tinction, on which inspiration is contrasted | could be proved to be at variance from depreciatingly with revelation, has been the scriptural, then it should be altered, the beginning of strife. It has "darkened and its value fixed according to the biblicounsel by words without knowledge," cal standard; but in this case it is quite and aggravated instead of simplifying the the reverse. The biblical, the etymologiproblem presented for our solution in the cal, the historical, and the popular sense authority of Holy Scripture; for, in the of the word, are opposed to the meager, first place, it so limits the meaning of the contracted sense in which it is applied by word inspiration as completely to subvert Coleridge and those who have copied him. its common acceptation; and, secondly, being supposed to intrench whatever is supernatural or Divine in Scripture within a safe stronghold, by rigidly marking off those of its contents that are asserted to be communicated by God, it at once derogates from the authority of all the rest, as something generically different, and encourages the freest license in speculation as to the kind of assistance that was needed merely to speak or transcribe these Divine communications, and to compose the other human portions of the Bible. Consequently, Coleridge himself eliminates from the inspiration of Scripture writers its miraculous efficacy; others who abide by his distinction do not, but have availed themselves of the liberty which the comparative indifference of the matter allowed them, to differ, in every conceivable way, as to the mode and measure of the supernatural aid confessedly bestowed by inspiration. "Inspiration" is understood to denote the peculiar mental state of a man who is commissioned and qualified by God to make known to his fellow-man whatever God may will to be so published. The word was originally, and is therefore most properly, applied to the communications that were thus published either in speech or writing. Now the meaning commonly, and we hold correctly, conveyed by the expression that a composition either in whole or in part is inspired, or given by inspiration of God, is that it perfectly represents to us what God wished us to know, no matter what may be the substance or form of it. If, then, we construe this idea back from the writing to the writer's mind, it is plain that inspiration is connoted of the latter, only as it denotes that peculiar mental state of the writer, which made his words written in it divinely inspired words, or words which perfectly represented what God wished to We accept the distinction only in so far be made known. In simpler phrase, it is as the mode of intelligence here specifical- that condition of the mind which impressly named "revelation" is involved in in- ed that peculiar quality on his language, spiration, as forming one of its constitu- which Scripture designates divinely tive elements; but to regard the inspira- breathed or inspired. This simple analytion of a prophet or apostle as something sis is enough to show that Coleridge's different from his supernatural knowledge limitation of the word "inspired" is erroof the Divine will, instead of being exhib-neous, since it would deny the application ited and proved by that supernatural of that word to those passages which the knowledge, we conceive to be a fundamental error, opposed alike to the plain representations of inspired men, the biblical statements concerning inspiration, and the universal acceptation of the meaning of that word. It is the introduction of this new meaning of the word "inspiration," emptied, too, of its highest potency, which has perplexed recent discussion on the subject. Against such a procedure we earnestly protest; for by this wayward and fanciful use of words in contempt of their common usage and explicit meaning, all controversy and all rational intercourse are put at an end, and mutual confusion is the sad result. Since the word is of biblical origin, we admit that if the popular meaning of "inspiration" voice of God himself is said to utter. These, according to him, are revealed, not inspired; but no practical value can attach to such distinction. What God spoke directly to his servants of old must be guaranteed to us by an infallible historian. For us, indeed, there is no revealed will of God that does not wholly rest on the validity of inspiration. Inspiration, then, in its common acceptation, is a general term, signifying that specific mental endowment of any man whose words possessed the sanction and authority of God. It includes, therefore, in its meaning, every qualification necessary to give such an awful impress to his language. Now, among these qualifica tions the mode of intelligence implied in revelation is doubtless a preeminent one; for if it were the will of God to publish some fact or truth which was transcendental and inaccessible to the ordinary faculties of man, or was unknown to the mind of his inspired servant, then it would be imparted to his mind by a direct communication or revelation, and in that particular his inspiration would involve this most exalted function. But if God willed to publish to man some historical fact, or some religious experience, then the commission and the qualification given to any man to record these, constitute as perfect an inspiration as in the former case; for, according to the meaning of that word, its complexion or character can not be affected by the substance of the Divine communication. All men are equally inspired whose words authoritatively express, whether the subject matter be otherwise known or not, what God has commanded and fitted them to record; so that in reading them we are assured they are such as God intended us to read. Accepting then this meaning of inspiration-and to adopt any other is to throw confusion into the controversy-it will