Whatever

proceeded only from the same heavenly source. impressions of the law of nature may still remain upon the mind and conscience of man, his conceptions of duty are so indistinct, limited, and feeble, that plenary inspiration was particularly necessary to furnish him with a luminous, spiritual, and perfect rule of practice. That God himself wrote the words of the Decalogue on two tables of stone, we are expressly assured. Is it not, then, natural and warrantable to conclude that all the other moral portions of Scripture, contributing, as they universally do, to ramify, explain, and enforce the precepts of that law, in which they all meet as their sum and centre, were verbally suggested by his Spirit? The instructive minuteness of several ancient prohibitions and requirements; as those that relate to muzzling the mouth of an ox when he treadeth out the corn, and seething a kid in his mother's milk; the terseness and extensive utility of Solomon's Proverbs; the graphic delineations presented by the Prophets and Apostles of the salutary tendencies of virtue, and the fearful consequences of vice; the close fellowship preserved between evangelical doctrine and an exalted unbending morality-these, and other happy peculiarities that distinguish the morals of the Bible, all serve to establish the same conclusion. "We may suppose," says a certain writer, "that some of the precepts delivered in the books called Hagiographa were written without any supernatural assistance." This, however, is a most gratuitous supposition, not only unauthorized by Scripture, but contrary to its explicit averments, Nor is its unsoundness remedied, or its baneful tendency done away, by the concession which that author subjoins "though it is evident that others of them exceed the limits of human wisdom." With almost equal propriety we might take it upon us to "suppose that some of the precepts delivered" in the Decalogue, as, "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," are so simple and obvious that they must have been "written without any supernatural assistance." Though we should allow that "it is evident that some others" of these ten precepts, as the command relating to the Sabbath, "exceed the limits of human wisdom," would this admission render the preceding supposition either warrantable or innocuous ? Could the caution we display, in reference to the inspiration and authority of some of those precepts, obliterate or extenuate the guilt of our temerity, in setting aside others of them that are

equally divine in their origin, and equally imperative in their authority?

The same full inspiration that is apparent in the moral passages of Scripture, "illumines every page" of its DEVOTIONAL parts. Here, indeed, we are often warmed, delighted, and surprised by the sudden flashes of the celestial fire. The book of Psalms, in particular, amid its beautiful epitomes of the Jewish history, and its interesting descriptions of the person, offices, sufferings, and glory of the promised Saviour, abounds with elevated expressions of holy confidence, gratitude, love, and joy, intermixed with the native language of humility and penitence, calculated to induce every reader who possesses the least share of spiritual taste and discernment, to say, "This is the finger of God," "A plenary and unconfined inspiration is here."

The art of Poetry is in Scripture consecrated to the glory of God, and made instrumental in promoting the highest interests of man. A very considerable proportion of the Old Testament, including not only the books strictly devotional, but a great part of the prophetic, possesses all the attractions arising from the harmony of numbers. Now, the productions of the sacred penmen, whether they wear the simple garb of prose, or stand embellished with the charms of poetry, are found to exhibit undeniable traces of the same heavenly original. "Here," says a celebrated writer on this subject," we may contemplate poetry in its very beginning; not so much the offspring of human genius as an emanation from heaven; not gradually increasing by small accessions, but from its birth possessing a certain maturity both of beauty and strength; not administering to trifling passions, and offering its delicious incense at the shrine of vanity, but the Priestess of divine truth-the Internunciate betwixt earth and heaven. For this was the first and peculiar office of poetry, on the one hand, to commend to the Almighty the prayers and thanksgivings of his creatures, and to celebrate his praise; and on the other, to display to mankind the mysteries of the divine will, and the prediction of future events the best and the noblest of all employments."

From this induction, then, it appears that verbal inspiration was necessary to the various species of composition exhibited in Scripture not only to its prophetical, but to all its other

Bishop Lowth's Lectures on Sacred Poetry, translated by Dr O. Gregory, vol. i. pp. 46-48.

parts; in particular, the historical, doctrinal, moral, and devotional.

VI. The emphasis not unfrequently placed in Scripture on short phrases, and even on single terms, employed by the sacred writers, affords a cogent argument in support of Verbal Inspiration.

Á valuable summary of divine truth, published in the year 1828, contains, in a paragraph on plenary inspiration, the following statement:-"We find the Apostles sometimes arguing from the very terms or modes of expression used in the Old Testament: Gal. iii. 12, 13, 16; Heb. i. 6-8. iv. 7. x. 8, 9. xii. 26, 27.” *

The passages here referred to, deserve, we think, to be quoted at length. In the first of them Paul deduces an important inference from the word seed occurring in the singular, not in the plural number:-" Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made: He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ." In the second, the Apostle founds an argument on the use of the term angels, that is messengers, which is applied to the winds as well as to those exalted spirits who surround the throne of God; while to the Son it is said, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever." In the third passage mentioned, the inspired writer establishes the certainty of that spiritual and everlasting rest to which we are called by the Gospel from the word to-day:-" Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To-day, after so long a time; as it is said, To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. For if Jesus (that is Joshua) had given them rest, then would he not afterwards have.spoken of another day." The fourth example produced occurs in a passage where the Apostle, intending to represent the atoning sacrifice of Christ as superseding the Levitical sacrifices, by which it was prefigured, and which in value and efficacy it infinitely surpasses, comments most satisfactorily on that expression, thy will:-" Above, when he said, Sacrifice, and offering, and burnt-offerings, and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; (which are offered by the law;) Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second." In the last passage cited above, the Apostle, to show that the Christian dispensation has superseded the Mosaic, reasons powerfully from that expression, yet once

Testimony of the United Associate Synod, p. 97.

more:- "Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more, I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain."

Some of these instances of the whole force of an argument resting on a single word or phrase, are mentioned also in another work; but the author adds a few more examples. He specifies 1 Cor. xv. 27, 28, and Heb. ii. 8, where the interpretation of the passages in the Old Testament referred to depends on the word all; and he urges, in particular, our Lord's declaration, John x. 35, "The Scripture cannot be broken.” "Here,” says this powerful writer, "the argument is founded on one word, gods, which, without verbal inspiration, might not have been used; and if used improperly, might have led to idolatry. In proof of the folly of their charge of blasphemy, he refers the Jews to where it is written in their law, I said ye are gods.' The reply to this argument was obvious:-The Psalmist, they might answer, uses the word in a sense that is not proper. But Jesus precluded this observation by affirming, that the Scripture cannot be broken; that is, not a word of it can be altered, because it is the Word of Him with whom there is no variableness. Could this be said if the choice of words had been left to men? Here, then, we find our Lord laying down a principle, which for ever sets the question at

rest.'

6

Additional instances of similar argumentation might no doubt be produced. We have ourselves been struck with other two examples that occur in the Saviour's own reasoning with his adversaries. One of them is supplied by his memorable dispute with the Sadducees regarding the resurrection of the dead, or rather a future state of existence, Mat. xxii. 31, 32, “ As touching the resurrection of the dead, 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." The force of this argument depends, at least to a great degree, on the use of the substantive verb in the present tense, I am, not in the perfect, I was. "God made himself known to Moses," says Dr Campbell, "not as he whom the Patriarchs had worshipped, but expressly as he whom they then worshipped; for he

Haldane's Evidence and Authority of Divine Revelation, vol. i. pp. 198, 199.

says not, I was the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, to wit, when the Patriarchs lived upon the earth, but I am their God at present. It is manifestly from this particularity in the expression, which cannot, without straining, be adapted either to the past or to the future, that Jesus concludes they were then living. Nor let it be thought too slight a circumstance for an argument of this importance to rest upon. The argument is in effect founded, as all reasoning from revelation, in the veracity of God; but the import of what God says, as related in Scripture, we must, not in this instance only, but in every instance, infer from the ordinary construction and idioms of language." "I know,” adds that distinguished critic, "it is urged on the other side, that though the verb u is used in the Greek of the Evangelist, and in the Septuagint, there is nothing which answers to it in Hebrew, and consequently the words of Moses might as well have been rendered I was, as I am. But this consequence is not just. The Hebrew has no present of the indicative. This want, in active verbs, is supplied by the participle; in the substantive verb, by the juxtaposition of the terms to which that verb in other languages serves as the copula. The absence of the verb, therefore, is as much evidence in Hebrew that what is affirmed or denied, is meant of the present time, as the form of the tense is in Greek or Latin."*t

The other striking example alluded to, occurs in the conversation of Jesus with the Pharisees respecting the dignity of the promised Messiah. To correct their low apprehensions of his character, he refers them to that single expression my Lord; from which it appears that, though the Messiah was to be the Son of David according to the flesh, David acknowledged him as pre-existing in a higher nature, and as his own Master and superior, Mat. xxii. 43-46: " He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? And no man was able to answer him a word."‡

Every candid reader of these two passages may be expected to concede that our Lord's arguments, founded on single expressions, could not have completely silenced, first the Sadducees and then the Pharisees-these learned and subtle disputants,

Dr Campbell's Note on Mat. xxii. 32. † See note G.

On these verses, also, the reader might consult with advantage the remarks of Dr Campbell, in his Preliminary Dissertations, prefixed to his Translation of the Four Gospels, Diss. vii. part 1, sect. 8.