A few definitions of the word "inspiration," from strictly orthodox sources, will show the present position of Protestant theology on this subject. Professor Park, in his lectures at Andover says:-"Inspiration is such an influence upon the minds of the sacred writers as caused them to teach in the best possible manner whatever they intended to teach, and especially to communicate religious truth without any error." Moses Stuart wrote:- "Were I to choose a simile for illustration, I should say that the inspired man ascends an intellectual and moral eminence so high that his prospect widens almost without bounds, and what is altogether hidden from ordinary men is, more or less distinctly, within his view." Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, says: "The Church has never held what has been stigmatized as the mechanical theory of inspiration. The sacred writers were not machines. Their self-consciousness was not suspended; nor were their intellectual powers superseded. * * * The sacred writers impressed their peculiarities on their several productions as plainly as though they were the subjects of no extraordinary influence. As the believer seems to himself to act, and in fact does act out of his own nature; so the inspired penmen wrote out of the fulness of their own thoughts and feelings, and employed the language and modes of expression which to them were the most natural and appropriate. Nevertheless, and none the less, they spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and their words were his words."

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The following is from "Lee on Inspiration"-"By inspiration I understand that actuating energy of the Holy Spirit, guided by which the human agents chosen by God have officially proclaimed His will," a definition which seems carefully framed to include all the preaching and teaching of inspired men, as well as their writing, and yet to leave the nature and extent of their infallibility an open question. From the theologians of Germany, if we were to consult them, we should get definitions far more liberal than these, but our present purpose permits the citation only of those who are well known and of acknowledged orthodoxy. Almost all Protestants who have reflected on the subject would unite in the formula that "the writers of the Bible were inspired in such a

sense as makes their teachings, when properly and fairly interpreted, the only and sufficient rule of faith and practice in religion and morals, and in no other sense."

Indeed, it would not be too bold to declare that this has been the real doctrine of the Christian Church in all ages. For the church has given comparatively little attention to this subject, and has made very few formal declarations or definitions of the doctrine of inspiration; and although we may find some writers who have interpreted the Bible with an arbitrary and fantastic literalness, and some who have thought it necessary to maintain the miraculous origin of the words and letters of the sacred text, yet these peculiarities have been due to the vagaries of individuals and to the supposed necessities of controversy. The early writers referred to above, who indulged in the wildest of allegorical interpretations, nevertheless held, for the most part, a doctrine of inspiration almost identical with that of the present day; while those who formulated an extreme theory, were unable to adhere to it in practice, but used the holy book very much as other men have used it,-forcing their own ideas into it, and squeezing their own systems out of it, as though it were a code of human law, or a mere "rule of faith and practice."

The question inevitably arises at this point: Is the practice of the Church abreast with its theory? Since nearly all who have formed a careful opinion on the subject are found in agreement,-do intelligent Christians treat the Bible as they define it, or do they use it like an infallible text-book of all branches of knowledge, every syllable of which is written by the hand of God himself? On this point also the testimony of history is instructive. For the opinions and practices of men have a strange tendency to perpetuate themselves through centuries, and in history we may often see ourselves as in a mirror. When modern astronomy began to show that the blue sky is not a solid expanse "spread out like a garment" and studded with stars as with jewels; that the sun is not a luminary appended to the earth, but a vast and powerful body, swinging the earth and many others planets in the emptiness of space; that the moon is not the co-equal of the sun, created at the same time, but an infinitesimal reflection, a youngest grand

child of the central glory; orthodoxy was profoundly alarmed. The authority of the Bible and the Fathers was thought to be at stake. The new scientific theory of the heavens was deemed a dangerous heresy. The aged Galileo, among others, was called to a severe and solemn account for affirming, in answer to the arguments which his opponents drew from the Bible, "that the Bible accommodates its language to common notions, and does not aim to teach scientific truth." The strongest arguments at the command of the Inquisition were resorted to for extirpating the noxious and dangerously unscriptural error, that the earth moves around the sun!

It is very easy for us to see, at this distance of time, how the orthodoxy of that day, by declaring war upon science, was endangering the very foundations of Christian truth. For when any fact in the physical world is once proved by the methods of physical science, every healthy mind, if adequately informed, at once yields assent. From that moment all opposition is not only fruitless, but seems fairly absurd. To oppose the authority of the Fathers or of the Holy Scriptures to a well-established fact of science, seems to the scientific mind utterly unreasonable, almost inconceivable. Hence the authority which is thus over-strained snaps asunder, loses all strength, on all subjects, and the mind falls into utter unbelief. But the men of that day feared that the whole structure of their religion would topple down, if they suffered any rude hand to touch what they deemed its key-stone, the literal infallibility of the Scriptures and of the Fathers.