be seen that these three qualifications are involved in this miraculous endowment; in order, namely, to constitute any writing inspired, or exactly what God has wished it to be that the writing state what God wished to be made known-so much as he wished to be made known-and in that manner in which he wished it to be made known. If any of these conditions in the writing or corresponding qualifications in the writer is wanting, then the prerogative, the high quality of inspiration is wanting, since what is written we can no longer consider to be given of God. His Divine seal does not rest upon it; it is man's production, and not God's, if in either manner or matter it is the off spring of a merely human will. The three logical categories, rí, oσov, olov, must be rigidly applied to inspiration, as to every other object of thought; and if they are not fulfilled, its whole nature is essentially changed, it becomes something else. For example, if any writing contain a fiction of man's own invention, we can not accept that as coming from God; if it contain a certain history, but more than God purposed should be written, then the additional supposititious narrative can have no Divine significance or authority; or if the matter and the quantity be exactly what God purposed, but if it be presented to us in a totally different manner from that which God willed, then this representation is no longer God's, but man's. If, therefore, a writing or any part of it, is to be presumed to have Divine authority for our intellect or conscience, in matter, measure, and manner, it must be exactly what God would have it be. And precisely this is meant by the claim that the Bible, or any section of it, is inspired. Inspiration is the gift enabling a man to communicate what, and how much, and in what way, God pleases through him to publish to his fellow-men. It may be now exactly seen what relation revelation holds to inspiration. It appertains to the first qualification which we have said to be involved in inspiration. An inspired man whose words have the sanction of God must know what God would have him say; and if this knowledge be not accessible from human sources, or is imperfectly contained in them, then by some supernatural process this information must be supplied; to which specific act of intelligence the word "revelation" may be appropriately confined. If he already knows what is to be said, such revelation is not needed. But his commission and qualification, to say it as God would have him say it, make the matter of this latter communication as impressively Divine, as purely God's message, as authoritative and obligatory for us, as that of the former given by revelation. Hitherto we have been expounding and defining the commonly received notion or meaning of inspiration, as applied to the sacred writings and writers. In this article we shall use the word in this sense, namely, as denoting that quality in the writings, and that corresponding mental state in the writer, which give their words the authoritative sanction of God, as we have explained above; so that in reading them we are assured that we are reading just what God proposed we should read, as given directly from himself. Let it be remembered, we do not here prejudge the fact, or the measure, or the modes of such inspiration. These questions are all left open. We merely determine the nature of inspiration, and affirm that this is the proper meaning of the word. It remains for us to examine whether the Bible, or any part of it, is so inspired, and also to discover if any light can be thrown on the mode in which this peculiar mental state coëxisted with the ordinary mental operations, or was itself elicited and continued. the absolute and impossible sense in which some writers strain them, when applied to Scripture. If any writing be precisely what God willed it to be, both in substance and form, it is inspired; for though written by men, if it be such as he intended and impelled these men to write, it is God's writing to us. Doubtless it will be in conformity with the eternal laws of rectitude and truth, else it could not be in accordance with his will; but it is an altogether different matter to postulate, that every thing in it shall be metaphysically and superhumanly accurate; for example, its statements always tallying with the essential reality, and not with the appearance of things, its language never varying in the description of the same events, even by different persons. Such accuracy or infallibility is not found We have adopted the popular meaning of inspiration on the following grounds: 1. Because it is universally received and is readily understood in this sense. Even skeptics do not differ from us here; nay, even those who have corrupted the meaning of the word "inspiration," shrink from carrying out their rendering of it in the interpretation of the passage, All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. (2 Tim. 3: 16.) They endeavor to rid themselves of this testimony to the Divine authority of Scripture, by the grammatical quibble that deóTVEVOTOS is a qualifying epithet, and not a predicate, instead of vindicating their theory in this proof passage, and flatly asserting that inspiration does not vouch for the authority or truth-in Scripture, and does not belong to infulness of Scripture; and so they evince spiration. God willed that his communitheir unalterable sympathy with the com- cations to mankind by man should be submon opinion that deоnvεvoría attributes a ject to the conditions of humanity, under Divine sacredness to any writing, and which such absolute exactitude, which accredits it as being exactly what God in- presupposes the omniscience of God to tended for us. 2. We believe, moreover, belong not only to the writer, but also to that this is the correct exegetical meaning the readers, would be unintelligible. It of dεonvεvoría, or "inspiration," when depends therefore upon the meaning in used in Scripture. But, 3. We have which we explain these words, whether here, at any rate, a fixed meaning of the we can connect them with inspiration, word, and so the controversy concerning which moreover has no proper reference the Bible is brought to a plain intelligible to such external criteria, but simply to issue; we have a clear, definite conception the Divine origin and consequent authoriattached to the query, "Is the Bible in-ty of the Scriptures. spired?" which will at once, like the stretching out of Moses' rod over the waters, cause the two opposing parties to divide, and array themselves against each other; for the query means, "Is the Bible God-given? and was the influence operating on its writers such as that their language represents to us exactly what he willed us to know?" They who assent, and they who dissent, here separate and turn towards antipodal points. We assent, and shall accordingly endeavor to prove the fact of that inspiration in the Bible, the nature of which we have been exhibiting. It will be noticed that we have cautiously avoided the words "infallibility," "accuracy," etc., when defining the meaning of inspiration; and we have done so because there are many previous questions concerning these words which need to be settled ere we predicate them of inspired writings. It can not be God's will that what he makes known to man should be infallible and accurate, in Having thus elaborately, and with intentional reïteration, exhibited the nature of inspiration, we have now prepared the way for our defense of the position, that the whole Bible is inspired. In order, however, that we may present to our readers the different phases of the controversy on this subject, that we may clear away the objections brought against our position on à priori grounds, which else might be thought to invalidate the very foundations of our defense, and that we may thus gradually approach and explicate the position in which we shall finally rest, and which we are prepared to maintain, we shall state and criticise the principal theories avowed and urged against the common doctrine of plenary inspiration. These theories we shall arrange in order, as they are further or more nearly removed from that doctrine. By this plan we believe we shall render our readers a service, by giving them in one view a résumé and refutation of those diverse views now so loudly applauded by their several supporters; and we shall greatly simplify our future task, in having proved, step by step, the insufficiency of all the theories that stop short of the position we have assumed. We name those theories according to their respective authors, as this gives concentration and point to our work, and brings us at once to personal hand-to-hand conflict with individual men, which is much more comfortable than buffeting the air. The first objection we shall examine is the bold and startling statement made by Mr. Francis W. Newman, in his work, The Soul, its Sorrows and Aspirations, that an authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man. He supports this thesis at length, in the section of the above-named work entitled 66 English Idolatry;" but it is his favorite we might almost say, hobby-dogma; repeated, again and again, in his recent writings, and echoed by the members of that school, including Theodore Parker, Hennel, etc., which we now take him to represent. Accordingly although it has passed the microscopic lenses of Henry Rogers, and has been severely but justly exposed by him- let us examine it for ourselves, and with a view to our own argument; for if this assertion has even a vestige of probability, it puts a cross-bar in the way of our further inquiry, since it renders it a futile task to prove that there has been a revelation, which after all is without authority, and therefore comparatively worthless. Now the sentence we have quoted above is exceedingly intricate and ambiguous; we must warily unravel its knots, that we may discover its meaning. Mr. Newman, it will be observed, does not affirm that an external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is impossible. He does not presume to say that God could not, by any possible method, disclose to men his character and will, and the facts of their immortal destiny. If so, then indeed that is impossible to God which is possible to man. Nor does Mr. Newman's assertion go to prove that such a revelation could be no wise advantageous, or would be altogether needless and superfluous. Many of his other expressions, indeed, are tantamount to a denial even of the utility of a Divine revelation; but after Mr. Rogers's brilliant and irrefutable Essay on The Analogies of an External Revelation with the Laws and Conditions of Human Development, we have no doubt he would willingly cancel the unguarded expressions, and shelter himself within the subtle distinction that is drawn, though not with the broad emphasis desirable in a matter of so much importance, in the sentence: "An authoritative external revelation is essentially impossible to man." It is not then an external revelation, but an authoritative external revelation, that is impossible. This fine point, which after all is the gist of the sentence, has been missed by Mr. Rogers, whose caustic and withering criticism so unsparingly devastates Mr. Newman's opinions. This point, therefore, which contains the pith of Mr. Newman's opposition to the Bible, we now exhibit for dissection. It is this, that even if God (granting what Mr. Newman dare not deny that he can) were to communicate to mankind a statement of his character, of his providential control and moral aim in the government of the world, and a description of the spiritual sphere which lies beyond death, and if, moreover, he