translator does not transliterate the letters and syllables, transmute sounds, give word for word, transfer foreign words and idioms; but he ascertains the sense, the idea, and then gives expression to the idea, the sense, in the most appropriate way. It is admitted that close, literal translations are bad, misleading, worse than paraphrases; Aquila has even been a warning in this regard.1 The method of Ezra is far preferable, to give the sense to the people without the pedantry and subtilties of scholarship. As another Puritan says:

"Now, what shall a poor unlearned Christian do, if he hath nothing to rest his poore soul on? The originals he understands not; if he did, the first copies are not to be had; he cannot tell whether the Hebrew or Greek copies be the right Hebrew or the right Greek, or that which is said to be the meaning of the Hebrew or Greek, but as men tell us, who are not prophets and may mistake. Besides, the transcribers were men and might err. These considerations let in Atheisme like a flood." "

It is a merciful providence that divine inspiration is not confined to particular words and phrases, and grammatical, logical, or rhetorical constructions; and that the same divine truth may be presented in a variety of synonymous words and phrases and sentences. It is the method of divine revelation to give the same laws, doctrines, narratives, expressions of emotion, and prophecies in great variety of forms. None of these are adequate to convey the divine idea, but in their combination it is presented from all those varied points of view that rich, natural languages afford, in order that the mind and heart may grasp the idea itself, appropriate and reproduce it in other forms of language, and in the motives, principles, and habits of every-day life. The external word, written or spoken, is purely instrumental, conveying divine truth to the soul of man, as the eye and the ear are instrumental senses for its appropriation by the soul. It does not work ex opere operato by any mechanical or magical power.

As the Lutherans tend to lay the stress upon the sacraments, in their external operation, and the Anglicans upon the external organization of the Church, so the Reformed have ever been

1 See p. 191.

2 Rich. Capel, Remains, London, 1658.

in peril of laying the stress on the letter, the external operation of the Word of God. The Protestant principle struggles against this confounding of the means of grace with the divine grace itself, this identification of the instrument and the divine agent, in order therefore to their proper discrimination. This is the problem left unsolved by the Reformation, on which the separate churches of Protestantism have been working, and which demands a solution from the Church of the nineteenth century. Here the most radical question is that of the Divine Word and its relation to the work of the Holy Spirit. This solved, all the other questions will be solved. Herein the churches of the Reformation may be harmonized. Its solution can come only from a further working out of the critical principles of the Reformation; not by logical deduction from the creeds and scholastic dogmas alone, but by a careful induction of the facts from the Scriptures themselves. The fundamental distinction. between the external and the internal word is well stated by John Wallis, one of the clerks of the Westminster Assembly:

"The Scriptures in themselves are a Lanthorn rather than a Light; they shine, indeed, but it is alieno lumine; it is not their own, but a borrowed light. It is God which is the true light that shines to us in the Scriptures; and they have no other light in them, but as they represent to us somewhat of God, and as they exhibit and hold forth God to us, who is the true light that 'enlighteneth every man that comes into the world.' It is a light, then, as it represents God unto us, who is the original light. It transmits some rays; some beams of the divine nature; but they are refracted, or else we should not be able to behold them. They lose much of their original lustre by passing through this medium, and appear not so glorious to us as they are in themselves. They represent God's simplicity obliquated and refracted, by reason of many inadequate conceptions; God condescending to the weakness of our capacity to speak to us in our own dialect."1

The Scriptures are lamps, vessels of the most holy character, but no less vessels of the divine grace than were the apostles and prophets who spake and wrote them. As vessels they have come into material contact with the forces of this world, with human weakness, ignorance, prejudice, and folly; their forms

