the Holy Ghost, as soon as we are convinced that Paul was the writer of the document, its ultimate emanation from God is settled. Now it obviously facilitates this inquiry to have the mind of Paul stamped upon the letter, to have it distinctly impressed with his image, while it contains nothing but the true and faithful sayings of God. It is consequently no presumption against the divine dictation of a book that it should exhibit traces of the hand that was employed."

1

I will add that there are other less or more obvious reasons why God should have employed as his instrument a MAN, not a machine, an intelligent, moral, individual agent. It is in harmony with all his dealings with the universe, and therefore antecedently probable that he should have done so. He usually, if not always, operates through, and not against, law. We agree in terms with the Duke of Argyll in affirming the absolute universality of law in the unlimited sense of that word; for even the volitions of the Supreme Being are in voluntary accordance with the laws of his own nature. No divine act, therefore, can in the highest sense be said to be unnatural or anomalous. We hesitate to go so far as to affirm with that eminent authority the universality of physical law. It would appear to be an inevitable deduction from the omnipotence of God—and it is honoring him to say so that he has the ability to interrupt at pleasure the whole ordinary course of nature, in the physical sense, and it may have suited him at times to do so. This is the simplest, and, as it seems to us, the most probable account to give of the miracles of the Old and New Testaments. It is not necessary to hold that the ordinary physical force is for the time being no longer exerted in the case of a miracle. It is only necessary to recognize the interposition of a new and higher force than the ordinary physical one -a force, too, exerted from the outside, not the inside, of the system of ordinary causation-and the inadequacy of the ordinary, and the adequacy of the extra-ordinary force to produce the miraculous effect. It by no means follows from this that there should be any physical contrivance or machinery, or any system of physical laws, higher than the familiar system commonly spoken of as the ordi1 Collected Writings, Vol. III., pp. 55, 56.

nary course of nature, or the ordinary system of second causes, in the physical sense, that is employed by the Almighty in the production of the effect. There is not a tittle of proof that anything whatever of a causative kind intervened between the sovereign fiat of God and the occurrence of the miraculous event. If any energy was put forth other than the divine volition, it would most likely be a direct characteristic (shall we say spiritual?) energy proceeding from the source of all wisdom and of all power. But whatever view may be taken of God's miraculous agency, such agency is confessedly and ex vi termini exceptional.

Are inspiration and revelation to be classed as miracles? So Bannerman opines and maintains. In the technical sense, clearly they are not. They are not to be so much regarded as themselves evidential, as matters to be supported by evidence ab extra; and are not, as John Locke declares the technical miracles to be, "sensible events." Miracles they may be in a wider acceptation of the term. They are supernatural, not natural, phenomena and products. They are in a manner singular and extraordinary events. But-and this is the point we would emphasize—it is, as we have seen, antecedently more likely, as more agreeable to God's usual mode of procedure, and more in harmony with the acknowledged facts of the case, that the allwise and omnipotent Jehovah should have made use of, rather than that he should have superseded, the faculties and even the personal idiosyncrasies of the human instruments. Inspiration and revelation do, however, bear a relation to the ordinary course of Christian experience analogous to that borne by a miracle to the ordinary course of nature.

Again, there were eminent and controlling reasons for it of a practical kind. All sorts of persons and tribes were to be reached and benefited by the revelations. Dr. William Lee, as we saw, believes that the peculiar type of each writer's individual nature was essential to the due conveyance and reception of that particular phase of truth which he presents. It may be added that every one of these particular phases of truth was exactly adapted to corresponding phases of the human soul, whether in the case of one and the same person or of different persons. Some tempera

