. Our conception of the inspiration of Scripture does not rest on criticism alone, but on a variety of considerations. Criticism itself is not one of the exact sciences, but rests very largely upon the idiosyncrasy of the particular critic or school of critics. What would be illogical or absurd would be to abandon a belief founded upon a vast amount of cumulative evidence, upon premisses resting on an uncertain induction drawn from one class of considerations only.

To push our belief in the human element in Scripture so far as this, appears to the writer likely very seriously to impair the belief in its authority and inspiration. But a belief in that authority and inspiration is not, it appears to him, in any way impaired by confining that authority and inspiration to the proclaiming the ways of God to man. The inspiration of the writers of the Bible did not concern itself with ordinary history, nor with the limits of the natural and the miraculous, nor with questions of natural science, nor even with the elaboration of a system of theology or religious philosophy. The Bible is not, to use Coleridge's striking phrase, "A Creed of which every sentence is an article." But what historians, prophets, Apostles, were commissioned to declare to us was the will of God, and His methods for the training of mankind. From the Bible we may learn our duty to God, and to our neighbour, by learning our relations to God and to one another. From it we gather those elementary truths of our relation to Him on which alone all human morality can safely be based. From it, too, if St. Paul is to be trusted, man discovered, by his incapacity to fulfil the law, the true conception of the extent to which he had gone astray. From it we imbibe the first "principles of the doctrine of Christ "—that norm of Divine belief in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of the knitting together of a "peculiar people, zealous of good works," in that belief, and in the relation to God which it produces. And even if we admit that historians, prophets, Apostles, may occasionally have made incorrect deductions from the principles they were commissioned to proclaim-if we hold that their inspiration did not involve