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ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.-He is a mysterious God, mysterious in His wisdom. How He smiles to see the attempts made, both within and without the church, to overturn man's faith in the Holy Scriptures. He has permitted His enemies to assail the authority of the Bible, in order to conduct the church to the truth. How we rejoice in these words, "All things work together for good," Rom. viii. 28. All the schemes and efforts of hell, all the devices and labours of rebellious man, all the prayers and feeble exertions of saints, work together to advance the truth, to drag on the triumphal car of Jesus Christ, to lead the world to God. Before the world can be reformed, the church must be reformed. The instrument of reformation is truth applied by the Holy Ghost. Sound doctrine is to be obtained from right principles of interpretation, and these from true views on the subject of inspiration.

By the word "inspiration," we mean the assistance given by the Holy Ghost to those who wrote the Bible. The assistance was twofold. The Holy Spirit operated both on the mind, and on the subject. The nature of His operation on the mind, on the intellect, and on the heart, cannot be well described; but the effects of that operation can. What sort of medicine grace is, cannot be known; but the cure it effects may be most clearly known. What the Holy Spirit aimed at in working upon the minds of the writers of the Bible, was to bring them up to the point at which they would be able to write in the manner He desired. That requisite point of qualification was reached by three means-1st, Grace bestowed. 2nd, Light drawn from their own Christian experience. 3rd, Knowledge obtained through the senses, and from reflection. The principal means undoubtedly was grace, for without it the scales would not have been removed from the eyes of the mind, nor would there have been any Christian experience from which to draw light. It will be at once seen that the point of qualification was gradually reached, and it is important, as we shall hereafter see, to keep this truth in remembrance.

The work of the Holy Spirit upon the soul can be imagined from scenes in daily life. There is a child before me, with its eyes weak and inflamed. The lids are kept nearly closed; so little light is admitted that nothing is distinctly seen. He is so unwilling to allow his eyes to be touched, that the father has to apply the healing solution only at night, when the child is asleep. See, he gently lifts a lid and allows a few drops to fall upon the diseased organ. Day by day the inflammation subsides, and the power of sight is restored. The Holy Ghost is the parent, and grace is the healing solution. Like the sleeping child, we get drops of grace when we are quite unconscious that the Holy Spirit is so near, and, under its irresistible influence, the vision of the soul improves. It is a sovereign medicine; a specific, and

the only specific for all the diseases of the intellect and of the heart. So much for the Spirit's operation on the mind. His operation on the subject consisted in throwing light upon it, and this was done in various ways.

1st. Verbal Injection.-By verbal injection, we mean that the words, precisely as we have them in the original languages of the Bible, were communicated to the writers. That the Holy Ghost is the author, and the prophet or apostle only the amanuensis. David expresses what we mean in 2 Sam. xxiii. 2, "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His word was in my tongue." How much of the Old and New Testaments is thus to be ascribed to the Holy Spirit? Very little indeed. God invariably accomplishes His ends by the smallest means. What man could do in writing out the Bible, God the Holy Spirit permitted, yea commanded man to do. What was beyond the knowledge, or renewed and strengthened powers of the writer, that, and that only, the Holy Ghost gave by verbal injection. Neither God nor man acts upon the principle of "Keep a horse and draw the carriage yourself." The horse is able to draw the carriage; man only requires to guide the animal's power. The writers of the Bible, when renewed and qualified by grace, were able to write the greater portion; the Holy Spirit had only to guide, to instruct when and what truth was to be written, leaving the expression of such truth to the writer's own knowledge and mental power. The carriage is started, drawn along the various streets, and stopped at the pleasure of the driver; and all this is done as correctly as if he himself drew the carriage. And, in like manner, the whole Bible, though the greater portion of it is the fruit of man's knowledge, gracious experience, and mental powers, is as correct, is as precisely what the Holy Ghost wished to convey, as if He had dictated every word.

Can we point out any of the passages given by verbal injection? Some of them can be most easily distinguished; but to lay his finger upon them all, is a task we would not wish any mortal man to attempt. It would be an utter failure; indeed the writers themselves could not, in every instance, say what arose from their own mind, and what from the Holy Spirit. Besides, it would do us no good to know, because, since the Holy Ghost watched every word as the writers wrote it down, and allowed nothing to be written but what He approved, every part of the Bible is equally the voice of God to us; every part of the same value and authority as if it had been given by verbal injection. Gen. xlix. 3-27 is a fine instance of verbal injection. Jacob's own mind could not have foreseen the destiny of his sons in the far distant ages. His prophetic blessing is expressed in words which he himself did not understand. The tongue of that venerable hoary-headed man, whose eyes are dim with age, and who in a few minutes shall "gather up his feet into the bed, and give

up the ghost," is used by the same Divine power which moved the dumb animal that rebuked the madness of the prophet, 2 Peter ii. 16. Every word rises distinctly within the mind, whispered by the Holy Ghost, and His power enables the dying tongue to give audible expression to the words as they rise. When he reaches the 17th verse there is a pause; exhausted nature takes a rest. Turning his dim eyes upwards, as if to gaze on the God of Abraham and Isaac, the God that had spoken from the top of the mystic ladder, and had been his guide through all his pilgrimage, he breathes out, "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord." Strengthened by that look, and the conviction that in a few moments he shall be with his fathers in the home of everlasting glory, he proceeds, and his last words swell into a magnificent harmony that ravishes the soul, the Holy Ghost accommodating His language to the undying attachment the patriarch bore to his beloved Joseph,

"But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel:) even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb: the blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren," Gen. xlix. 24-26.

