often joined before, now stir a voiceless | child." He did worship; and though all music in his soul. Turning to his child, unheard by mortal ears, the strain minhe says, "I wish I had strength, Sarah." gled with another melody, and was heard "To do what, father?" "To worship, upon another shore!

From the British Quarterly Review.

THE

DOCTRINE

O F

INSPIRATION.*

To attempt to analyze Mr. Macnaught's | bility of resistance. But it will be suffi volume, and to deal with it in detail, cient evidence-sufficient to make subwould be to bestow more space upon it mission to it imperative. What is true in than it deserves. But the question of this respect of the prophet, must be true inspiration is a great and a somewhat of the people to whom the propheturgent question; and though our own message is addressed. In their view, the views on this topic have been often ex- message must take with it its proper pressed, the time has come, we think, in evidence--evidence of which they themwhich it behoves us to present those selves will be the judges. Both in the views to our readers in a form as care- times of the Old Testament and the New, fully digested, and in terms as explicit, as the people were commanded to try the may be. spirits, and were expected to distinguish between divinely-commissioned men and mere pretenders to such authority. To believe without evidence would be idiocy, and to call that evidence which the reason can not understand and appreciate would be absurd.

We shall, in the first place, glance at some points relating to the evidence in favor of the inspiration of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures considered as a

FACT.

1. Every one will feel that human reason must have its province as a judge in regard to any supposed revelation. To suppose that any such communication has been made from God to man, must be to feel assured that it has been attested by its appropriate evidence. The prophet through whom such intelligence comes must have evidence warranting him to believe that he has become the subject of such illumination. The evidence must be supernatural, but the natural reason of the man will be competent to judge of its value. It will, of course, be only moral evidence. Though supernatural, it will not be such as to preclude the possi

* The Doctrine of Inspiration; being an Inquiry concerning the Infallibility, Inspiration, and Authority of Holy Writ. By the Rev. JOHN MACNAUGHT, M. A. Oxon, Incumbent of St. Chrysostom's Church, Everton, Liverpool.

But the evidence of a supposed revelation will not be all external. There will be evidence, either for or against its claims, arising from its contents. On these, also, the reason of man has, in a measure, to form its judgment. common division of Christian evidence into external and internal suggests this conclusion. It is supposed, in this distinction, that we are capable of distinguishing, in some degree, between what is fit, and what is not fit, to have come from the Supreme Being to our race. It supposes that we not only know that God is, but that we know something as to what he is. If we can know nothing of God, we can know nothing of the proper or the improper in what is said to have come from Him. Apart from revelation, nature is our only source of Divine knowledge.

What God is, we can only know from what He has done. But His doings are found in mind and matter, in the moral as well as in the physical universe. It is only by looking to what is ethical in man, that we can judge at all concerning the true or the right in the government of God. Our conception of Deity must be evolved from within. It can only be corroborated from without. If the light which conscience has kindled is not to be followed, en we have no light. In that case, to reject a revelation could be no sin, inasmuch as all capacity for judging of its claims would be wanting.

But it is when passing from the mind of man, as constituted by the Creator, to its condition as depraved by circumstances and habit; and when passing from this disordered world within, to the no less disordered world without, that difficulty thickens upon us. Still, the highest conception we can form of the moral excellence possible to the nature of a man, is that which we should account as proper to him; and the highest conception we can form of the perfection possible to God, is that which we should account as proper to Him. Descartes was right-our capacity to conceive of Infinite Perfection must have come from Infinite Perfection. The capacity implies its object. The deity of human conception is not greater than the Deity who made us capable of that conception. It is such faith in God that must determine our faith in regard to any communication said to have come from Him. Whatever may seem to be at variance, either within us or about us, with such perfection in the Divine Being, must be a variance only in seeming.

much beside in the same quarter, consists, at best, of half-truths. It is a fact, that religion in man is thus necessary and indestructible; but it is also a fact, that the moral nature of man is something much above instinct, and that for this reason his religion should be regarded as something much above that mere brute tendency. It is true, the sentiment of religion is universal, while its objects change; but it is also true, that this change may be from false objects to true ones, and that the natural effect of this change may be to call forth pure sentiment in the place of the impure. The truth that the moral element in the objects of worship does much to determine the moral feeling of the worshipers, is elementary enoughbut even this truth such men have to learn. So long as religious and moral truth shall be thus accounted as of little or no practical value, nothing can be more natural than that the ideao f the intervention of the Deity to uphold and diffuse such truth by inspiring prophets and apostles for that purpose, should be utterly repudiated.

