Chapter VII

WE have seen that our belief in God tends to a belief in. the existence of a written revelation.! And having reached this point it would be idle pedantry to discuss the rival claims of the Bible and of other books. Moreover, I am writing for Christians, and with the Christian the only question open is — How, and to what extent, is the Bible inspired? Now it is admitted that the Lord Jesus Christ has taught us to reverence the Hebrew Scriptures as inspired in the strictest sense.2 And we have seen that if part at least of the New Testament be not inspired in that same sense, there is no rational basis for believing any of the transcendental truths of Christianity. What concerns us, then, is the method of the inspiration. And the first question which arises may be popularly stated thus, Whether did God

* P, 64, ante. 2 P, 67, ante.

Cu. VII.] THEORIES OF INSPIRATION 79

inspire the Scriptures, or the men who wrote

them? Now I am not going to enter on this

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well-worn controversy. Were I to restate the question and ask, Are the Scriptures inspired writings? or Are they the writings of inspired men? it would need a lengthy chapter to explain the point at issue. I take note of the fact, first, that the Bible itself advances no theory of inspiration; and secondly, that none was ever formulated until modern times. And further, I would urge that between these rival theories there is no such antithesis as the controversy supposes.

True it is that ‘Saul among the prophets” became a proverb; and a dumb ass was once inspired to rebuke a prophet. But not even the Higher Critics have suggested that either Balaam’s Ass or the Son of Kish made any contribution to the written revelation. If by inspired men be meant men filled with the Spirit, and specially guided by the Spirit, then we may assert with confidence that the Biblical writers were inspired men.

Which of course will call out the taunt, Was David one of your “inspired men”? That sneer shall be answered in the words of a rugged, honest-hearted man of the world : —

a f, of P22 One Ya 2 “David, the Hebrew king, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And therefore the unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this your man according to God’s heart? The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, what are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten? ‘It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.’ Of all acts, is not, for a man, vefentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin ; — that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility and fact; is dead: it is ‘pure’ as dead dry sand is pure. David’s life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man’s moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew.”!

* Thomas Carlyle, Heroes, Sect. II.

Cu. VII.] DAVID AND URIAH 81

A passing word about the “blackest crimes.” I am no apologist of evil. But the matter of Uriah’s wife I leave to each man to settle with his own conscience, asking him only not to forget the facts. Most men cater for the sin which brings them down; but the temptation which led to David’s fall was not of his seeking. By accident it was that Bathsheba crossed his path. Nor did he even know that she was married. And when he had brought the woman into peril, he tried to save her by recalling her husband to Jerusalem. But in this he was foiled by Uriah’s keenness as a soldier. He was bent on “returning to the front”; and drunk or sober he could not be turned from his purpose. The wretched king was thus confronted by the fact that the death of the man he had wronged was the only possible way to save the woman he had tempted. The horrible doom of the unfaithful wife awaited her. And in desperation he framed the guilty plot. It is a terrible instance of what men have so often proved, that one sin always leads to another, and immorality often leads to crime. The only unique element in David’s case was the depth and. permanency of his repentance. Here is the Divine summary of

7 his life story: ‘ Save only in the matter of Uriah the Firttite, David did right in the eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside from anything that He commanded him ad the days of his life.”* No wonder that he was ‘‘a man after God’s heart!” 2

Yes, it was men like David that God used to write the Bible. And the fifty-first» Psalm betokens more fitness for the part than the smug pharisaism and self-confidence of all the critics of Christendom.

There is no doubt that the writers were inspired men. And those whose lives are unfolded to us were severely trained in the school of God. They knew the meaning of the crucible and the refiner’s fire. As the apostles proved in later times, they were made a spectacle to angels and to men. Visions of unutterable glory, like those vouchsafed to Isaiah and Ezekiel, alternated with sufferings that tore their very heart-strings. And here it may be said in passing, that no one can even znxderstand the Scriptures who is entirely a stranger to experiences like those of the men who wrote them. We can beat back attacks by exposing ignorance

* 1 Kings xv. 5. * See Professor Margoliouth’s striking passage on this subject in his Defence of the Biblical Revelation, Pp. 209, 210.