What a beauty there is in the mind of God. We like to gaze on the beauty that is in His infinite soul, as we see it impressed upon nature and revelation-impressed there not in all its strength and glory, but faintly, to gratify the little we can, in this our state of weakness, bear. But it is not on account of its beauty we would pitch upon any passage, and say that therefore it was given by verbal injection; for even when the Spirit gave the very words, He adapted them to the writer's own natural taste. Jacob, though a plain man dwelling in tents, had yet a very picturesque style of speaking. When asked his age by Pharaoh, he gave an answer such as not one in a thousand could have returned, "The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.' The characteristic of the passages given by verbal injection, is their being above the knowledge and powers of the writer, and all the prophetic passages were such. We also include all commands, especially those prefaced with "Thus saith the Lord," among the passages given by verbal injection. The prophets themselves did not understand the prophetic injected words. Daniel says "I heard, but I understood not," Dan. xii. 8. And Peter informs us that the prophets anxiously meditated upon the

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intimations they had received,-"Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow," 1 Peter i. 11.

The prophecies of Balaam are another beautiful case of verbal injection. Num. xxiii. 7-10, 18-24; xxiv. 5-9, and 17-24. There are many single verses in the Psalms and prophetical books which we believe to have been injected, but we need not enumerate them. It would be difficult to say whether the lovely verses spoken by Zacharias, Luke i. 68-79; the salutation of Elizabeth, Luke i. 42-45; and the song of Mary, Luke i. 46-55, were injected, or were the natural gushing of the heart under the temporary exalting influence of the Holy Ghost. In none of them is there knowledge of which the speaker was previously ignorant, and so the Spirit may have only quickened the natural powers of the mind into unusual strength and beauty.

The two books in the Bible which received most assistance from the Holy Ghost, are Genesis and Revelation, the first and the last. As all the events recorded in Genesis had occurred before the time of Moses, and as that book abounds with the very language of the different speakers, we believe that Moses received all the information it contains during the forty days he was with God in the mount. Probably the God that spake to the Jewish leader as familiarly as a man does to his friend, dictated every word before Moses wrote it down, and yet adapted the language to the natural style of the amanuensis; so that the description we have is precisely what Moses would have given had he beheld all the scenes. The book of Revelation again, is a series of injections and of images supernaturally brought before the mind. In penning his gospel, John got more help from the Holy Ghost than any other writer of the New Testament. It was written when memory and all other mental faculties had faded; when the infirmities of advanced age allowed him to do no more than rise in the assemblies of the primitive Christians, utter these touching words, "My little children, love one another,' then smile on them, and sit down. It was needful, in these circumstances, the Holy Spirit should both quicken the mind, and recall to recollection the very words the Saviour had employed. And so it happened that out of weakness, out of tottering old age, came forth strength and immortal beauty; the manna of heaven, the life of the soul, the consolation of the world till the archangel sound.

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2nd. Quotational, Suggestive Injection.-"But (said Jesus) the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance," John xiv. 26. Teach you, by bringing to your remembrance. Probably of all the writers in the New Testament, Paul received most of this kind of assistance

from the Holy Ghost. He was the writer whose mind was most abundantly stored with knowledge, whose mental powers were the greatest, and who had most of that strengthening and renewing influence we call grace. Having been in this manner qualified to write, he could compose as well as another who depended more upon verbal injection. The injection of a passage or phrase of Scripture already written suggested the right train of thought to be pursued; and upon this hint the apostle's own mighty powers were called into action, and the thoughts and words we now possess then flowed on. We do not detract from the honour of God in saying, the Spirit prepared Paul in one way for his work, and a different writer in another way. He is a mysterious God, and worketh according to the pleasure of His will. One fine instance of quotational suggestive injection we find in the experience of the German Reformer, Luther. During his visit to Rome, he one day was passing the steps called the Stair of Pilate. The Pope had promised a special indulgence to any one who would ascend these steps on his naked knees. Drawn by a superstitious veneration which he could not as yet tear from his heart, and fervently desiring the indulgence, the Saxon monk kneels, and begins to crawl. Pope, monster of hell! do you call this a meritorious work; do you make saints by changing men to fools; do you white-wash the soul by drawing blood forth from the tortured limbs? Down, damnable impostor. Let swift ruin smite thy hell-erected throne. When Luther has partly made the ascent, Heaven arrests his madness. The Holy Spirit thunders in his soul-"The just shall live by faith," Rom. i. 17. He trembles. Still the words rise and re-rise-" The just shall live by faith." He springs to his feet a man-a man humbled before God-but a man no more to be a fool at the call of bloody Rome. That quotational suggestive injection prepared him for thundering throughout the world the saving truth"Man shall have everlasting life by faith in Christ alone." The Spirit still uses, and will always use quotational injection. Many a sinner is awakened by a verse fastened in his soul; many a believer is soothed by the written word of mercy being breathed upon his suffering heart by the compassionate Holy Ghost.

3rd. Analogical Suggestive Injection.-Since the words which the Holy Ghost thus injected are not in the Bible; since they only, by analogy, suggested to the writer the truth, of which he at the moment was ignorant; it is impossible to give an instance of this kind of help obtained from the Holy Spirit. Under next head we shall have actual cases of analogical representation, and we have not the slightest doubt but that there were many cases of analogical injection. The writer was about to put down what the Holy Spirit did not approve, and was at once stopped, and put right by the few injected words. We can easily conceive of a case of this class. Suppose the Spirit wished to communicate

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