were to append a luminous and perfect code of moral duty, neither of these communications could possess any authority with us, on the ground of their coming from God, and can only have authority at all, in so far as, upon quite independent grounds, we are able to authenticate the facts of the former communication as true, and to acknowledge the commands of the latter as right. The authorship of these communications, admitting them to come from God, gives them no extrinsic value whatever. This is a fair exposition of the meaning obscurely wrapped up in Mr. Newman's oracular and enigmatic sentence. Before entering upon its confutation, let it be observed, that he combines moral and spiritual truth together, and regards the authority which attaches to both as of essentially the same kind. This is a stupendous mistake, and lies at the root of the confusion that manifestly involves his mind in their treatment. It may do very well for Mr. Charles Kingsley, with his nobly Quixotic, but most illogical, soul, hating the tedious toil of analysis, as a poet scorns the rule of three, to proclaim as a great discovery, almost as the * Gospel of our age, that the moral and spiritual are one. But the distinction between them has been immemorially established, and is too palpable to be erased at his dictation. It is true, they have been, and should be, vitally associated in the history of mankind; for faith in the spiritual world is the most effectual coërcive power that can be brought to stimulate and strengthen the individual conscience, and affords the only guarantee for the preservation of a high-toned national morality. All religions, too, combine both kinds of truth, grounding the duties they enjoin upon the spiritual facts which they profess to reveal. Notwithstanding, however, that moral and spiritual truth are so intimately interwoven in nature, they are essentially different. Spiritual truth consists in a statement of facts, moral truth in a prescription of duties. The one appeals to our intelligence, the other to our conscience. So widely contrasted are they both in their own nature, and in the faculties by which they are apprehended. For what is the chief spiritual truth, but a revelation of the nature, the works, and purposes of God? and how does this differ, save in the boundless sublimity and importance of such knowledge, from a narrative disclosing the spirit and recording the history of any finite spiritual being? Spiritual truth can only be a statement of facts. That there is a God -that he is of such a character that he has entered into certain relations with his creatures, are simply facts, which are apprehended by our intelligence, and are credited, or discredited, according to the source and evidence of our information. Now, the only authority predicable of such a statement of facts is, that which will authorize our faith in it. An authoritative revelation of spiritual truth is one which we must believe to be true, or to represent the facts contained in it correctly, in strict accordance with their reality. In other words, the only authority of such a revelation is the authority of truth. On the other hand, the word "truth" is not properly, but only by the accomodation of metaphorical license, applied to ethics. * See especially his Lectures on the Alexandrian School of Philosophy; and his article on Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics, in Fraser's Magazine of December, 1856. See on this subject, Hampden's Bampton Lecture, Third Edition, p. 300. The authority of a summary of duty is the authority of right. Moral truth is not a statement of facts which we are to learn, and concerning which all we have to determine is, that the evidence supporting it is sound; but an enforcement of laws which we are to obey, which have not merely to be impressed on our memory, and methodized by our logic, but which should govern the will, and discipline every active energy of our nature to their requirements. And here we must determine, ere we submit ourselves to them, that the laws enjoined upon us are "holy, just, and good." Spiritual facts and moral laws are thus essentially different from each other. The authority of the one is that of truth. The authority of the other is that of right. Having disentangled the knot in Mr. Newman's sentence, and exposed the rare superficiality of Mr. Kingsley and the Broad Church School, that the moral and spiritual are one, our criticism becomes as plain as sunlight. The plausibility that seems at first sight to gild Mr. Newman's assertion, arises wholly from his illegitimate combination of two diverse kinds of truth in the subject of his proposition, and then fallaciously imputing to both that kind of authority which belongs only to one of them. For though it be true. that there is a principle in man that is able to determine on certain conditions the propriety and obligation of a moral law, and that a revelation of moral law can only be authoritative to us, when it is approved by this principle of conscience, there is no similar principle that can determine, on à priori grounds, the reality of any facts that may be presented to it. Rend, then, these two kinds of truth apart; let each of them be tried on its respective merits, and the preposterous fallacy of Mr. Newman's assertion instantly appears. 1. He says, an authoritative external revelation of spiritual truth is essentially impossible. This means that no external revelation of spiritual truth is trustworthy, or can have sufficient evidence to warrant our faith; for such is the meaning of an authoritative revelation here, otherwise it has no meaning. But spiritual truth comprises all truth concerning the existence and character of God, our own spiritual nature, and that of other spiritual beings. Then no external revelation concerning these things is trustworthy. We do not |