Bible,1 this subject was treated in the same calm and liberal fashion. The form it took was an answer to the question, 'In what sense and within what limits is the Bible the Word of God?' The writers were of different denominations. A Churchman and a Wesleyan maintained broadly that the Bible is literally the Word of God. A Unitarian argued that the Bible never calls itself the Word of God; God's direct communications or authentic statements are not to be confounded with the words of the historian, the scribe or the poet. The Bible may be called the Word of God in the sense that a rose, a thistle, or a sunbeam is, for there is nothing outside of Deity. A Swedenborgian said that the Word of God was not a written book, but the presence among men of the Spirit of Jehovah. A Roman Catholic said that the Scriptures are the Word of God and infallibly true, so also are the decrees of a General Council. There is, however, this difference that the decrees of councils are the work of men not inspired but preserved from error by the Spirit of God, while the Scriptures are the work of inspired men. Inspiration does not extend to the words, but only to the subject matter. A Jew showed that among Jews there was the same variety of views as to inspiration as among Christians. Some said the Bible was the Word of God, others ascribed the same character to the oral law, and some said that the Bible only contained the Word of God. An Independent preacher 2 asked that we put aside for a time the idea of the New Testament as one volume. This was the work of those who formed the canon and is merely a human work. It will then be seen that the authors are as distinct as those of Greece and Rome. If we could read them in their original condition the absurdity of asserting for them all the same uniform quality of inspiration would be apparent. This was an afterthought of the Church which had its consummation in Protestantism, arising from the necessity of an infallible Book as against the Romish idea of an infallible Church. We believe the gospels from moral and intellectual reasons in the same way that we believe the veracity of any ordinary historian. If this cannot be done no solid belief can be attained by setting up a doctrine of

verbal inspiration. In the books which contain the dogmatic teaching of prophets and apostles we have a 'Thus saith the Lord,' but the sacred writers approach us each with a separate work and with different claims to inspiration. The Bible is the work of fifty different writers, of different ages with different degrees of illumination and many other things differWe should regulate our views of inspiration by the testimony which each gives to the degree in which he was moved by the Holy Ghost.

Canon Farrar summed up the argument and concluded the symposium. The orthodox writers who called the Bible the Word of God did not contribute one element to any categorical answer to the question. All the writers agreed that the books had a unique claim to our study and reverence, and it is really a secondary matter whether or not they are I called the Word of God. The Bible is a record of God's revelation, but it is superstition of the worst kind to think of every word and letter as proceeding supernaturally from God. In the Prayer Book inspiration is always something present, a natural and continuous influence of the Spirit.

The stream of liberal tendency everywhere overflowing its banks has reached regions where it was least expected. The most remarkable of these manifestations is in a party who might be reckoned in the lineal succession from the Tractarian writers. The Librarian of the Pusey Library in Oxford edited a volume of Essays,1 the avowed object of which was to put 'the Catholic faith into the right relation to modern intellectual and moral problems." The way of doing this was to have the faith 'disencumbered, re-interpreted and explained.' The Editor's own essay would have produced, fifty years ago, such a panic as followed Hampden's Bampton Lectures' or Milman's History of the Jews.' Even now it did not escape without some commotion, but even commotion has learned to be calm. The writer held by the theory of an inspired Church, while he set aside the infallibility of the Scriptures. This might recall the words of a famous essay in which the Bible is called the written voice of the congregation. The same spirit which inspired the Bible inspired also the Church, the world of nature, and of human life. A hard and fast line

cannot be drawn between what is within and what is without the canon. For instance, the Epistle to the Hebrews is in, while the corresponding Epistle of Clement is out. Every race has had its inspiration and its prophets. Here we are reminded of an essay on the Education of the Human Race. The conclusions of recent critics of the Old Testament are treated favourably, including, for example, stages in the growth of the law of worship, especially the three marked by the Book of the Covenant, the Book of Deuteronomy and the Priestley code. Moses may have established a certain germ of ceremonial enactments in connection with the ark and its sacred tent, and with the 'ten words.' This may have developed into the law of Moses, which represents a later and less historical development of Israel's history than that given in Samuel and Kings. This is admitted to be an unconscious idealising of history, yet compatible with the idea of inspiration which would exclude anything like pious fraud or conscious deception. The very word idealising reminds us of the ideology in another essay in the once famous volume. Inspiration is not a miraculous communication of facts. The records in Genesis may be myths and yet inspired. Myth was the earliest form in which the mind of man apprehended truth. The Bible histories in the judgment of many of the Fathers were mere allegories.