We must add, that the spirit in which the scientific studies of our age are often prosecuted is scarcely less one-sided than are the dreams of the sentimentalist. The one may seem to be all phantom, and the other all exactitude, but they have their tendencies in common. The spirit which underlies both is a self-sufficing spirit. It is a spirit which is content to be alone, and to be the regulator of its own ways. There is much to be done; but its fancy is, that whatever needs to be done it can do. Mistakes of all sorts may be inevitable, but mistakes natural to 2. But there is much in the spirit of our our condition are mistakes about which times to which the idea of inspired com- there need be no apprehension. So, too munications from God to man is very un- often, does the student of science choose acceptable. Religion, we are told by his course. He is concerned with the some, is a sentiment, not a creed. It has laws of things, and with nothing more. its seat in the emotions, not in the in- He is busied among sequences, and astellect. Its object may vary, but it is cends no higher. If he knows any thing everywhere a response of the affections, and of a Deity, it is of a Deity who is afar everywhere in substance the same. It is off. The universe is a great machine, its an instinct of our nature-we may say Maker has set it a going, and now he has that of it, and that is about all we can only to look at it and to see it go. His say. To ask whence it comes is about as interference with it, in any way, would be futile as to ask whence comes our power accounted an intrusion. It would be an of seeing or hearing. Man is religious, attempt to amend his own work, which as he is social, because he is a man, and must imply imperfection. It would be to the because in either case can be traced disturb the order which he has himself esno higher. tablished. It would be, in brief, to undo But this trenchant kind of talk, like what he has done. Miracle, accordingly,

cients in these things, you have rarely risen to their level. May not the remote time when so much of this higher kind of truth was perfected have been the time when religious truth was perfected? May not the time when all that was most cognate with religious culture had thus ripened have been the time when religion itself was to be matured and fixed for ages to come? We are better chemists and better astronomers than the ancients; but, left to ourselves, should we have been better moralists or better religionists? There is at least room to doubt on that point. What is wanting to us, is not that Christianity should be other than it is, but that we should ourselves give proof that we know how to separate between those corruptions which the infirmities of past ages have incrusted about it, and those hoarded treasures wherewith it waits to enrich the ages to come. Our modern world has much work to do before it will come into possession of the latent wealth that will be some day found in this ancient mine of thought.

In brief, what an enigma is man, on the supposition of his holding no intelligible relation to a hereafter! In his nature we see the mysterious-the enthroned power of conscience. This power requires that he should choose right as right, and avoid wrong as wrong; that he should be a creature of moral acts and moral intentions. He is a being, moreover, whose nature transcends the limits of the visible and the finite, and craves a place with the holy and the everlasting. If his only end be that he should live to the agreeable in this life, whence this waste of powers, and such a mockery of pure and earnest aspirations? Can we venture to charge the Just, the Wise, the Good, with having made His creature capable of a destiny so high, and doomed him to a destiny so low?

There is nothing valid, then, in the ground taken by those who deem it unreasonable to suppose that an inspired and infallible message has been addressed by the Creator to our race. Every thing rather combines to show that, improbable as it may be that any such communication should be made in our time, it is highly probable that something of the kind has taken place in past ages. Man's great need of such assistance is a strong presumptive evidence that it has not been altogether withholden.

3. It may not be unuseful to ask, at this point of our inquiry, what those features are which may be expected to characterize teaching coming to us by inspiration? It will of course be teaching that will assume that we need to be taught to be taught what we do not know, and to be taught what we know in part more fully, and with more authority. It will suppose man to be capable of distinguishing to a large extent between truth and error, and between right and wrong, and to the individual responsibility of men as thus based its appeals will be made.

