ITS DESCRIPTION. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. BIBLE PASSAGES. BIBLE FACTS. HIGHER CRITICISM. OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.

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HAVING ended our discussion of "The Bible: A Divine Revelation," it will be in order as an introduction to our present subject, "The Bible—Its Inspiration," to distinguish between the meanings of the word Revelation and the word Inspiration. The word revelation, as pertinently used of God, has in the Bible two meanings: (1) God's pertinent act itself and (2) the product of that act. By God's act of revelation is meant the disclosing, the unveiling, the making known of something by God to the mind of someone, the impressing of something on his mind (Gal. 1:12). This has been done in a variety of ways: (1) by audible voice, e.g., by God's speaking to Adam, Eve and Satan (Gen. 2:16, 17; 3:9-19), to Noah (6:13—7:4; 8:15-17; 9:1-17), to Moses (Ex. 3; 4; 20:22—23:33; 25:1—31:18; etc., etc., etc.), to Israel (Ex. 20:1-17; etc.), etc.; (2) by dreams, e.g., to Jacob at Bethel (Gen. 28:11-15), Joseph (Gen. 37:5-10), Pharaoh (41:1-15), Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2:1-45; 4:1-27), the Millennial Ancient Worthies (Joel 2:28), etc., (3) by visions, e.g., to Isaiah (Is. 1:1; 6:1-13), the Millennial Youthful Worthies (Joel 2:28), Peter, James and John (Matt. 16:28—17:9), Paul (Acts 9:3-6; 26:13-19; 2 Cor. 12:1-5), John (Rev. 1:10-20), etc.; (4) by symbolic institutions, like those of the Law Covenant, baptism and the Lord's Supper of the Sarah Covenant; (5) by direct impression without external means on the mind, as in the case of many of the prophets (1 Pet. 1:10-12; 1 Cor. 14:29-32); (6) by acts, like miracles; and (7) by character manifestations, e.g., Christ's character is God's revelation of His own character (John 14:8, 9), the character of second-deathers

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is God's revelation of Satan's character (2 Tim. 3:1-9; 2 Pet. 2:10-22; Jude 8-16; 1 John 3:8-10), as by fallen man God gives a revelation of the curse (Rom. 1:21-32). Revelation as a product is the thing disclosed, unveiled, made known to, and impressed on the mind, e.g., (1) any book of the Bible is revelation as a product, e.g., the book of Revelation (Rev. 1:1), (2) any teaching of the Bible (1 Cor. 14:26, 30; 2 Cor. 12:1, 7; Gal. 3:23; Eph. 3:3-5), and (3) the Bible as a whole as the Word of God is the Divine Revelation (Deut. 29:29; Heb. 4:12; 2 Tim. 2:15). Inspiration also is an act and a product. As a product it is the same as revelation as a product; and as an act it is the road over which revelation travels to become revelation and inspiration as a product. 2 Pet. 1:21 proves this of it as an act; and 2 Tim. 3:16 proves it of it as a product. This will appear more clearly as we proceed.

This brings us to our definition of inspiration as an act. It is that act of God by which His Spirit (power) moved certain humans to speak or to write out the thoughts that He revealed to their minds, and that in such words as He selected for, and moved them to use. Some explanations will clarify this definition. First of all, it is an act of God, not of man; for God, not man does the inspiring. But it is an act of God to perform which He moves men as agents or instruments, after they have received the thoughts that He revealed to their minds, to speak out or write out these thoughts. And in such speeches or writing God Himself selected the words that they spoke or wrote. This is a definition of inspiration that will fit either of its forms, speech or writing. If in defining the inspiration that produced the Bible we would have to omit from our definition the word "speak," in its strict sense of using oral language, and retain in it the words "write out," in the sense of reducing thought to written language, we would define the inspiration that produced the Bible as follows: It is that act of God by which His Spirit (power) moved

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certain humans to write out the thoughts that He revealed to their minds, and that in such words as He selected for, and moved them to use. Accordingly, there can be revelations without inspiration, but there can be no inspiration without revelations; for St. Paul had some revelations that he could not put into words or into writing (2 Cor. 12:4). But in the nature of the case there can be no inspiration without revelation; for inspiration moves an agent to put into speech or writing the thing or things revealed. It will also be noted that in our definition it is stated that not only the thoughts of revelation are expressed by inspiration, but also that the words that are used are likewise inspired. We trust that the above explanation will make clear the sense of our definition of inspiration as an act.

To clear away misunderstandings it may be well to show what is not meant by inspiration as its product. Above it was shown that both revelation and inspiration as a product are the Bible; but the Bible that we hold to be the product of inspiration is not any translation of it; for all of them are of human origin; and even the best of them contain mistranslations, interpolations and misunderstandings. Nor are any of the recensions of the original texts inspired in their entirety; for all of these have lacks in some case, in others interpolations, in others variant readings on which the editors are not certain, and in still others undoubtedly false readings. The lately discovered science of Biblical Numerics enables us to detect and dismiss interpolations, and to judge as between variant readings, which are the right ones; but as yet there is no certain way of supplying lacking words. Thus Biblical Numerics has enabled us to see that quite a number of passages which were considered spurious are genuine, e.g., Mark 16:9-20; John 8:1-12, etc., that quite a number of readings that were regarded as genuine are false, e.g., the reviser's "men of good will," instead of "good will to men" (Luke 2:14), "Church of the Lord" instead of "Church of God" (Acts 20:28), "righteousness of

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God," instead of "the righteousness of our Lord" (2 Pet. 1:1), and that a number of passages that were regarded as genuine are spurious, e.g., the earthquake reference and its accompaniments in Matt. 27:51-54; the statement on "three that bear record in heaven," etc., of 1 John 5:7 and the clause, "the rest of the dead," etc., in Rev. 20:5. It is only of the original texts as written by their human authors to which full and verbal inspiration is to be ascribed. It is not to be expected that the full inspired text will be completely restored in the present Age; but in the near Millennium the inspired writers will be here and will fully restore it. In the meantime the text as now restored by Biblical Numerics has such inconsequent imperfections as will affect the Truth illy as little as the breathing of but ten people will pollute the air of well ventilated Madison Square Garden of New York, Royal Albert Hall of London or St. Peter's at Rome. Hence whatever lacks, interpolations, false readings or variant readings may remain, so far as practical purposes are concerned, need trouble God's people but negligibly.

Inspiration has often been confounded with other features of the Bible. From these it should be kept separate and distinct in our minds. Some confound inspiration with the integrity of the Bible. The latter refers to the incorruptness of the text on all matters. While conceding that some slight discrepancies still remain in the text of the Bible, since it is now being corrected by Biblical Numerics, facts and the purpose of the Scriptures prove that our present text is in such a condition of purity as to give us certainty on all points of doctrine and practice. Hence the natures of these two things are separate and distinct, one showing how the text has been produced, the other showing in what condition as to purity it has been preserved. Sometimes the inspiration and canonicity of the Bible are confounded. Canonicity refers to what books are authoritative and thus by right belong to the Bible, e.g., some deny the right of certain books to be in the Bible as

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parts of it. Thus some deny the right of the books of Esther, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John and Revelation, to be in the Bible as parts of it, i.e., to be of the canon, to be a part of the rule of faith and practice,—canon being the Greek word for rule. While all inspired books belong to the canon, and do so by virtue of their inspiration, God's causing the books of the Bible to be written is not the same thing as the right of a book or books to be a part or parts of the canon or Bible, i.e., inspiration, especially as an act, and even as a product, is different from the question as to the canonicity of a book or books of the Bible; for the latter question is one that concerns what books God's people of the Jewish and Gospel Ages have accepted as authoritatively parts of the Bible as the sole source of faith and the main rule of practice. Romanists accept seven books of the Apocrypha as belonging to the canon, which we deny, because the Jews, to whom God committed the Old Testament as His Oracles (Rom. 3:1, 2) did not accept them as such. We accept all 66 books of the Bible as canonical, because the Divinely appointed custodians of them, the Jewish Church of the Old Testament and the Christian Church of the Old and New Testaments, have accepted and preserved them as canonical. Again, some confound the inspiration and genuineness of the Bible. Its genuineness refers to the authorship of its several books, as to whether they really were written by the human authors to whom they are ascribed as their authors, or in case of those books of the Bible whose human authors are not known, whether they originated at the time and amid the circumstances to which they are assigned; but certainly the question as to the fact of their inspiration, which is an act of God, is separate and distinct from the question as to whom He used to be the Bible's human authors, and from the question as to the time and circumstances of their human authorship.

Again, some confound inspiration with truthfulness,

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factuality. While the product of inspiration is true (John 17:17), there are many true things that are not inspired, e.g., there are, apart from inspiration, historical, philosophical, scientific, educational, financial, sociological, artistic, mathematical, etc., truths that are the invention of uninspired man. Thus while what God inspires as to content is true, or what He inspires as a record of the contents of evil beings' sentiments is true as a matter of record, yet all truth is not contained in the Bible; and its extra-Biblical forms are not inspired. Still others confound inspiration with credibility, worthiness of belief, acceptance and confidence. Here, too, it must be said that what is inspired is credible but the credibility of the Bible is not only based or even mainly based on its inspiration, but upon the inherent value of its contents, the credentials which accompany it and the external corroborations that it has, e.g., under the discussion of the Bible as a Divine Revelation we gave numerous proofs, under three separate lines of thought: internal, internalo-external and external, that the Bible is a Divine revelation, without discussing its inspiration at all; for only now have we come to the discussion of its inspiration; but the proofs that were given that it is a Divine revelation demonstrate that it is worthy of belief, acceptance and confidence—credible. So, too, some confuse the authoritativeness of the Bible with its inspiration. While these thoughts are related, as we saw the other five features above discussed to be related, to inspiration, yet there is a distinction between them, for the authoritativeness of the Bible is only partially dependent on its inspiration as an effect of the latter. But its authoritativeness is based mainly upon God as its Source and upon His Sovereignty. And, finally, some confound inspiration with the Bible's sufficiency as the sole source of faith and as the main rule of practice. These confound inspiration as the act that caused the Bible to be written with an attribute of the Bible's contents after being written.

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Next we will consider the implications of inspiration, both negatively and positively. It does not merely imply illumination, such as all Christians, especially such as the non-apostolic star-members, have had and such as occasionally other scribes instructed in the Kingdom have had, all of which occurs in the realm of grace, while inspiration occurs in the sphere of the supernatural. Nor is it merely the elevation of the natural faculties, such as the natural genius experiences e.g., poets, like Shakespeare, Homer, Milton, etc., orators, like Demosthenes, Cicero, Fox, Webster, etc., or authors, like Plato, Aristotle, Luther, Hooker, Macaulay, Dickens, Hawthorne, etc., or inventors, like Watt, Morse, Bell, Edison, Steinmetz, Marconi, etc., had. It does not imply sinlessness in its human agents, as the cases of Balaam, David, Solomon, Peter, etc., prove. It does not imply perfect preservation of the Bible text, as its interpolations, lacunae, corruptions and variant readings prove. Nor does it imply perfect errorlessness in copyists and translators, as the Greek and Hebrew MSS. and all translations prove. It did not imply the loss of individuality in its agents, as the differences of style in the writings of Paul, James, Peter and John prove. Nor is it to be understood as justifying the conduct of all of whom it treats, e.g., Judah's and Amnon's incest, the rape of the Levite's concubine, etc. Nor does it imply that its agents were well versed on other subjects than those on which they wrote. Nor does it imply that they understood everything that they wrote (Dan. 12:8, 9; 1 Pet. 1:10-13). Neither does it imply that everything was true in the sayings that it quotes, e.g., Satan's lies to Eve and to Jesus narrated in the Bible, the sayings of the Sanhedrin of Jesus and Paul, of the fool, that there is no God (Ps. 14:1), of job's four friends against him, etc., etc., etc. Nor is inspiration as a product, which is synonymous with revelation as a product, limited to merely the doctrinal and ethical contents of the Bible, as some, higher critics, affirm, who claim that promissory, hortatory, prophetical,

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historical and typical parts of the Bible contain more or less error and so-called pious frauds.

Positively it implies that the Bible is God's Word, is the written Divine revelation, is infallible, is sourcal of salvation truth, was written by human agents at God's causation, is God's entire revelation as to the various elect classes for this life, though not His entire revelation as to the Worthies and the non-elect classes Millennially, since it is but part of it, the rest of it to come as "another book" (Rev. 20:12) in the Millennium. In every case inspiration was God's act of causing the inspired ones to write out what He revealed to them. There was no exception to this even when they wrote on matters of natural theology, i.e., things of religion that by induction, deduction, observation or intuition man's reason gives him as matters of knowledge, like the existence and attributes of God and angels, the sense of obligation to do right to God, man and other animate beings and avoid wrongs as to them, etc. Whenever God brought those things to the minds of His agents as things to be put into the Bible they became revelation; and His act of causing them to write them out as a part of the Bible was inspiration, e.g., Acts 17:23, 28; Rom. 1:19-21; 2:14, 15. This is also true of the historical facts that the writers knew from observation or investigation, and then wrote out under God's causation. However they were brought to their attention, the act of bringing them to their attention became by that act revelation; and the act of causing them to write them out, inspiration. This covers matters such as Moses (Mark 12:20; Luke 20:37), Samuel, Nathan and Gad (1 Chro. 29:29), Matthew and John observed and wrote out, and such as Mark and Luke learned by study and wrote out (Luke 1:1-4; anothen means from above, not from the very first, as in A.V.).

A few words on the sphere of inspiration. It is not of the sphere of nature, even if some matters of nature enter into it; for if it belonged to the sphere of nature practically any one would be an object of it. By the

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sphere of nature we, of course, here refer to human as well as inanimate nature. And when we say that it does not belong to the sphere of nature we mean that neither human nature nor inanimate nature has it as an inherent possession. Neither do they have the power to cause it to come into existence and exercise. Both human nature and inanimate nature have it in their power to arouse an elevated state of the natural mind and to cause it at the glow of genius to produce works that the ordinary mortal cannot do. And some designate such a productive glow of genius inspiration. But such is not the Biblical thought of inspiration. It is not an operation of nature; for nature is not the sphere of inspiration, though nature yields some true thoughts on religion called Natural Theology. Nor is it a matter of the sphere of grace, by which we mean the field of the operation of enlightenment, justification, sanctification and deliverance. Indeed, as in the cases of Balaam (Num. 22—25), Saul (1 Sam. 19:9-24) and Caiaphas (John 11:47-53), one does not necessarily have to be in the state of grace in order to be used by God inspirationally. In the state of grace enlightenment comes to all therein; for all Christians share more or less in such enlightenment (1 Cor. 1:30; 2:10-16); but they are not thereby inspired. To the non-apostolic star-members regularly, and occasionally to the other non-apostolic scribes instructed as to the Kingdom, God has given special enlightenment directly, such as none of the other Christians get, yet this is not inspiration, though it may rightly be called special direct illumination. In measures far beyond those enjoyed by the star-members between the Jewish and Gospel Harvests has God illuminated the Laodicean Messenger; yet the two brothers who have constituted that Messenger have not been inspired and consequently have not been infallible. While their enlightenment has been very great, it has not transcended the state of grace, though the highest degree of it enjoyed in the state of grace. There is but one other state in which in this life some of God's

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people have been, i.e., a supernatural state, which is the state of miracles; and to this state inspiration belongs; for it was a miraculous power. It was a miracle; for both revelation and inspiration are miraculous. It is because these belong to the miraculous that we are unable to understand fully how it worked as a psychological operation, though most of the features of it we do understand; and that in it which we do not fully comprehend we see can be, as is measurably illustrated in the way fallen angels inspire mediums, etc., to give their messages. Keeping in mind that inspiration, as well as revelation, belongs to the realm of the miraculous will help us better to see its nature.

Evidently inspiration is of various kinds. Some expressions of it are mechanical, e.g., Balaam's ass was seized by Divine power and uttered under its influence things that it did not understand (Num. 22:28, 29). Moreover, Balaam was seized by Divine power repeatedly and as repeatedly uttered involuntarily things that he did not understand nor wish to say (Num. 23:5-12, 16-26; 24:1-24). This was true of Saul and his three delegations (1 Sam. 19:19-24). The Apostle Peter tells us that this was the case with the prophets who prophesied of the Christ (1 Pet. 1:10-12); and Daniel expressly tells us that he did not understand the greatest of all his prophecies (Dan. 10—12, compare 12:8). In such cases God's Spirit laid hold on them, and moved them mechanically to write what they did not understand and what He dictated, somewhat after the manner of a musician playing on an instrument, or a speaker talking over the radio or telephone, which mechanically carries the sound of the speaker's voice, without, of course, understanding the thing said. Some inspiration, on the other hand, was entirely sympathetic, i.e., most of the inspiration of the Apostles. The Spirit enabled their minds to reason out the Divine revelation—the things that they were to bind on, and loose from the Church; and then by the Spirit's causation they wrote these out as matters which they clearly understood, with

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which they were in heartiest sympathy, and which with fullest cooperation of mind and heart and will by the Spirit they wrote out as Gospels and Epistles. In some things of their prophecies the prophets enjoyed this form of inspiration. Parts of the book of Revelation John wrote without understanding; for they for the most part were not due to be understood in his day. There is a third form of inspiration; and this may be called directive inspiration. It is especially connected with the writing out of the events that the writers either observed as they happened, or learned by hearing, investigation or research. Their minds had to be directed by the Lord into settling on what they were to select for, and reject from incorporation into the writings that God caused them to produce. St. Luke intimates this when the word anothen is properly translated "from above" and not "from the very first," as the A. V. gives it (Luke 1:3). And the facts of the case prove it; for all the histories of the Bible are types, i.e., tableau prophecies; hence their writers were Divinely moved to reject from their histories those events, etc., that were not types and to incorporate those therein that were types as parts of the Divine revelation. This kind of inspiration combines the mechanical and sympathetic—we say mechanical, for these writers had not the slightest idea that what they wrote were types, nor did they understand that God directed them to select some for, and reject other matters from their books—sympathetic, because they knew and understood the facts that they wrote out and were in mental, moral and religious harmony with their writing these things. All kinds of inspiration, so far as its agents are concerned, belong to one or the other of these three or to a, combination of two or all three of them: mechanical, sympathetic and directive.

Inspiration, like revelation, covers everything in the Bible as God originally gave it. It is true that the thoughts of wicked angels and men are stated in the Bible, which fact we are to understand, so far as inspiration

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is concerned, to imply that while the sentiments of such are not inspired, the record of them as therein contained is inspired, which above-mentioned examples illustrate. The Scriptures in almost every such case dissanctions such sentiments, usually in connection with their recording. These, however, cover but a small part of the Bible, and as such are a part of the Divine revelation and thus contain things that God desires to have His people know as useful for them to know as related to His plan and as revealing negative features of it. All of its positive and negative features are summed up or divided into seven parts. The first of these is doctrinal, like its teaching on God, Christ, the Spirit, Creation, the Covenants, Man, the Fall and Curse, the Ransom, the Church, the World, the Second Advent and the Consummation. The second of these is ethical—pertaining to good and bad character development. The third of these is promissory, especially as contained in God's Covenants. The fourth of these is hortatory, covering encouragements toward the good, warnings against, and rebukes of the evil. The fifth of these is prophetic, predictive of future things. The sixth of these is historical, recording the course of the Divine revelation and God's various acts and dealings toward the subjects of that revelation. And the seventh and last of these is typical; for Scripture, reason and facts prove that the histories, biographies, persons, institutions, etc., of the Bible are prophecies in the form of types. It is because the Bible's historical, biographical, etc., parts are typical that they are revelatory and hortatory, even if the ethical value of their teachings were ignored. So far as we can see, everything in the Bible comes under these seven lines of thought.

The extent of inspiration belongs to a study of our subject and will therefore be treated here. In addition to the limitations placed by some on the act of inspiration mentioned above: (1) a denial of it altogether; (2) making it a mere elevation of spirit such as fires the mental powers of a genius, and (3) restricting it

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wholly to enlightening the Bible writers to inscribing true doctrinal and ethical teachings, there is a fourth way in which some limit inspiration as an act, i.e., God's causing the Bible's writers to inscribe all the Bible's thoughts but not its words. They allege in proof of this thought the patent fact that the various writers of the Bible use different styles of composition. It is undoubtedly true that various Bible writers use different styles, e.g., Paul's style in his epistles is markedly different from that of John's epistles, as well as from that of James', Peter's and Jude's epistles. Paul's style, as a rule, is very heavy, at times very involved, the other four's decidedly more simple. But conceding this, it must be admitted that the style of Paul's epistles differs greatly, e.g., the heavy and involved style of Ephesians contrasted with the graceful flowing style of Hebrews, which together with Luke's and James' writings are the most ornate of the New Testament. Hebrews in point of style and contents is easily the finest literary product of the New Testament. The same writer will often use different styles of composition, which often depend on the subject matter, his degree of grasp of his subject, his purpose in writing, his surroundings, his states of mind, his mental, artistic, moral and religious development in the interval between his compared writings, and the kinds of writing—poetry or prose, narrative or oratory, reasoning, persuasion, encouragement, restraint or instruction.

The differences in style in Biblical writers are due to God's respecting and using the individuality of His agents as writers of Biblical books. This variety of style in the Biblical writers can be illustrated by the difference in the quality of musical instruments. How varied is the quality of the music made by different pianos, violins, cornets, harps, even mouth-organs, yet the same expert musician playing on each one of these different musical instruments produces the same sounds but different quality of sounds. Thus God's respecting the individuality of the various writers is seen in the

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general diversity of their styles of writing. The same instrument responding differently at different times, e.g., in hot, cold, damp or clear weather, illustrates the differences in Biblical writers as to their surroundings and states of mind. Their different degrees of development undergone between their different writings is seen in some instruments improving by use and the involved lapse of time. Corresponding to the difference in style due to the subject matter is the difference made in the music by its subject; and corresponding to the difference due to the kinds of literature is the difference between the different classes of music played—classic, popular, jazz, etc. But none of this, while proving that God respected the individuality of the Bible's writers, disproves the fact that God inspired the words, as well as the thoughts, of the Bible's writers; for the Bible, reason and facts prove this, as we will show later. Hence verbal inspiration is involved and included in the idea of the inspiration of the Scriptures. The Bible is, both in its contents and in its words, inspired.

The men that were inspired by God to write the Bible were fitted for the task. In every case they were faithful, consecrated men, despite the fact that at times God inspired some wicked men to utter inspired sayings, e.g., Balaam and Caiaphas, which were by other, but consecrated and faithful, inspired men incorporated into the Bible. Certainly God would not use wicked men to write the Bible! And the agents that He used thereto certainly were well fitted for the work. While some of them were not learned men, they were all able men. While Jesus was God's Agent in writing the book of Revelation, which He dictated to John (Rev. 1:1), He did not, while in the flesh, write anything in book form for the Gospels, which, however, consist largely of His discourses. Admittedly Jesus was the greatest genius of the human race, and by far the most influential of mankind. Moses, David, Solomon and Daniel were statesmen and executives of the first order; additionally Moses and David were warriors of the highest

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rank. Solomon, Ezra and Paul were scholars of the first order; and all of these were authors of the highest distinction. There is good reason for believing that Solomon was the writer of the book of Job, which confessedly is the supreme literary product of the world. Apart from Jesus, a deeper reasoner than Paul probably never lived. Samuel was not only great as an executive and warrior, but also was great as a writer, Joshua, Judges, Ruth and parts of 1 Samuel proceeding from his pen. Isaiah was also a literary light of the first rank, excelling especially in sublimity. Priests like Jeremiah and Ezekiel were certainly men of a high order of intellect. The writings of the Minor Prophets show them to have been talented, even if in some cases they were not learned. Luke certainly was a scholar. And the language of James and 1 and 2 Peter proves that while at first these two were unlearned and ignorant men, they became in the school of Christ talented writers from a literary standpoint. Sublimity is the highest quality of authorship; and certainly with great simplicity John in his gospel and epistles rises to sublime heights. Unlike many authors, the writers wrote the truth on every subject treated by them; and their fine characters, as well as their thought, commend their writings to us as worthy and uplifting.