ments are mercurial, now up, now down, and require corresponding variety of intellectual and spiritual stimulus and aliment. The same man, whether mercurial or not, is apt to be in different moods at different times. Such moods commonly vary according to events and circumstances. Other temperaments are sanguine, or phlegmatic, or atrabilious and melancholic. There are also different degrees and orders of intelligence. There are seasons when a man craves logic, and seasons when the same man craves poetry or homely exhortation. One man loves, or needs, to be instructed in doctrine, another man to be guided in practice. Certain persons are more impressed by Moses, others by David, or by Isaiah, or by Luke, or by Paul, or by James, or by John. The whole range of knowledge and genius is compassed, and the entire gamut of emotion and affection is run, in these sacred oracles. There is something in the word of God for those who are elated, and still more for those who are depressed and dejected. There is matter here for both sexes, and for all races, ages, and climates. As Matthew Henry says, here are shallows where a lamb may wade, and deeps where an elephant would have to swim.

Because of the striking elevation in the subjective condition of Isaiah, Paul and John, in comparison with that of most or all of the other biblical writers, it has been confidently urged by some that their words have a higher authority than those of the other writers. If this were so of any we should plead for the inclusion of Moses and David in this list. The difference, however, to the advantage of some, as compared with others of the biblical writers, is due to their superior natural powers, to their superior illumination, and to the peculiar exaltation of soul which usually accompanied their superior degrees of revelation. It is a difference which does not affect one whit the equal inspiration; that is to say, the divinely-secured infallibility of the otherwise inferior writers. We have been led to conclude that inspiration may be found apart from revelation, and even from illumination. It is probable, notwithstanding, that a majority, if not all, of the inspired writers-that is, the men whose books compose the sacred canon -had received revelations, and that all had probably received

spiritual illumination. Let it be borne in mind, however, that it was neither their revelations nor their illuminations that made them inspired; but it was common for these three things to be united in one person. Now Isaiah, John and Paul, if you please, were endowed with singular measures or degrees of revelation and illumination; but mark you, there are no measures or degrees in INSPIRATION.

H. C. ALEXANDER.

son.

IV. THE DELU G E.

I. TESTIMONY OF TRADITION.

"THE one tradition which is really universal among those bearing on the history of primitive man is that of the deluge. It goes back to the earliest ages of the world, and can be nothing but an account of a real and well authenticated fact." Of similar import with this testimony of Lenormant is that of Canon Rawlin"The evidence shows a consentient belief among members of all the great races into which ethnologists have divided mankind. Among the Semites, the Babylonians and Hebrews; among the Hamites, the Egyptians; among the Aryans, the Indians, Armenians, Phrygians, Lythunians, Goths, Celts and Greeks; among the Turanians, the Chinese, Mexicans, Red Indians and Polynesian Islanders, held the belief which has thus the character of a universal tradition, a tradition of which but one rational account can be given, namely, that it embodies the recollection of a fact in which all mankind was concerned."

2

"Of all the true traditions relative to the great deluge," writes Lenormant, "by far the most curious is that of the Chaldeans, made known to the Greeks by the historian Berosus," which is as follows:

"In the time of Xisuthrus happened a great deluge, the history of which is thus described. The deity Chronus (the Greeks thus translate the Chaldæo-Assyrian name Ilu) appeared to him in a vision, and warned him that upon the fifteenth day of the month Dosius (Sivan) there would be a flood by which mankind would be destroyed. He therefore enjoined him to write a history of the beginning, procedure, and conclusion of all things, and to bury it in the City of the Sun at Sippara; and to build a vessel,'and take with him into it his friends and relations, and to convey on board everything necessary to sustain life, together with all the different animals, both birds and quadrupeds, and to trust himself fearlessly to the deep. Having asked the deity whither he was to sail, he was answered, 'To the gods,' upon which he offered up a prayer for the good of mankind. He then obeyed the divine admonition, and built a vessel five stadia in length and two in breadth; into this he put everything which he had prepared, and last of all conveyed into it his wife, his children and his friends. After the flood had been upon

1 Ancient History of the East, p. 13.

2 Butler's Bible Work, Old Testament, Vol. I., p. 246.