Let us come a little nearer home. When the science of geology first began to prove that the world was not made in six literal days,-began everywhere to exhume fossils which everybody saw must have been parts of living animals thousands of years before the Bible chronology, the religious world was seized with a profound alarm. The Protestant world was moved against geology, much as the Catholic world had been against astronomy. The arguments employed were not so forcible as the rack and the stake of the Inquisition, but were equally unscientific. It was thought by many that every geologist was by necessity an atheist, and geology the deadly foe of religion. The figure of Antichrist was changed from

that of a woman sitting on a scarlet-colored beast, to a welldressed man with a hammer, breaking open boulders to see what they were made of, and studying the rocks. We can now clearly see that the greatest danger to religion was from these injudicious defenders, who overloaded the Bible far beyond what it was intended to bear, and made the authority of revelation answerable for things far outside of its purpose. We are all ready now to admit, we even claim, that the Bible has nothing to do with science, either physical or metaphysical.

In theory, the verbal inspiration and the scientific infallibility of the Bible are now almost universally abandoned. No one argues now that the sun goes round the earth, or that the world was made in six days, because the Bible seems to say so. Yet, so inveterate are the habits of the human mind, we often find ourselves acting upon theories which we have long since rejected, admitting unconsciously what we consciously deny. For instance, there are many who hold the modern theory of inspiration, and yet spend much time and thought in trying to reconcile the first chapter of Genesis with modern geology, and cannot give up the idea that its author was inspired with a knowledge of that science. They pin their faith upon some ingenious explanation of the six days of the Mosaic creation as long periods or as visions; and that in such a way, that if the explanation should be proved scientifically false, their belief in all revelation, in all religion, would be shaken, perhaps destroyed. Such a position of mind as this, has its basis and only logical standing in the doctrine of verbal inspiration. For, though the votaries of science are extremely fallible and often mistaken, yet science itself, properly so called, is infallible; the very meaning of the word is,-accurate, exact, wellascertained knowledge. When any fact has been scientifically established, they who oppose it on grounds of authority are beating the air.

Even those who disbelieve in all inspiration may sometimes be detected in a similar inconsistency of thought concerning the Bible. For instance, Mr. Matthew Arnold, from whom we have quoted the widely received formula, "that the language of the Bible is fluid, passing, and literary, not rigid, fixed, or scientific," and who describes the Bible as "a book of con

duct,"―nevertheless proceeds to extract from it the intensely metaphysical definition of God as "that stream of tendency by which all things fulfill the law of their being." Mr. Arnold even attempts to prove that the writers of the Bible, and Christ himself, thought of God, in his relations with human life, under the thoroughly abstract form of "the Eternal, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness." Thus the abstrusities of pantheism are read between the lines of the very book whose simplicity, artlessness, and outwardness, this entertaining author has so beautifully described. A combination of the verbal inspiration of the Reformers with the fantastic exegesis of the Fathers, could alone logically account for such extraordinary literary results as these!

And perhaps inconsistencies might be found nearer home, between our theories about the Bible and our practical way of using it and speaking of it in public; between the way in which ministers reason about the human element in the Bible, when preaching on inspiration, and the way in which they base great doctrines or whole systems upon a single verse; between their theories concerning the nature of prophecy, and the way in which they read a detailed history of the world be tween the lines of Daniel and the Apocalypse; between the doctrine of inspiration as taught in our theological seminaries, and as implanted in the minds of the young in our Sunday schools. There can be no doubt that our theological professors and educated ministers are far in advance of the laity of our churches in clear and consistent opinions upon the great question," What kind of a book is the Bible?" Have not the clergy then an important duty in this matter, namely, to teach exactly what they believe, and conform their public utterances, both formal and casual, to their theories?

If the modern theory of inspiration is dangerous to be taught to the people, or to be practically used in the pulpit, the prayer-meeting and the Sunday school, then it must be false, and we ought to abandon it and return to the theory of verbal inspiration, and literal infallibility. But if every pastor finds, in his practical work, that this verbal theory is dangerous, leading to perfectionism, millenarianism. antinomianism, and other errors, he will not be likely to expect much relief from