Let us not forget to dwell somewhat on the advantages of an inspired Bible. Let us suppose that the Bible were not inspired. What disadvantages would result? Very many and great advantages that an inspired Bible gives us we would lack. If uninspired, the Bible could not be the sole source of faith and the main rule of practice, with the Holy Spirit and Divine providence as subordinate rules of practice. It would be a fallible book on which our faith could not rest, which our hope could not make its anchor, which our love could not find to be its power, and in which our obedience could not gain its inspiration; it would fail us in time of need; it would break down for us in our times of temptation and trial; it would lead us into error in life and

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unto a delusion at death. We could not depend upon it to support our faith in controversy; and in the end it would leave us as dupes in despair; for an uninspired Bible would be Satan-made and man-palmed-off, just as the pseudo-Bibles of heathenism. But an inspired Bible proves to be the genuine sole source of faith and the main rule of practice, the Holy Spirit and Divine providence completing it as the rule of practice. It must be an infallible Book, and as such is the rock upon which our faith is built, the anchor on which our hope rests, the power that develops and perfects our love, and the inspiration on which our obedience thrives. It sustains us in our time of need; it strengthens us in our hour of trial; it gives us victory in our time of temptation. If we are faithful, by Jesus' ministry it will enlighten us in the Truth, will insure our justification, empower us to carry out our consecration and in our Christian conflicts make us victorious, and, finally, will make us more than conquerors through Him who loved us and gave Himself for us; for it is the power of God unto salvation. It is by its inspiration infallible, authoritative, indestructible, eternal, sufficient and efficacious. It is thus our guide, support, strength, help and power in the narrow way, even to the end. It gives us victory in Zion's controversy; it cleanses from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, and enables us to perfect holiness in the reverence of the Lord. Surely the inspired Bible has all these and yet more advantages.

It is self-evidencing in its proof of its inspiration. While, as will be shown, reason corroborates, and facts substantiate it, the Bible is its main proof of inspiration. Some say that when we set forth the Bible's statements as a proof of its inspiration we reason in a circle, and that our argument from it as evidencing itself as inspired is invalid. To these we reply that if the Bible were an ordinary book of man's origination, this objection would be well taken. But we are to remember that it comes to us with unanswerable evidences of its being a Divine revelation. The main ones of these we gave

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while discussing the proofs that it is a Divine revelation. We will briefly point these out as shown first in its internal, second its internalo-external and third its external evidence as such. Under the first, the internal evidence, we proved that it is a Divine revelation (1) from the harmony, perfection and practibility of the plan that it reveals, (2) from the perfection of the character and works of God that it reveals, (3) from the unique person, character, and also curse-delivering offices of Jesus, (4) from the self-harmony, reasonableness and factuality of it, (5) from its teachings as establishing good and suppressing evil, (6) from the fact that it alone of all alleged revelations gives a reasonable and factual solution of the problem of the permission of evil and (7) from its excellencies and the efficiency of the means that it sets forth to realize its ends. Under the second line of proof genuine and holy miracles and wide-flung and fulfilled prophecy were discussed as proofs of its being a Divine revelation. And under the third line of evidence there were adduced as proofs of its being a Divine revelation the following: (1) from the evidence of the elects' experiences, (2) from the fruits of the Bible in the elect, (3) from its being the beacon light of civilization, (4) from its corroborations by the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, (5) from corroborations of its plan in the analogy and constitution of nature, (6) from the corroborations of its plan symbolized in the constellations and (7) from the contour, etc., of the Holy Land. A book coming with such unanswerable proofs of its being a Divine revelation self-evidently has the right to give witness to its origin; and this right should be conceded by all. Being proven good and truthful in all respects, why should not its self-evidence be accepted? Do not courts rightly accept the evidence of known good and truthful witnesses as to themselves? Certainly the Bible deserves not to be treated less favorably than such in its witness as to itself! And from the nature of the case this is the only evidence that can be given apart from the corroborations

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given its inspiration by the proofs of its Divine origin; for those who were inspired to write it are all dead; so, too, all who were their companions and witnesses, who might give corroboration to its inspiration, as claimed by its writers, are dead; for as an act its recipients alone could as an experience and observation testify to it, which they did while alive, orally and in writing, and this testimony we now have in the Bible alone. Hence we are justified in appealing to its testimonies, which are those of its writers, every one Divinely corroborated as inspired (Heb. 1:1, 2; 2:3, 4). Hence the burden of disproving its right (the right of its writers to give testimony as the only human witnesses of their inspiration) to testify of itself lies on those who object to this right; and this they never can disprove; for they witnessed not nor could they witness the pertinent facts.

We yield to no one in our appreciation of the value of faith—a correct faith, faith in God, faith in the precious blood, faith in the Bible as the Word of God, faith in the exceeding great and precious promises. We realize that without such a faith we could never be conquerors, overcomers, but would succumb either to the wiles of the Adversary or to the spirit of the world or to the weakness of our own flesh. The proper faith is an anchor to our souls, sure and steadfast, entering in within the veil and holding us serene in all the storms and difficulties of the journey to the Heavenly Kingdom. Hope also is a necessary element of Christian character; it is built upon our faith. Without faith we cannot have hope. Hope is faith in activity; it is the anchor within the veil. Faith is the cable by which we are held firmly to it. Who does not see the importance of holding fast, being well anchored in the hopes and promises given us by our Lord directly and through the Apostles and Prophets. Ah! we must hold both to our faith and hope—nothing can persuade us that these are unimportant, trivial. As the Apostle declares, these have abode throughout the Age. But when he speaks of

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love the Apostle declares that it is the greatest of all. Why? we ask. Indeed many would be inclined to suppose that love would be much less important than any other quality. They would speak of rugged, rude faith and hope, and of rugged characters whose lives represent little of love. What, then, shall we strive for most particularly? The Apostle's declaration is that love is the greatest of these great qualities; but his advice is very contrary to the sentiment of the world. It tells us that if we have love we cannot be successful, that the quality would interfere with us whatever our ideals might be. From the world's standpoint love would hinder a politician from crushing down others that he might rise to prominence himself; love would hinder the merchant from crushing his competitors that he might amass the larger fortune. Large love for others, they tell us, would lead us to esteem others better than ourselves, and mean that we would be hindered in the great race that is going on amongst men for riches and honor and power. Shall we heed the world's advice or shall we follow the inspired testimony of the Apostle?

The two standpoints are totally different. The New Creatures cannot follow the advice of the world; to do so would be to renounce and deny all the new ideals we have accepted, and toward which we have been laboring. If as New Creatures we would gain the great prize of our calling in Christ Jesus, we must hearken to Him that speaketh from Heaven; we must hearken to the words of the Lord through the Apostles and Prophets; we must note our Master's testimony, "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another"; "Herein shall all men know that ye are My disciples if ye have love for one another" (John 13:34, 35). His further message through the Apostle is, "Love is the fulfilling of the Law"; and again, in the text "Love is the principal thing," the greatest thing in the world. The New Creature must attain this character of love; for all of his hopes depend upon his attaining this character-likeness of his Lord. Otherwise he will not

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be fit for the Kingdom or be granted a place in the elect Little Flock, which is to inherit it and to be used of the Lord during the Millennium for the blessing and uplifting of the world in general out of sin, degradation and death. Love is the principal thing, then; for whatever knowledge we might gain, whatever talents we might possess, whatever faith, whatever hope, none of these could bring us to the Kingdom. They can all merely assist us in developing this love-character which is the Kingdom test—the fulfilling of the Law. Nor do we mean that the perfection of love-character can be manifest in our fallen flesh. Its weakness, its kinks, its peculiarities are hindrances, so that the Apostle declares, "We cannot do the things that we would" (Gal. 5:17). But our hearts must be up to this love standard; we must will lovingly. In our hearts we must love the Lord supremely, we must love the brethren, we must love our neighbors, we must love our enemies; and if we so do, the effect will be that so much as lieth in us this love will be manifested to others in our words, in our looks, in our tones, in our actions. Whatever imperfection there is in the matter must not be of the heart but merely of the flesh, and such imperfection because of heredity is counted a part of what our Lord redeemed us from and the merit of His sacrifice is counted as covering all those unwilling blemishes so that the love of our hearts carried out in our lives to the extent of our ability is counted of the Lord as perfect love—perfection of character. Such are counted copies of God's dear Son, who was an image of God.

We answer that love is perfection of character. "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God"—is fully in accord with God, and hence in the condition pleasing to the Father unto eternal life. According to His covenant with those who have become the followers of Jesus, He is pledged to give them upon demonstration of this character, glory, honor and immortality in association with their Redeemer (Matt. 5:48). Let us take the analysis of love that is given by

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the Apostle. One of its elements is meekness. There is a difference between meekness and weakness; Moses was a meek man but a very strong character. He was humble-minded, not boastful, not proud or haughty. So with the New Creatures who have this quality of meekness, from the Divine standpoint. Gentleness is another element of love. It does not signify weakness or fear. The Christian man is, therefore, the true gentleman, the Christian woman the true gentlewoman—the highest ideals of these. The world may feign a gentleness which it does not really possess, but the gentleness of the Christian is a part of his character of love. It is because he thinks lovingly, considerately, of others that he is gentle toward all, seeking to walk with soft tread that he may not disturb others, to touch not rudely, but gently, that he may avoid the giving of pain to others, to speak not rudely or harshly, but kindly and gently, that he may not wound others. Patience is another element of love and a part of the true Christian character. True, we often see great patience in merchants, clerks, etc., exercised merely for policy's sake—for fear a good customer might be offended and dollars be missed. But the Christian's patience is of an unselfish kind; for it is a part of love, a part of his disposition. In proportion as he has sympathy, and kindness, love, he is disposed to wait, to assist with patience those who at first fail to come up to his ideals. He remembers his own trials and difficulties along these lines; and his broad, sympathetic love enables him to exercise much patience with those who are out of the way and who have not yet seen and have not yet learned to overcome difficulties and hindrances. Brotherly kindness is another element of love. It is the kindness that ought always to prevail amongst true brethren, but in the Christian this kindness so appropriate to a brother is to be such a heart condition that it will be applied to all men. In this he is copying the Lord, who is kind to the unthankful, the ungrateful. All these qualities the Apostle sums up in the one word, Love, because love includes

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every kind of gentleness and kindness imaginable—and love has value in God's sight.

Emphasizing the importance of love in the forepart of the chapter from which our text is taken, the Apostle declares that if he could speak all the languages known amongst men and the angelic tongue as well, and if he used these talents in preaching, if his preaching were not inspired by love, it would be nothing—God would esteem it no more than the sound proceeding from cymbals or any brass instrument. God has not glory, honor and immortality for brass horns and brass cymbals; and if a man should preach the whole Truth in all its grandeur, yet without the spirit of love he would be, nevertheless, as unfit for Divine favor and a share in the Kingdom as the brass horn would be. No place in the Kingdom would be found for such. What a lesson for us all as we attempt to sound forth the praises of Him who hath called us from darkness to light! How necessary it is that we shall speak the Truth in the love of it, with hearts full of devotion and appreciation! Taking another illustration, the Apostle suggests that if he had mountain-moving faith, if his knowledge of Divine mysteries and all other mysteries were very great, superior to those of all other men, and even if in his zeal for man or for God he should become a martyr and permit his body to be burned, yet, notwithstanding all this, if the primary influence in these matters were not love, all the sacrifice, all the self-denials, all the labors, even the burning, would profit nothing. Ah, dear friends, when we come to get the Divine standpoint of things we find indeed that it is very high; and yet our judgment assures us that it is right, that it is just, that it is proper, that God should thus set the standard of love as the only standard by which we shall ultimately be measured. But whoever thinks to have this perfect love for God and for man and make no manifestations of it is equally mistaken. Wherever love is in the heart words, works, thoughts and looks will testify to it, so that he who loves much

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will serve much. If we love the Lord we shall delight in His service regardless of failures, regardless of fame, regardless of any earthly consideration; yea, even though the service of the Lord should cause us the loss of human approbation, fellowship, etc. The language of love is well expressed in our dear Redeemer's words, "I delight to do Thy will, O my God; Thy Law is written in my heart" (Ps. 40:8). Hence every true Christian may link the two words love and service, and be sure that his love will manifest itself in zeal. Similarly, love of the brethren will mean a desire to serve the brethren; love of the home and family will mean a desire to do good to them; love of our neighbor will signify a desire to do for his interests as for ourselves.

The Apostle points out some of the restraints of love. It cannot be quick, irascible; for "Love suffereth long and is kind." He who is loving cannot be envious of others, nor covetous of the blessings and favors they are enjoying; for "Love envieth not." He who is loving cannot be boastful and proud; for "Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." He who is controlled by the spirit of love will not be ungracious, unkind, rude; for "Love doth not behave itself unseemly." He who is full of the spirit of love will not be selfish, grasping, neglectful of the interests of others; for "Love seeketh not her own" merely. The truly loving one will not be quickly angered, will not be easily offended; for "Love is not easily provoked." The one controlled by the spirit of love will not be imagining unkindness and rudeness nor seeking to interpret the words or conduct of others unkindly; for "Love thinketh no evil." He who has the spirit of love will have no satisfaction in the adversities coming upon those who are even his enemies; for "Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth." He who has the spirit of love regulating his heart, his words, his thoughts, his actions, the Apostle declares will be ready to "bear all things" and ready to believe everything that is favorable and all that is possible of good, and will be disposed to hope

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always for the best outcome in respect to all with whom he may have to do. He will be ready also to "endure all things," to submit to many unkindnesses and to credit these largely to weakness or poor judgment.

Faith will fail in the sense of ceasing when the present time of limitations of knowledge has passed; for then, instead of faith, we shall have sight. Hope will then also reach a glorious consummation; for instead of the hope for the things God has promised us we shall then have them, though as qualities of character they will remain; for we will not become infidels and despondents in heaven. But "love never faileth," will never cease. Whoever then attains this glorious character of love has a thing of beauty and a joy forever. It will beautify his own character, make him lovely in the sight of his Lord and be the quality that will bring him the Master's words, "Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things." Thou hast faithfully developed My spirit of love in the little things of life. I can therefore now give you greater things to do in My service in glory, in the blessing of others. This character of love, essential to Divine favor, will be essential to the eternal life and eternal happiness of the individual. For God to give eternal life to any others than those who have the perfection of this His own character would be to permit an element in Heaven which sooner or later would be in danger of working mischief and bringing in works of selfishness, sin and injury. This love-standard of character, which is now being developed in the saints in the few short years of the present trial time, must be developed also in the world of mankind-in all who will ever attain to eternal life during the Millennial Age. One difference is that they will have a thousand years for the development of such character while we of the present time have a much shorter period in which to make our calling and election sure by such character development. But then, if our trial is briefer and therefore

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more rigorous, it also has attached to it the still greater reward of a share in the Divine nature—glory, honor, immortality. Let us, then, dear friends, resolve for ourselves that we will strive for the principal thing; that the love of God may more and more be shed abroad in our hearts and that we may come more and more into heart-likeness to Him and so far as possible exemplify this character in our outward words, deeds and looks. Thus we shall attain the highest ideals, God's ideal, and the greatest blessing—God's blessing.

Heretofore the Bible doctrine of inspiration was set forth in an explanatory way, in order to make the subject clear in its nature and implications, and to guard the subject from misunderstandings and misrepresentations. No arguments were submitted in its proof, that phase of the subject requiring separate and lengthy treatment beyond that so far given the subject. These proofs will be presented from a threefold standpoint: I, General Biblical considerations; II, Specific Biblical passages; and III, Factual Biblical thoughts. Each of these lines of thought will be set forth in fair fullness, and we trust with cogent power. We cannot hope to convince willful, hostile, or depraved unbelievers; but we trust that the proofs presented will satisfy the rightly disposed. Indeed, it is not the Lord's will that the wrongly disposed receive now this or other truths; for the gift of the Truth by Divine intention is made to the rightly disposed alone—those whose minds, hearts and wills are meek, humble, hungry, honest, holy; reverent and good. To none others is it the Divine will to give the due Truth; for to give it to others would lead them to misuse it, injure themselves and others and dishonor God. Therefore, let our readers fill their hearts, minds and wills with the right disposition—that of meekness, humility, hunger, honesty, holiness, reverence and goodness, and then and then only will the Lord bless them with the Truth, which includes inspiration.

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(1) The first general proof that will here be offered is this: The character of God requires that the Bible be inspired. God's character consists of wisdom, power (will power), justice and love, each perfect in itself, each perfect in its harmony with the others and all in this harmony perfectly dominating God's other graces. From many standpoints, God's wisdom requires an inspired Bible. His wisdom is the tactful application of His knowledge securing good results. Hence His wisdom showed Him that an uninspired Bible could not secure the fullness and precision of the Bible necessary to secure the good results aimed at by the Lord in giving His revelation; on the contrary, that such a Bible would wreck the results that He aimed at in giving it; for it would omit essential parts of His revelation, mix it with error and insert foreign matters, all three of which would be fatal to its attaining the Divinely intended results. But His wisdom showed that by inspiring the Bible He could omit from it things not belonging to it, insert into it exactly what He desired to be in it and keep error out of it, both as to fullness and precision; and thus His wisdom showed that He would have a revelation just as He desired it to be, and sufficient to secure the ends in view in giving it. God's power also requires an inspired Bible and cooperated to make it so. Jehovah is not so weak-willed as to allow His revelation to be given without inspiration, since He knew that an uninspired Bible would frustrate the purpose of His revelation, destroy its purity, compromise its fullness and defile its contents; and His will power, which exercises all necessary might to secure His purposes, guarantees an inspired Bible, since inspiration is the only way to make it what He desires it to be to secure His purposes therewith. God's justice, duty-love, also requires an inspired Bible; for an uninspired Bible would be a disgrace to God, a compromise of His revelation, an injury, through its lacks, faults and immaturities, to its purposes, and an injustice to its

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users—none of which things His justice could permit. On the contrary, justice, which renders to each his due, not only saw to it that the Bible was not only harmless, which even at best an uninspired Bible could not be, but was fully beneficent, which to be the Bible must be inspired. Finally, God's love requires the Bible to be inspired. From its very nature, love requires this; for love is that disinterested good will which, delighting in good principles, i.e., the Truth and its Spirit, delights in, and is in sympathetic oneness with those in harmony therewith, sympathizes with or pities those who are out of harmony therewith, or those who are treated contrary thereto, and delights to sacrifice to advance them. Such a love could not give an uninspired Bible because of its contrariety to good principles; but must give an inspired Bible because of its harmony with, and advancement of good principles. Accordingly, God's character of perfect, balanced and dominating wisdom, power, justice and love, requires an inspired Bible.

(2) The Bible's writers require inspiration to write an inspired, infallible Bible. For the most part the Bible's writers were not learned men. Moses, Solomon, Daniel, Ezra and Paul were learned men. But the rest of the Bible's writers were not learned men. Some of the others, like Samuel, Isaiah, Luke, etc., may properly be called well educated men. But of the majority of its writers some may properly be called unlearned men, and the rest ignorant men, though none of them was unlearned and ignorant on what he wrote. But regardless of whether they were learned, semi-learned, unlearned or ignorant, they were all fallible; and when left to themselves, made mistakes, as can be seen by Moses' not circumcising his sons until forced thereto, and by his smiting the rock twice, instead of speaking to it as charged; as can be seen by David's mishandling Uriah, Absalom and Joab; as can be seen in Solomon's marrying so many wives, oppressing Israel, and mistakenly dealing with Jeroboam; as can be seen by Jonah's

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attempting to flee from the Lord, and being displeased with God's sparing Nineveh; as can be seen in Peter's denial of the Lord, and drawing back from fellowshipping with Gentile brethren at Antioch for fear of the Jews; and as can be seen by all the Apostles' forsaking Jesus at His capture, and in presuming without God's command to elect an Apostle, a work that God, by Jesus, reserved to Himself (John 15:16; Gal. 1:1). In addition to their being fallible, none of them, uninspired, had the ability to put the things revealed to them in the proper form and words. To give us an infallible record and presentation of God's revelation, the Bible's writers had to be made infallible, which alone could be accomplished by God's inspiring them to write; for fallible men would omit some things that should have been incorporated into their presentations, add some things that did not belong therein, and corrupt or very incompletely give what they did present therein. Hence the fallibility of the Bible's writers made it necessary for the God of perfect, balanced and dominating wisdom, power, justice and love, in order to secure infallibility in the presentation of His written revelation, to inspire its fallible writers. This argument is certainly of cogent force on our subject.

(3) The Bible's nature requires an inspired Bible. We have seen that in nature it is a Divine revelation; or to put it in another way, all its contents are a Divine revelation. Its contents consist of many doctrines, precepts, promises, exhortations, prophecies, histories and types. Some of its doctrines are simple, others of them are difficult, and the rest of them are a combination of simplicity and difficulty. To secure the infallible presentation of these in writing, its writers had to be infallible; particularly was this the case with prophecy, since many of its writers, the prophets, had no understanding of many of the things that they wrote, and an imperfect knowledge of most of the rest of the things that they wrote. This same thing can be said of the histories and biographies of

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the Bible. For apart from inspiration they would not have known what of historical and biographical materials of which they had knowledge they should select as a part of the Divine revelation or reject as not a part of the Divine revelation. We say this, because those histories and biographies are typical of future things. Doubtless their writers knew a great deal more of connected and other events than they incorporated in their writings. Hence they needed inspiration to guide them to the right selection and proper rejection of materials that they had on hand, and that, if uninspired, they would have certainly misused as to selection and rejection; for they were utterly ignorant of the typical character of the events that they narrated and, at least for the most part, of the fact of their typical character. Hence, inspiration was indispensable for them in the selection and rejection of materials at their hands. The doctrinal and ethical thoughts that they incorporated into the Bible were some of them not understood by their writers, in which case they had to be inspired to write them out correctly, to say nothing of infallibly. Others of them understood the difficult doctrinal and ethical thoughts that they wrote out and understood them by a process of reasoning, as, e.g., appears from the pertinent writings of Paul, particularly of Romans, Galatians and Hebrews, yet such needed inspiration to insure their infallible presentation of them.

The fact that all of the uninspired ablest thinkers and reasoners of the race, e.g., Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, Gautama, Confucius, Maimonides, Spinoza, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Darwin, Spencer, etc., erred so greatly in their theories of doctrine and ethics, certainly implies that, e.g., Paul unless inspired would have erred in his reasoning and writing out his doctrinal and ethical thoughts, to say nothing of his prophetic thoughts, some details of which he certainly did not fully understand. Of such doctrinal thoughts we might instance what he gave us on election,

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predestination, the fall, the curse, the ransom, Christ's threefold natures, justification by faith, sanctification, Israel, the hidden mystery, the kingdom, resurrection, the consummation. Apart from inspiration, how could Moses so accurately describe the nature and order of creation as even to be ahead of the findings of modern science, which in very many particulars corroborate Moses' account of creation? For we are not to forget that no human being witnessed the creative work described in Gen. 1. Its record must, therefore, be a matter of inspiration, as well as of revelation. Take, as another illustration, the law of justice. It is briefly summarized in the words, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. There is absolutely no duty that man owes to God and man not covered by this brief statement. Analyzing the law of duty-love, justice, to the neighbor, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, which Jesus explains to mean that whatsoever one desires His neighbor to do to him in thought, motive, word and act, he should do to him, we must conclude that it covers every duty relation into which man can come with his fellows. We stand amazed at the thought that there is no social relation possible but is completely covered, so far as duty-love, justice, is concerned, by these few words, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Only an omniscient mind could have thought out so completely comprehensive a law; and a human mind could not, therefore, have conceived it except by revelation, and written it out except by inspiration. Man's efforts to make the laws of justice fit the ever changing relations of man to man, have resulted in laws innumerable filling thousands of large volumes, laws that receive frequent additions, modifications, revisions and annulments. Thus the Roman law, current in continental European countries fills at least a thousand volumes. Thus the common law of Britain and America fills hundreds of

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others. Thus the special laws of Britain and the United States fill literally thousands of volumes. And what shall we say of the state, provincial and municipal laws of all these countries! All of these are the uninspired efforts of fallible men to govern the relations of man to man. But the inspired Bible condenses all of them and many not yet enacted, in so far as they are just, into the brief sentence, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, i.e., all things, whatsoever ye would that men do to you do ye even so unto them. No uninspired man had the ability to write out that sentence as a thought of his own invention. These considerations guarantee an inspired Bible.