1 Sermons, London, 1791, pp. 127-128.

have been modified in the course of the generations, but their divine contents remain unchanged. We shall never be able to attain the sacred writings in the original letters and sounds and forms in which they gladdened the eyes of those who first saw them, and rejoiced the hearts of those who first heard them. If the external words of these originals were inspired, it does not profit us. We are cut off from them, forever. Interposed between us and them is the tradition of centuries and even millenniums. Doubtless by God's "singular care and providence they have been kept pure in all ages, and are therefore authentical." Doubtless throughout the whole work of the authors "the Holy Spirit was present, causing His energies to flow into the spontaneous exercises of the writers' faculties, elevating and directing where need be, and everywhere securing the errorless expression in language of the thought designed by God"; 2 but we cannot in the symbolical or historical use of the term call this providential care of His Word, or superintendence over its external production, inspiration. Such providential care and superintendence is not different in kind with regard to the Word of God, the Church of God, or the forms of the sacraments. Inspiration lies back of the external letter: it is that which gives the Word its efficacy; it is the divine afflatus which enlightened and guided holy men to apprehend the truth of God in its appropriate forms, assured them of their possession of it, and called and enabled them to make it known to the Church by voice and pen. This made their persons holy, their utterances holy, their writings holy, but only as the instruments, not as the holy thing itself. The divine Logos - that is the sum and substance of the Scripture, the holy of holies, whence the Spirit of God goes forth through the holy place of the circumstantial sense of type and symbol, and literary representation, into the outer court of the words and sentences, through them to enter by the ear and eye into the hearts of men with enlightening, sanctifying, and saving power:

1 Westminster Confession of Faith, I. viii.

2 A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield, art. “ Inspiration," Presbyterian Review, II. 231.

"Inspiration is more than superintending guidance, for that expresses but an external relation between the Spirit and writer. But Inspiration is an influence within the soul, divine and supernatural, working through all the writers in one organizing method, making of the many one, by all one book, the Book of God, the Book for man, divine and human in all its parts; having the same relation to all other books that the Person of the Son of God has to all other men, and that the Church of the living God has to all other institutions.”1 True criticism never disregards the letter, but reverently and tenderly handles every letter and syllable of the Word of God, striving to purify it from all dross, brushing away the dust of tradition and guarding it from the ignorant and profane. But it is with no superstitious dread of magical virtue or virus in it, or anxious fears lest it should dissolve in the hands, but with an assured trust that it is the tabernacle of God, through whose external courts there is an approach to the Lord Jesus Himself. 66 Bibliolatry clings to the letter; spirituality in the letter finds the spirit and does not disown the letter which guided to the spirit." 2

Such criticism has accomplished great things for the New Testament text. It will do even more for the Old Testament so soon as the old superstitious reverence for Massoretic tradition has been laid aside by Christian scholars. Critical theories first come into conflict with the church doctrine of inspiration when they deny the inspiration of the truth and facts of Scripture; when they superadd another authoritative and predominant test, whether it be the reason, the conscience, or the religious feeling. But this is to go beyond the sphere of evangelical criticism and enter into the fields of rationalistic, ethical, or mystical criticism. Evangelical criticism conflicts only with false views of inspiration. It disturbs the inspiration of versions, the inspiration of the Massoretic text, the inspiration of particular letters, syllables, and external words and expressions; and truly all those who rest upon these external things ought to be disturbed and driven from the letter to the spirit, from clinging to the outer walls, to seek Him who is the sum and substance, the Master and the King of the Scriptures.

1 H. B. Smith, Sermon on Inspiration, 1855, p. 27.

2 In l.c., p. 36.

V. THE HIGHER CRITICISM AND CREDIBILITY

This is the most delicate and difficult question of the Higher Criticism with reference to all literature, but especially with reference to Biblical Literature. That there are errors in the present text of our Bible, and inconsistencies, it is vain to deny. There are chronological, geographical, and other circumstantial inconsistencies and errors which we should not hesitate to acknowledge. Such circumstantial and incidental errors as arise from the inadvertence or lack of information of an author, are not an impeachment of his credibility. If we distinguish between revelation and inspiration, and yet insist upon inerrancy with reference to the latter as well as the former, we virtually do away with the distinction. No mere man can escape altogether human errors unless divine revelation set even the most familiar things in a new and infallible light, and also so control him that he cannot make a slip of the eye or the hand, a fault in the imagination, in conception, in reasoning, in rhetorical figure, or in grammatical expression; and indeed so raise him above his fellows that he shall see through all their errors in science and philosophy as well as theology, and anticipate the discoveries in all branches of knowledge by thousands of years. Errors of inadvertence in minor details, where the author's position and character are well known, do not destroy his credibility as a witness in any literature or any court of justice. It is not to be presumed that divine inspiration lifted the author above his age, any more than was necessary to convey the divine revelation and the divine instruction with infallible certainty to mankind. We have to take into account the extent of the author's human knowledge, his point of view and type of thought, his methods of reasoning and illustration. The question of credibility is to be distinguished from that of infallibility. The form is credible, the substance alone is infallible.

The Higher Criticism studies all the literary phenomena of Holy Scripture. It has thus far done an inestimable service in the removal of the traditional theories from the sacred books, so that they may be studied in their real structure and character.