Cu. VII.] VERBAL INSPIRATION 83

and folly and error, and turning the weapons of assailants against themselves. But “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”! And the tenor of a spiritual life is the path of discipleship, and discipleship means being a partaker of the sufferings of Him who was called “the Man of Sorrows,” as well as a sharer of the joy that is unspeakable and of the peace that passes understanding.

But some will say, “All this is unreservedly conceded: the men who wrote the Scriptures were inspired, and inspired to write them; and therefore their writings are inspired. But though the thoughts were divinely given them, the words in which they expressed them were their own. Our difficulty springs from the dogma of verbal inspiration.”

Now first, let us face the facts; and they are facts some of which a certain phase of dull “orthodoxy” blindly ignores. A critical examination of the text will satisfy us that, for example, the prophecies of Isaiah were written in Isaiah’s language, and those of Jeremiah in Jeremiah’s

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language, and so on. The inference drawn from this is that, even assuming that God suggested the ideas, each writer must have been left free to: express them in his own words; and therefore that inspiration is no guarantee of accuracy Whether this be so or not, must be decided on other grounds. To base it on the ground stated involves the fallacy of supposing that God has a language of His own, and therefore that human words cannot have a Divine authority.

A more egregious fallacy there could not be. The connection between language and thought is. one of the most interesting problems of metaphysics. But words are merely sounds; and in one sense the relation between a word and the idea it represents to a trained mind is as arbitrary as that which a note on the piano bears to the. musical sound produced by striking it. A trained mind, I say, because if the idea be not there, the sound will not call it up.

But, it will be objected, words have a history, and therefore they are not mere arbitrarily chosen sounds. True, but this only adds force to my argument. Some new idea arises in the mind, or some new object is presented to it. The existing vocabulary contains no word to represent it, and a new one is framed to supply the want.

‘Cu. VII.]| WORDS ARE BUT COUNTERS 85

To those, therefore, who-frame the word, it seems to carry its own meaning; but this is due solely to its connection with the mental processes which led to its birth. To others it is but a sound. For example, the fraudulent way in which “‘escheats” were formerly seized by the Crown led to the creation of the word “cheat”; but there is not one person in ten thousand who now thinks of its origin, and to such it is a mere sound which they have learned to connect with a particular idea.

If a man has not the conception which we associate with the word “eternal,” the word, even though it were emblazoned across the sky, could not evoke it. And shouting olam or azonzos into his ear would be mere noise to him. ‘ Words are the counters of wise men, the money of fools.” They represent ideas, but they have no intrinsic value. And, as I have said, their relation to the ideas they represent is arbitrary. Write Zazz on a piece of paper, and show it on Dover pier: you will be referred to a doctor. Cross the Channel and exhibit it at Calais: you will be directed to the refreshment-room.!

* Some one may object that the sound would be different. Very well. At Calais, call out the French word for lady, and

they may imagine you have lost a travelling companion: at Dover they would certainly think you most profane.

The argument is that as Isaiah, for example, wrote in his own language, his writings cannot be called ‘‘the Word of God.” Will the critics tell us in what language other than his own the prophet could have written? If a man makes a communication to another, he conveys it either in his own language, or in that of the recipient. But as God has no language of His own, He speaks to men in theirs. Would the Bible be more Divine if it were written in some celestial volapuk, with a superadded miracle, unparalleled in the whole range of recorded miracles, to make men understand it? A nice sort of Bible that would be!