(4) The Bible's descriptions of Christ's three natures, His character and His twenty-one offices require an inspired Bible. Even after these were revealed to reduce them to writing infallibly required such an inspired Bible to guarantee its infallibility. How easy to fall into mistakes it was on the subject of Christ's prehuman nature, can be seen in the gross errors introduced thereon during the Gospel Age. These errors range from the denial of His pre-existence altogether, to setting Him forth as God Almighty, the co-eternal, consubstantial and co-equal of the Father. To guard the Bible's writers on this phase of the subject, its writers had to be inspired to make them infallible. To guard them against the extremes of error on His carnation, His becoming human, errors that ranged from His alleged begettal by Joseph to the God-man theory, its writers had to be inspired to set Him forth in physical, mental, artistic, moral and religious perfection as a human, no more and no less, for the first thirty years of His earthly life. Certainly inspiration was necessary infallibly to set Him forth as He was undergoing the change from human to Divine nature, through the process of a new-creaturely begettal, quickening, growth, strengthening, balancing, crystallizing and birth. Any error in the slightest degree on any of these features, would have caused misconceptions,

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with resultant mischief. Then,-too, the Bible required inspiration to guarantee infallibility in its descriptions of His Divine nature in relation to God, the good and evil angels, the Church, the Great Company, the Ancient and Youthful Worthies and mankind now and hereafter. Thus the Bible's description of His three natures required the inspiration of its writers.

The same thing was necessary for its writers, to enable them adequately to describe His character, which, apart from revelation, they never could have conceived. Surely grace and beauty meet in that perfect character. All of the graces, the higher and lower primary graces, the secondary graces, and the tertiary graces, do not only exist in Him, but each exists in individual perfection in Him, as they also exist in Him in strength, balance and crystallization. Not only so, but the higher primary graces, to secure the proper balance between them and His other graces, in their perfection, balance and strength dominate all His other graces, giving them the proper strength, balance and perfection. Certainly the Bible's writers had to be inspired infallibly so to describe His character. While treating of the internal evidence of the Bible's being the Divine revelation, we pointed out 21 evil effects that the curse has wrought on mankind, and showed that for each of these effects of the curse Christ had a correlative office effective of its cure. How could uninspired men have adequately described these 21 curse features and the 21 offices of Jesus, each one designed to cure its correlative curse feature? Without inspiration they certainly would have missed one or more of these features of the curse and their correlative features of Christ's office, as well as have mixed them with more or less error. This becomes all the more manifest when we remember that from the piecemeal method in which they are presented, and from the fact that none of them is presented in its entirety by any one Biblical writer, none of their writers set out with the intention to enumerate all of

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them. Accordingly, we conclude that the three natures, the perfect character and the 21 offices of Christ as the cure of the 21 curse features, prove inspiration.

(5) The qualities of the Bible likewise require it to be inspired. Its main qualities are unity, diversity, harmony, sufficiency, truthfulness, infallibility, authoritativeness, skillfulness, adaptability, universality, dueness, progressiveness, efficiency, appealableness, practicability, sublimity, beauty, holiness, power, simplicity, indestructability. Later details will be given on each of these attributes of the Bible. Here they are introduced for their giving proof of the Bible's inspiration. When we consider that there were nine writers of the New Testament, and more than twenty-four writers of the Old Testament, that they, from the first to the last, lived 1700 years apart, the Old Testament writers doing their work within about twelve centuries, and the New Testament writers, within about fifty years, that they were of very diverse characters, talents, stations and education, that they wrote without system and piecemeal on the Divine revelation, that many of them wrote some things that they did not understand, that they wrote on principles, persons, things and events, past, present and future, and yet produced a work that is of utmost unity in doctrine, precept, promise, exhortation, prophecy, history and type, the Bible's unity becomes apparent and is a sure proof of its inspiration; for all of these add up to a plan that displays such a unity as is exemplified in nothing else in all literature, that has been put together with utmost diversity, as was just pointed out, and that yet maintains its unity. This is another evidence of the Bible's inspiration. And amid such unity and diversity, there is the utmost harmony between the seven above mentioned thought features of the Bible, between the parts of the plan to which they add up, in and between the agents, means, spirit and methods that go to make up this unity and diversity, making every part of it, when properly distributed, fit with utmost agreement

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with every other part of it. Such harmony amid such unity and diversity surely required an inspired Bible. The Bible in its beauty, sublimity and simplicity of thought and style gives us three others of its qualities that argue its inspiration as the most unique book in the world. In sublimity the oration which makes up the bulk of Deuteronomy, the arguments of the book of Job, the rhapsodies of Psalms and Isaiah and the visions of Revelation excel anything else in all literature, not to speak of the sublimity of Christ's farewell address in the upper room. There is also much sublimity in other Biblical writings, e.g., of other prophets and of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Note the sunbursts and rays of beauty in the writings just mentioned, and in the figurative sayings of Jesus. Note the simplicity of the Bible's historical writings and those of John, wherein sublimity and simplicity rival one another as to preeminence. It is simply impossible for human ability, no matter of how high an order, to unite in such supreme excellence the sublimity, beauty and simplicity of the Bible. These qualities can have been produced by inspiration only.

Sufficiency is a seventh attribute of the Bible that implies its inspiration; for by the sufficiency of the Scriptures we understand its perfection as the sole source of faith and the main rule of practice to be meant. There is in it no lack of anything as to teaching that goes to make it the sole perfect source of faith and the main perfect rule of practice. It needs nothing to be added to it to supply an alleged lack as to the source of faith; and apart from the Divine Spirit and providences, coming as they do from the same One as inspired the Bible, to help to an understanding of the application of some of its principles to very difficult matters of conduct there is nothing to be added to it to supply an alleged lack as to the rule of practice. Its being sufficient for true doctrine, for refutation of error, for correction of misconduct, for cultivation of good character and to work repentance

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and faith unto justification, to work sanctification of will, body and spirit, and to give victory in the Christian warfare in its parts and in its entirety, it must have been inspired, for no uninspired human ability has produced nor can produce a book of such sufficiency. Truthfulness is the eighth Biblical attribute requiring inspiration. This attribute covers all seven parts of the Bible. While most of its historical parts required only ordinary honesty and accuracy to give it truthfulness, such is not the case with all its histories, e.g., the record of creation; but when we come to the other six parts of the Bible almost nothing to some of them and nothing to the rest of them could human ability give the attribute of truth, e.g., the promises, prophecies and types. And so far as the doctrines, precepts and exhortations are concerned, only small fractions of them, e.g., in doctrine God's existence and some of His attributes very imperfectly understood, and in precept very imperfect features of duty-love to God and man, imperfectly understood, and imperfectly understood natural exhortations, can be of, and have come from human reason. Hence the other truth features of the seven parts of the Bible could have come from inspiration alone. And the presence in the Bible of those truth fractions of four of the seven Biblical parts that human reason had been able to reach by exercise of natural reason, does not imply that there they are not inspired. Hence the Bible's truthfulness required an inspired Bible. The infallibility of the Bible, its ninth attribute, required it to be inspired. Since only God is infallible, the only way an inspired Bible, written by fallible men, could be produced, is by Divine inspiration. This is so evident that it requires no proof beyond the mere statement of the fact. The authoritativeness of the Bible is its tenth attribute that implies that the Bible is inspired. Its authoritativeness is its right to be heartily believed and faithfully obeyed. But how could it make such a claim, if it is simply the product of human agents,

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since they would be arrogant indeed to make such a claim for a product of their own, having no higher authority than themselves. Such authoritativeness it could only then have, if God is its author, which, of course, implies its inspiration.

Skillfulness is the eleventh attribute of the Bible. The skillfulness with which the Bible has been written and put together is another evidence of its inspiration. This skillfulness is manifest, not only in what we have heretofore said and will yet say of its other qualities, but in the clearness of its statements designed to be understood by anybody and everybody and in the ambiguity of its statements designed to be hidden from the world and to be revealed to the elect only. In throwing together in apparent confusion, disconnection and disorder, partially discussed snatches of unrelated subjects here, there and elsewhere throughout the Bible, yet all, when rightly divided, forming a most harmonious and systematic whole, in its use of dark sayings in parable, type, prophecy and enigma, in its use of tens of thousands of figures of speech, consisting of at least 181 different kinds, like metaphors, similes, synecdoches, etc., etc., in its use of symbolic language based on objects of nature and art, like mountains for kingdoms, hills for republics, valleys for oppressed peoples, cities for religious governments, etc., etc., and in putting so much thought in so few words, certainly such skillfulness is superhuman and proves the Bible to be inspired. The adaptability of the Bible is a twelfth quality of the Bible and is another proof of its inspiration. It has parts adapted to childhood, parts to adolescence, parts to maturity and parts to old age; parts adapted to the unlearned, parts to the fairly well learned and parts to the very learned; parts adapted to the sinner, parts to the just and parts to the saint. It is adapted to people of all ranks, nations, races, religions and civilizations. It can be translated into any and every language without loss to its sense, excellencies and

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effectiveness, a thing of which no other book is capable, e.g., the Koran is said to be simple, sublime and beautiful in the original, all of which, however, it loses in translation, a remark that applies to the sacred books of heathen religions. Such adaptability of the Bible could not have been produced by uninspired writers; it is supernatural and thus inspired. The universality of the Bible is its thirteenth quality that proves its inspiration. We gave enough on this point while discussing its adaptability.

The dueness of the Bible is its fourteenth attribute that proves its inspiration. By its dueness we mean its giving its enlightenment when needed in point of time. With the changing conditions, situations, experiences and needs of God's people, the need of advancing and apposite light makes itself felt. And at those changes the Bible's dueness shows itself by giving the appropriate light exactly fitting such changing conditions, situations, experiences and needs of God's people. Such dueness has never yet failed, nor will it ever fail. How could uninspired writers have put such "meat in due season" in the Bible? Such an ability would require practical omniscience, which they lacked. It can be accounted for only on the basis of the Bible's inspiration. Closely related to the Bible's dueness is its progressiveness, which is presented as the Bible's fifteenth attribute proving its inspiration. Not only is this seen in its giving, as can be seen in the advancement of the light in the three parts of the Old Testament, Law, Prophets and Holy Writings, and in the three parts of the New Testament, history, doctrine and prophecy, and in the interrelation of the books of each of the Bible's two parts, as well as in each of these two parts within themselves, but it can be seen also in the progressive unfolding of its contents in the history of God's Gospel-Age peoples, first, in the Jewish Harvest, second, in the Interim and, third, in the Gospel Harvest. Fastening our attention on the Gospel Harvest, we note this quality acting in the

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reaping, sheaving and drying time of the Gospel Harvest, when not only the generalities of God's plan were progressively unfolded, but also the details necessary for the development of the Little Flock; and in the special threshing, winnowing, sifting and garnering time of the Gospel Harvest we see enacting before us this progressiveness of the Bible's unfolding in the details necessary for the development of the Great Company and Youthful Worthies, two of the three subordinate elect classes of God's plan. Such progressiveness could not have come from the writings of uninspired men. It argues their inspiration. Closely related to the adaptability of the Bible is its appealableness, which we present as our sixteenth attribute of the Bible in proof of its inspiration. It contains matters that appeal to people of every kind of character: the sinful, the righteous and the holy; as experience proves it appeals to people of every race: the white, the black, the yellow, the swarthy and the red, numbers of which accept it as God's revelation, to people of every nation, as is evident from its being accepted by people in every nation, to people of every class: rulers, clergy, aristocrats and the common people, to the people of every trade, as the ranks of labor prove; and in due time it will appeal to every individual of the race—in the Millennium, when the crucified Christ will draw all men unto Himself. How could uninspired men have written a book of such universal appeal?

The practicability of the Bible we offer as its seventeenth quality proving its inspiration. By its practicability we mean its usefulness. It is useful for the child, the youth, the mature and the aged. It is useful for the statesman, the teacher, the pupil, the financier, the trader, the leader, the led, the employer, the employee, the scholar, the ignorant, the husband, the wife, the parent, the child, the friend, the acquaintance, the official, the citizen, the sinner, the righteous, the holy, the ruler, the cleric, the aristocrat, the rich,

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the poor—in a word, it is useful for everybody. This being true, certainly uninspired men could not have been its writers; they must have been inspired. Closely related to the Bible's practicability is its efficiency, which will now be presented as the Bible's eighteenth quality. By its efficiency its ability to achieve its purposes is meant. Its purposes are to save the elect and to prepare the non-elect for their Millennial blessings. It saves the elect by having effected their repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus, thus leading them to justification. This is accomplished by clarifying pertinent truths to them and by energizing them unto repentance and faith. Furthermore, it effects their progress in the justified life ever nearer to consecration by giving them the appropriate enlightenment and energy to make such progress. More yet, it, by its enlightening and energizing power, effects their consecration, in which they give up self-will and world-will and accept, instead, God's will as their own. By its enlightening and energizing power it begat and quickened them of the Spirit, causes them to grow in grace, knowledge, and fruitfulness in service, strengthens, balances and perfects them therein, at the same time enables them to lay down their human all in sacrifice unto death, while keeping their wills dead selfward and worldward. And, finally, by its enlightening and energizing power it enables them in temptations and trials to fight the good fight of faith successfully, not only in the single great and small conflicts of the Christian warfare in detail, but in general makes them more than conquerors in that warfare as a whole; and thus it saves God's elect for glory, honor and immortality. Surely it has thus efficiency as an attribute in so far as saving the elect is concerned. As for the non-elect, it is efficient in preparing them for the Millennial blessings of Christ's reign, for by its enlightenment it reproves them for their sins; it teaches them measurably the principles of justice toward God and man; and gives them a

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witness of the coming Kingdom of God, in which all shall undergo the judgment process of instruction, a trial for life, stripes for misconduct and a final bestowment of life or death, dependent on obedience or disobedience. Surely in accomplishing these ends it is full of efficiency, which proves its inspiration.

Holiness is the nineteenth quality of the Scriptures witnessing to its inspiration. By the holiness of the Scriptures its internal harmony with good principles and its external activity in promoting good principles in its objects are meant. Accordingly, internally the Bible is in harmony with the Truth and its Spirit, and externally it promotes the Truth and its Spirit. Certainly its doctrines, precepts, promises, exhortations, prophecies, histories and types are in their nature, qualities, purpose and effects in harmony with the Truth and its Spirit, and promote these in the blessing of its objects. Whence came such holiness? Certainly not from uninspired men, as the characters, teachings and effects of heathen founders of religions prove. It is not the quality of their writings, let alone of their characters and works. Uninspired, the writers of the Bible would not have done as to holiness better than these. Hence, we conclude that the holiness of the Bible in its nature, contents and effects, exists because it is inspired. As the twentieth attribute of the Bible testifying to its inspiration, we present its power. It is living, i.e., energetic, and strong. It is permeated by God's power; for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. Its power enables the sinner to hate the sins that he loved and love the righteousness that he hated. Its power energizes him in repentance to turn from sin to righteousness, from error to truth, from unbelief to faith, from ignorance to knowledge. Its energy enables the justified to go from less to more righteousness; and when it energizes his justifying faith and this love of righteousness to become consecrating faith and love, it enables him to consecrate himself to the Lord; that

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power in the Word, when the high calling was yet open, begat him of the Spirit, and it enables him to grow in grace, knowledge and service. It enables him to crucify his fleshly disposition and lay down his human all unto death sacrificially, as it enables him to overcome the devil, the world and the flesh. Surely the Word of God is quick [energetic] and powerful. Whence did the Bible get such power? From uninspired writers? Nay; for uninspired writings, of which the world has a surplus, do not and cannot accomplish these things. Only an inspired Bible can do them.

Finally, the indestructability of the Bible as its twenty-first attribute, guaranteeing its permanence, is a proof of its inspiration; "for the Word of God liveth and abideth forever." Satan, the world and the flesh have striven to obliterate it. Through the apostacy of the Jews and the influence of surrounding idolatrous nations, Satan almost succeeded in putting it aside; but God saw to it that in the days of Josiah it was reclaimed from oblivion. Keen pagan philosophers like the keen Celsus, like the keener Porphyry and the Neo-Platonists, tried their hardest to destroy it; but it came forth with greater power from their onslaughts. Roman Emperors, e.g., Decius and Diocletian, with special thoroughness tried to have every copy of it and of its parts destroyed, exhausting the resources of torture and martyrdom in the attempt, and made a miserable failure therein. The papacy, in the dark ages, tried their best to hide it from the people; but it burst the chains that they had forged about it, and came forth in the Sardis period in partial circulation, and in the Philadelphia period in general circulation, and is now decidedly the most widespread and widespreading book in the world, the best seller of the best sellers. Atheism, materialism, agnosticism, pantheism, deism, rationalism, evolutionism and higher criticism have all sought to set it aside, either in part or in whole; but like its other enemies they have been defeated in the attempt, and out of the

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crucible it has come more luminous and life-giving than ever. Its blessed light in translations into a thousand and more languages and dialects, shines upon the dark places of the earth; and now among God's consecrated people it is shining more and more as we are approaching the full day. Why have uninspired writings not been subjected to the destructive efforts of enemies, as the Bible has? Many of them under a thousandfold less hard attacks have sunk into oblivion. Why has it come out of each attack with added prestige, and probative power and a more abundant ministry than before? In a word, why did it stand up undefeated under the most severe attacks, while attacks a thousandfold less severe would have destroyed most uninspired books? The answer is, it is indestructible and is such because it is inspired. With the indestructibility of the Bible as a proof of its inspiration we bring to an end our presenting the 21 chief attributes of the Bible in proof of its inspiration. Some of them are more, some of them are less cogent in probatory power, but all help to prove the Bible's inspiration.

(6) Our sixth argument in proof of the Bible's inspiration is its purposes. These may be reduced to two kinds: primary purposes and secondary purposes. Though so named, we will discuss the secondary purposes first. These are two: (1) the salvation of the elect as the faith class pre-Millennially, and (2) the salvation of all the obedient of the non-elect as the unbelief class Millennially. Considering the human family, God foreknew that some of its members could gain salvation under conditions that required a faith that will trust God when it cannot trace Him, and that some of its members could not trust Him out of sight, let alone under crucial trials that imperatively require a faith that trusts when and where it cannot trace God. Since the elect, as the faith class, can exercise such a faith, God gives them their trial under faith-requiring and exacting conditions, i.e., now when the present evil conditions demand it. But

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because the non-elect, as the unbelief class, cannot exercise such a faith, God does not, in this life, put them on trial for life; for if He would put them on trial for life amid faith-requiring and exacting conditions, which they have not the needed faith to meet successfully, every one of them would be everlastingly lost. To prevent this God shuts them up in their unbelief condition without now putting them on trial for life, reserving them for trial in the Millennium, when the conditions will not require a faith to which sight is denied. Accordingly, in the present life the Bible's purpose is now to save the faithful faith classes and to leave the unbelief classes over for the Millennium to have their opportunity to gain life. Hence during the pre-Gospel-Age times God gave their faith class the chance to win the election, and those successful therein gained, as Ancient Worthies, the privilege of attaining perfect humanity in the beginning of the Millennium, and princeship in the Kingdom and post-Millennially they will gain the opportunity of spirit existence. But during the Gospel Age God has been giving the rest of the faith class the opportunity of gaining the elective salvation, and at its end three of such elect classes will emerge from the Gospel-Age elective process: the Little Flock, which will receive Brideship with Christ, the Great Company, nobility, and the Youthful Worthies, princeship share with the Ancient Worthies.

The Bible, to secure its purposes with the elect, not only gives elaborate instructions for their help, but also comes invested with the power to enable them successfully, if faithful, to pass through two steps of salvation from their emergence from the worldly class by repentance and faith to justification and consecration, and also enables them to pass successfully through all of the stages and processes of sanctification and deliverance. Such elaborate instructions uninspired men could not give to their writings, since they imply God's pertinent wisdom, which could come to them by

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inspiration alone, and such power, energy, uninspired men could not impart to their writings, which is God's power, energy, and hence required inspiration to effect it. Under easier conditions the same principles will operate toward the non-elect. Hence the inspired Bible, with another part added to it Millennially, will be necessary to give them the necessary enlightenment and energy to win and keep the salvation then operating. Thus an inspired Bible must be had to effect the secondary purposes of the Bible—saving the faithful elect now and the faithful non-elect later. The primary purposes of the Bible are also two-fold: (1) To glorify God as the Bible's Source and as the Source of its effects on the elect and non-elect, and (2) to glorify Christ as the Bible's Agent and as the Agent of its effects on both of these classes. When we speak of the Bible's glorifying God as Source, and Christ as Agent of its above-mentioned effects as its secondary purposes, we are not to understand that God and Christ are exercising approbativeness for the sake of ostentatiousness—to show off. They desire the Bible to effect its primary purposes through effecting its secondary purposes, because it is for the good, the physical, mental, artistic, moral and religious good, of both the elect and the non-elect, to be brought, by the Bible's effect, to reflect credit upon God. In other words, such glory to God and Christ will be desired by and will please Them, because it is in harmony with good principles—the Truth and the Spirit of the Truth; for God's and Christ's pleasure is Their delight in Their creatures' delight in, and practice of good principles. Hence it is a noble desire in God and Christ that They desire to be glorified in the effects that the Bible now works in the elect and later on will work in the non-elect. But an uninspired Bible could not secure these two primary purposes of the Bible; for it must be inspired to effect its two secondary purposes, whereby the two primary purposes are secured. Praise our God and our Christ for Their

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noble characters, manifest in the primary and secondary purposes of the Bible, both proving its inspiration.

We now come to our seventh general proof for the Bible's inspiration—its arrangement proves its inspiration. Everyone at all conversant with the Bible knows that as to arrangement it is not constructed like a text-book. All text-books worthy of the name are systematically, logically and progressively arranged. Hence according to this arrangement one subject follows another in proper order, e.g., a text-book on arithmetic has such an arrangement: first we have a few general remarks, then come the numbers as sign values, then come addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of simple numbers, then these processes with compound numbers, especially as applied to money, measures, weight, time; then come factoring, greatest common divisor, least common multiple, fractions, common and decimal, ratio, proportion, percentage, interest, partnership, exchange, involution, evolution, arithmetical and geometrical progression and mensuration. In these arithmetical subjects we see a logical, orderly, progressing arrangement from the simple to the complex, then to the more complex and finally to the most complex. The same thing will be found to hold good in other good text-books, e.g., on grammar, music, geography, physics, chemistry, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, mechanics, calculus, etc.

But the Bible is not so constructed. Rather none of its subjects is completely and progressively discussed in any one place; for incomplete discussions of one subject are intermingled with incomplete discussions of often a half-dozen or more of other subjects. The Bible itself states that this is the case, as we read in Is. 28:10: "For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little." Especially is this the case in the Prophets, Psalms and the Types. And what complicates the matter more is that these confused intermixtures are found to abound in ambiguous sentences, dark

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speeches, figures, parables and hard sayings. For this reason the Bible is harder to unravel than a thousand Chinese puzzles (reputedly the hardest of all puzzles) compounded into one. The Lord so constructed the Bible to hide its thoughts now from the non-elect and to stumble them, which to understand would result in their great injury, and also to test the humility, meekness and faithfulness of the elect unto their trusting Him when they cannot trace Him; even as Is. 28:13, 16 shows. It is this apparent "confusion worse confounded" that is in part responsible for contradictory and contrary interpretations offered on the Bible, and for the formation of so many contradictory sects all claiming to base their creeds on the Bible, and quoting therefrom in alleged proof thereof.

But despite these apparent confusions and great diversities, the contents of the Bible, when it is rightly divided (2 Tim. 2:15), are a most harmonious unity. This is apparent when its passages on doctrines, precepts, promises, exhortations, prophecies, histories and types are construed according to its dispensations, ages, seasons and planes of being; for so divided, all its passages add up to the most marvelous and harmonious unity, despite the great diversity of its subjects. Let it be further noted that not one of the Bible's writers has given anything like a complete view of its teachings. Rather greater or lesser snatches of its subjects characterize all of them. Yet when each one's contribution is added to all the others' contributions in the right division of the Word of Truth, a most unique, logical, orderly, harmonious, beautiful, sublime and practical unity results, by far surpassing man's ability to invent, containing the highest wisdom and the most exact knowledge, meeting the exactions of the severest logic of the head, and satisfying the deepest cravings of the heart. The result of such right dividing of the Word of Truth is even more wonderful than if an immense African river should fall over a high precipice into the Atlantic, then separate into billions

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of drops mingling with the Atlantic's water, and after being tossed about for centuries finally come as separate drops to the shores of South America and there combine again, separate and distinct from the Atlantic's water, as they were before falling over that African precipice. Or to use another simile, the marvelous result of such right dividing of the Word of Truth is more wonderful than if billions of letters of the alphabet, all separated from one another, were thrown down in utmost confusion upon the ground and would be found to have formed themselves into an epic poem finer than Paradise Lost. To have thrown the thoughts of the Bible together in such apparent confusion and yet by their right division to find them a unity by far surpassing the most brilliant inventions of man, thoroughly implies the Bible's inspiration. Hence our seventh argument, the Bible's arrangement, proves its inspiration; for men detachedly giving snatches of many deep subjects over a period of 17 centuries, in such apparent confusion, could not uninspired have produced such a stupendous wonder as God's plan, which enfolds in its ample embrace every passage of the Bible, and reduces "confusion worse confounded" to perfect symmetry.

