show them to every believer. Yes, it is all true. But what has God said in nature, in Providence, in Christian experience, in Christian literature that He has not said first in the Bible? Take the most beautiful thought ever suggested by the profoundest Christian mind, and you will find it quietly folded in some word of Jesus, in some argument of an Apostle. This was the argument for the inspiration of the Gospel on which my old teacher, Dr. Robertson Smith, was specially wont to dwell. "We mean," he said, "that the Bible contains within itself a perfect picture of God's gracious relations to man, and that we have no need to go outside of the Bible history to know anything of God and His saving will toward us, that the whole growth of the true religion up to its perfect fulness is set before us in the record of God's dealings with Israel, culminating in the manifestation of Jesus Christ. History has not taught us that there is anything in true religion to add to the New Testament. We still stand in the nineteenth century where Christ stood in the first, or rather Christ stands as high above us as He did above His disciples, the perfect Master, the supreme Head of the fellowship of all true religion." Even so, as Christ stands, and forever will stand, infinitely above us, so does the Bible stand, and ever will stand, infinitely above all other books. Consider what this claim of finality means in an age when everything is changing, when our books of history, science, and philosophy last only a few years. Think what it is to say this in the face of the lights that are now streaming in on all sides upon the human soul. Think also that this statement cannot be challenged by any Christian. No Christian knows anything about God but what has been already written in the Word of God. The experience of the saints runs with these words: "I had little thought of its intellectual grandeur or literary beauty. Christ was there. I went to Him for life and found it. I was baptized and absorbed in His dying love."

But the question may be raised, has been raised, Is it right to describe the Bible as the Word of God? Is it possible to vindicate such a name for the whole Bible in the face of criticism and its results? Is it not better to say that the Bible contains the Word of God? I think it is possible to use the phrase "Word of God" in a sense that is not justified. But the phrase, "the Bible is the Word of God," expresses a truth which is denied in the other phrase, "the Bible contains the Word of God." I appeal again to Dr. Robertson Smith, whose place among Biblical scholars will not lightly be contested. He says: "People now say that the Scripture contains God's Word, when they mean that part of the Bible is the Word of God and another part is the word of man. That is not the doctrine of our churches, which hold that the substance of all Scripture is God's Word. What is not part of the record of God's Word is no part of Scripture. Only we must distinguish between the record and the Divine communications of God's heart and will which the record conveys." Defining his position still further, the same illustrious scholar said: "We may say that silver is contained in the mould into which it is run. If the silver is only in the leaden ore, the man who has no means of smelting is no richer by having it in his possession. If the Bible only contains the Word of God mixed with man's word, like silver in the leaden ore, then no one could use Scripture for his own religious life who did not possess the requisite scholarship, as in the other case the man could not get silver without having a smelting to separate it from the leaden ore. Therefore that view is untenable. But there is another way in which Scripture may contain the Word of God, the pure Word of God—as the mould contains the silver seven times tried. The pure silver takes the shape of the mould—it may be an imperfect shape—but it is pure silver, and the man is enriched thereby at once without any further act."

Once more, when Biblical criticism has done its utmost, when every one of its established results is acknowledged to the full, there is still a problem. Grant the furthest claim of the critical analysis. Divide the Bible as you have it into innumerable shreds, painted differently. What then? You have not explained the living combination. How were these innumerable scraps brought together and endowed with this indomitable vitality? It is the same problem as is presented in Christianity. The parts, as an apologist has said, may be taken to pieces, and people may persuade themselves that without Divine interposition they can account for all the facts. "Here is something from the Jews, something from the Greeks, an element contributed by this party, another by that, a general coloring by people who held partly of both. You may take down Christianity in this way, and spread it over the centuries. But when the operation is done the living whole draws itself together again, looks you in the face, reclaims its scattered parts from every century back to the first, and reasserts itself to be a great burst of coherent life and light centring in Christ. Just as though you might take a piece of living tissue and say, here is only so much nitrogen, carbon, lime, and so forth, but the energetic peculiarities of life going on before your eyes would refute you by the palpable presence of a mystery unaccounted for." So it is with the Bible. How were these elements put together? Who breathed into the whole the breath of life so that it became a living creature, as Luther says, with eyes and hands and feet? Take the problem of the Gospels. One may say lazily that it is an insoluble problem, and one may say it wisely. In any case, how was it that these writers succeeded in drawing the picture of the Stainless? How was it that the stream was never allowed to become turbid at any moment? One act, one word, one attitude might have been condemned by all generations of the faithful. How were they kept from misunderstandings, these men who were always misunderstanding, when the story came to be written? An artist and poet of great note died some twenty years ago, and quite a number of his friends have put on record their impressions. The most intimate of these friends has refrained. He has contented himself with saying that they have all missed the true man, the heroic, the noble man. Are we not in the presence of the supernatural in dealing with a fact like this, that the sinful should understand the Sinless so perfectly as to record no thought, no deed, no word which bears upon it the mark of their human frailty? Shelley said once: "There are two Italys, one of the green earth, the transparent seas, old ruins, the warm, radiant atmosphere; the other is of the Italians, with their works and ways." There are two Bibles, the Bible cut in pieces by analysis, the Bible as we have it. The time will come when one will pass into the other, but it will not come till the finality and Divinity of the Bible are confessed, just as the moment will come when the spell of Italy will pass into the soul of her people, and the contrast will fade away. What we say about the Bible, when admitting everything that criticism has secured, is that criticism has only made it clearer than ever that it is a house not made with hands.

Once more, and especially of the Old Testament, we have the witness of Christ. This is a witness which has been misunderstood and overdriven. But in its essence it is a witness which is admitted by believing critics themselves to be absolute. To us it is not enough to say that Jesus Christ is an inspired soul, obedient to the laws of His own nature. It is not enough even to say that He holds a regal rank among souls and an exceptional relation to God. It is not enough to say that He is the Saint of