thesis of inspiration may be loaded with insurmountable difficulties, and bring the truth itself into discredit with thoughtful men; while a view drawn from Scripture itself by inductive evidence, may find strength and confirmation in all those various features of style, of form, and mutual relation, which enrich and diversify the Word of God.

II. (1.) In the sketch of such a view, which is all that can be attempted within our present limits, we observe, first of all, that there are clear cases of express dictation. Thus, in the New Testament, the epistles to the seven Churches (in the Apocalypse) were dictated by our Lord Himself; while one of the sweetest messages in the whole Bible-a note of comfort to thousands of Christian mourners-is afterwards dictated in the same way by the Spirit of God (Rev. xiv. 13).* Of the same kind is the later message (Rev. xix. 9).† In the Old Testament we have some of the clearest examples of this dictation, in the first chapters of Hosea, Amos, Haggai, and Zechariah, and it abounds in the prophecies of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah.

(2.) Among the numerous examples of direct revelation, where the substance of the message is supernaturally given, but without any trace of dictation in the words by which it is conveyed-we have the history of the temptation; the visions to St. Peter and Cornelius; the appearance of our Lord to Saul on the way to Damascus, with the message then addressed to him; the later vision on his return to Jerusa

lem; the prophecy of Agabus; the words of comfort to the apostle at Corinth, at Jerusalem, and again before the shipwreck; the statements concerning the rapture of the saints, in the epistles to Corinth and Thessalonica; the preaching to the spirits in prison affirmed by St. Peter; and the contest of Michael with Satan, respecting the body of Moses, asserted by St. Jude. The last book of the Canon derives its name from this characteristic feature. The substance of the whole is supernaturally revealed in a series of visions, while dictation is confined almost entirely to the seven epistles to the Churches. In the Old Testament the instances of direct revelation are more frequent. As examples, we may

"I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."

"Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God."

specify the account of the creation; the pattern of the tabernacle; the future lot of Israel and of the tribes; the message to Samuel on the fortunes of the house of Eli; the visions in the sixth of Isaiah, in the first chapters of Zechariah, and the beginning and close of Ezekiel's prophecies, and all the visions of the beloved Daniel.

(3.) Of illumination, or truth conveyed by the faculties of memory and reason, purified and elevated by the Holy Spirit, we have examples throughout the epistles, and in the historical books of both Testaments. Thus, we are expressly told that St. Paul wrote his epistles "according to the wisdom given to him;" and wisdom is an inherent quality, more deeply inwrought into the texture of the mind than simple knowledge, being the ripest and highest result of a man's spiritual faculties in their active exercise. Thus, too, the Holy Spirit was promised to the apostles, to bring to their remembrance the teaching of their Lorda promise which has a most important bearing on the composition of the first and fourth Gospels. In the writings of St. Luke we are expressly taught that a diligent search into all the facts was a principal part of the evangelist's preparation for his office; and it is thus implied that illumination, or the enlightened use of memory, judgment, and reason, employed on copious materials derived from the testimony of others, and not direct revelation, was the principal means by which the necessary knowledge was imparted to him.

(4.) With regard to the form of expression, or the manner in which the substance of the message is clothed in words, and thus given to the world, the direct evidence is less ample The two most explicit passages refer it, generally, to a spiritual impulsion within the mind. of the prophet. Thus, St. Paul tells us that "all Scripture is God-inspired" (sóжVEVOTOS): and St. Peter, that "the holy men of God spake as borne along [ipóμevo] by the Holy Ghost." And yet, as there was evidently-on some occasions at least-some latitude given to the prophet as to the time and mode * of his utterance, it may be quite possible, and equally consistent with the Divine authority of the message, that the same principle (of some lati

*For an example of this limited control, compare the words of St. Paul, "The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets," with those of Jeremiah: "Then I said, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name. But His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay."

tude, at least occasional) should apply to the choice of the terms by which it was conveyed.

(5.) Of external restraint or supervision, we could hardly expect to find many clear traces, since its usual result would be merely to hinder the insertion of what was either erroneous or unsuitable. The Old Testament furnishes an example, however, in the case of Daniel, who, when desiring to append a fuller interpretation to his prophecy, receives for answer, "Go thy way for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end." And in the New Testament, when, like "the man greatly be loved," the "beloved disciple" is on the point of recording the voice of the seven thunders, which has just sounded in his ears, he receives the injunction, "Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not." So that restraint from without, as well as a strong spiritual impulse within, has concurred in the actual formation of the sacred canon, though the exact share of each may be impossible to be determined.