(8) The Bible's uses are an eighth argument proving its inspiration. The Scriptures set forth quite a number of uses that the Bible has. One of these uses is to teach us what we should believe; another is to teach us what we should not believe; a third is to teach us what we should not be and do; and a fourth is to teach us what we should be and do. This is expressly taught in 2 Tim. 3:16: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine [to teach what we should believe], for reproof [to give refutation of what we should not believe], for correction [to cleanse us from what we should not be or do], for instruction in righteousness [to teach us what we should be and do]." And this it does to the end that God's people may be complete, fully equipped for every

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good work, as v. 17 teaches: "that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." To accomplish these four very important works the Bible must be inspired; for as seen by the effects and shortcomings of the uninspired writings of the greatest heathen religious teachers, of the ablest philosophers and of the keenest ethicists, uninspired writings would err in various particulars as to doctrine, refutation, correction and instruction in righteousness, and thus fail to attain completely these four uses of the Bible; and to accomplish these four things, infallibility as to these four things is necessary, and to attain infallibility fallible men must be inspired. There are other than the above-given four uses of the Bible, all of which require inspiration to insure the infallibility necessary to accomplish them. It contains passages that work sorrow and hatred for sin and the determination to give it up, and love for righteousness and the determination to practice it, in other words to effect true repentance. But uninspired writings would assuredly contain some false teachings and would compromise the effecting of these results, as we see is the case with the merely uninspired human writings. Against such compromise inspired writings are a safeguard, as erring human writings are a threat of it. Another, a sixth, use of the Bible is to work a justifying faith, which to be competent must be born of the inspired Truth of the Bible; for an erroneous teaching on a justifying faith would not work it, and thus would prevent the effect of such a faith, i.e., justification by faith. Hence the necessity of an inspired Bible to guarantee its infallibility in teaching the Truth effective of a justifying faith producing faith justification.

A seventh use of the Bible is to work a consecrating faith and love. A consecrating faith is a more advanced faith than that of justification; for the latter merely trusts the promises involving justification, while the former enables one to trust God where sight is denied. So also a sanctifying love is a more advanced love than

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that belonging to justification as a fruit of the latter; for love as a fruit of justification is merely duty love, while a consecrating love partakes in a measure of disinterested love also. If infallible teachings are needed to develop the lower forms of faith and love connected with justification, how much more are they needed to develop the higher forms of consecrating faith and love! An eighth use of the Bible has been during the call of the Gospel Age to beget of the Spirit, a thing which is effected by the infallible Word of Truth, the Word of God (Jas. 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:23), which proves its inspiration. A ninth use of the Bible is its work of sanctification of body and spirit (John 17:17), accomplishing the death of the former as an acceptable sacrifice unto God, a thing that requires an inspired Bible to accomplish, and accomplishing the latter through the application of minute details of the Truth needed to work out the details of developing the heavenly affections and the higher and lower primary, the secondary and tertiary graces, in balancing the higher primary graces with one another, and in this balance making them dominate by suppression when necessary, by use when necessary, the lower primary, secondary and tertiary graces. The intricacy of this work accomplished by the Word of God requires its inspiration; for uninspired, fallible human writings would surely vitiate it and thus prevent it. As a tenth use of the Bible we point out its delivering work. It is by the inspired Word as a weapon (Eph. 6:17), as an armor (11) and as an energization (Rom. 1:16; Heb. 4:12) that we fight the good fight of faith. Its battles are so detailed, intricate and subtile, that to meet its subtilities, details and intricacies successfully, an infallible Word is necessary to overcome our enemies; for an uninspired Word could not penetrate the depth, length, breadth and height of this warfare. It would mislead or fail us in its mazes. Only an omniscient mind could outplan and outmatch the devil, the world and the flesh in this warfare. And that omniscient

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mind put the pertinent needed infallible information in the Bible for our use in this fight, inspiration.

(9) The users of the Bible need an inspired Bible, that by its infallibility, guaranteed by its inspiration, will supplement their weakness as to willing and doing according to God's good pleasure. Confessedly the Bible's users, God's faithful people, are encompassed by infirmity of mind, heart and will. Left to their own powers, they would sure fail to know, to desire, to will and to do the Lord's good pleasure. Hence they need a help that will unfailingly give them the needed knowledge, the needed motives and the needed strength to do God's will. God offers them these in and by the Bible. But unless the Bible, through inspiration, were infallible, it would fail of accomplishing this. Not only so, but it, by fallibility, which would become its by lack of inspiration, would directly contribute to giving them erroneous knowledge as to that will, false and therefore ineffectual motives to arouse to desire to do that will and weak and ineffective volitions to effect that will. But inspired and thus infallible, the Bible would give them true pertinent knowledge amid all life's circumstances and experiences as to what that will is and as to what they are to do as to it, holy and energizing motives to make them desire to fulfill that perfect will in all life's various conditions and affairs, and power to will and do that will. The users of the Bible would thus find it sufficient for knowledge, motive and power for every one of the ten uses discussed in two preceding paragraphs. Accordingly, the users of the Bible require an inspired Scripture.

(10) The Bible's problems require an inspired Bible to solve them. Let us note some of these problems: Creation, the origin of sin in sinless beings in its relation to the sovereignty and character of God and the creature's free will, the permission of evil and its harmony with the sovereignty and character of God, the curse in its twenty-one features, the remedy for the curse in these twenty-one features, the providence of

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God in human history in general, and in that of His people in particular, the carnation of the Logos, the Ransom, election and free grace, reconciliation between God and man, the bringing into existence of the New Creation, the resurrection, final rewards and punishment. Philosophers and heathen and nominal-church theologians have wrestled with these problems, and have as to almost all of them given them up in despair of their solution. And their partial solution of some of them is quite unsatisfactory. If the keenest human minds by reason have failed to solve them, certainly less keen human minds by reason must fail to solve them. None of the Bible's writers, if left to his own unaided powers, could have solved them. And the solution of them is so responsible a thing that the all-wise God would not have entrusted the explanation of their solution to the unaided minds of human writers. Yea, their solution is so hard that God could not safely have let it be done by that measure of illumination with which He has favored the non-apostolic star-members. As His authoritative solutions of those problems He could not have let them rest with His revealing them to certain ones, trusting them thereafter to write them out of themselves. They are so commandingly important that they required inspiration to set them forth aright. Especially was this of absolute necessity, since these solutions were never given fully in any one place; but piecemeal, scattered here and there throughout the Bible. Hence we conclude that the problems that were mentioned above and the solutions that God gave in the Bible required the inspiration of its writers to guarantee their proper setting forth.

(11) The wording of the Bible required its inspiration in order to the proper selection of the words with which to set forth the thoughts to be revealed in the Bible. Even in ordinary matters, care is needed in the selection of words to convey clearly one's thoughts. But especially is this necessary in important matters, e.g., in legal matters, contracts, wills, etc. How much

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more so would this be necessary in setting forth the Divine revelation, because of the all importance of making God's plan clear and operative as due. This was all the more necessary when we consider that many of the Bible's writers wrote things which they did not understand. Added to this is the fact that there are many things in God's revelation that He did not desire the unjustified to understand, still others that He did not desire the unconsecrated to understand, and many of them that He did not desire even the consecrated to understand until they were due. Hence the Bible's parables, mysteries, the dark and hard sayings, etc., not understood by most of their writers, had to be clothed in precise language, so that when due they could be clearly understood. Moreover, Bible thoughts had to be so stated that their sense was precise. Not infrequently its arguments depend upon whether a thing is stated in the singular or plural, e.g., Gal. 3:16, "seed" not "seeds." Since in languages like the Greek and Hebrew there are many synonyms, antonyms, analogous and contrasted words, great care had to be exercised to select the one that would convey the exact shade of thought intended, a thing that could not have been done by those like the prophets (1 Pet. 1:10-12) who wrote of things that they did not understand. The Hebrew language, as contained in the Old Testament, is poor in vocabulary, having, including 2668 proper nouns, only 8674 words, or exclusive of proper nouns only 6006 words. Some of these have very many different meanings, and some of them are strict synonyms. These facts make it very necessary to be very discriminating as to which word to use, a thing that one writing things not understood by him, like some doctrines, most prophecies and all types, makes it impossible for the uninspired to do. Since the sense of sentences depends so much upon precision of language, no unknown or uncertain sense could be properly expressed unless inspiration of the words used sets in. Hence we hold that not only the sense of

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the Scriptures is inspired, but the very words by which that sense was expressed, had to be inspired; for a small change in the selection of words would give a different thought. Hence in putting His revelation into writing, God inspired the writers to use the very words that He chose to express His thoughts in the Bible.

(12) The Bible's enemies required that the Bible be inspired. We may classify its enemies into three kinds; those who are professedly inimical, those who mean to be its friends, but who lightly esteem and disparage it, and those who highly esteem it, but misrepresent its teachings unto its disparagement. Among those who have been professedly inimical to it we may, as of ancient times, name Celsus and Porphyry, who wrote learnedly against the Bible. Celsus was completely refuted by Origen; and Porphyry was fully answered by Eusebius of Caesarea. Among those who in modern times have been professedly inimical to it may be mentioned Bolingbroke, Hume, Paine, Bradlaugh, Ingersoll, the last three of whom were superficial but able scoffers, and all of whom have been thoroughly refuted by defenders of the Bible in their times. In modern times higher critics like Vatke, Baur, Strauss, Renan, Graf, Kuenen, Wellhausen, Dillman, Driver, Cheyne, etc., while acting ostensibly as friends of the Bible, holding professorships for its defense and interpretation, but giving it the Judas kiss, betrayed it to its sworn enemies. These have been refuted by men like Neander, Hengstenberg, Zahn, Koenig, Rupprecht, Orr, Green, Urquhart, Sayce, etc. In modern times evolutionists like Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, Spencer, have attacked phases of the Bible and have been soundly refuted by men, Bible defenders, like S. J. Harrison, Wilford Hall, Mendel, Bateson, Dawson, etc.

The above-mentioned higher critics and evolutionists, as well as a number of the above-mentioned professed enemies of the Bible, were men of high caliber of intellects. And an uninspired Bible, written for the most part by unlearned men, would have made it a

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mark easy to hit and a position easy to take. God, foreknowing the caliber of many Bible opponents, could not safely or wisely have let it be the work of uninspired men; for they would have been sure to make mistakes in their statements on all seven lines of Biblical thought, doctrinal, ethical, promissory, hortatory, prophetic, historical and typical, which mistakes would not have escaped the attention of its able opponents, and that to the great disparagement of the Bible. Hence the opponents of the Bible made it necessary that it be inspired. But actually neither the openly inimical nor the pretended friends of the Bible have been its most damaging and dangerous handlers. Rather, some friends of the Bible, with all good intentions, have been its greatest disparagers; for truth has been most wounded in the house of its friends. These include ancient, medieval and modern churchmen. These have taught, as Scriptural doctrines, things blasphemous of God, and perverse and derogatory of the Bible, like human immortality, the consciousness of the dead in torment or bliss, eternal torment, absolute predestination of a few to bliss and of all the rest to eternal torment, the creedal trinity, God-manship, the Holy Spirit as a person, God's predestinating the fall of angels and men into sin, hierarchaism, purgatory, transubstantiation, the omnipresence of Jesus' human body, receiving with the mouth the actual body and blood of Jesus in the communion, mass, auricular confession, union of state and church, conversion of the world and the Church's reign over it a thousand years before Christ's Second Advent, various no-ransom theories, Jesus taking back His humanity in His resurrection, His visibility in the flesh at His second Advent, no future probation for the non-elect, the judgment day as doom's day and a period of 24 hours, the annihilation of the universe at that time, the resurrection of the very body that is laid away in death, the righteous spending eternity playing golden harps and singing Psalms and the wicked in physical and mental torment

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forever. Such and other teachings have grossly misrepresented God and the Bible, and coming from friends of the Bible, have done it more harm than the mistreatment that it has received from all its other disparagers combined; for they palmed off these errors as true Bible teachings. Had uninspired men written the Bible, they would undoubtedly have incorporated some of these errors in the Bible and thus would have made it impossible to refute them from the Bible. But an inspired Bible, being free of errors and containing only infallible truth, contains within itself powerful refutations of these errors.

(13) Closely related to the foregoing point is this, that the Bible's defenders had to have an inspired Bible to be able to refute the three kinds of Bible attackers discussed in the two preceding paragraphs. As a matter of fact, God, foreknowing the rise and time of the rise of these three classes of errorists, inspired the Bible's writers to put such things in the Bible as refute each of the foreknown errors, and caused these refutations to become due to be seen by God's servants at, or shortly after the time that each of these errors came to the fore, e.g., God allowed higher criticism in the form of the documentary theory, (e.g., that the five books of Moses did not proceed from his pen, but from eight to eleven centuries later were compounded by editors from the writings of six to eight uninspired authors), to set forth its pertinent theory; then after higher critics had, on the documentary theory, fired their shots, He brought out the fact that through the Hebrew and Greek letters being also numerals, the numerals of every sentence, paragraph, section and book of the Bible were constructed in exact multiples of seven. Take, for example, the first word of the Gospel of Matthew, biblos. In addition to its meaning, book, its letters are numerals, which (using the English names for its letters) are as follows b=2, i=10,

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b=2, 1=30, o=70 and s=200. Hence the word also stands for 2+10+2+30+70+200=314.

As stated above, all sentences, paragraphs, sections and books of the Bible are constructed in exact multiples of seven. This fact utterly destroys the documentary theory; for how could editors, unaware of Biblical numerics have compounded words and sentences of six to eight books into one treatise, and every sentence, paragraph, section and book come out in exact multiples of seven? Again, the number of words in the Hebrew and Greek testaments in each case total in exact multiples of seven. Additionally, the number of words of each book comes out in multiples of seven. Moreover, each book contains words of multiples of seven not found in any other book of the Bible. Then there are in the Bible elaborate multiples of 11, which are usually connected with the numerics of its books and their writers. Then by neighborhood numerics, i.e., if allowance is made for the deduction of a numeric value of from 1 to 6, the numerics would come out by sevens, God points out that errors would come out on the subject covered by the involved neighborhood numerics. A haphazard slapping together of the writing of from six to eight authors by various editors could not have resulted in these numerical phenomena. Even if they had tried to construct their product on the basis of numerics, they could not have accomplished it, let alone produce histories, prophecies, etc., that read so naturally as the Bible; for such a task requires omniscience, which these alleged editors did not have. Thus we see how Biblical numerics require inspiration; and hence defenders of the Bible need this as a sure refutation of higher criticism. Not only so, but every other error that has arisen in the Gospel Age, after making its appearance, received its refutation by new Biblical light then becoming due. How could uninspired men have furnished such a so-to-speak made-to-hand armory so much needed by the Bible's defenders against every error arising during the Gospel Age?

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Certainly their need and its satisfaction by the Bible's due truths prove its inspiration; for great were these needs and without their supply its defenders would have been driven from the field of controversy; and an uninspired Bible would have failed to supply them. Hence an inspired Bible is guaranteed and proven by its always supplying the needs of its defenders with due truth to overthrow these three kinds of errorists.

(14) Our final general argument for the inspiration of the Bible is its blessing people for eternal life and blessing them eternally. Uninspired books at best are temporal in doing good. The transitoriness of almost all uninspired books is written on their face; and actual experience proves that their death set in shortly. A few of them live for centuries, e.g., those of Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton. But these carry in their vitals the seeds of death because of the numerous errors of all of them and the wrong morals of some of them which will not let them have vogue in a perfect order such as the Millennium will introduce. Even educational books that are true will have to give way to books that incorporate advances in knowledge not had when the best of those of the present were written. Perfect men uninspired will produce finer literature, science, art, etc., than the very finest produced during the reign of sin, with the result that the latter will sink into oblivion in the vogue of the former. But the permanent mission of blessing that is the portion of the Bible could come from its inspiration alone; for only Divine omniscience, inspiration, could produce a work that will fit men for eternal life and bless them eternally. As fading as fallen humanity's greatest books are, so unfadable and eternal must God's inspired book be to be adapted to giving eternal life and to be fitted to minister everlasting blessing to body, head, heart and will. It required omniscience, inspiration, to make it fit for such a mission; for how could uninspired men have produced a work giving eternal life? And how could they have put into that work instruction

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and inspiration to give blessings eternally? Not knowing the conditions and the needs of the ages of glory, how could they have produced a book adapted to them and conferring the needed blessings? Only God could have done this, and thus inspire the writers with the needed help to produce such a book. Only an inspired book could be the Word of God. And only the Word of God could be such a permanent blessing to save and keep saved. And that "word of God liveth [works energetically] and abideth [endures] for ever," a fact that could be guaranteed only by its origin in Divine inspiration.

As was pointed out above, the only ones who were witnesses of inspiration as an act were God and His inspired agents. Hence theirs is the only testimony available for the fact of inspiration as a witnessed act. But the facts that the Bible is a Divine revelation, that its records are true and that its writers were honest and good men and accredited messengers of God, make their testimony to their inspiration highly credible. Moreover, some of them attest the inspiration of others, e.g., St. Peter does this of Paul (2 Pet. 3:15, 16). The Bible presents its witness on inspiration, as on other subjects, not dogmatically, but suggestively, to arouse to investigation. It will be recalled that in discussing its inspiration we gave, first, some general thoughts thereon and promised to give the proof thereof from three standpoints: (1) general Biblical considerations; (2) specific Bible passages and (3) Biblical facts. We have already treated of the first of these lines of proof and desire now to take up the second—specific Bible passages. These are very numerous and we will content ourselves with dealing briefly with the main ones.

We will first prove that the Old Testament was inspired, and thereafter prove this of the New Testament. For the first point the first set of passages that we will discuss comes under the thought that Jesus and the Apostles accepted the view of inspiration believed

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in by their contemporary Jews as the custodians of God's oracles (Rom. 3:2). The Jews of that time as such custodians believed in the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament. They believed that the Law, the Prophets and the Holy Writings came directly from God, who used their writers as His mouthpieces and penmen. This accounts for the very great reverence with which they regarded those writings; and they counted it one of their greatest losses that with Malachi inspiration ceased. This view of the Jews, that the Old Testament was Divinely inspired both in thought and words, Jesus and the Apostles shared with them. If this can be proved, it will for Bible believers prove the inspiration of the Old Testament. That Jesus believed this of the Old Testament is seen from the way He used it. When tempted He appealed to, "It is written" (Matt. 4:1-10). He does the same repeatedly in the sermon on the mount. At Nazareth He appealed to the Scriptures as Divinely forecasting His ministry (Luke 4:17-21). He charged the Israelites to read it, because it gave God's witness of Him (John 5:38, 46, 47; 8:17, 18). He called it the Word of God (Mark 7:13). He held that not the minutest thing of the Old Testament would pass away unfulfilled, yea, that rather heaven and earth would pass away than that the smallest feature of it—jot or tittle, the equivalent of the English expression, "dot of the i and crossing of the t"—would be unrealized. He showed that the Law and the Prophets, the Mosaic dispensation, as well as its writings, the two senses of this expression, were God's written revelation in force over Israel until the Gospel dispensation started; and He showed that the Law's minutest feature cannot fail (Luke 16:16, 17).

Some have thought that Jesus contradicted various things of the Law, e.g., on sabbath keeping (Matt. 12:1-8), on hating enemies (Matt. 5:43, 44), on divorce (Matt. 19:3-12), on fasting (Matt. 9:14, 15) and on unclean meats (Matt. 15:11, 12, 17; Mark 7:15-19). Such who so think fail to see that it was the misinterpretations

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and traditions of the scribes that Jesus was contradicting, not God's Word. They had made a veritable slavery of sabbath-keeping with traditions of man-made ordinances which destroyed its spirit, making man exist for its benefit, not it for man's benefit (Mark 2:27). Against these abuses Jesus taught, not against resting on the Sabbath. It was perversion that the scribes taught, that one should hate his enemies, which is nowhere taught in the Old Testament; hence Jesus in this matter rejected the wrong teachings of the scribes, not the teachings of the Old Testament. As to divorce, our Lord did not contradict what Moses said on the subject, but explained that for the time being, on account of the great degradation—"the hardness of your hearts"—of the people God had tolerated divorce for a while, until the people could be elevated from their degradation unto appreciating and living the original institution of marriage, which under proper teaching by Christ's time they should have been able to do. As to fasting, the Law prescribed but one day's fast in the year, i.e., on the day of atonement. But by their additions to the Law the Pharisees required it twice a week. It was this abuse, not a right use, of fasting that Jesus disapproved. As for unclean meats, Jesus did not contradict the Law on that subject. The Law proscribed certain meats for typical reasons, and, as the antitype was about to set in, Jesus set it forth, i.e., that false doctrines should not be accepted and wrong practices enacted. He announced that for the new dispensation men were not defiled by Levitically unclean meats, but by unclean teachings and acts. That He did not set aside the type until the antitype came, is manifest from the vision given Peter (Acts 10:9-16). Nay, Jesus did not contradict the Law. Nor was His introducing antitypes of things connected with the Law a contradiction, but a confirmation of it as valid and to be completed by something higher.

On the contrary, Jesus teaches that the Old Testament cannot be abolished, dissolved, abrogated, as

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means the original for the word translated broken in John 10:35. Jesus everywhere reverences the Old Testament as God's Word (Mark 7:13; John 10:35). If it is God's Word, its writers must have been inspired to write it, or it would not be His, but man's word. The Apostles treated it in the same way as Jesus. They expounded it as God's Word; they quoted it as proof for their teachings as being from God, e.g., St. Paul quoted Ps. 2:7; Is. 55:3; Ps. 16:10 in Acts 13:33-35, to prove Jesus' resurrection, as he quoted Is. 6:9, 10 in Acts 28:25-27; to prove that God's Spirit forecast Israel's unbelief, as Jesus also quoted it in Matt. 13:14, 15 and John, in 12:39, 40. In Hebrews Paul quoted from the Old Testament repeatedly, assuring us that the things quoted were uttered by the Holy Spirit (Heb. 3:7; 9:8; 10:15). Old Testament sayings are repeatedly spoken of as God's sayings by the Apostles (Heb. 4:4; Acts 2:17; 3:21; 4:25). Accordingly, we see that Jesus and the Apostles held the same doctrine on inspiration as the Jews held, that the Old Testament was the Word of God, God's speech, God's utterance. Had they not held it, they would have rebuked the Jews thereover, as falsely teaching, as they did as to their real false teachings. Instead of so doing, they endorsed their views, both by their theories and practices. Hence we conclude that the Jews were right in regarding the Old Testament as God's Word. Hence He inspired its writers, or it would not have been His Word, but their word. Our first proof is given.

We present a second argument for the inspiration of the Old Testament. The various names that Jesus and the Apostles called the Old Testament prove its inspiration. It was given by them, first of all, the name, the Scripture, and the Scriptures. Originally the word meant merely writing. But it in time received a nobler meaning—one designating it to be, by preeminence, the writing of all writings, i.e., God's writing, or writings, the Oracles of God, Scripture, or Scriptures (Rom. 3:2; Acts 7:38; Heb. 5:12; 1 Pet. 4:11).