Of course, God could have made all the prophets use the same words and idioms as the earliest of them. But what would have been gained by this? Some people would persuade us that the English race now holds the place once held by Israel. If this were so, and God were to give usa special revelation to-day, it would not be in ancient Hebrew, but in modern English. Even supposing, for example, that Yahweh is the correct orthography of the great covenant name, we may be quite sure that JeEHovan is the name by which God would call Himself in addressing us — that name which is enshrined in the religious

Cu. VII.] THE NAME JEHOVAH 37

thought and worship of all the English-speaking races of the world. For Yahwek would be mere jargon save to the Hebraist; and it is very doubtful whether the Hebraist’s knowledge of the etymology of the term would not mislead him as to its significance.

Take these words, for instance: ‘‘ The Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; He also is become my salvation.”! Now to the believer, as such, the question of the spelling or the etymology of the name is of no more importance than that of the type in which it is printed. The only practical question is whether he has the conception which the name is intended to call up. The name was in use from primeval times: it was the great covenant name of God. But it was not till He identified Himself with an earthly people that men could know what it really meant to have a Jehovah God.?

* Isa. Xi. 2.

2 This is the meaning of Exod. vi. 3 (see Appendix, Note I). I venture to suggest that the use of Yahweh, or Yahveh, savours of pedantry. It is justified on two’ grounds; tst, traditional authority (for the contempt which the critics feel for “traditional beliefs” does not apply if the tradition be Rabbinical); and andly, that it carries its own meaning. To which plea I answer that its etymological meaning is not its meaning as used in Scripture. It is not an English word, and its use is therefore

precisely the same kind of pedantry as, ¢.g., using Firenze instead

of Florence. The vowels of our magnificent word Jehovah are accounted

Some men, no doubt, would be better satisfied with the Bible if all the prophets had written in exactly the same dialect and style; and better still if they had written in Pauline Greek or modern English, That would have been a miracle indeed, and really worth notice! Of course, God might have inspired the Scriptures in this way. Yes, and the Lord might have fed the multitudes without using up the disciples’ little store of loaves and fishes. But this is not His way. Divine power summoned Lazarus from the grave, but it was left to human hands to loose him from the grave-clothes. Divine power called Jairus’s daughter back to life, but her parents were commanded to give her food.! It appears to be a principle with God never to put forth Divine power save in so far as human means are inadequate or unavailable. And any one who grasps this principle holds a clew to the

for thus: The old Hebrew MSS. had no vowels, but when the name occurred, the Jews suppressed it from feelings of reverence, and read Adonai instead; and the vowels of this name were inserted under the line to remind the reader of the keri, or word to be read. As a matter of fact, the name was uttered daily in the blessing of the priests (Dict. Christ. Ant., vol. i., p. 198); and the spelling of the many names with which it is incorporated (such as F¥ehoida, Fehoshaphat, &c.) would indicate that Fehovah may be correct. Yahveh isa mere guess which may be right or may be wrong. * Luke viii. 55.

Cu. VII.] THE FACT OF INSPIRATION 89

solution of many a difficulty in this matter of inspiration. It is a principle which mars the. dramatic effect of most of the miracles, the miracle of inspiration not excepted; but dramatic effect is not studied in Divine miracles at all.

In this aspect of it, then, the verda, inspiration difficulty is unworthy of notice. The only question of any practical importance is whether, as the New Testament so plainly teaches, God spoke “through” (or “in”) the writers of the Old. But just as the morbidly inquisitive brain of a certain sort of child insists on seeing inside a watch, when sober common sense asks only whether it can be trusted to tell the time; so while ‘“‘the common sense of faith” is content to know that God inspired the Bible, there are minds that demand to know all the mysteries of the problem of inspiration. And some people think they have solved these mysteries, just as there are men who fancy they have mastered the infinite wonders of Nature. But wiser heads distinguish between the facts, whether of revelation or of nature, and the theories which men offer in explanation of them. We do well to accept with intelligent and unfaltering confidence the fact of inspiration so clearly taught by our Divine Lord; but we do well also to view with great distrust all human theories relating to it.