III. What we have written, then, amounts to this:

While the sacred writers were allowed to pursue their own method, and use their own powers, the Holy Spirit directed and controlled all that was written, so as to make the writings infallible.

We pronounce this the true theory of the inspiration of Holy Scripture, on the ground that it alone is consistent with all the facts of the case. The objections to it may be summed up in these three:

First, That it is not supported by Scripture itself; that the book contains nothing which can warrant this imputation of infallibility and consequent authority to the writers.

We reply: The objection is untrue in point of fact. It consists of a false allegation. The Bible abounds with passages which flatly contradict it.* The Scriptures are the depository of truth; and ignorance of Scripture is the source of error-for "ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures:" and a declaration more authoritative than this it is impossible for man to receive.

Second, It is alleged that Scripture and science are at variance, and thence it is inferred that Scripture is wrong. We answer that with

This has often been shown, but nowhere more elaborately and conclusively than in the excellent lecture of the Rev. T. R. Birks ("Modern Rationalism and Inspiration." London: Seeleys), to which the writer is largely indebted.

true science the Scripture is not at variance,* and that the dogmatic assertions to the con trary are assertions without proof.

Third, It is alleged that in Scripture we have conflicting and contradictory accounts of the same transaction. They cannot both be true; and if one of them is false, why may not both be so ?

Answer: It is the allegation, and that alone, that is false. When the accounts are really contradictory (a rare occurrence), they have never been shown to refer to the same trans. action; and when they do refer to the same transaction, they are never contradictory.t

Holy Scripture, then, "is given by inspira tion of God;" and that, too, "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." "ALL Scripture"-for it is incapable of disintegration; "The Scrip. ture cannot be broken;"§ and "Not one jot or tittle shall pass away till all be fulfilled."

IV. With two parting remarks on the Scriptural aspects and practical uses of this important truth, we conclude.

(1.) And first, we may observe the wisdom of God in the variety of methods by which He has revealed His will to men. We have the very words of Divine dictation; we have simple records of supernatural revelation; we have evidences of supervision and restraint from without, and a perpetual assertion of spiritual guidance and impulsion from within. We have histories and prophecies, psalms, proverbs, and doctrinal reasonings, dramatic, pastoral, and lyric poetry. We have penmen, like Moses and Daniel, trained in the courts of princes, and others, like Amos, taken from the herds of Galilee. We have fishermen from the lake of Gennesareth, a physician from Antioch, the Queen of the East, and a disciple from the schools of Tarsus brought up at the feet of Gamaliel and versed in all the learning of the Gentiles.

Thus, as was emphatically noted by the great Apostle in the first sentence of his letter to the Hebrew Christians, it was "in sundry parts" (oλvμepws), and in "divers ways" (oλurpóws), that God had spoken in time past to their fathers by the prophets. The Source was one, but the streams were many, and in their diversity might be seen what he calls elsewhere "the many-varied wisdom of

God." What a contrast, for instance, between the book of Genesis, the simplest and plainest form of history, and the Apocalypse, where symbols meet us in almost every verse, and we seem to lose ourselves among the deep things of God, as if we had entered on enchanted and fairy land-between the Proverbs of Solomon, like so many separate pearls on the same string, and the Epistle to the Ephesians, where the thoughts of the Apostle are like a deep and rapid river, hurrying, wave on wave, to lose itself in the vast ocean of the Divine love-between the sorrowful reflections of the Preacher, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" and the calm heavenly joy of the beloved John, who, gazing from the Pisgah of contemplation on the glories of eternity, sums up his message in that twofold declaration, "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all;” “God is love, and he that loveth dwelleth in God, and God in Him." We need not, then, be surprised that the most opposite objections have been brought against different portions, according to the various tastes of eclectic and immature believers; that some books are suspected, because they abound in the supernatural; and the book of Esther, because it does not so much as mention the name of God;

the histories, because they are too simple, and needed no inspiration to write them; the prophetic visions, because they are too obscure, and cannot be understood. In all such objections, and the diversity of Scripture from which they spring, we have a remarkable analogy between God's works of creation, so rich, various, and infinite, and that Word which He has magnified above all His works.

(2.) Most important of all, however, is the practical aspect of this doctrine of inspiration. The Bible has been given to mankind, not to gratify a vain curiosity, to nurse idle speculations, to settle all doubts, or solve all mysteries:

it has been given "that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." It is to fit it for the accomplishment of this great end-to make it "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness"-that the Spirit of God so fills and moulds every part of it as to make it literally true that "All Scripture is God-inspired."