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The New Testament 52 times gives this name to the Old Testament. We will cite some of these occurrences: Mark 12:10; Luke 4:21; John 7:38, 42; Acts 8:32, 35; Rom. 4:3; Gal. 3:8; 1 Tim. 5:18; Jas. 2:8; 1 Pet. 2:6. These are occurrences of the word in the singular, Scripture. A few passages using the plural, Scriptures, are: Matt. 21:42; Mark 12:24; Luke 24:27; John 5:9; Acts 17:2, 11; Rom. 1:2; 1 Cor. 15:3; 2 Tim. 3:15; 2 Pet. 3:16. This name meant to the Jews, to Jesus and the Apostles what the word Bible means to a true Christian—God's inspired message. Frequently they speak of its fulfilment as that of an inspired thing (Mark 15:28; Luke 4:21; John 13:18; 17:12; 19:24, 28, 36, 37; Matt. 26:54, 56). We are to remember that before the New Testament was written this name was given to God's pre-Gospel-Age revelation. A second name they gave it: Moses and the Prophets, or the Law and Prophets (Luke 16:29, 31; 24:27; John 1:45; Acts 26:22; 28:23; Matt. 5:17; 7:12; 11:13; 22:40; Luke 16:16). Repeatedly the Law, the Pentateuch, is called God's Law (Luke 2:23, 24, 39). What the name prophet means is very evident from the fact that Moses was made God's prophet and Aaron was made the prophet—mouthpiece—of Moses (Ex. 4:10-16; 7:1, 2). Thus in writing the Pentateuch Moses was God's mouth and the prophets, etc., writing the rest of the Old Testament were God's mouth. He spoke through them as His mouth—inspiration! Thus the New Testament calls the Old Testament the Prophets, or Prophecy (Rom. 16:26; 1 Pet. 1:10-12; 2 Pet. 1:19-21). All of this is but a synonym of inspiration. A third name that Jesus and the Apostles give the Old Testament is, the Word, and commandments, of God, which proves that its human writers wrote as God inspired them; for it was not the word of man, but the Word of God. The following are some citations that call the Old Testament the Word of God: Matt. 15:3, 6, 9; Mark 7:13; John 10:35-38; Rom. 10:17; Eph. 6:17; 1 Thes. 4:15; Heb. 4:12; 1 Pet. 1:23-25.

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Hence those who preached the contents of the Old Testament as it became due in the Jewish Harvest are described as preaching the Word of God (Luke 3:2; 5:1; 8:21; 11:28; Acts 11:1; 13:5, 7, 44-49; 1 Thes. 2:13; 1 John 2:14; Rev. 1:9; 6:9; 20:4). These three names used by Jesus and the Apostles of the Old Testament imply its inspiration.

The New Testament gives illustrations of certain Old Testament persons and its parts as inspired. Thus Jesus speaks of David as being inspired, "doth David in Spirit call," "David himself said by the Holy Spirit," when He distinguished between David's Lord (Jesus) and Jehovah and spoke of the Former's exaltation to the Latter's right hand (Matt. 22:43; Mark 12:36, compared with Ps. 110:1). Thus Matthew (1:22, 23) tells us that God spoke in prophecy by Isaiah of the virgin birth of Jesus (Is. 7:14). St. Peter tells us that God spoke of the Millennium as times of refreshing and restitution of all things by the mouth of all the holy prophets (Acts 3:19-21-24). He and the other Apostles tell us that God by the mouth of David spoke of the kings, rulers and people rejecting Christ (Acts 4:24-27; Ps. 2:2, 6). St. Paul tells us that God in the Old Testament times spoke through the prophets (Heb. 1:1). He tells us in Heb. 3:7 that Ps. 95:7-11 was spoken by the Holy Spirit, as he also tells us in Heb. 10:15-17 that Jer. 31:31-34 was spoken by the Holy Spirit. In fact, there are literally thousands of quotations and allusions in the New Testament to Old Testament passages and personages, whose uses by Jesus and the Apostles prove their inspiration. And they do not make such quotations and allusions by way of limiting inspiration to such quotations and allusions, but as illustrations of their understanding that the entire Old Testament is inspired.

God definitely made promise of inspiration to several Old Testament writers. When Moses in his humility and meekness, shrinking back from undertaking the mission of Israel's deliverance, hesitated to undertake

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it, God promised to be His utterance for him, i.e., God promised to inspire him, making him God's mouthpiece. And if God was such to him in his oral addresses for a little while to but one generation of Israel, the last one in Egypt, how much more so when he wrote out the Pentateuch to be instruction to all generations of Israel, as well as to all generations of the Church. This was all the more necessary, because unwritten traditions would be sure in process of time and apostacy to be corrupted, as we see from the pertinent traditions of the Jewish and Romanist teachers. Jeremiah is another illustration of God's promising inspiration to him as a prophet of the Lord in his speeches and writings. This is set forth in Jer. 1:4-9. Jeremiah, according to these words, was a humble, reticent man, who, therefore, shrank back from undertaking the Divinely proffered mission. Accordingly, the Lord encouraged him very movingly, assuring him that He had given him prenatal help to fit him to undertake the proffered work (v. 5). When he demurred, referring to his inability and immaturity, God gently dissuaded him from so saying, assuring him that he would undertake the mission and that he would speak all that the Lord would charge him to speak. He encouraged him not to fear, since God would be on his side to deliver him. Thereupon God gave him the words that he should speak. And this he did throughout his 40 years' ministry. While we are not expressly told that this was God's procedure with all the prophets, we may be sure that He gave every one of them his needed encouragement and put His words into their mouths, as they all assure us of this last thing; for they delivered their messages as God's messengers, mouthpieces.

Old Testament writers make the distinct claim that they were inspired to write their part of the Bible. Thus David made this claim: "David the son of Jesse said, even the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, even the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, The Spirit of the Lord spake by me,

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and His word was in my tongue" (2 Sam. 23:1, 2). Isaiah makes the claim that his utterances were God's declarations: "The vision of Isaiah … which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem … Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, etc., etc." (Is. 1:1, 2). These words apply to the first part of his book, chapters 1—39; the following words apply to the second part of his book, chapters 40—66: "The glory of the Lord shall be revealed; and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord [Isaiah] hath spoken it" (Is. 40:5). Isaiah frequently speaks of himself as the Lord's mouth, the one through whom God spoke (Is. 1:20; 30:2; 55:11; 58:14; 62:2). Jeremiah makes the same claim. This is made in a passage that we used in the preceding paragraph, when we pointed him out as an example of one who had been promised inspiration by God (Jer. 1:4-10). This feature is especially covered in vs. 4 and 9: "The word of the Lord came unto me … Then the Lord put forth His hand, and touched my mouth; and the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth." Ezekiel likewise says the same thing of himself: "The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest" (Ezek. 1:3). Repeatedly other prophets declared that God gave them a message to deliver (Hos. 1:1; Joel 1:1; Amos 1:1, 3; Ob. 1; Jonah 1:1; Mic. 1:1; Hab. 1:1; Zeph. 1:1; Hag. 1:1; Zech. 1:1; Mal. 1:1). This is strong on our point.

Over 2,000 times the Old Testament declares that the messages that it gives are God's messages, sayings, utterances, etc. In the Pentateuch alone over 500 times the following and similar expressions occur: "The Lord said unto Moses"; "The Lord spake unto Moses, saying"; "The Lord called unto Moses, and spake to him out of the tabernacle, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them"; "God spake all these words, saying." Let us remember over against higher critics, who deny the Mosaic authorship of the

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Pentateuch, that he most solemnly warned against one falsely speaking for God and adding or subtracting from His words (Deut. 4:2). In the historical books and poetical books of the Old Testament expressions like, "The Lord said"; "The Lord spake, saying"; "Thus saith the Lord"; "The word of the Lord came," occur about 300 times; and all of them teach that God gave the pertinent words. In the 16 prophetical books of the A.V. the expressions, "The Lord said unto me"; "Thus saith the Lord God"; "Thus saith the Lord"; "The word of the Lord came"; "Hear the word of the Lord," occur over 1,200 times. In the four brief chapters of Malachi the expression, "Saith the Lord," occurs 24 times. Thus in the Old Testament over 2,500 times expressions occur that teach that what follows these expressions are God's very words. These expressions, of course, prove inspiration.

Some special passages treating of the inspiration of the Old Testament deserve a more detailed discussion than is given to those quoted or cited above. One of the chief of these is 2 Tim. 3:15-17. Everything considered, the A.V. is the best rendering of this passage. Here St. Paul reminds Timothy that from childhood up he had been taught the Sacred Scriptures, the Old Testament, the New not having been in any part written when Timothy was a child. These he describes as able to make him wise unto salvation through the faith which is in Christ Jesus. Then St. Paul goes on to state several things of the Old Testament of which Timothy had been taught from childhood up. He first says of it that it was inspired by God, literally God-inbreathed, i.e., the Old Testament is inspiration as a product. Then he shows four of its main uses: it is the source of doctrinal Truth, of refutational Truth, of correctional Truth and of character-building Truth, and that consequently its mission is to make God's people as Truth servants complete, thoroughly equipped to do every good work. Devilish ingenuity has sought to set aside this clear proof that the Old Testament is God's

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inspired written revelation; but in vain have the efforts of higher critics, rationalists and infidels been thereon. In 1 Pet. 1:10-12 St. Peter tells that the Prophets searched and inquired diligently into the salvation of the high calling, when they prophesied of this favor coming to the Gospel-Age Elect. The time features of this salvation were a special matter of their study of those things that they wrote by the Spirit of Christ which was in them in its witnessing of the Christ's suffering first and then entering into glory. But their inquiries produced no understanding of these matters; for they were given to understand that the contents of their prophecies were not intended for them, but for the Gospel Church, and were the same things as God's Spirit-empowered servants would preach to the Gospel Church. Here again the Spirit is spoken of as giving the prophets their message reduced to writing. 2 Pet. 1:19-21 is a powerful proof to the point. Clearer than the vision on the mount of transfiguration are the writings of the prophets (v. 19), to which God's people while walking, not by sight, but by faith, are to give heed, as a light that makes clear the obscurity of the present trial time, until the great day of God comes, with Christ as the then great Enlightener. But in studying the prophetic word of the Old Testament God's people are to remember, first of all, that Scriptural teachings are not of a human's clarifying, since no prophecy, inspired teaching, of the Old Testament originated in man's will; but men spoke from God, borne on by the Holy Spirit. The reasons that this passage gives for no mere human's being able to interpret correctly the inspired Word are that it is not man-originated, but is God-originated through the influence of the Holy Spirit operating upon and controlling its writers. It is for this reason that no Scriptural passage can be abrogated, dissolved, annihilated, but must stand forever! and its interpretation comes, not from man, but from God by Christ through His mouthpieces.

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We now come to the proof of the New Testament's inspiration. On this point our argument proceeds largely from the less to the greater, a kind of an argument that Jesus used, e.g., "If ye being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good gifts [in another passage He said, give the Holy Spirit] to them who ask Him" (Matt. 7:11; Luke 11:13)? Other passages using the same kind of arguments are frequent, e.g., Matt. 10:25; 12:12; Luke 12:24, 28. The argument is this: If God inspired the Old Testament, the less important of the two parts of His revelation, how much more would He inspire the New Testament, the more important part of God's revelation? If God inspired Moses and the Prophets, how much more would He inspire Jesus and the Apostles? If God inspired the preaching of Jesus and the Apostles, which were given to a comparatively few persons of their own generation, how much more would He inspire their teachings reduced to writings intended for all generations? If inspiration featured their speeches amid conditions less pervaded by possibilities of misunderstanding, how much more would inspiration feature their thoughts reduced to writing amid conditions decidedly more pervaded by possibilities and actualities of misunderstanding? If we had no other arguments than these to prove the inspiration of the New Testament, they would prove it, with cogency. But we have more than these. The Apostles' speaking and preaching in tongues unknown to them at Pentecost and later proves that they were inspired; how much more were they inspired in writing for the Church throughout the Age the things that they bound upon the Church? And if by inspiration they taught orally that the Church of their day was loosed from the Mosaic Covenant, how much more must their writings on that subject for the Church in all generations have been inspired? Jesus' statement that whatever the Apostles would bind upon or loose from the Church would be bound or loosed

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in heaven could only be true, if God inspired them in the things bound or loosed; for fallible humans could have claimed to bind what was actually error and loose what was actually truth, and certainly God would not thereby have been bound to sanction it (Matt. 18:18).

Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit when he addressed the rulers (Acts 4:8), how much more so when he wrote for the whole Church in all generations! Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit when he reproved Elymas (Acts 13:9), how much more so when he wrote for all generations of the Church! Peter was inspired to understand that Gentiles were eligible to the Lord's favor in the case of Cornelius and his friends (Acts 10:28), how much more so when he wrote binding things on the entire Church! The prophetic gift made to the Apostles and some other brethren proves their inspiration. St. Paul appeals to this fact of their being prophets as showing that he was to be recognized by them as inspired in giving God's commands (1 Cor. 14:37). Let us not forget that the word prophesy does not simply mean to forecast. It means to teach any feature of the Lord's Word, past, present or future; and when applied to those who had the gift of prophecy it means their inspiration, a thing that all the Apostles had. Hence we conclude that if they used this gift for personal teaching, certainly they had it in their impersonal teaching—written teachings—for the entire Church in all its generations throughout the Age. Certainly, if God inspired individual members of a local church in order to teach it infallibly, as 1 Cor. 14 shows was the case at Corinth, He inspired the Apostles in their official capacity in teaching infallibly the entire Church in all generations through their writings. This was all the more necessary, since, as century after century passed, new and subtle errors arose; and the faithful had to have an infallible standard as a touchstone to demonstrate what was genuine and what was alloy, and thus cleave to the Truth and reject the error. Was it not by an appeal to the inspired

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words of the Apostles and Prophets, of Christ and Moses, that the Reformers were able to demonstrate the apostasy of the papacy? And has it not been by the same appeal that God's people have in the Harvest been able to demonstrate the apostasy of sectarian Protestantism and manifested crown-losers?

St. Peter couples St. Paul's epistles as Scripture with and in the same sense as the Old Testament writings, which, of course, were Scripture, which, accordingly, proves their inspiration. Please note the language: "Our beloved brother Paul also [as well as the other Apostles] according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you, as also in all his [other] epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which [epistles] are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction." The expression, "also the other Scriptures," at least includes the whole Old Testament. Hence St. Peter puts St. Paul's epistles into the canon as parts of the Bible, hence as inspired. But since St. Peter wrote his second epistle about 65 A. D., very shortly before his death (2 Pet. 1:13, 14), which is thought to have occurred in 66 or 67 A. D., the first three Gospels, Acts, James, 1 Peter and Jude, as well as all of St. Paul's epistles, except perhaps 2 Timothy, had been written, and we believe are included besides the Old Testament in St. Peter's expression, "the other Scriptures." Hence this passage proves the inspiration of the bulk of the New Testament, as well as the entire Old Testament.

Certainly, the Apostles claimed inspiration. This is true of St. Paul. His calling on the inspired prophets in the Corinthian Church to recognize his writings as God's commandments proves their inspiration (1 Cor. 14:37). The same conclusion we draw from the fact that he claimed to be an apostle, special messenger, not of or by man, but by Christ and God, which implies his inspiration (Gal. 1:1; see also the opening verses of

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almost all his other epistles, wherein the same claim is made). His emphatically anathematizing anyone who would preach another gospel implies that his was God-derived—inspired (Gal. 1:8, 9). In 1 Thes. 2:13 he emphatically insists that what he preached (how much more what he wrote) was not man's, but God's Word. And in 1 Thes. 4:13-15 he assures his readers that his message on the resurrection that he was then writing was the Word of God, hence inspired. And what is true of him as an inspired speaker and writer is also true of the rest of the Apostles, whose binding certain things on the Church, which are set forth in writing, is expressly said to have come from the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:28). In 1 Cor. 2, speaking of himself and the rest of the Apostles ("we"), St. Paul shows that God revealed His hidden mysteries to the Apostles by His Spirit (vs. 1, 10), which were freely given by God to them, for the receiving of which He gave them His Spirit (v. 12), and which they spoke (and wrote) in words given them by the Spirit (verbal inspiration; v. 13), all because they had the mind of Christ (v. 16). It was because the Apostles inspired taught these things to Spirit-filled brethren that the latter could understand and explain these things, as this chapter also teaches.

In certain Scriptures the Apostles are coupled with the Prophets as writers of the Bible. Among other things, the Bible as coming from them is set forth as the foundation of the Church in Eph. 2:20, with Jesus as the chief corner stone. Such coupling clearly implies the inspiration of the Apostolic writings. This coupling of the Apostles and Prophets as inspired teachers of the Church, with the Apostles as using the power to bind, give inspired "commandments," and the Prophets as giving inspired "words," is another proof of the inspiration of the Apostolic writings. John's Revelation is expressly said to have been given him from God by Christ (Rev. 1:1-3). God commissioned him to write out the message to be sent to the seven churches—inspiration (vs. 10, 11). The charge to write these Divinely

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given things is repeated in v. 19—inspiration. In Rev. 22:18, 19, the book is several times called prophecy—inspiration being the meaning of the word.

Our Lord Jesus promised the Apostles the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the Truth to give them the Divine knowledge to exercise their office as His plenipotentiaries. He gave them complete authority under Him to be executives and teachers of the Church unto the end of the Age, which, after their death, must mean them as ministering in their writings, as we read in Mark 3:14, 15; Matt. 18:18; 28:18-20 and Acts 1:3-9. As their qualification He promised them the Holy Spirit and in due time gave it to them. He began to give them these promises about the middle of His ministry, and elaborated thereon from time to time before His last night with them, as we can see from Matt. 10:14-20; Luke 12:11, 12; 21:12-15; Mark 13:9-11. But these promises came to a culmination during Jesus' famous discourse delivered on the occasion of the last supper, as given in John 13—16, and in the resurrection history (John 20:21; Luke 24:47-49; Acts 1:4, 5, 8). Especially in John 14:16-18, 26; 15:26, 27; 16:7, 12-14, is the Spirit promised as their Qualifier for their work as teachers. In John 14:16 the Spirit is promised the Apostles throughout the Age, which after their death early in the Age must mean that the Spirit would abide with them in their ministry through their writings; for that is the only way that they could minister after their death. This implies the inspiration of those writings—the Spirit abiding therein. In v. 17 He calls the Spirit, the Spirit of [the, so the Greek] Truth, which in John 17:17 He calls God's Word. Hence the Spirit permeated the Word, which implies its inspiration. Thus equipped they were not left by Jesus comfortless, for the Spirit as Comforter was in them and in their writings as Inspirer. In v. 26 He indicates that the Spirit is His representative sent to them by God, and would teach them everything needed by them in their personal ministry and in their impersonal ministry,

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i.e., in their writings. This implies their personal and literary inspiration. He further told them in this verse that the Spirit would fecundate, i.e., by inspiration, their memories, so that they would remember everything that He had taught them.

In John 15:26, 27, calling the Holy Spirit again, the Spirit of the [emphatic in the Greek] Truth, He promises it as God's gift to them by Jesus and as coming to them from God. He told them that that Spirit would bear witness of Jesus to them and make them bear witness. This was done to their own generation partly by their word of mouth and partly by their writings, and to succeeding generations by their writings exclusively. This being the Spirit's witnessing in and through them implies their inspiration. In John 16:12-14 further elaborations of these promises are given. On account of their not having received the Spirit-begettal while our Lord was yet with them, they could not understand spiritual things, hence Jesus could give them only generalities as to the Truth. He indicates that He had yet much to reveal to them, but their unbegotten condition made these too hard for them to understand (v. 12). However, He assured them (v. 13) that when the Holy Spirit as the Revealer of the deep spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:10, 12) would come to them in the Spirit-begetting, It would guide them into all the Truth of God's Plan as due. Here the guidance of the Apostles into all due Truth by the Spirit is promised; and this, of course, implies their inspiration. The Spirit would not do this automatically, but only as God would give it to It. And this would cover doctrine as well as prophecy of future things. In this mission the Spirit would glorify Jesus; for It would receive from Him the things of God and show them to the Apostles (v. 14). This language implies the thought expressed in 2 Pet. 1:21: "No prophecy came by the will of man; but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit." Strong indeed are these arguments.

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In John 20:21 Jesus shows that as He was God's special Messenger and Plenipotentiary, so the Apostles were His special messengers and plenipotentiaries, which implies that the Spirit of Christ inspired them (1 Pet. 1:11), as the Father's Spirit had inspired Jesus. In Luke 24:47-49 Jesus shows that the Apostles as Jesus' witnesses were to preach the gospel among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem; and He promised to send them as their qualification therefore God's promise, the Holy Spirit, as the power that would make them able thereto. While the Apostles preached to everyone under the Jewish symbolic heavens (Col. 1:23), they evidently did not visit and preach to every nation, let alone to every individual in them, while in the flesh, since nations like Japan, those in America and in Oceania were not yet discovered. Hence to fulfill Jesus' command given here and in Matt. 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Acts 1:8, they had to put into writing the inspired Gospel, which then as carried to all nations became the Apostolic preaching and witnessing in all nations; for only through their writings were they to preach to those nations and generations inaccessible to them; and if their oral presentations to their own contemporaries were inspired, how much more would their written presentations to all nations and generations be inspired? In Acts 1:4 they are again told by Jesus to wait for the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit, as their qualification and power to witness, which they did by word and writing. In v. 5 they are expressly told that they would receive the Holy Spirit, and that by a baptism of It, an outpouring of It upon them. Again, in v. 8 Jesus stresses the Spirit's coming as their power to perform their Apostolic work, which we see was done through witnessing by preaching, teaching and writing. Thus as upon Jesus, the Head, so upon the Apostles was the Spirit to rest. The Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, the Gospels and Revelation are a living proof that the promise of the Father was given them—even the Holy Spirit, their Inspirer in

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teaching, preaching and writing. Surely to Bible believers the above considerations prove the inspiration of the Old Testament and the New Testament. How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!

So far on the subject of the Bible's inspiration there have been presented certain general considerations on the subject and two lines of proof thereof—general Bible proofs and specific Bible proofs founded on Bible passages. There remains a third line of proof for the Bible's inspiration—facts in the form of Biblical numerics. Lest we appear wiser than we are, the remark is here appropriate that we have gotten the most of the facts that will be presented on Biblical numerics, and that we have very carefully examined and proved, from Messrs. Ivan Panin and R. McCormack. God has two books of revelation: Creation and the Bible; and we find that He as the Author of both has interwoven the number 7 in both of these books. And it is not to be unexpected from the same Author that He use a common key number as a sign of His authorship in both. We will note the various branches of nature as revealing His Authorship of the material-creation by the number 7. The rainbow and light have 7 colors; music has 7 notes; the human, male and female, voices have 7 ranges: bass, baritone, tenor, alto, contralto, mezzo-soprano and soprano. Arithmetic shows some peculiar things about 7 and its fractions. Please note the following, wherein the same figures occur in the same order, following one another with the first taking the last place after each example: 1/7 =.142857; 3/7=.428571; 2/7=.285714; 6/7=.857142; 4/7=.571428; 5/7=.714285. If we take the decimal value of 1/7 and treat it as a non-decimal, 142857, and multiply it by 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, we get the same figures but differently ordered: 142,857xl=142,857; x2=285,714; x3=428,571; x4=571,428; x5=714,285; x6=857,142. It is singular that the 360 degrees in a circle are divisible by the nine digits without remainders,

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except 7. The area of a circle is obtained by multiplying the square of the diameter by.7854. Undecimaled this number is obtained as follows: 7x1,000 (7,000) +7x100 (700) +2x7x10 (140) +2x7 (14) = 7854. The appearance of sevens in various features of chemistry is too numerous to note in this article. In the three kingdoms of nature—animal, vegetable and mineral—sevens constantly appear, e.g., species, genus, family, order, class, sub-kingdoms and kingdoms: mammalia, birds, reptiles, fish, radiata, crustaceans, and articulates. So, too, are invertebrates and vertebrates each of seven classes.