“But,” some one will here interrupt, “anybody can see the difference between a man’s recording matters within his own knowledge, and matters or truths of which he could know nothing except by direct revelation.” Yes, anybody can see it. And after he has seen it, what then? Does the interrupter mean, for example, that the prophet is to be believed implicitly when he declares that ‘the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads”!; but that he is not to be trusted when in the next sentence he records that “In the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defenced cities of Judah and took them”?2 And if he does not mean this, what sense is there in the interruption? Any one but a Higher Critic would test a chain at the weakest link, and not at the strongest. He would say, “If you can satisfy me that God made the prophet write those words about future blessing for Zion, I shall have no doubt about the Sennacherib invasion.” The

t Isa, Xxxv. IO.? Ibid. xxxvi. 1.

Cu. VII] OBJECTIONS ANSWERED 91

problem has difficulties for those who want to frame theories of inspiration; but the Christian who merely wants to be assured that the truth of Scripture is Divinely guaranteed, brushes the difficulties aside.

“But,” the objector says again, ‘the manner in which the Old Testament is quoted in the New — loosely quoted sometimes from the notoriously loose Septuagint translation — explodes all your theories of verbal inspiration.” Well, so much the worse for the theories. But will the objector tell us in what way this affects the fact of inspiration. The Bible was not written for the wise of this world; still less for fools. To understand it aright we need both spiritual intelligence and common sense. The latter quality will help us here. Any one who possesses it can see that in the historical narrative of Isaiah xxxvi. — xxxix., for example, the sense is everything, and the choice of words is a matter of comparative indifference. Whereas in chapters xxxv. and xl. absolute verbal accuracy may possibly be essential. And so we find sometimes a quotation so loosely given that care is needed to trace it to its source, while in other cases emphasis is laid upon the very tense of a verb or the number of a noun. It is not that in the one case the statement is less true than in the other, but that less importance, or possibly none, attaches to the particular words used to express it.

Instances of this are familiar to every Bible student. Here, for example, is one of them. Of those who denied the resurrection, the Lord demanded, “Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”! Now here the whole force of the argument depends on the tense of the verb. To say that the language of Exodus means merely that God was the God of the patriarchs, would be quite in keeping with the loose way the Bible is treated by the critics. But the word is not I was the God of Abraham, but “I am the God of Abraham”; and therefore Abraham is still an existing person, a person in being. And as a clew to the use of Scripture, it is noteworthy that these words were spoken “by God,” and spoken to those whom the Lord was then addressing.

Take another instance still more striking. “Js. it not written in your law, ‘I-said, Ye

* Matt. xxii. 31, 32.

Cu. VII.] THE TESTIMONY OF CHRIST 93

are gods’? If He called them gods to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), say ye, &c.” Now here Psa. lxxxii. is ascribed to God, and not to the Psalmist; it is declared to be Scripture which cannot be broken; and it is appealed to as making “an end of controversy.” And as in the other case, the force of the argument depends on the absolute accuracy of the words.!

We see, then, how and why a Divine revelation must be made in the language of those to whom it comes. And upon their fitness and capacity to receive it depend any limits and failure of the revelation. For words are merely like paper securities for money. Intrinsically valueless, their worth depends on the gold they represent. If the gold be wanting, the paper is only paper and nothing more. If the thoughts the words represent are absent, the words are only empty sounds. Therefore it is that inspired men are needed to be the channels of a revelation, and spiritual men alone can understand it aright.

“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid: for the Lord Jehovah is my

* John x. 34, 35. The critics meet all this by representing the Lord as an ignorant person and the Evangelists as being untrustworthy. See Chapters VI. and XIX.

strength and my song; He also is become my salvation.” We are dependent on Hebrew scholars to give us these English words: we are absolutely dependent on the Spirit of God to enable us to understand them. True exegesis consists in ‘interpreting spiritual things to spiritual men.”! And therefore Hebrew scholars as such cannot help’us here; for they can only explain natural things to natural men.

* x Cor. ili. 13, R.V. marg.