It is to be expected, moreover, in a communication of this nature, that much as it may reveal, it will leave much unrevealed, and that its tendency will be rather to abate difficulty than wholly to remove it. In every department of knowledge, what men know is little compared with what they do not know. We get our truth by glimpses, not by full manifestations. Our knowledge of the past is as nothing in comparison with our ignorrance. Even of the present we know only the immediate. The nearest wave is visible-the ocean of billows which stretch off beyond it we see not. The multitude are observant of phenomena, the few only pass on to their causes, and to the secret place where the Cause affecting all causes doth work! Even the few can travel but a little way in that direction. The material and moral laws of the universe are, as we believe, everywhere the same: but what know we concerning the modes in which those laws are carried out in the numberless systems about us, or even in the planets of our own system? Those innumberable worlds have their relations to all space and to all time, but what know we, what can we know, of those relations? If the Being who has given existence to this universe, and who still rules it, should speak to men, we may be sure, from what we know of His ways, that the knowledge conveyed will be limited, relating mainly to our immediate moral necessities, and that he will often be silent where we could have wished Him to have been communicative. That the sacred writers have known where to stop, and that they have delivered their message so dogmatically and authoritatively, are among the most striking evidences of their inspiration.

We should also bear in mind, that a necessary effect of the coming of new

Nor should it surprise us greatly if, in the communications so made, the Deity should seem to concern himself with the small affairs of men no less than with the great. The small in creation is from Him as well as the great. He has bestowed as much elaboration on the one as on the other; and in His providence He cares for the one quite as truly as for the other. In ways innumerable He tells us that great and small is for us, not for Him. What He is as known to us through nature and providence, we should expect Him to be as known to us through inspiration.

light on the path of man, must be not-Will not the human be present there only to diminish the nearer darkness, but also? Of course, the liability to err will to make the more distant darkness visible. be extruded. The purpose of inspiration With us, the known everywhere loses it- supposes that much. But to almost any self in the unknown. Our light always extent compatible with that principle, the dies away into its opposite. All things human may be expected to be conspicuous, have their root in mystery, so that the even in inspired utterances. more things we know, the more of mystery we know. This test to humility, and to the spirit of obedience, is inseparable from the condition of all creatures. In the experience of the highest of such existences, to believe in God is to bow in the presence of an infinite mystery. So it must be for ever. What we need is to be saved from sin, not to be no more beset with mystery. To this end, our great want is faith in God-faith in Him, grounded on what we know of Him, and warranting us to have faith in Him, when, from His thoughts being higher than our thoughts, His ways differ from our ways. But the idea of an inspired mind is inseparable from our idea of inspiration. It consists in the Divine speaking through the human. Man is here a worker together with God. In its substance the message may be purely divine; in its manner of conveyance it must be in great part human. It is thus, in fact, in all departments of moral agency. In physical changes the elements themselves are wholly inert-the tendencies, or powers, which seem to belong to them, come wholly from the Creator. But in the mind of man there is a separate motive power, and a separate will, and while the rule of the world is from God, the men of it are free. Men may become blind to evidence-if they will; may harden themselves against goodness-if they will. Man may sin even in Paradise. Angels may sin even in heaven. On these grounds, it is reasonable to conclude, that if in inspiration there be much of God, there will also be in it much of man. The very elevation to which the mind is raised by inspiration, should be expected to bring out the human with special vividness and force. Whatever may be peculiar to the man, may be expected to give its impress to the message. What men are as men, everywhere gives the complexion to the moral systems which they devise, and to the Christianity which they profess. But if by reason of the moral freedom of man, the human does blend itself with the Divine in this manner up to the line where Divine influence becomes inspiration, the question naturally occurs

4. Such considerations as the preceding must be kept in view by any intelligent man who would come to the question of inspiration in a condition of mind proper to such an investigation. It will be well, also, for such a man to mark the strong presumptive evidence in favor of the inspiration of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures before directing his attention. to the positive evidence relating to it. After all the objections that have been taken to the claims of the Hebrew Scriptures, there is much in their contents that can not be explained if those claims are not admitted. The views concerning the Divine Being, and the nature of religion, in those writings, are such as could never have originated with the Hebrew, and such as could not have been borrowed from any other people. What the Egyptians and the early Asiatic nations were in these respects, the Hebrews would have been had they been left to themselves. In general culture, they were, for the most part, below their neighbors. This phenomenon has been felt to be perplexing. Great pains have been taken in modern times, as in ancient times, to detract from its weight, by traducing the character of the Hebrew nation. Their writings, it is alleged, are not so ancient as we affirmtheir theology was not so pure-their religion was outward and unspiritual, and their morals below the ordinary level, even in those times. Our answer is, that the Book of Job, the Psalms, and the pages of Isaiah, are a sufficient refutation