In botany the two orders, flowerless and flowering plants, are summed up into 7 kinds; thallogens, acrogens, rhizogens, endogens, dictyogens, gumnogens and exogens. A complete flower has 7 parts: sepals, petals, stamens, anthers, ovary, pistil, and stigma. There are 7 cereals: wheat, oats, barley, maize, rice, rye and millet. In geology there are 7 ages, which are subdivided into 14 (a multiple of 7) systems. There are 7 general kinds of crystals, which are subdivided into multiples of 7. There are 14 types of minerals, 7 kinds of rocks, 7 kinds of tastes to soluble minerals and 7 colors in precious stones. Winds are of 7 kinds as to velocity: almost calm, light, moderate, strong, galey, stormy and hurricaneous; so, too, are clouds and optical phenomena of 7 kinds, ranging in the former from curl to rain clouds and in the latter from halos to mountain spectres. The earth's land surface consists of 7 continents: Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America, Australia and Antarctica. It has 7 oceans, called the Seven Seas: Arctic, Antarctic, North and South Atlantic, North and South Pacific and the Indian Ocean. There are 7 zones: northern frigid, semi-frigid, temperate, torrid, southern temperate, semi-frigid and frigid. The human body shows many heptads, e.g., 7 cervicals; 7 subdorsal vertebrae; each vertebra has 7 processes; 7 holes in man's head; 7 depressed surfaces on the breastbone for joining with

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7 ribs; 14 face bones; 7 parts to each arm: arm, elbow, forearm, wrist, hand, fingers and knuckles; 7 parts to each leg: main leg or thigh, knee, lower leg, ankle, foot, toes and toe joints; 7 bones in the ankle; 7 parts to the brain; 7 accessory tongue muscles; 7 fibres of the heart's ventricles; 238 (7x34) voluntary muscles in the body; the interosseous muscles are 7 in the hand and 7 in the foot; 7 distinct kinds of eyes as to color; 7 kinds of tissues in the body, which consists of 7 parts: brain, nerve, bone, muscle, blood, flesh and hair; 7 are the main ingredients of living matter: native and derived albumens, globulins, fibrin, proteids, peptones, lardadin; 7 ages of humans: infancy, childhood, youth, adolescence, manhood, decline and senility; 7 years fully change the body's elements.

There are 1400 vibrations between the lowest and highest human tone; 35 phrenological brain organs, 21 of the affections and 14 of the intellect; 7 swellings of the hand and 7 kinds of hands; 7 groups of finger prints; 7 races of man; 7 relations of the first degree; father, mother, brother, sister, spouse, son and daughter; 7 kinds of coloring matter in bird's eggs; 7 higher primary graces; 7 social graces; 7 departments of the science of physics: mechanico-dynamics, light, heat, sound, electricity, radio (or electronics) and magnetism; 7 circumstances of the actions of men: who, what, where, by what means, why, how and when. There are 7 points in a lobster's pincers, 14 are the nautis shrimp's legs; 28 are the teeth of the kangaroo; 7 are the molars of very many animals; the hare and the rabbit have each 28 teeth, and the tapir 42; most fish have 7 rays in their gills, 7 are the artificial motions of the horse; rabbits breed 7 times a year; 7 are the parts of a typical solitary coral; 7 are the years of an oyster's growth, then he takes a fresh growth for 7 years more, which is followed by another kind of growth for 7 years; for 7 years horses betray their age. A human develops through 7 stages: sensibility, will, consciousness, intelligence, reason, conscience, religion.

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There are 7 magnitudes of the stars visible to the naked eye; no more than 7 eclipses of the sun and moon can occur in a year; 7 are the motions of the earth; multiples of 7 are the periods of most animal gestations, e.g., 21 days for the mouse, 28 for the hare, rabbit and squirrel; 35 for the dormouse and weasel, 49 for the hedgehog, 56 for the cat and the marten, 63 for the dog, wolf, fox, lynx, polecat, otter, 98 for the lion, 119 for the pig, 147 for the sheep, 280 for the cow and many other mammals; as to birds: 21 days for the hen and raven, 28 for the duck, turkey, pheasant, guinea fowl, 42 for the ostrich, swan, etc. In the elephant it is 21 months, or 630 days; in humans 280 days. All the above-given day periods are in multiples of 7. The above-given facts, and many times more, prove that in the book of nature God has widely inscribed the Divine number of 7, to indicate Him to be nature's Author. Hence we should expect Him to have done the same in His other book, the Bible. And this we find to be true.

In a variety of ways in the Bible in matters pertaining to God the number 7 and its multiples appear. He indicated it in the 7 epochs of His creative and rest periods, in the 7,000 years of each creative day and in His rest day, in the 7,000 years that He devoted to the curse and restitution from the curse, in the 49,000 years of the creative and rest periods, in the 7 days of the week, in the 7 weeks leading up to the jubilee of weeks (Pentecost), in the 7 years of the sabbath of years, in the 49 years as completing the 7 sabbaths of years, leading up to the jubilee of years, in the 7 times of the Gentiles, in the 7 days of Passover and Tabernacles, in the many other 7-day periods connected with events pertaining to Divine things (Gen. 7:14; 8:10, 12; 21:28-30; 9:18, 20, 27, 30; 41:2-7, 18-27, 29, 30, 34, 36, 47, 48, 53, 54; Ex. 37:23; Lev. 4:6, 17; 8:11, 33, 35; 13:4, 5, 21, 31, 33, 50, 54; 14:7, 8, 16, 27; 16:14, 19, etc., etc., etc.). The heptadic structure of the Scriptures is seen in Revelation, in its 7 stars,

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angels, churches, messengers, spirits (teachings) of God, horns, eyes, thunders, seals, trumpets, bowls with their angels, plagues, 3. times (7 half-times), 42 months, 1260 days and in 7 visions of each Revelation period. In the genealogy of Jesus through Mary (Luke 4:23-34) from Abraham 56 generations are given, and in that of Jesus through Joseph's ancestors (Matt. 1:1-17) from Abraham onward 42 generations are given. Actually, according to certain Old Testament data there were 47 generations in this line. Why this seeming discrepancy? We believe it was done by God to set forth for the purposes of numerics a hint of its Biblical existence. Moreover, it was to give to the Matthew genealogy the multitudinous occurrences of sevens that will later be pointed out, and that would have been spoiled by giving the full genealogy in Matt. 1:1-17. For the same reason God caused many grammatical mistakes to be made, e.g., in the Greek of the book of Revelation, in order to preserve the numerics in all its sentences, paragraphs, sections and in itself as a whole. The above examples, a few from among many, give a broad hint that the heptad plays a very important part in the Bible. This occurs, not only in the surface of the Bible in vast detail, but also in the numerics of the Bible's words, sentences, paragraphs, sections, books and in it as a whole. This is possible because the letters of the Hebrew and Greek alphabets are also numerals; hence each word of the Bible is the sum of the numeric values of its letters. This numeric structure is so varied and detailed as to make it the strongest factual proof of the Bible's inspiration. Additionally, a scheme of elevens is apparent in the generalities of its books, their order place, divisions and their anonymous and non-anonymous writers. These will be presented first, before its heptads are presented. The following is the list of Bible books as found in the Hebrew and Greek Bible, with the order number of each book prefixed:

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The sum of the order numbers is 2,211. One-third of these books is anonymous, e.g., the Bible nowhere tells who wrote Genesis, Lamentations, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, John, 1, 2, 3 John and Hebrews, though there is good reason for ascribing them in the order named to Moses, Jeremiah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul. The Bible ascribes the Psalms (mainly) to David, and Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy to Moses. The following books were written by the persons whose names they bear: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the 12 Minor Prophets, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, James, 1, 2 Peter, Jude; and there is good

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reason for believing that Samuel wrote Joshua, Judges, Ruth and part of 1 Samuel (Acts 3:24; 1 Chro. 29:29), and that the rest of it, 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles were written by Nathan and Gad (1 Chro. 29:29). But since these books do not claim to be written by Samuel, Nathan and Gad, we may call them anonymous. Additional to the anonymous books mentioned above the following are also anonymous: 1, 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles and Esther. Old Testament writers who are expressly quoted from, and that by name, in the New Testament, are Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, David and Daniel. Other Old Testament writers, alluded to by name in the New Testament, but not as writers of parts of it, are Solomon and Jonah. Samuel (Acts 3:24) is referred to as an Old Testament writer, but not quoted as such in the New Testament. The following are expressly mentioned as writers of more than one Bible book: Moses (4), Samuel (probably of 3 and part of a 4th), Solomon (3), Peter (2) and Paul (13). Each of the other expressly named writers of Biblical books wrote but one apiece. Special attention is called to the numbers prefixed above to the list of Bible books. These are hereinafter called the order numbers of these books. Thus the order number of Genesis is 1, of Matthew 40 and of Revelation 66. The Old Testament has three Divinely-given divisions: Law, Prophets and Writings (Luke 24:44, the third division being here called after its first book, Psalms). The New Testament falls into four parts: Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Revelation. Of the Bible's 66 books, 21 are Epistles and 12 of its other books contain epistles, whence they may with the 21 Epistles be called Epistolary books. They are 2 Sam., 1, 2 Kings, Is., Jer., Esth., Dan., Ezra, Neh., 2 Chro., Acts, Rev.

We will first point out the various features of elevens, then later of sevens, connected with the Bible books. Its 66 books are 6x11 (1), of which 22 (2x11) are anonymous (2) and 44 (4x11) are non-anonymous (3). 22 (2x11) of the 44 non-anonymous books were

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written by writers of more than one book (4) and 22 by writers of but one book (5). 33 (3x11) are Epistolary books (6) and 33 (3x11) are non-Epistolary books (7). The first five Bible divisions contain 44 (4x11) books (8). These have 11 Epistolary books (9); and the last two have 22 (2x11) books (10); and all these 22 (2x11) books contain Epistles (11). The two largest Bible divisions, the Prophets and the Epistles, contain each 21 books; and the two smallest, Acts and Revelation, one each. These four divisions contain 44 (4x11) books (12). Its other 3 divisions contain 22 (2x11) books (13). The order number of the first of these smallest divisions, Acts, is 44 (4x11) (14); and the order number of the other, Revelation, is 66 (6x11) (15). The Bible's first 11 (1x11) books, Gen.—2 Kings, are narrative and typical (16); the next 22 (2x11), Is.—Eccl., are prophetico-typico-didactic (17); the next 11 (1x11), Esther—Acts, are narrative and typical (18); and the last 22 (2x11), Jas.—Rev., are didactico-prophetic (19). The sum of the order numbers of the 66 Bible books is, as shown above, 2,211 (11x201) (20). The order numbers of the Epistles, as shown above, are 45-65, whose sum is 1,155 (11x105) (21), of its non-Epistles, 1,056 (11x96) (22). The sum of the Epistles' first, middle and last order numbers is 165 (11x15) (23), of the first and last is 110 (11x10) (24); and their middle one is 55 (11x5) (25). Order number Epistles 53, 54, 55, 59 and 60 were addressed to churches; Phile., 65, was addressed to Philemon and the church in his house; and 3 John, 50, was addressed in part to a church. The sum of the order numbers of these seven Epistles is 396 (11x36) (26). The seven divisions of the Bible begin with Gen., Joshua, Ps., Matt., Acts, Jas. and Rev. They end with Deut., Mal., 2 Chro., John, Acts, Phile. and Rev. The sum of the order numbers of these twelve books is 407 (11x37) (27); and the sum of the unrepeated digits of 11x37 (1+3+7) is 11 (28). The order numbers of these twelve books may be divided

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into three groups thus: The first group, consisting of one book, has as its order number 1. The second group, consisting of those that have 2 books, has as its order numbers, 5-6, 26-27, 39-40 and 65-66. The third group, consisting of three books, has as its order numbers 43-45. The sum of the groups with one and two numbers is 275 (11x25) (29); the sum of the group having 3 numbers is 132 (11x12) (30). The middle order number of this third group is 44 (11x4) (31); its other order numbers total 88 (11x8) (32).

In the preceding paragraph only the Bible books, their divisions and their order numbers were treated. In this paragraph the names of the Bible writers will be considered. The persons both named and quoted in the New Testament as Old Testament writers are Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, David and Daniel. While Samuel is named as such, he is not quoted in the New Testament as an Old Testament writer. And while Solomon and Jonah are named in the New Testament, they are neither named nor quoted in the New Testament as Old Testament writers. The following are the order numbers of the Old Testament books whose writers are both named and quoted in the New Testament: for Moses: 2, 3, 4, 5; Isaiah: 12; Jeremiah: 13; Hosea: 15; Joel: 16; David: 27; and Daniel: 35. Their sum is 132 (11x12) (33). The two writers of Old Testament books who are mentioned in the New Testament, but not as writers, have as the order numbers of their books: Jonah: 19; and Solomon: 28, 30, 33, their sum being 110 (11x10) (34). The last is 33 (11x3) (35); and the others' sum is 77 (11x7) (36). Additional to the 7 Old Testament writers both named and quoted in the New Testament, there are 5 New Testament writers mentioned therein as New Testament writers: James, Peter, Jude, Paul and John. The names of these 12 writers occur in the Bible 2,871 (11x261) times (37). There are 2,310 (11x210) (38) occurrences of the names of these 7 Old Testament writers and 561 (11x51) (39) of these five

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New Testament writers; of Moses there are 847 of such (11x11x7) (40, 41); and of the rest of these Old Testament writers 1,463 (11x133) (42). Mention of the name of Moses occurs in 31 books, of Isaiah in 12, of Jeremiah in 8, of Hosea in 7, of Joel in 7, of David in 28, and of Daniel in 6, whose sum is 99 (11x9) (43). Of these the first, middle and last have 44 (11x4) (44) and the others 55 (11x5) (45). While Moses' name occurs 847 times (11x11x7) in the Bible, it occurs a varying number of tunes in different Bible books, e.g., in Ex. 290 times, in Josh. 58 times, in Rev. once. Thus in some books it requires 3, in others 2 and in others 1 figure to designate these various occurrences. In 21 books its occurrences can be numbered by 1 digit totaling 77 (11x7) (46); and those requiring 2 or 3 digits total 770 (11x7x10) (47). In the Bible's seven divisions these 847 occurrences of Moses' name occur as follows: in the non-Epistles 825 (11x75) (48) times, and in the Epistles 22 (11x2) (49) times. In Hebrews it occurs 11 (11x1) (50) times; and in the rest of the Epistles 11 (11x1) (51) times. The order numbers of every eleventh of the Bible's 66 books are 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, whose sum is 231 (11x21) (52). The books that have this number less than 10 times have it occurring 77 (11x7) times (53); and the others have it 770 (11x70) times (54). Above we saw that the order numbers of the books that begin and end the 7 divisions of the Bible total 407. The two divisions which consist of but one book (Acts, 44, and Rev., 66) total in their order numbers 110 (11x10) (55); the sum of the order numbers of the books of the other five divisions is 2211—110=2101 (11x191) (56). That of the order numbers of the beginning and ending of the other divisions' books is 297 (11x27) (57). Only in Gal. (1:2) of his Epistles does Paul join with himself others anonymously in the address of his Epistles, though, as will be shown later, in seven others he associates with himself others by name. The order number of Gal. is 55 (11x5) (58).

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So far we have traced 58 sets of elevens that the reader of the English Bible can verify. But there are other frequent occurrences of elevens that are found on the Bible, its divisions, order numbers and writers in the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible; for the letters of the Hebrew and Greek are also numerals, which fact results in this, that every Greek and Hebrew word is the sum of the numerical values of its letters used as numerals. Thus the Hebrew word for Jehovah—Jod (10) He (5) Vav (6) He (5)—is the number 26; and the Greek word for Jesus—I (10) H (8) S (200) O (70) U (400) S (200)—is the number 888. While occurrences of elevens in the Bible, its divisions, order numbers and the names of its writers, etc., in Hebrew and Greek are numerous indeed, and thus would greatly increase the number of elevens connected with the Bible, we will not give examples of such, contenting ourselves with the mere mention of the fact. How did it come about that there are at least 58 combinations of Bible writers, books, order numbers and divisions? Could it have just happened? There is only one chance in eleven that one of them could happen; but for two of them to happen could be in only one chance in 121 (11x 11) times; and for them to have happened 58 times would require a number of 64 figures, i.e., one chance in many vigintillions of chances, a number that is so enormous that the human mind cannot take it in; and the possibility of its just happening is so infinitesimally small as to deserve to be ruled out of the court of reason; for no human court would give the least weight to it in deciding probability.

Seven is the other number that occurs very frequently on the surface of the Bible, and can be verified by the reader of the English Bible; and we will now give our attention to this feature of Biblical numerics; for it permeates the Bible through and through, and in Biblical numerics is found there decidedly more frequently than eleven; for it not only is present on the Bible's surface, but also throughout

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its words, sentences, paragraphs, sections, books and in the Bible as a whole. Let us first notice the surface uses of 7 in the Bible. The largest division of the Old Testament, the Prophets, has 21 (7x3) books (1); so has the largest division of the New Testament, the Epistles, 21 (7x3) books (2). Above was shown that the two Old Testament writers whose names appear in the New Testament, but not as writers, had for the order numbers of their books, 19, 28, 30 and 33, for their sum (110), a multiple of 11, and also the last (33) is a multiple of 11, while the sum of the others is 77 (7x11), a multiple of 11 and 7 (3). We also saw that the occurrences of the name Moses (847) had two points of 11. Now we call attention to the fact that 7 also appears therein (11x11x7) (4). Above we also called attention to the fact that the name Moses in its 847 occurrences appears in some books enough to be designated by three digits, in others by two digits and in others by one digit. In 21 (7x3) books (5) its occurrences, designated by but one digit, are 77 (7x11) (6) and in those expressed by more than one digit it occurs 770 (7x11x10) times (7). It was also noted that the Bible has 7 divisions (8). Above it was noted that its two largest divisions, Prophets and Epistles, had each 21 books; but of the Epistles 14 (7x2) are Paul's, (9) and 7 are by other Apostles (10). Of these 7 were addressed to or associated with churches (11), the rest, 14 (7x2), to others (12). The order numbers of St. Paul's letters addressed to churches (Romans to Thessalonians; 52-60) total 504 (7x72) (13). In 1, 2 Cor., Phil., Col., 1, 2 Thes. and Phile. (7 in all) (14), Paul associates others with himself by name in the address. The sum of the order numbers of these Epistles (53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 65) is 406 (7x58) (15). In 1, 2 Thes. Paul joins with himself two others. Hence the preceding 58 sevens are distinct thus: 1, 2 Thes. have as the sum of their order numbers 119 (7x17) (16) and the other five Epistles of this group have as the sum of their order numbers 287

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(7x41) (17). Paul joins with himself Silvanus (Silas), Sosthenes and Timothy, whose names occur in the N.T. respectively 16, 2 and 24 (or 42=7x6) times (18).

Of the 66 order numbers of Bible books, as shown above, every eleventh number is 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66. Their sum is 231 (7x33) (19), whose factors (7, 3, 11) are 21 (7x3) (20). The names of Old Testament writers named therein are Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the 12 Minor Prophets, David, Solomon, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah—21 (7x3) in all (21). Such writers named and quoted in the New Testament are 7 (7x1) (22). The names of these writers, as shown above, occur in the Bible 2,310 (7x11x2x3x5) times (23), and the sum of these factors is 28 (7x4) (24). David's name occurs the most times—1,134 (7x3x3x3x3x2) (25), the sum of whose factors is 21 (7x3) (26). Moses' name occurs 847 (7x121) times (27). The books that have his name less than 10 times contain it 77 (7x11) times (28); and the rest have it 770 (7x110) times (29). The Old Testament books of writers expressly mentioned therein as writers of more than one book are Ex., Lev., Num., Deut., Prov., Cant., Eccl.—7 (7x1) in all (30). The sum of their order numbers is 105 (7x15) (31). Of these the order numbers of Moses' books total 14 (7x2) (32) and of Solomon's books 91 (7x13) (33), whose first book, Proverbs, has as its order number 28 (7x4) (34); Cant. and Eccl. 63 (7x9) (35). The names of New Testament writers: James (or Jacob, so the Greek) occurs in 11 books, Peter in 8, Jude (Judas, or Judah, so the Greek) in 8, Paul in 15, John in 7; total 49 (7x7) (36 and 37). John, the last of these, occurs in 7 (7x1) (38), the rest in 42 (7x6) (39). Their order numbers are 45-47, 51-65, whose sum is 1,008 (7x2x2x2x2x3x3) (40), with 7 factors (41), whose sum is 21 (7x3) (42). Thus there are in the Bible's uses of its books, their order numbers, divisions and writers at least 42 occurrences of these sevens. From the standpoint of their compound probability these 42 occurrences would be

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one to their happening as against a number consisting of 47 figures to their not happening. Numbers are not counted beyond vigintillions, many of which we saw above were the chances of the 58 occurrences not happening to one that they would happen. If we should then compound the chances of the 42 occurrences of the sevens and the 58 occurrences of the elevens in connection with the Bible's books' divisions, place order and writers, we would get one chance to their happening to many vigintillions times many quartodecillions, numbers consisting of hundreds of figures, for which we have no name; for we name no numbers beyond vigintillions. In such a case no sane person would accept the idea of these elevens and sevens chancing to happen. If one should have 1,000 cards all consecutively numbered from 1 to 1,000 and all mixed up in their order numbers and should throw them into the air with the wind blowing at 100 miles an hour and they all would alight in 40 rows, 25 to a row, in perfect number order, we would have a thing many times more likely to happen than for these 58 elevens and 42 sevens to have happened. Nay, there must have been an omniscient mind that designed these 58 elevens and 42 sevens in the mere surface of the Bible, i.e., it was a product of inspiration. Hence merely scratching the surface of the Bible by numerics we have an unanswerable factual proof of inspiration.

We designedly used the expression, "scratching the surface of the Bible," for that is all that our use of the Bible books, their divisions, order numbers and certain of their writers along the lines of eleven and seven is. But in the words, sentences, paragraphs, sections and books separately and conjoinedly we have sevens putting in their appearance in such numbers as to dumbfound the denier of the Bible's inspiration in thought and word. This occurs in words, sentences, paragraphs, sections and books in the Bible, as well as in the relation of every part of the Bible to the Bible as a whole. Without now taking up the numerics based on

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the Hebrew and Greek letters in the words, sentences, paragraphs, sections and books of the Bible and the Bible itself, we desire to show how in the structure of the Bible the number seven occurs. Later we will show this thing as it exists in the numerals of words, all sentences, etc., of the Bible. We have already pointed out the sevenfoldness of the surface structure of Matthew's genealogy of Jesus and of the book of Revelation, which is divided into seven parts and each of these parts into seven subdivisions, with sevens running many ways through each of these 49 subdivisions. Let us here take up the chapter containing our Lord's High-Priestly prayer—John 17—in the Greek, not alone the prayer, but the entire chapter, and the following appears: It contains 49 (7x7) sentences (1, 2), 490 (7x7x10) words (3, 4) and 2,079 (7x11x3x3x3) letters (5). The numeric value of these letters is a multiple of 7 (6). The only number that will exactly divide all three of these numbers is 7 (7). In this connection the word sentence means the shortest complete thought which the laws of grammar permit. So divided this chapter contains 7 paragraphs (8); each paragraph contains 7 sentences (9); the number of words in each paragraph is a multiple of 7 (10); the number of letters in each paragraph is a multiple of 7 (11) and the numerics of the letters of the words of each paragraph is a multiple of 7 (12-18). The chapter's verbs are a multiple of 7 (19); its nouns and adjectives are a multiple of 7 (20); its pronouns are a multiple of 7 (21); its prepositions and adverbs are a multiple of 7 (22); its articles and adverbs are a multiple of 7 (23); its conjunctions are a multiple of 7 (24); the chapters' consonants are a multiple of 7 (25); its long and short vowels are a multiple of 7 (26); its doubtful vowels are a multiple of 7 (27); the number of nouns and pronouns referring to the Father and Son are together 7x7 (28, 29); the pronouns referring to the Lord's followers are a multiple of 7 (30). There are many other verbal sevens in this

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chapter, which need not be detailed here. The 30 given above will suffice for our present purpose, which purpose is this: to illustrate the fact that every section of the Bible presents as detailedly similar occurrences of sevens. And more remarkable still, many expressions, e.g., the Son of Man, phrases and words are found, sometimes alone in either Testament and sometimes when they are combined, in heptads.

