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Only it remained to be asked, whether a marvellous prediction of very distant earthly events did not introduce an irrational element into inspiration, as if the only wise God had departed from His method of teaching men through faith by the Reason which comes forth from Him as His Truth, and had broken His own laws, through impotence to keep them? From all that has been now said between Dr Wolff, my friend, and myself, you will see why I think it truest and therefore most pious, to say that our Lord has not violated in Prophecy, more than in other things, the harmony of the Divine Eeason. Gk)d seems to touch us by the natural sensitiveness of our feelings, and awakens our best affections by contact with those around us; He leads us through fear and awe, with something of silent inference from instinctive logic, to an apprehension of an eternal Power above us, and shews us the wisdom of listening to whatever experiences of the most sacred things have been handed down ; again, He shews us through our better conscience, that mere passion of devotion or fervid stretching forward to things unseen, will not commend us to Him without a practical element of truth and righteousness ; He reserves also a place for the intellect in com- paring, and judging, and remembering; again. He makes all religious emotions fruitless, unless we discipline them into action ; and some power from Him, difficult to trace, but which moves by order, and which we win chiefly in prayer, goes along with all such processes, and puts life into them, so that they come to good result. So that inspiration seems on the whole to INSPIRATION, GENERIC, AND CHRISTIAN. 479 be a qtdckening from the breath of God, which awakens what is best in us, and works in all the faculties His providence had given us, so that thej become effectual to His will. It puts into our minds good desires, and enables us to bring them to good effect. It gives us fervour in prayer, and clearness of sincerity in purpose, and a vision of truth so far as it concerns our peace, which is as it were a sight of the mind. Hence faith^ which is especially awakened in us by it, and answers on our part to it, has been called by the Christian Scriptures, a sight of things unseen. But such a perception of principles in an intense degree would be not only moral insight, and the intuition of right, but the spirit of prophecy. Nor again do we find that this inbreath- ing of the Holy Spirit ever stands outside of that instrumentality of events, and thoughts, and language, by which God makes us capable of receiving it. We may, however, use the word inspi- ration in a larger sense, for every lesson traceable even remotely to the Providence of God ; and this would be the sense of the Old Testament ; or in a narrower and more distinct sense, for the right feeling of sacred things, which might almost seem a special organ in religion, such as the moral instinct has been called in ethics, and which is both perception of the Truth, and performance of the Right. But, however much we may thus distinguish the inworking of the breath of God firom other gifts of His providence, it still moves in unity with them all, even as God the Giver of all is fundamentally One. So again, we some- times distinguish that shewing of the Father bodily by the Son, which is called Revelation, from the gift of fiedth in what has been revealed, which seems rather the inworking of the Holy Spirit. For it seems convenient to have such a distinction of the work of the Son and of the Spirit. Thus St Paul says, no man can accept Jesus as the Messiah, or prefer a kingdom of thought and peace and holiness to one of earthly triumph, except by the Holy Ghost. But here again, both the Son and the Spirit, and their works, are so joined in one, that I dare not divide, even if I venture to distinguish them. Such unveilings of God as are 480 PROVINCE OF THE HOLT SPIRIT. given in the Old Testament, seem to have been chiefly through the Spirit of the Lord, or by Divine working on the thoughts of men. Even in the New Testament the incarnation of the Son is not without the agency of the Spirit. He who was by birth ♦ the son of David, is declared the Son of God by power according to the spirit of holiness. It is the Spirit even which joins the Highest Father and the Son in One. And what is revealing so much as taking away a veil ? Nor does anything hide the Father of our spirits from us, so much as sensualism, or sin in some of its forms of selfishness or materialism. By sowing to the flesh we reap corruption. But when we turn unto the Lord, who is the eternal Spiritf, then the veil is taken from off the eyes of our mind, and by purity of heart we become able to conceive of ffim more nearly as He is. If, therefore, I have spoken of Providence, and of Revelation, and of Inspiration, as of three Divine gifts or agencies, you will understand me as not meaning to divide their essential and eternal imity. " I have kept back as much as possible the New Testament hitherto ; but it was not possible to speak of Divine Inspiration, as the source of all high impulses amongst the ancient nations, or in its more sacerdotal form among the Hebrews of the Old Testament, without glancing on at the broader life which the Spirit brings to pass in the Christian Church. When Christ came standing between God and man, and with a name| and a mission, each of which attested the Divine breathing upon Him, He could not lessen the consciousness of men, that all powers and gifts come down from the Father of lights. Yet in one sense He might be said to have narrowed the idea of inspiration. For He cleared it in its best meaning from connexion with those wild outbursts of passion, which might often impel men to supernatural energy, yet which seemed borne in upon them by frenzy. Nor is the Spirit, which He most emphatically com- * BomanB i. 3, 4, "natu hominem, virtute spiritus Deum." f 2 Corinthians iiL 16, 17 ; St Matthew v. t St Peter, Acts x. 38. INSPIRATION — CHRISTIAN. 481 mended, to be traced as directly breathing in the creations of art or genius. Yet all such things, so far as they are good, come ultimately from Divine motives ; and perhaps there is a nearer kindred than many are aware, between the dreams of unearthly beauty which our imagination would embody in art or song, and the earnest aspiration* of our faith to a holiness we have not yet attained, and a kingdom which is to come. Prayer and poetry seem to be twin sisters ; for both of them seek, what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard. But yet Christ's words would awaken in men a spirit which cares f so little for earthly gifts, that we can hardly class among its powers the general impulses of Divine Providence. Even if it permits to Christians renown in arts or arms, it does not urge them to desire it. Kather it persuades them to take hold of eternal peace, and is a participa- tion of that spirit which dwelt in the Prince of peace. Let this mind (or tone of sentiment) be in you, which was in Christ Jesus^ says the Apostle Paul. Such a mind triumphs over the impulses of ' the animal mind,' such as pride or selfishness, and opens the eyes of our understanding to see God as Spirit, and makes us worship Him In spirit and in truth. It awakens us to the li£& of the soul, which ' animal men' cannot discern. It is rooted in faith, and is confirmed by patience, and made perfect in love, and has hope growing into joy. Such a strength it derives from following Christ, in doing the will of God, and so fulfilling His thought, and making us partake of a Divine nature, and escape the corruption which is in the world through selfish desires. Thus St Paul is not afraid to describe the Spirit which knows the mind of the Lord, and is His eternal Counsellor, as animating also the assembly of faithfrd men, and so making it an embodiment of Christ. For that is any one's body, in which his mind or his spirit dwells. Divine inspiration then, according * Compare St Paul, Bomans viii., with the Phcedo of Plato, and with many passages in the Republic. See abo the remarks on devotion in the Jtemains of Alex- ander Knox, with his illustrations from certain of the Gentiles' own prophets. t St Matthew vL 19 — 34; x. iS ; xviii. 8, 9 : St Luke xvi. 9, 15, ^5 ; xvii. ^7 — 30 • ' CJorinthians vii. ^9 — 31* M. P. 31 482 INSPIRATION — CHRISTIAN.