manifest, and we have thought it right to indicate it, in connection with the painful and degrading consequences to which it led, believing that in this way it is fitted to furnish a great moral lesson, and to serve as a beacon to warn those who may be tempted to become accusers of the brethren.

In consequence of the last article in this Number having unexpectedly extended from two sheets to above three, it has become necessary again to postpone the Critical Notices. It was intended to have noticed-Brown on the Romans; Culverwell on the Light of Nature; Clarke's New Translation of Bengel's Gnomon; Hodge on the Corinthians; Alexander on the Acts; Moody Stuart on the Song of Solomon; Kelly's Examination, &c.; Dr Livingstone's Travels; Prize Essays on the Support of the Gospel Ministry, &c., &c. We hope to have notices of these and other works in our next Number.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN

EVANGELICAL REVIEW.

APRIL 1858.

ART. I.-The Inspiration of Holy Scripture, its Nature and Proof. Eight Discourses delivered before the University of Dublin. By WILLIAM LEE, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 530 Broadway, 1857, pp. 478.

We

IN a former number we expressed a high opinion of the general merits of this work, and our conviction of the truth of the doctrine which it is designed to explain and defend. wish now to call attention to the subject of which it treats. Happily the belief of the inspiration of the Scriptures is so connected with faith in Christ, that the latter in a measure necessitates the former. A man can hardly believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and worship him as such, without regarding as the word of God the volume which reveals his glory; which treats of his person and work, from its first page to its last sentence; which predicted his advent four thousand years before his manifestation in the flesh; which, centuries before his birth, described his glory as though it was an object of sight, and his life and death as though they had already occurred. To such a believer the assumption that the Scriptures are the work of man, is as preposterous as the assumption that man made the sun. Nor can any such believer read the discourses of our Lord, and hear him say, that the Scriptures cannot be broken, that heaven and earth may pass away, but one jot of the law cannot fail until all be fulfilled, that David spoke in the Spirit; he cannot hear his command, "Search the Scriptures, for they testify of me," without sharing in his conviction that the Scriptures are infallible. When a man becomes a true Christian, when he is made a partaker of the precious faith of

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God's elect, what is it that he believes? The scriptural answer to that question is, He believes the record which God has given of his Son. And where is that record? In every part of the Bible, directly or indirectly, from Genesis to Revelation. Faith therefore in Christ involves faith in the Scriptures as the word of God, and faith in the Scriptures as the word of God is faith in their plenary inspiration. That is, it is the persuasion that they are not the product of the fallible intellect of man, but of the infallible intellect of God. Thus faith, as the apostle teaches us, is not founded on reason, i. e. on arguments addressed to the understanding, nor is it induced by persuasive words addressed to the feelings, but it rests in the demonstration of the Spirit. This demonstration is internal. It does not consist in the outward array of evidence, but in a supernatural illumination imparting spiritual discernment, so that its subjects have no need of external teaching, but this anointing teacheth them what is truth. It is no mere intellectual cognition, cold as a northern light, but it is a power controlling at once the convictions, the affections, and the conscience. It is, therefore, irresistible. It cannot be shaken off by any voluntary effort, any more than a man can free himself from the belief in the moral law. Nor can it be effectually assailed by any of the weapons of argument, contempt, or ridicule. Philosophers look down with disdain, and even with disgust, on those who profess a faith thus supported as drivelling fanatics. They refute by logical demonstration the doctrines which are the objects of this faith; they demonstrate that reason is the guiding faculty of the soul, that nothing can be received as true which reason does not sanction, and because of that sanction; they pour contempt on all claims to the testimony of the Spirit. But all this avails nothing. They are like children or maniacs endeavouring to trample out the sun light. The moment they raise their feet there it is as calm and bright as ever. They may turn infuriated and curse the source of that light, but it still shines beneficent and glorious. Such has been the experience of the church from the beginning. How many times has the gospel been proved to be foolish! How often has some antichristian philosophy, first one and then another, received the homage of the leading minds of the world, and left the gospel to the poor and uncultivated! But the simple faith of the Church remains ever the same and ever sure. There are probably more sincere believers now alive on earth than at any previous period of the world's history. We can therefore afford to have our doctrines derided and contemned. We can bear to hear the philosophers of to-day repeat the shout of triumph uttered by the philosophers of yesterday. We can even afford to acknowledge our

incompetence to meet them in argument, or to answer their objections; and yet our faith remain unshaken and rational. Comparatively few men are able to meet or refute the argument of a skilful idealist, and yet comparatively few are the least shaken in their convictions of the reality of the external world.