As an illustration of the heptadic occurrence of Bible words, let us take the word Passover. It occurs 49 (7x7) times in the O. T. (1, 2) and 28 (7x4) times (3) in the N. T. (John 6:4 has this word as interpolation), total for both 77 (7x11) (4). Its root is pasach, to pass over, which occurs 7 times (5), whose only other derivative, pisseach, lame, occurs 14 times (6), making the root and its derivatives appear 98 (7x7x2) times (7, 8). Eat the passover: O. T. 1+N. T. 6=7 (9); sacrifice (of) the Passover: O. T. 4+N. T. 3=7 (10); kill (ing) the passover: O. T. 7+N. T. 0=7 (11); (to) keep the passover: O. T. 19+N. T. 2= 21 (7x3) times (12), of which 7 (13) are in Num., 7 in 1, 2 Chro. (14) and 7 in other books (15); 7 in the O. T. are plural (16) and 7 singular (O. T. 5+N. T. 2) (17); 7 in the O. T. are in the infinitive form (18). The noun pesach, passover, is uninflected 14 (7x2) times (19) and 7 times inflected with the accusative (objective) sign eth (20). In the N. T. the noun pascha, the passover, occurs 21 (7x3) times (21) in the nominative and accusative cases and 7 times (22) in the genitive and dative cases. The word occurs 7 times (23) in Exodus and 7 times (24) in Luke, and in immediate dependence on a verb (keep, 23; kill, 6; sacrifice, 3; eat, 1 and roast, 1) 34 times in the O. T. and (keep, 2; sacrifice, 3; eat, 6; make ready, 4) 15 times in the N. T., totaling 49 (7x7) times (25, 26). The word is found in 7 N. T. books (27). Other Bible words—all its more important words, phrases and expressions in fact—present various heptadic features. A similar feature as to words is this: Each Bible book

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has certain words in heptadic occurrences not found in any other Bible book, which, of course, proves that there could be no collusion in bringing about this result; for how could collusion have bridged the nearly 450 years from Moses, the Bible's first writer, to Samuel, the Bible's second writer, and the over 450 years between the close of the O. T. and the beginning of the N. T. books? The occurrence of such heptads of words in each book, if attempted to be explained on natural grounds, would require each book's writer to have all the other Bible books before him, in order to avoid in his book using their peculiar heptads, which would mean the absurdity that each Bible book was written after all the others were written! Only one author could be the writer of all of them—God—to avoid this absurdity. Or take the case of Moses' name: How could there have been collusion from his time to John's, even bridging the above-mentioned two sets of about 450 years, i.e., between Moses' and Samuel's writing and between the writing of the last O. T. book and the first N. T. book, and then even up to John's Revelation, to bring into existence its in all 847 occurrences, the last one coming in the once occurrence of Moses' name in the book of Revelation? The idea of collusion is impossible here, even as we saw above the idea of chance is impossible on the matter of the elevens and sevens in the Bible, its divisions, books and writers. The only solution of these phenomena is that but One, an omniscient One, was the Author of the Bible, which proves the inspiration of its thoughts and words. From the above-given facts on the order numbers of the Bible books, we see that there could have been only 66 books in the Bible, hence that the Romanists are wrong in adding to it seven apocryphal books. And a number of facts connected with the order numbers of Bible books proves that while the Protestants are right in the claim that there are no more, nor less, than 66 canonical books in the Bible, in so far as their place ordering of these books is different from that of the Hebrew and

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Greek Testaments they are wrong; for unless place-ordered as above, which is the Hebrew and Greek Testaments' order, quite a few of the above-given elevens and sevens based on the place order of the books so arranged would fall to the ground.

As already indicated, the letters of the Hebrew and Greek alphabets serve, not only as letters, but also as numerals; for these languages have no other numerals than the letters of the alphabet. They are as follows, with their pronunciation and numerical values in English, the Greek having no letters for 6 and 90, and certain Hebrew letters having a different and usually larger form when coming at the end of a word from its regular form used everywhere else, the Greek small sigma having a different form at the end of a word from elsewhere; Hebrew letters being the same form for capitals and small letters, and the Greek having separate forms for capitals and small letters, as indicated below:

HEBREW ALPHABET GREEK ALPHABET

‍

‍

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‍

‍

We have given, the above items in order that our readers may be in a position to test what will be given below on the numerics presented. But the test requires a correct text, which in not a few cases the Diaglott fails to be. Westcott and Hort's text is more exact, though not always dependable, and at times is uncertain on variant readings. While certain, the more important, Hebrew and Greek words occur in heptads or in heptad multiples, we are not to be understood as meaning that the numerics of the letters of every Hebrew and Greek word totals seven or its multiples. But the numeric value of the words of every sentence, paragraph, section and division of each Biblical book does total in multiples of seven. We will now illustrate this fact by some examples, remarking that similar phenomena mark every other sentence, section, etc., of the Bible in Hebrew and Greek. Let us illustrate this, first of all, from Matt. 1, studying it in three sections: 1-11; 1-17; 18-25. We will first take up vs. 1-11, which give the genealogy from Abraham to the Babylonian captivity, vs. 12-17 giving the genealogy from the captivity to Jesus Christ. The following things mark Matt. 1:1-11: Its vocabulary has 49, or 7x7, words (1, 2), of which 28 (4x7) begin with a vowel (3) and 21 (3x7) begin with a consonant (4). Of these 49 words 42 (6x7) are nouns (5) and 7 are not nouns (6). 35 (5x7) of these 42 nouns are proper nouns (7) and 7 are common nouns (8). 28 (4x7) of these proper nouns are names of Jesus' ancestors (9), and 7 are not (10). 14 (2x7) of the 49 words of the vocabulary occur but once (11), and 35 (5x7) occur more than once (12). Again, these 49 words are distributed according to the letters of the Greek alphabet by sevens. Thus 21 (3x7) words begin with letters (we give the English equivalents)

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under a to e (13); 14 (2x7) begin with letters under z to k (14) and 14 (2x7) begin with letters under m to ch (15). The number of letters in these 49 words is 266 (38x7) (16), of which words the seven common nouns have 49 (7x7) letters (17, 18), and the words that are not common nouns have 217 (31x7) letters (19). Three women, Tamar, Rahab and Ruth, are mentioned, whose Greek names have 14 (2x7) letters (20). Only one city is here mentioned, Babylon. In Greek this name has 7 (1x7) letters (21). Alphabetically arranged these 49 words have in their 266 letters the following distribution: words under a-g have 84 (12x7) letters (22); under d 7 (1x7) letters (23); under e-z 21 (3x7) letters (24); under th-i 70 (10x7) letters (25); under k-m 21 (3x7) letters (26); under n 7 (1x7) letters (27); under o-ph 49 (7x7) letters (28, 29); and under ch 7 (1x7) letters (30). The following are the multiples of these 266 letters: 2x7x19, the sum of whose three factors (2+7+19) is 28 (4x7) (31). Not only does this part of the genealogy exhibit an elaborate plan of sevens, but one that includes its subdivisions, e.g., its 7 common nouns have their letters distributed in alphabetical groups of sevens. Thus the word under a has 7 (1x7) letters (32); those under b have 14 (2x7) letters (33); under g 7 (1x7) (34); under n-y 14 (2x7) letters (35) and under ch 7 (1x7) letters (36). The 35 proper nouns occur in all 63 (9x7) times (37); the names of Jesus' 28 male ancestors occur 56 (8x7) times (38). Thus a plan of sevens runs through this passage, having many details, i.e., the number of its vocabulary words, of their number beginning with vowels and consonants, of their parts of speech, as well as of the letters of the alphabet, of letters of their alphabetical distribution, also of that of their parts of speech and the sum of their factors. These things constitute a miracle of 38 points!

Now let us take up vs. 1-17, which like vs. 1-11 have a vast scheme of sevens. While the Old Testament gives at least 46 generations from Abraham to

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Jesus, God in vs. 1-17 purposely reduces these to 42, in order to give us in the total 42 (6x7), a multiple of 7 (39), but divides these into three sets of 14 (2x7) each (40, 41, 42), in order to give us a hint on the heptadic structure of the Bible, as shown above. The number of nouns in vs. 1-17 is 56 (8x7) (43). Of these, as shown above, vs. 1-11 have 42 (6x7) and vs. 12-17 have 14 (2x7) (44). The article ho is the most frequently occurring word here, occurring 56 (8x7) times (45). The vocabulary of vs. 1-17 has 72 words. As already indicated, the numerical value of a word is the sum of the numerical value of its letters, which value for each letter was given above. The sum of all of these 72 words is 42,364 (6,052x7) (46), which words under a-b have as their sum 9,821 (1,403x7) (47), under g-d, 1,904 (272x7) (48), under e-z, 3,703 (529x7) (49), under n-r, 19,264 (2,752x7) (50), and under s-ch 7,672 (1,096x7) (51). In numerical values vs. 1-17 are drawn upon a plan of sevens. These 72 vocabularies occur in vs. 1-17 in 90 forms. The sum of the numerical value of these 90 forms is 54,075 (7,725x7) (52), of which the forms under a-d have 11,900 (1,700x7) occurrences (53), under e-n, 4,739 (677x7) (54), under i, 14,287 (2,041x7) (55), under k-1, 504 (72x7) (56), under m-r, 8,806 (1,258x7 (57), under s, 4,956 (708x7) (58), under t-ch, 8,883 (1,269x7) (59). Thus the vocabulary of forms shows a scheme of sevens. There are elaborate schemes of eights, nines and thirteens running through this passage, but we will not present them here, however much weight they add to our argument that God is the Bible's Author, and hence it is inspired.

We will now present the argument based on Matt. 1:18-25 and will omit a consideration of its scheme of nines and elevens. There are 161 (23x7) words in the passage (60), with a vocabulary of 77 (11x7) words (61), which occur in 105 (15x7) forms (62). The numerical value of these 77 vocabulary words is 51,247 (7,321x7) (63). In this passage the angel uses

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28 (4x7) words (64) and does not use its other 49 (7x7) words (65, 66). Of its 105 forms the angel uses 35 (5x7) (67) and does not use the other 70 (10x7) forms (68). These 77 vocabulary words are divided into three alphabetical lists of sevens, as follows: Words under a have seven occurrences (69), under b-t, 63 (9x7) (70), and under y-ph, 7 (1x7) (71). The 160 uses of these 77 vocabulary words are divided alphabetically as follows: Words under a-e have 63 (9x7) occurrences (72), under e-i, 14 (2x7) (73), under k, 14 (2x7), and under l-ph, 70 (10x7) (75). Of the angel's 28 words 7 (1x7) are verbs (76) and 21 (3x7) are not verbs (77); they are alphabetically divided as follows: under a-g, 7 (1x7) (78), under d-i, 7 (1x7) (79), under k-o, 7 (1x7) (80) and under p-ph, 7 (1x7) (81). The numerical value of the 77 vocabulary words, as shown above, is 51,247. They are distributed thus: the six words here found nowhere else in Matthew have the numerical value of 5,005 (715x7) (82), of which one word, Emmanuel, is found in no other New Testament passage, it having the numerical value of 644 (92x7) (83).

These six words have 56 (8x7) letters (84); and the numerical value of the words found elsewhere in Matthew is 46,242 (6,606x7) (85). Of the 105 forms 77 (11x7) (86) occur but once, and 28 (4x7) occur more than once (87), 35 (5x7) are verbs (88) and 70 (10x7) are not verbs (89). Of the 70 non-verbs 7 (1x7) are proper nouns (90), having 42 (6x7) letters (91). Their words under d-e have 14 (2x7) occurrences (92), under i-m, 28 (4x7) (93). These 105 words are divided alphabetically as follows: words under a have 14 (2x7) occurrences (94), under g-r, 70 (10x7) (95), and under s-ph, 21 (3x7) (96). Their 161 occurrences are distributed alphabetically thus: a-g, 35 (5x7) (97), under d-e, also 35 (5x7) (98), under th-o, 63 (9x7) (99), under t-ph, 28 (4x7) (100). 7 (1x7) have Iota subscript (an i under certain vowels) (101). Finally, the numerical value of the 105

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forms is 65,429 (9,347x7) (102), which is divided alphabetically as follows: under a-d their numerical value is 15,626 (2,318x7) (103), under e-p, 32,501 (4,642x7) (104) and under r-ph, 17,402 (2,486x7) (105). The largest value of a letter, it occurring frequently, is 1,771 (253x7) (106), and the smallest of a letter is 7, both totaling 1,778 (254x7) (107). The simple vocabulary and the vocabulary of forms have 29 words in common. These occur 56 (8x7) times (108) and have a numerical value of 10,255 (1,465x7) (109). The number of forms not found elsewhere in Matt. is 14 (2x7) (110), with a numerical value of 8,715 (1,245x7) (111). The total numerical value of the entire passage is 93,394 (1,906x7x7) (112, 113). Certainly, an intricate and elaborate plan of sevens occurs in Matt. 1:18-25, as well as in Matt. 1:1-11 and Matt. 1:1-17, and also in the entire chapter as a whole.

Matt. 2 forms with Matt. 1 the first of the seven divisions of Matt. The rest of the seven are the following: (2) 3—7:27; (3) 7:28—10; (4) 11—13:52; (5) 13:53—18; (6) 19—25; (7) 26—28. Because Matt. 2 forms with Matt. 1 the first of Matt.'s 7 divisions, we will here first very briefly treat it separately and then combinedly with Matt. 1. Its vocabulary is 161 (23x7) words (114), with 896 (128x7) letters (115) and 238 (34x7) forms (116). The numerical value of its vocabulary is 123,529 (2,521x7x7) (117, 118), of its forms, 166,985 (23,855x7) (119). Matt. 2 has four divisions, e.g., vs. 1-6 have a vocabulary of 56 (8x7) words (120), and so on with the other three (121, 122, 123). There are three speeches here: the magi, Herod and the angel, whose speeches contain many numerics. Indeed, in this chapter all the kinds of numerics appear in detail as we indicated in Matt. 1, which will from lack of space not be given here, because we desire to present other and different features. In Matt. 1, 2, taking each sentence beginning with And (kai, de, in Greek) as a division, there are 6 divisions, each containing 7 subdivisions (124-129).

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From this standpoint the genealogy is one subdivision, containing 42 (6x7) subdivisions (130). Of course, the numbers of vocabularies, forms, words, letters and their numerical values in each chapter, as shown above, being in heptads, they must in both chapters total heptads. But we will show that the heptadic feature characterizes their parts of speech, i.e., nouns, verbs, etc. While these features total a large number of points, we will not number them as such. In these two chapters there are 882 (18x7x7) words (131, 132) and 4,459 (13x7x7x7) letters (133, 134, 135). It is a remarkable fact that the numbers 42, 882 and 4,459 are all of them divisible by no other number than 7. In each of the six sections of these two chapters, the total number of words is divisible by 7 (136-141), and this is also true of the number of the letters (142-147), while if the words are divided into parts of speech, the following appears: Verbs (excluding participles) are 133 (19x7) (148), whose letters are 1,008 (144x7) (149); proper nouns are 161 (23x7) (150), having 1,008 (144x7) letters (151); common nouns and adjectives are 126 (18x7) (152), having 798 (114x7) letters (153); pronouns 56 (8x7) (154), having 252 (36x7) letters (155); adverbs are 28 (4x7) (156), having 112 (16x7) letters (157); participles are 49 (7x7) (158, 159), having with the 145 articles 798 (114x7) letters (160); the articles and prepositions total 210 (30x7) (161); conjunctions are 119 (17x7) (162), which with the 65 prepositions total 483 (69x7) letters (163). Very many numerical features of sevens, eights, nines and elevens in these two chapters we pass by without mention, believing we have given enough thereon to convince any honest and open mind.

So far we have shown the occurrences of sevens in three chapters: John 17 and Matt. 1; 2. Lest one would think that these phenomena are limited to these chapters (they permeate the Bible through and through), we will give small sections numerically from the other two Gospels. Let us first consider the first

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eight verses of Mark—Mark 1:1-8. They have 126 (18x7) words (164), a vocabulary of 77 (11x7) words (165), of which 42 (6x7) begin with vowels (166) and 35 (5x7) with consonants (167). This vocabulary of 77 words has 427 (61x7) letters (168). John the Baptist uses 21 (3x7) of these vocables (169) and does not use 56 (8x7) of them (170). The first and last words of this section, alphabetically arranged, have the value of 312 and 1,501, whose sum is 1,813 (37x7x7) (171, 172); and the two words that have respectively the smallest and largest numerical values in this vocabulary, 9 and 1,755, total 1,764 (36x7x7) (173, 174). Moreover, 6 of these words have each a numerical value less than 100,—9, 55, 65, 31, 85, 70,—whose sum is 315 (45x7) (175). 19 different letters of the alphabet are used to begin these vocabularies, having as the sum of their values 2,289 (327x7) (176). These vocabularies are distributed as follows: Of the 77 words vs. 1-5 have 49 (7x7) words (177, 178) and vs. 6-8 have 28 (4x7) (179). There are in these 8 verses 21 (3x7) words (180), either (1) not found before in the particular form here found, or (2) not found in any later New Testament book, or (3) not found in this particular form anywhere else in the New Testament. Thus in these 8 verses there are at least 17 different numerical points. It has more, too many to give here.

As an illustration of numerics from Luke we will take the words of Luke 1:46-55, which are usually called the Magnificat (She [Mary] magnifies [the Lord]). With its introductory words, "And Mary said," it contains 14 (2x7) sentences (181), 105 (15x7) words (182) and 546 (78x7)=7x77[11x7]+7) letters (183), numbers which when taken together (having a common divisor) are divisible by 7, but by no other number. There are two well defined sections of 7 sentences here (7+7) (184, 185), and in each section the 7th sentence is longer than the other six (186, 187). The last one contains 21 (3x7) words (188) and 112 (16x7) letters (189). In the second section 7 acts of

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God are set forth (190). According to Ancient Greek Grammar (not English Grammar) there were 8 parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, participle, article, adverb, preposition, conjunction. Participles were separated from verbs and adjectives were counted among nouns. There are no adverbs in the Magnificat, nyn (now) being used here, as often in the New Testament, as a noun with an article and governed by a preposition. Hence there are 7 parts of speech used in this passage (191); of these 35 (5x7) are nouns (192), 14 (2x7) are pronouns (193), 16 verbs plus 12 conjunctions, or 28 (4x7) (194), and 17 articles plus 8 prepositions plus 3 participles, or 28 (4x7) (195). These total 105, as shown above. Of the declinable nouns 7 (1x7) are singular masculine (196), 7 (1x7) are plural masculine (197) and 7 are singular neuter (198). There are 7 (1x7) proper nouns, if Savior and the Mighty One (God) are included (199). 14 (2x7) nouns end in o (200) and 7 (1x7) in i (201). Names of God and things belonging to Him occur 7 (1x7) times (202). Of the pronouns 7 (1x7) different inflections are used (203); aytos occurs (in oblique cases) 7 (1x7) times in the singular (204); it also occurs 7 (1x7) times in the genitive singular and plural (205). Of the verbs 14 (2x7) are in the indicative mood (206) and 14 [not the same 14] (2x7) in the aorist tense (207); 7 (1x7) begin with e (208) and 7 (1x7) end with oy (209). Of the conjunctions, kai (and) occurs 7 (1x7) times (210) in the song itself. Of the articles 14 (2x7) are in the singular (211) and 14 (2x7) begin with t (212); 7(1x7) words begin with p (213), 14 (2x7) with e [of which 7 (1x7) are verbs] (214, 215), and 14 (2x7) with k (216); 7 (1x7) end with o (217) and 28 (4x7) with i (218). 7 (1x7) words have 7 (1x7) letters each (219, 220) and 7(1x7) have 9 (221). But these 221 points are not exhaustive.

Its 105 words are the sum of the numbers 1-14 (222); a occurs 70 (10x7) times (223), e 56 (8x7) times (224), i 56 (8x7) times (225), o (52)+y (38)+ph (15)

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occur 105 (15x7) times (226); th (6) +z (1) occur 7 (1x7) times (227); ph (2)+ch (2)+ps (3) occur 7 (1x7) times (228); n (41)+r (16)+s (41) occur 98 (2x7x7) times (229, 230); k (16)+t (38) +1 (16) occur 70 (10x7) times (231); b (5)+p (22) +d (8) occur 35 (5x7) times (232); and e (16)+g (9)+m (17) occur 42 (6x7) times (233); z, the numeral for 7 (lx7), is the only letter of the alphabet not occurring at all in the Magnificat (234). While the total of vowels is 303, no heptad, if sound alone determines the vowels and diphthongs total (173 vowel sounds and 65 diphthong sounds) 238 (34x7) sounds (235). The five main diphthongs occur 35 (5x7) times (236). The peculiar expression, from now on [= henceforth], which occurs in this song, is found 7 (1x7) times (237); God my (or our) Savior, 7 (1x7) times (238); and the future and aorist of kathaireo, to put down, occurs 7 (1x7) times (239). This song contains 14 (2x7) quotations from the Old Testament (240). In this short passage in itself and as related to other New Testament occurrences there are 56 (8x7) heptads (241) brought to our attention. We showed above that the 58 occurrences of elevens in the mere surface of the Bible had one chance of happening to hundreds of vigintillions of not happening and the 42 occurrences of sevens in that surface had one chance of happening to a number consisting of 47 figures of not happening and combined such elevens and sevens had one chance of happening to a figure of hundreds of figures of not happening. Here we have shown in but three short passages, Matt. 1; 2; Mark 1:1-8; Luke 1:46-55 (we did not count in among these those that lie on the surface of John 17) 241 heptads, without by any means exhausting these, and ignoring the many involved eights, nines, elevens, etc. The possibility of these merely happening to their not happening is as one to a row of several hundred digits, a number so enormous as to baffle human imagination and to rule the matter of its happening out of consideration. But these are not isolated phenomena;

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for these heptads are found in the occurrence of most of the Bible's words, and in the numerics of every sentence, paragraph, section, division and book of the Old and New Testaments.

We will give one more illustration of this phenomenon of heptads, one from the Old Testament, which abounds in them, like the New Testament. Without giving the numerics of it, Ps. 23, as to vocabularies, forms and words, nor their alphabet distributions in the varied details in which these occur and in the various subdivisions as we gave them in Matt. 1, we will give some generalities on its heptads. In the Hebrew text there are 56 (8x7) compound words (1) and 84 (12x7) simple words (2), each prefix and suffix being counted a distinct word, and 210 (30x7) letters (3). We count the Hebrew word tsatmaveth [shadow of death] as two words, since it is such. There are 14 (2x7) verbs (4), 28 (4x7) common nouns (5) and 28 (4x7) prefixes and suffixes (6) in this Psalm. Of the letters (using the English equivalents), v occurs 7(1x7) times as a consonant (7), and 7 (1x7) times as a vowel (8). d and ch also occur each 7 (1x7) times (9, 10). The two weak gutturals, a and ai, occur 21 (3x7) times (11) and the strong ones, d and ch, with r, often classed with gutturals, 28 (4x7) times (12), the gutturals thus totaling 49 (7x7) (13, 14). The three vowel letters, a, y and v, occur 63 (9x7) times (15). In favor of counting the Hebrew words for the shadow of death two words is also the fact that as one word it has the sign called makkeph, which makes a surplus one, one more than 7, in the Psalm; it otherwise has 7 (1x7) (16). We could take up other Old Testament passages, e.g., Jonah 1:1-5; Gen. 17:15-27; Ex. 20:18-26, all of which contain marvelous numerics; but our readers will agree that we have given illustrations enough to prove the Bible's verbal inspiration, when we remember that they are but examples of what is present in most of the words and in all of the Bible sentences, paragraphs, sections, divisions and books.

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Biblical Numerics has many other uses than proving the Bible's verbal inspiration, some of which will now be briefly pointed out. One of these is helping to get the right translation when the same form can belong to different words; another is to correct wrong readings. Copyists have often made mistakes in the Greek and Hebrew MSS., sometimes leaving out right words or phrases, sometimes inserting wrong ones, sometimes giving us variant readings in a passage, sometimes inserting marginal notes into the text, sometimes leaving out parts, at times considerable parts, of sections. We will give some illustrations. As an example of correction of a wrong reading we might instance 2 Pet. 1:1, where our version has it: "the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ"; but numerics show that it should read, in harmony with St. Peter's parallel expressions: "the righteousness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." As a case of its helping to find the right among variant readings we might point out Luke 2:14, where many MSS. give our A. V. reading and others the Vulgate's and A. R. V.'s reading: "peace on earth to men of good will." Biblical Numerics proves the A. V. to be correct: "peace on earth, good will to men." As illustrations of insertion of marginal notes into the text the passage of the three heavenly witnesses may be cited—1 John 5:7, which numerics, like all MSS. before the 15th century, proved to be an interpolation; and the same is the case with the clause of Rev. 20:5: "the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished," which also the Sinaitic, our oldest and best MS. of Revelation, and the Syriac, the oldest New Testament translation, omit.