The worst of the heresies of this essay are yet to come. Jesus brought no light on Old Testament history. He simply endorsed the views current among the Jews, though indeed He set forth that He was the goal to which it pointed. He did not settle any question of Old Testament literature. Jonah's resurrection was a type of His own, but He did not determine whether it was history or allegory. He spoke of eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage before the flood, but there is nothing of this in the original narrative. He argued with the Pharisees on the assumption that David was the author of Psalm CX, but this does not decide its authorship. He did not reveal His Godhead by any anticipation of natural knowledge. The incarnation implied limitation. It was a self-emptying of God to reveal Himself under con

He limited Himself to the scientific and historical knowledge of His time.

If light thus shone into one of the darkest corners of the Church of England, it is not surprising that we find it also in the Free Church of Scotland. William Robertson Smith was dismissed from the professorship of Hebrew because he had adopted the speculations of Wellhausen concerning the late origin of the Levitical law, and all the changed views of the structure of the Old Testament complied in these speculations.' The Bible is inspired, but it has a human side as well as a divine. The writers were not mere passive channels through whose lips or pens God poured forth an abstract doctrine. On the contrary they had an intelligent share in the divine converse with them. If we are to understand the Divine Word this must be taken into account, just as in seeking to understand the conversation of a father we must consider what the child saw, knew or felt.2 Bible revelation is a jewel set in human history. We must not suppose that the first recipients of revelation had the same knowledge of divine things which the later had. The Old Testament believers looked for a Messiah, but they had no such conceptions of the Messiah as now exist in the Christian Church.3

Some other Free Church writers have barely escaped the reproach of heresy. Professor Bruce, clearly following Maurice, distinguishes between Revelation and Scripture; the former is the unveiling of God; the latter contains this unveiling. Scripture is inspired because it is the literature of a theocratic people. It does not profess to make known the secrets of the universe, but simply moral and religious truths. Natural phenomena are spoken of not in scientific but in popular language. The old Kabbalistic idea made the Bible a repository of scientific learning which it is not. Revelation is not a book but God manifesting Himself in history in a supernatural manner, and yet this Revelation has the stamp of naturalness. It is in accordance with the laws

It may be safely said that the Free Church of Scotland would not dismiss another Robertson Smith if they had another. 2 See Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. 19.

of God's general Revelation of Himself in nature and providence. It is not something proved by miracles and prophecy which are themselves Revelation, but God Himself is revealed, not as the unknown but as the known.1

Perhaps the most prominent feature of present day theology is the effort to modify or form theological doctrines by the present position of science. Once the object was simply to meet objections, now it is to regard revelation as natural, so that it may not be in antagonism with any truth of nature. This is intimated in many places in Lux Mundi. The present generalisation is according to present facts, but new generalisations will be required by the discovery of new facts. Again the Church may feel it can assimilate all new material and give place to all new knowledge.3 Darwinism is credited with the honour of having brought God back to His Creation. The Deistic idea had thrust Him far off. He was thought of only as transcendent, but now evolution 'in the guise of a foe did the work of a friend.' God is everywhere present in nature. Everything in nature is His work. There are no second causes. God is immanent in the Universe, and whatever happens is by His immediate agency. An argument for immortality is drawn from the law of continuity, and the unity of the visible and invisible in the co-relation of forces. Miracles are not violations of physical laws. Continuity teaches that God's laws do not require revision, and that matter is not vile. Co-relation speaks of something behind and beyond matter and so an invisible order which will remain when the present system of things has passed away.

These suppositions intimate even when it is not expressed that the supernatural falls under the laws of the natural. To some this will appear as the denial of all miracles. Creation, for instance, was once held to be due to a divine fiat, a 'Let it be,' or an interference with the ordinary processes of natural law, but now it is regarded as evolved, and the world still in evolution, an unfinished world.

1 See End of Revelation.

3 Pref. Ibid. ix.

5 The Unseen Universe,

The testimony of geology is 2p. 38. Canon Scott Holland. Ibid. 99. Aubrey Moore. Pref. viii, 1875, Tait and Balfour. 6 Ibid.

7 Professor Henry Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual