assertion of being the sole teacher of truth, and much denunciation of all who did not listen submissively to him; but neither in his epistles nor in those of Peter, James, nor Jude, do we find any claim to special knowledge of truth, or guarantee from error by direct spiritual aid. All assertions of inspiration, are, we believe, confined to the epistles of Paul, and may be found in 1 Cor. ii. 10-16. Gal. i. 11, 12. 1 Thess. iv. 8. 1 Tim. ii. 7.

Now, on these passages, we have to remark, first, that "having the Holy Spirit," in the parlance of that day, by no means implied our modern idea of inspiration, or anything approaching to it; for Paul often affirms that it was given to many, nay, to most, of the believers, and in different degrees1. Moreover, it is probable that a man who believed he was inspired by God would have been more dogmatic and less argumentative. He would scarcely have run the risk of weakening his revelation by a presumptuous endeavour to prove it; still less by adducing in its behalf arguments which are often far from being irrefragable.

Secondly. In two or three passages he makes a marked distinction between what he delivers as his own opinion, and what he speaks by authority:-"The Lord says, not I;"— "I, not the Lord;"-"This I give by permission, not commandment," &c., &c. Hence Dr. Arnold infers2, that we are to consider Paul as speaking from inspiration wherever he does not warn us that he "speaks as a man." But unfortunately for this argument, the Apostle expressly declares himself to be "speaking by the word of the Lord," in at least one case where he is manifestly and admittedly in error, viz. in 1 Thess. iv. 15; of which we shall speak further in the following chapter.

Thirdly. The Apostles, all of whom are supposed to be alike inspired, differed among themselves, contradicted, depreciated, and "withstood" one another.

1 1 Cor. xii. 8; and xiv. passim.

2 Christian Course and Character, p. 488-9.

3 Gal. ii. 11-14. 2 Pet. iii. 16. Acts xv. 6-39. Compare Rom. iii., and Gal. ii. and iii., with James ii.

Fourthly. As we showed before in the case of the Old Testament writers, the Apostles' assertion of their own inspiration, even were it ten times more clear and explicit than it is, being their testimony to themselves, could have no weight or validity as evidence.

But, it will be urged, the Gospels record that Christ promised inspiration to his apostles.-In the first place, Paul was not included in this promise. In the next place, we have already seen that the divine origin of these books is a doctrine for which no ground can be shown; and their correctness, as records of Christ's words, is still to be established. When, however, we shall have clearly made out that the words promising inspiration were really uttered by Christ, and meant what we interpret them to mean, we shall have brought ourselves into the singular and embarrassing position of maintaining that Christ promised them that which in result they did not possess; since there can be no degrees of inspiration, in the ordinary and dogmatic sense of the word; and since the Apostles clearly were not altogether inspired, inasmuch as they fell into mistakes', disputed, and disagreed among themselves.

The only one of the New Testament writings which contains a clear affirmation of its own inspiration, is the one which in all ages has been regarded as of the most doubtful authenticity -viz. the Apocalypse. It was rejected by many of the earliest Christian authorities. It is rejected by most of the ablest Biblical critics of to-day. Luther, in the preface to his translation, inserted a protest against the inspiration of the Apocalypse, which protest he solemnly charged every one to prefix, who chose to publish the translation. In this protest, one of his chief grounds for the rejection is, the suspicious fact that this writer alone blazons forth his own inspiration.

IV. The common impression seems to be that the contents of the New Testament are their own credentials-that their

The error of Paul about the approaching end of the world was shared by all the Apostles. James v. 8. 2 Pet. iii. 12. 1 John ii. 18. Jude, verse 18.

superhuman excellence attests their divine origin. This may be perfectly true in substance without affecting the present question; since it is evident that the excellence of particular passages, or even of the great mass of passages, in a book, can prove nothing for the divine origin of the whole-unless it can be shown that all the portions of it are indissolubly connected. This or that portion of its contents may attest by its nature that this or that special portion came from God, but not that the book itself, including everything in it, had a divine source. A truth, or a doctrine, may be divinely revealed, but humanly recorded, or transmitted by tradition; and may be mixed up with other things that are erroneous: else the passages of scriptural truth contained in a modern sermon would prove the whole sermon inspired and infallible.

V. The argument for Inspiration, drawn from the miraculous gifts of the alleged recipients of inspiration—a matter to which we shall refer when treating of miracles—is thus conclusively met by a recent author: " Shall we say that miracles are an evidence of inspiration in the person who performs them? And must we accept as infallible every combination of ideas which may exist in his mind? If we look at this question abstractedly, it is not easy to perceive the necessary connection between superhuman power and superhuman wisdom . And when we look more closely to the fact, did not the minds of the Apostles retain some errors, long after they had been gifted with supernatural power? Did they not believe in demons occupying the bodies of men and swine? Did they not expect Christ to assume a worldly sway? Did not their master strongly rebuke the moral notions and feelings of two of them, who were for calling down fire from Heaven on an offending village? It is often said that where a man's asseveration of his infallibility is combined with the support of miracles, his inspiration is satisfactorily proved; and this statement is made on the assumption that God would never confer supernatural power on one who could be guilty of a falsehood. What then are we to say respecting Judas and

Peter, both of whom had been furnished with the gifts of miracle, and employed them during a mission planned by Christ, and of whom, nevertheless, one became the traitor of the garden, and the other uttered against his Lord three falsehoods in one hour?"1

came from God;" were

So far, then, our inquiry has brought us to this negative conclusion that we can discover no ground for believing that the Scriptures-i.e. either the Hebrew or the Christian Canonical Writings-are inspired, taking that word in its ordinary acceptation-viz. that they dictated or suggested by Him; were supernaturally preserved from error, both as to fact and doctrine; and must therefore be received in all their parts as authoritative and infallible. This conclusion is perfectly compatible with the belief that they contain a human record, and, in substance, a faithful record, of a divine revelation-a human history, and, in the main, a true history, of the dealings of God with man. But they have become to us, by this conclusion, records, not revelations; -histories to be investigated like other histories ;-documents of which the date, the authorship, the genuineness, the accuracy of the text, are to be ascertained by the same principles of investigation as we apply to other documents. In a word, we are to examine them and regard them, not as the Mahometans regard the Koran, but as Niebuhr regarded Livy, and as Arnold regarded Thucydides-documents out of which the good, the true, the sound, is to be educed.

Rationale of Religious Inquiry, p. 30.

CHAPTER II.

MODERN MODIFICATIONS OF THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION.

THE question examined in the last chapter was not “Do the sacred writings contain the words of inspired truth?" but, "Are the writings themselves so inspired as to contain nothing else? Are they supernaturally guaranteed from error?" It is clear that these questions are perfectly distinct. God may send an inspired message to man, but it does not necessarily follow that the record or tradition of that message is inspired also.

We must here make a remark, which, if carefully borne in mind through the discussion, will save much misapprehension and much misrepresentation. The word Inspiration is used, and may, so far as etymology is concerned, be fairly used, in two very different senses. It may be used to signify that elevation of all the spiritual faculties by the action of God upon the heart, which is shared by all devout minds, though in different degrees, and which is consistent with infinite error. This is the sense in which it appears to have been used by both the Jews and Pagans of old. This is the sense in which it is now used by those who, abandoning the doctrine of Biblical Inspiration as ordinarily held, are yet unwilling to renounce the use of a word defensible in itself, and hallowed to them by old associations. Or it may be used to signify that direct revelation, or infusion of ideas and information into the understanding of man by the Spirit of God, which involves and implies infallible correctness. This is the sense in which the word is now used in the ordinary parlance of Christians, whenever the doctrine of Biblical Inspiration is spoken of;-and it is clear that in this