This practical efficacy of the Bible, as a whole, has been eloquently expounded by Coleridge-while St. Paul sets aside the exceptions for which he pleads-and extends the same character to " every Scripture":

66

'The hungry have found food, the thirsty a living spring, the feeble a staff, and the victorious warrior songs of welcome and strains of music; and as long as each man asks on account of his wants, and asks what he wants, no man will find aught amiss or deficient in the vast and many-chambered storehouse. . . . . For more than a thousand years the Bible has gone hand in hand with civilization, science, law, with the moral and intellectual cultivation of the species, always supporting, and often leading, the way. Its very presence as a believed book has rendered the nation emphatically a chosen race; and this, too, in exact proportion as it is known and studied. Good and holy men, the best and wisest of mankind, the kingly spirits of history, enthroned in the heart of mighty nations, have borne witness to its influences, have declared it to be beyond compare the most perfect instrument, the only adequate organ of humanity; the organ and instrument of all the gifts and powers by which the individual is privileged to rise above himself, and to find his true self in the everlasting I AM, the one ever-living Word, of whom all the elect, from the archangel before the throne to the poor wrestler with the Spirit until the breaking of day, are but the fainter and still fainter echoes."

B

ELIEVING a woman's life to be a noble thing, and that it must in many cases be utterly independent of man's opinion, yet it does not by any means follow that her line of life ought to be the same as man's. We sometimes hear our powers spoken of, as if there were masculine

talents sleeping in us, which only wanted development, in order to fit us to fill every situation which men occupy. Those who speak thus would be the last to profess agreement with Pope's scornful sentiment, that woman is only the softer man; yet they are, in reality, saying the same thing. If such were the case, it

would be only rational to endeavour to rise out of this uncomfortable, imperfect state of halfmanhood. But we cannot subscribe to any such sentiment as that. Physically, it is untrue. Inferior or superior strength is not the chief distinction between the frames of man and woman. Why should we suppose, in the face of strong evidence to the contrary, that it is the chief mental and moral distinction ?

There is a strange connection between the body and the mind, close enough in many cases, though in others capriciously broken and indistinct, to justify us in concluding that in a perfect human nature the form would be a complete counterpart to the soul. We have no such perfect specimen; the links on both sides are all disjoined and distorted; and the wonder only is, that so much truth is discoverable from such imperfect means. I am not going to enter on any one of the ologies, which my readers may be dreading. I shall only just ask the most unbelieving, whether they do not often, unintentionally, use the same general terms to describe a man's character as in

describing his form. A very striking example

of this occurs in the life of Dr. Chalmers. Mr. Joseph Gurney, speaking of a forencon spent in the company of Chalmers and Wilberforce, says,

66

Our morning passed delightfully; Chalmers was indeed comparatively silent, as he often is when many persons are collected, and the stream of conversation flowed between ourselves and the ever-lively Wilberforce. I have seldom observed a more amusing and pleasing contrast between two great men, than between Wilberforce and Chalmers. Chalmers is stout and erect, with a broad countenance; Wilberforce minute and singularly twisted. Chalmers, both in body and mind, moves with a deliberate step; Wilberforce, infirm as he is in his advanced years, flies about with astonishing activity, and while, with nimble finger, he seizes on everything that adorns or diversifies his path, his mind flits from object to object with unceasing versatility. I often think that particular men bear about with them an analogy to particular animals. Chalmers is like a good-tempered lion; Wilberforce is like a bee. Chalmers can say a pleasant thing now and then, and laugh when he has said it, and he has a strong touch of humour in his countenance, but in general he is grave, his thoughts grow to a great size before they are uttered; Wilberforce sparkles with life and wit, and the characteristic of his mind is rapid productiveness."

Even had we not seen this fact illustrated, we might à priori have supposed it to be the case, that as man makes his machines to suit the power that wields them, as God makes His plants to agree with the soil in which they spring, so He would mould the body to give free play to the faculties that are meant to work through it. And if we find woman's physical frame peculiarly suited to one set of duties for which that of man is unsuited, shall we not infer that her mind is specially fitted for the same set of duties? Were it not so, she would be the most unhappy and most inconsistent of creatures. The very mother-bird, sitting day after day on her quiet nest, has a stock of patience and love which belong not to her mate, and without which her task would be one dreary period of captivity. Shall it be said that a human mother has the suffering and the self-denial a thousand-fold, with no patience and no love specially provided to strengthen her? And if, in this peculiar case, we see the physical and moral qualities so strongly corresponding, we may expect to trace the resemblance also in other cases not quite so obvious. We find her nervous system more finely strung, her frame more elastic, her fingers more quick and ready for delicate offices; may we not then conclude that her mind is equally agile, and lightly turned from one task to another, especially when we see how greatly most women have need of all this in their daily life? For whatever the claimants of equal rights may say, as long as there are children in the world, as long as those children have need of aunties and nurses as well as mothers, and as long as we cannot bring ourselves to imagine men taking our place in any of these capacities, so long our work must be various and perpetually changing. Were it not for the greater versatility of our natures, we could not find ourselves at home amid the constant interruptions of such work.

On the contrary, we find our bodies less strong to bear a heavy load or resist a long strain than those of men. Is it any slander to suppose that our intellects are also less hard, and give way more easily under severe pressure? And I think that in this lies the true explanation of the peculiar constitution of our reason. ing powers, which has been for so long a time a broad mark for all the random shots which men choose to fire at us. They will admit that we are very sharp in detecting the fallacies of others; and that we frequently jump at right conclusions by accident or intuitive perception,

they are pleased to affirm! Now, most right conclusions are reached, not simply by perceiving facts, but by comparing the relations existing between one fact and another. And this is reasoning.

We have, then, reasoning powers, as accurate as those of men, and commonly more alert. They move lightly, as our fingers do, but, like our limbs, they cannot bear too long a strain. We must sit down and rest, and unfortunately an argument cannot always be resumed at the point where we stopped, as easily as an interrupted walk can be pursued when energy comes back again. In a certain degree, this is a weakness resulting from our education and circumstances, and as such we are bound to make vigorous efforts to overcome it. We may go on improving indefinitely. There is no fixed limit; yet, however fully developed, our reason will never be fashioned precisely after the model of man's. It could not attain the persevering strength of his, and yet keep the easy rapidity in little things which is far more necessary to us. It is not a disgrace to us that no female Newton has ever arisen, nor is likely to arise; but it is a disgrace when, in matters that we reason about quickly and without effort, we reason wrongly for want of a little painstaking with ourselves.

The face and form of a beautiful woman affect our perceptions of beauty in a very different way from those of a finely moulded

man.

Yet we cannot decide which have power to satisfy our ideal in the highest degree. Both are complete in themselves. Must we then charge our mental constitution with defect, because it obstinately refuses to be cast after the model of man?

But the analogy which we have been pursuing between body and mind deserts us at a certain point. It will not carry us into every corner of our nature. There is no physical quality which resembles modesty, or love of retirement, or quick, easily touched sympathy; yet, after having proved that we possess some qualities in a peculiar degree, we may safely accept the evidence of experience, and class these among them.

most ambitious woman in the world would wish to disown the modesty, the patience, the helpful sympathy which we may charitably hope she possesses in a peculiar degree, in common with all her sex. She will, at least, be sure to assert that women far excel men in quickness and readiness.

Now, if she uphold the woman's superiority in such things as these, she cannot deny to man the possession of another set of qualities, in which he, in his turn, is superior, without claiming, not equality, but a most undue and unreasonable share of all the virtues for onehalf of the human family.

There are few who do not feel the distinction between the male and female characters,

race.

and yet no one has ever yet given, or can give, a complete description of wherein the difference consists. To attempt even a very general account of it, is specially difficult, because there is no neuter gender in the human Each one must be either man or woman, and consequently none can reach a standpoint from which to review both sexes with equal fairness. Another great source of difficulty lies in the circumstance that the two characters touch and intersect one another at every point. You cannot separate them by any fixed boundary line, so as to say, this property belongs exclusively to the male, that to the female. If we could say any such thing, the ground of mutual help and sympathy, which is mutual understanding, would be sapped under our feet.

We cannot forbid a man to weep when some great sorrow shakes his whole soul: no more dare we repress the indomitable courage which rises in a woman's heart when some difficulty stops up her way, or some danger threatens one she loves. The tears and the courage are both native to woman, and both native to man: the utmost that we can say of them is, that with her the tears rise more easily; with him the boldness is in the ascendant.

Man and woman were made one flesh, yet that flesh is differently moulded. They are of one nature, only it is differently proportioned. But to tell how it is so, to detect all the subtle varieties which make the two

"Not like in like, but like in difference,"

is a task which defies the nicest discrimination. A child can feel that the melody of a flute is not like that of a violincello, but the most experienced musician cannot explain accurately how it is that their tones affect us differently.