Faith in Christ, therefore, of necessity involves faith in the Scriptures, and faith in the Scriptures involves the belief that they are the word of God and not the word of man. They come to us in the name of God; they profess to be his word; they claim divine authority; they are quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and are a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. They control the reason and conscience, in the same way that the infinite reason controls that which is finite, and infinite excellence controls that which is limited and imperfect. All this is perfectly consistent with the admission that there are many intellectual difficulties connected with the doctrine, that the Scriptures are the word of God. It is our duty to endeavour to solve these difficulties; to disperse these clouds; to bring the understanding into harmony with our spiritual convictions. But our faith is in no degree dependent on the success of these endeavours. There are difficulties connected with the being of God and his relation to the world, which no human intellect can solve, and yet our belief that God is, and that he is the creator, preserver, and governor of the world, is none the less assured. If the fact that there are many things in creation and providence which we find hard to reconcile with Theism, does not shake our faith in God, why should the fact that there are many things in the Scriptures which we find it hard. to reconcile, shake our confidence in them?

In saying that the Bible is the word of God, we mean that he is its author; that he says whatever the Bible says; that everything which the Bible affirms to be true is true; that whatever it says is right is right, and whatever it declares to be wrong is wrong, because its declarations as to truth and duty, as to facts and principles, are the declarations of God. What the Scriptures teach is to be believed, not on the authority of Moses or the prophets, or of the apostles and evangelists, but on the authority of God, who used the sacred writers as his organs of communication. The Bible is the product of one mind. It is one book. It is the evolution through successive centuries, and in the use of a multitude of writers, of one great system of truth. The end was sure from the beginning. It contains a revelation of the secret things of God, of the nature, necessities, and destiny of man, of things before

human history and of things future—a knowledge altogether supernatural. Its several parts stand related to each other, the one supporting the others, all being mutually dependent and harmonious. The Bible is as obviously an evolution of the plan of redemption as an object of faith, as the history of our race is an evolution of that plan as a matter of experience. The two run parallel-the one was sketched out from the beginning, the outlines being more and more filled up until they are lost in the clouds and glories which overhang the book of Revelation, and the historical accomplishment following after, in its slow and certain progress-from the fall of Adam to the crucifixion of Christ, and from the crucifixion to the consummation. If there are unity and design in history, there are unity and design in the Bible. If the one is the work, the other is the word of God. They stand in such relation to each other, that they must have the same author. It will hardly be denied that this is the doctrine of the whole Christian Church. All Christians in every age and of every name have regarded the Bible in all its parts as in such a sense the word of God as to be infallible and of divine authority. This is the faith of the Greeks and Latins, of Romanists and Protestants. We differ from Romanists as to what is Scripture, in so far as they receive certain books into the canon which Protestants reject. We differ also as to what the Scriptures teach; but Greeks, Romans, and Protestants, all agree in saying, that everything in the Bible which purports to be the word of God, or which is uttered by those whom he used as his messengers, is to be received with the same faith and submission, as though spoken directly by the lips of God himself. This is the doctrine of plenary, as opposed to the theory of partial, inspiration. The church doctrine is opposed to the doctrine that some parts of Scripture are inspired and others not; or that a higher degree of inspiration belongs to some portions than to others; or that inspiration is confined to the moral and religious truths contained in the Bible, to the exclusion of its historical or geographical details. It is also opposed to the theory which merges inspiration into revelation, and teaches that we have in the Scriptures a divine revelation communicated by fallible men; or, what amounts to much the same thing, that the thoughts are to be referred to the Spirit of God, but the words in which those thoughts are communicated, are due to the unassisted minds of the sacred writers. The doctrine of the Church on this subject has ever been, that the thoughts and language, the substance and the form of Scripture are given by inspiration of God; that the holy men. of old SPAKE as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The apostle Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, sets forth this doc