Westcott and Hort's Greek N. T. text is one of the best; yet it puts in double square brackets 16 larger and smaller Scriptures as not genuine, while Biblical Numerics proves 14 of these to be genuine, including Mark 16:9-20; most of Luke 22:19 and all of 20, 43, 44; 23:34 (first sentence); John 7:53—8:11, etc. Frequently Biblical Numerics helps to restore a lost

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reading to eliminate a redundant reading, and at times to eliminate a false reading found in all ancient MSS., e.g., Matt. 27:51-54, in its earthquake and dead-raising references. By what is called neighborhood numerics God points out errors that He foreknew would arise. By neighborhood numerics is meant heptads that are not exact, but that, if allowance is made for a number to be one or more short of a heptad, or one or more long of a heptad, the rest will come out by heptads, e.g., the figure 104 is short 1 of being a heptad, 105; but if treated as 105 it will make figures connected with it in the same connection come out in heptads. It is very apparent that such a way of treating heptads violates the principle of heptads, for the strength of Biblical Numerics lies in its working in perfect sevens; yet Mr. Ivan Panin uses it as a proof that a false chronology of the Bible is true! As to the punctuation of Luke 23:43 as given in the A. V.: "Verily I say unto thee, Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise," many of God's children have been much perplexed, because they know that of the three paradises of the Bible two were non-existent that day, and that Jesus after His Resurrection expressly said of the third (Rev. 2:7) that He had not yet been there since His death (John 20:17). Here Biblical Numerics comes to our rescue. It shows that if the comma is put before the word today, as in the A. V., neighborhood numerics result in both clauses of the statement, but if it is put after the word today each clause comes out in perfect heptads. This is God's way of showing that error would prevail on this subject, and His way of correcting the error. This phenomenon occurs quite frequently in the Bible in passages foreseen as misused.

But for present needs one of the best uses of Biblical Numerics is its proof of the verbal inspiration of the Bible from its external forms. The best proof of the Bible's inspiration to the devout believer is its contents combined with his pertinent experiences, and its teachings on inspiration; but to others doubtless its best

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proof is Biblical Numerics, which at the same time is the most powerful refutation of the documentary theory of the Bible's origin advocated by the so-called higher critics. The documentary theory of the Bible's origin is the following: various writers' pen-products, called by the critics documents, were by various editors combined into the Bible's books, e.g., Moses, a la higher criticism, was not the writer of the Pentateuch, but the writings, documents, of about eight different authors were combined, slapped together, sandwiched together, intertwined, intertwisted and interlocked, into the first five books of our Bible, so that some chapters are supposed to be compounded from as many as six writers' works. Nobody ever heard of these alleged original writers before higher criticism arose. Their creation is the product of the higher critics' imagination. They claim that they know of their existence because of peculiarities of vocabularies and style of writing; but, Hebrew scholars as able as they deny these peculiarities. A sober judgment of their views and work is that they are long on guesses and short on facts, as well as that they run in head-on collision with facts that they cannot explain in harmony with their views and that violently contradict their views. As at the end of our book on Creation we refuted Evolution as a method of creation, so at the end of our discussion of the inspiration of the Bible, we expect to give a refutation of the main claims of higher criticism, as contrary to the Bible's view of itself, especially in its development theory; for it exists in two forms: (1) the documentary theory, and (2) the development theory. Thereafter we will refute in detail their claims that the Bible contradicts itself. Biblical Numerics is an absolute and unanswerable refutation of the documentary theory. How could, if uninspired, any of the alleged original documents have numerics in many of its words, in all its sentences, paragraphs, sections, and in the document as a whole; for it is entirely beyond the ability of a human to produce such numerics, since

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it requires omniscience to effect it? Moreover, how could it, if uninspired, have happened all unconsciously to its writers? How could the same thing have happened, limiting ourselves to the Pentateuch, to seven other alleged writers of "documents" allegedly underlying the Pentateuch? Even if the original documents had such intricate numerics, how could the editors who sandwiched together these documents, all unconscious of the situation, have preserved these numerics, considering that they excluded parts of them, added parts of their own, modified other parts, fused still others, intermingled in the same sentences parts from several "documents," etc., etc.? The documentary theory of the Bible's construction is, in the face of the myriad forms of Biblical numerics, an absolutely impossible theory. And if this documentary theory is completely impossible, certainly the development theory of higher criticism, which rests upon it as its foundation, is likewise completely impossible. But more on this phase of the subject later. We have from facts, those of Biblical numerics, proven the inspiration of the Bible, as we have also proven it from general Biblical considerations and specific Bible passages.

Above was given a brief refutation by Biblical numerics of the documentary theory of higher criticism. Before proceeding to a many-sided refutation of its documentary and its evolutionary theories, a brief description of higher criticism would be in place—a description that is at the same time a disproof of both of its forms. The father of higher criticism, in its documentary theory's first stage, was a Jean Astruc, a Protestant French physician, who, in 1753, noting that Gen. 1—2:3 calls the Deity God, and Gen. 2:4-25 calls Him Yahveh, concluded that Moses used two documents as sources of his information and copied the former into the parts of Genesis where the name God appears, and the latter where the name Yahveh appears, and used a third document where both of these names appear in Gen. He called the alleged first document

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the Elohist, the second the Yahvist, and the third, the Elohisto-Yahvist. Thus the documentary theory arose. But later "higher critics" went further than Astruc, who held that Moses compiled Genesis out of three alleged documents; they claimed to find seven or eight documents which, they claimed, not Moses, but editors allegedly living about 1,000 to 1,200 years later, mixed up into Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. The superficiality of the viewpoint is manifest in that they did not search deeper to find a satisfactory reason for the use of these different names for the Deity in the accounts where they occur. This real reason is already indicated in the meanings of the words; for elohim means the Mighty One, and is used in the creation story, because creation is above all things an expression of God's power; and Yahveh, meaning the self-existent one of perfect wisdom, power, justice and love, designates Him as the Covenant God of His people in His attributes of person and character, and Gen. 2:4-25 describes God in His Covenant relations with Adam and Eve. These two uses for the reasons just given continue throughout Genesis, and the combined use occurs when works of might and covenants are united.

Higher criticism claims that the alleged Elohist and Yahvist documents appear severally in the two accounts of man's creation, the former being that given in Gen. 1:26, 27 and the latter being that of Gen. 2:4-25. But the sophistry of this superficial view is apparent when we consider that many authors, orators, lecturers and preachers very frequently first give a brief synopsis of their subject matter, then give details, which is exactly what Moses did in the two accounts of man's creation. So, too, they claim that these two alleged documents appear in the flood story. But here, too, power toward wicked mankind characterizes the account wherein the name God appears, and God's attributes of character appear in its parts implying His covenant relations with Noah and his family. Furthermore,

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in the Babylonian account of the flood in the Gilgames epic, the same two lines of thought are brought out and no "higher critic" has had the temerity to offer the documentary theory as to it, an epic poem that was written at least 400 years before Moses. In refutation of the documentary theory as applied to the flood story, opponents of the critics, applying their methods to some of Dean Stanley's works, have shown two alleged documents underlying them! Apart from the inherent weakness of the documentary theory, Biblical numerics literally annihilates it.

The impetus was given the second stage of the documentary theory by a German Professor, Wolf by name, in his introduction to his edition of Homer's poems, 1795, claiming that Greek writing was unknown in Homer's day, about 800 B. C., and that hence his poems were memorized and thus handed down until in the days of Solon, about 600 B. C., Greek writing was invented. This theory was soon refuted, but it went over from profane to sacred literature, higher critics claiming that in Moses' day writing had not been invented anywhere, hence that he could not be the author of the Pentateuch. In the absence of archaeological finds this theory flourished widely in the first quarter and a few years later of the 19th century. But in the 1860's and 1870's higher criticism, laying hold on the evolution theory, claimed that the Bible was not a revelation from God, but was a record and statement of man's growth in religious ideas as a result of his groping and searching through his mental, artistic, moral and religious faculties after a knowledge of, and fellowship with God. Hence, according to these critics the Bible was simply a record and statement of man's evolution as to religion. They claimed, e.g., that before the days of Amos and Hosea man was too low in the scale of evolution to have worked himself into the idea of there being but one God, Monotheism; hence they claimed that the Pentateuch, which throughout teaches Monotheism, could not in any part of it have been produced

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before these prophets, who flourished about 800 B. C. They claim that Deuteronomy, actually the last book of the Pentateuch to be written, was the first one of it to be written, and that just before it, and allegedly not the rest of the Pentateuch, was shown to Josiah about 650 B. C., at which showing it was allegedly, by a "pious" fraud, misrepresented to him as a writing of Moses. The book of Leviticus and other sacrificial features of the Pentateuch, according to evolutionary higher critics, were allegedly written after the return from Babylon, probably by Ezra, and also fraudulently palmed off by him and others as written by Moses. This phase of higher criticism denied the authenticity of the historical books of the Old Testament; and because of the different styles of Is. 1—39 and 40—66, a difference easily accounted for by the vastly different subjects of these two parts of Isaiah, they claimed that there were two Isaiahs, both of whom allegedly wrote after the return from Babylon. Similarly they began to treat the Gospels; all of these books they allege were palmed off as pious frauds and given names of alleged authors of very ancient times, to pave the way for an easier and wider acceptance of them. Above we have described higher criticism in general in terms that will fit both the infidel and so-called evangelical schools.

Our first objection to higher criticism, into the discussion of whose details we cannot enter, for lack of space, since such a discussion would require several sizable books, as the writings of its opponents like Sayce, Green, Urquhart, Finn, Ruprecht, Orr, Moeller, Bissell, etc., prove, is that it is a child of irreverence. It is certainly irreverential to treat the Bible, which comes to us with unanswerable proofs of its being a Divinely-inspired revelation of God and His plan, as we would treat any secular book or a heathen sacred book of religion, as these critics do. It is certainly irreverent to approach it in subjecting its views to the criticism of the evolution theory, which the Bible refutes, as these critics do. It is certainly irreverent to treat large parts

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of it as pious frauds, as they do. It is certainly irreverent to palm Jesus off as one who knew that much of the Old Testament was pious frauds and yet appealed to such frauds in proof of His teachings, as some of them do. It is certainly irreverent to deny that its miracles were actually wrought, as the Bible claims, as most higher critics do. It is certainly irreverent to deny that the Bible prophesies the future; and to allege that its prophecies were uttered after the events, as they do in the cases of Isaiah, Daniel, Jesus, etc. It is certainly irreverential to foist upon the Bible one's own notions and fancies, as these critics do. It is certainly irreverential for an unbeliever in the Bible to seek to undermine faith in it, as most higher critics do. The fact that these critics, especially the most influential of them, like Graf, Kuenen, Wellhausen, etc., are in almost all cases irreverential toward the Bible and thus toward the God that it reveals, proves that they are destitute of the Truth on the subject; for the Bible teaches and experience corroborates that the fear [reverence] of the Lord is the beginning [foundation] of wisdom and knowledge (Job 28:28; Ps. 111:10; Prov. 1:7; 9:10; 15:33). Therefore, what they teach on this subject is not wisdom and knowledge. Rather, it is rank error. That there are difficulties in the Bible no real student of it will deny; and God designedly placed them therein to test the faithful and to stumble the unfaithful; for the Bible teaches that it is so constructed by Divine design, to stumble the irreverent, who in every case are unfaithful (Is. 28:13, 14; 29:9-16). Therefore, let us not look for Biblical truths to higher critics who lack reverence for God and His works. In the nature of the case they are waterless wells and rainless clouds. Some may think us uncharitable in so speaking of them; but it is God's judgment of them; and we, as a mouthpiece of Him, announce it as a criterion whereby they should be tested.

Higher criticism started on a twofold delusion, i.e., (1) a la Astruc, the use of the two Hebrew names for

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the Deity, Elohim and Yahveh, proves a plurality of authors in the books that use them, and a la Wolf, in Moses' day the art of writing was unknown. How illogical the former claim is can be seen from the facts that Mr. Gladstone wrote of Victoria in one place as queen and in another as empress, that Mr. Mower, the famous correspondent, in some places wrote of Mr. Stalin as Russia's prime minister and in other places as marshal, that Time's China's correspondent in some places writes of Chiang Kai-shek as president and in other places as generalissimo, that its Washington correspondent writes of America's chief executive in some places as Mr. Roosevelt, in other places as Commander-in-chief, in still other places as Mr. President, and that its London correspondent in some places calls the chief minister of his Majesty George VI Mr. Churchill, in other places prime minister, in other places premier and in still other places, head of the War Cabinet. These are not, of course, proofs of a plurality of documents underlying each one's pertinent writings out of which they are an amalgamation! On such an illogical basis was the documentary theory's start founded. It clearly is a delusion. And what shall be said of the Wolfian claim that the art of writing was unknown in Moses' day, a claim made before archaeological monuments in Bible lands were excavated? It has by archaeological discoveries been as completely overthrown as ever a delusion was overthrown as such. The Egyptians had not only hieroglyphics and Babylonians parallel written figures before the days of Abraham; but in his days had cuneiform inscriptions, alphabets and syllabolaries and an extensive literature on greatly varied subjects, as clay tablets, sculpture, temple and tomb inscriptions and papyri of those times and later times, both before Moses as well as afterward, abundantly prove. The Tel el Amarna tablets, discovered in 1887, which consist of diplomatic letters filed in the archives of the Pharaohs, and which, among other things, were the reports of Pharaoh's

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deputies in Palestine on conditions there during the times of the Exodus and of Joshua's conquest of Canaan, so completely disprove the second delusion maintained for years as the chief objection to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, namely, that the art of writing was then not known, that no scholars, not even higher critics, now hold this delusion. Yet Astruc's delusion was the father and Wolf's delusion was the mother of higher criticism! This leaves the theory disowned of father and mother; and it evidently is an invention of Satan, the father of lies (John 8:44), who in higher criticism uttered great falsehoods.

Another objection to higher criticism is that it is based upon the personal imaginations, attitudes, prejudices and predilections of theorists ("literary tact"!), and not on inductions from facts nor on deductions derived from factual principles. The inventors and main proponents of the evolutionary phase of higher criticism are Teutonic professors, who spent their lives in their studies framing their theories according to their notions of how things ought to have been according to their preconceived opinions, prejudices, attitudes and predilections, and not on how things actually were. In educational circles their method is called the "subjective," as opposed to "objective," method of investigation. By the former term is meant one's viewpoint based upon his personal mental attitudes and predilections and prejudices, and by the latter term is meant one's viewpoint based upon facts and factual principles irrespective of his personal mental attitudes, prejudices and predilections. Accordingly, higher criticism is the subjective theory of impractical theorists. While many German professors have been brilliant scholars, they have been men mainly detached from the practical facts of life, and therefore are very poor judges of life's affairs. Moreover, their viewpoint was that of Occidentals, Europeans, and not that of Orientals, Asiatics. They approached the Bible, which is a preeminently Oriental book surcharged with Oriental forms

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of language, methods of thought, points of view and modes of sentiment, as though it were an Occidental book surcharged with Occidental forms of language, methods of thought, points of view and modes of sentiment. Such a method of approach cannot but misunderstand the Bible in its setting of things, disqualify its user for the task of rightly appraising the Bible, and produce a thoroughly false theory of the Bible's nature, composition and contents, even as it acting in higher critics has as the sum total of its great mental exertions produced. If there were no other objection to it, this one alone is sufficient to condemn it; for a true science is based on facts treated inductively, and on objective, factual principles treated deductively—things on which higher criticism is not based, despite its learned twaddle on words very often of uncertain meanings, a course unworthy of the name science and productive of a thousand exploded hypotheses, even as higher criticism's rejection of not a few of its own earlier hypotheses based on words alone proves.

Higher criticism is in gross error in that it holds that the bulk of the Old Testament and parts of the New Testament are pious frauds, i.e., frauds knowingly palmed off as such by their perpetrators in order to serve the purposes of religion. Above we saw how it set forth Deuteronomy as a pious fraud invented about the time of Josiah and palmed off as a work of Moses to give it currency and authority. They claim that the bulk of the rest of the Pentateuch was written by Ezra or some contemporaries of him, but fraudulently palmed off by them as written by Moses, to give it a wider and deeper acceptance. Daniel, they allege, was not written by a contemporary and statesman of Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus, but by some one who lived after the Maccabean wars and wrote the book as an alleged prophecy of the Maccabean struggles after they were past events, and ascribed the authorship to an alleged Daniel who allegedly never lived, but whose existence was invented to lend authority to the alleged

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book of Daniel. Similarly, they claim that Isaiah was a series of alleged prophecies delivered after the events occurred, and palmed off as written by an alleged Isaiah contemporary with King Hezekiah, in order to secure for it wide and deep acceptance. They claim that his mention of Cyrus by name (Is. 44:28; 45:1) is a certain proof that the second part of Isaiah (40—66) was post-exilic, as though God, who knows the future as well as He does the past, could not have inspired the naming of Israel's deliverer two centuries before time, and as a type of Christ, who delivers God's spiritual Israel from symbolic Babylon. They allege that David did not write the bulk of the Psalms, very likely none of them. These, too, they claim to be in almost all cases post-exilic, but assigned mainly to David in a pious fraud, to give them greater currency and acceptance. John, of course, they allege could not have written the Gospel, and the Revelation that go by his name; but some fraud wrote these to combat certain errors that arose long after the second century began, and then issued them under John's name to insure their acceptance and authority. Thus these critics reduce large parts of the Bible to pious frauds. To the true Bible student this course of higher criticism buries it as a rotten carcass deep in the rubbish pile of infidel theories.

The reasons that they give, as based on the Bible, for denying the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch are certainly fallacious; for they are, in some cases, torn out of their connection, and in some based on false ideas as to the difference between the obligatoriness of justice and the non-obligatoriness of sacrifice. E.g., they quote Ps. 40:6: "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears has thou opened; burnt offering and sin-offering hast thou not required." This Psalm they claim was pre-exilic, because they think it can be used as a proof that the whole sacrificial system of the Old Testament was post-exilic. Here, they cry out, is a proof that the Old Testament sacrificial system was not in vogue before this Psalm was written; hence

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Moses did not give it, they cry out in triumph. But hold! we say to them. These words are not historical, they are prophetic of Christ (Heb. 10:5-10). They do not say one word to the effect that God did not wish, nor have pleasure in, the typical sacrifices before Christ came with their antitypes. They say this of them only after Christ set them aside as types by putting in their place their antitypes, as Heb. 10:5-10 proves. They quote Hosea 6:6: "I desired mercy, and not sacrifice," as another proof that in the 8th century B. C. the Mosaic sacrifices were not by God desired; and, hence, that such sacrifices were not of God's suggestion, at least up to 700 years after Moses' times. To this we answer: You are tearing the passage out of its connection. The connection shows that God desired no sacrifice offered Him by those who showed no mercy, and no burnt offerings made contrary to the Divine Truth. But this is a far cry from God's not wanting them at all, as higher critics loudly claim.

Similarly, they quote Amos 5:21-25 as a proof that God, in the 8th century B. C., disapproved of sacrifices and services such as the Pentateuch inculcates. Again, we answer that they ignore the statements accompanying and following His disapproval. These are to the effect that the wickedness and the hypocrisy of the Israelites of those times made Him disapprove, not of properly brought sacrifice, but the sacrifices and services of the wicked, which the Bible expressly calls an abomination to the Lord (Prov. 15:8). Again, Jer. 7:22: "I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the Land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices," is appealed to as a proof that God did not, up to the time of the exile, give the Jews a charge concerning the sacrifices of the Israelitish priesthood. In answer we would say several things: (1) The passage truly says that on the day of Israel's deliverance from Egypt, no priestly offerings were given them to perform. This was not done until they were at Sinai a while. (2) The

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passage specifies the two main offerings of the Levitical law, (a) burnt offerings and (b) sin offerings, even as Heb. 10:5-10 shows, both typically and antitypically. In Heb. 10:8 the word and between the words offering and burnt offerings should be even, for Paul here is defining sacrifice and offering by the words, burnt offerings and offering for sin. Of course, these were not given at the time of the deliverance from Egypt, but first at Sinai. (3) Neither burnt offerings nor sin offerings were by God commanded as a duty, but were by Him suggested as privileges. (4) The contrast as to what was not commanded, but was given as a privilege at Sinai, and what was commanded but violated, existing between v. 22 on the one hand, and vs. 23 and 24 on the other hand, shows that Jeremiah is rebuking the Jews for violating commands, i.e., violating the demands of justice, while performing things, sacrifices, not demanded by justice, but things suggested as privileges. In no sense does this passage prove that the Levitical sacrifices were not revealed at Sinai nor performed before the Babylonian exile, as higher critics claim. Thus he was rebuking sacrifices made in wickedness, and not disapproving of sacrifices made in righteousness. Hence the critics' thought is read into, not taken out of the passage. Thus is exposed the fallacy of their thought that God disapproved of burnt offerings and sin offerings as such, before the exile. How flimsy is their alleged proof that the Bible disproves the Levitical service's use before the Babylonian captivity!

Higher criticism is, in its grosser forms, blatant infidelity, and in its milder forms clearly infidelistic. In their great majority denying that the Bible is a revelation of God, that miracles were wrought in attestation of it, and claiming that its prophecies were written after the events, that Jesus was a sinful man begotten by a sinful father, but more than others was successful as an overcomer of His alleged natural depravity, and thus became a good example to others, and that the writers of the Bible in some cases were imposters and

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frauds, and in some cases were ignoramuses, they are in spirit much akin to outspoken blasphemous infidels, like Thomas Paine, Robert Ingersoll and Charles Bradlaugh. But the difference is this: Whereas the latter stood outside the fortress of the Bible as outspoken enemies of it, attacking it from without, the former stand in that fortress and as pretended friends, but really traitors and enemies, fight it from within—thus of the two classes by far the deadlier class of its foes are the higher critics. They have gotten the chief professorial chairs in many universities and theological seminaries and the pulpits of the more fashionable and larger churches, and sit in the chief pews, and do their deadly work under the guise of friends of the Bible, most of them practicing gross elasticity of conscience in subscribing to creeds, which they reject, and drawing salaries for defending the Bible, which they attack.

Higher critics have always spoken of their theories as assured results of Biblical scholarship. But their assured results have time and again been overthrown by archaeology. They take the position that the Bible's historical statements are to be questioned and denied, unless extra-Biblical evidence corroborates them. Thus they denied the Mosaic account of creation, until the assured findings of both geology and archaeology overthrew their view. They denied the historicity of the flood, until the Gilgames Epic was discovered, giving an account of it, much like that in Gen. 6—8, and until antelopes, mammoths, etc., with undigested green grass in their stomachs, were found embedded in the ice of Siberia, drowned by the flood waters and quickly frozen, proven by the undigested grass, in the soon congealed ice when the canopy that made this earth a hothouse, even at the poles, dropped and quickly changed that hothouse condition in the far north and south to frigid climates. They denied the historicity of Gen. 14, claiming that no kings of the names of the four and five mentioned there existed, and that at that time the eastern kingdoms did not rule over Palestine,

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until archaeology came along with their names and the history of the extension of their rulership to the Mediterranean given in the monuments. They denied Israel's enslavement in Egypt until a stele of the great Raamses, found in Besan, the Biblical Bethshan, described his enslaving them and making them build his store cities, Pithom and Rameses, which the Swiss archaeologist, E. Naville, had previously excavated and proved to be the store cities that the enslaved Israelites had built. They denied the overthrow of Sodom, etc., until a few years ago excavators discovered their sites and the proof of their being suddenly overwhelmed by great fires. We would not at all be surprised, if in one of the salt pillars of Usdum, south of the Dead Sea, the embedded body of Lot's wife will be found, excavated by explorers. They denied that writing was known in Moses' day, until the Egyptian monuments and papyri and Babylonian monuments and clay tablets gave the lie to their assertions. They denied the invasion and conquest of Canaan by Joshua, until the Tel el Amarna letters disproved their assertions. They denied various events given in Kings and Chronicles, until Babylonian and Assyrian monuments corroborated them. According to them, Cyrus never restored Israel to Palestine and aided them in the rebuilding of the temple, until a stele was found setting these things forth. To them Solomon was a myth, until his very smelting furnaces were discovered. Hezekiah's making a tunneled aqueduct to bring waters through a very long channel excavated through the solid rocks into Jerusalem was, according to them, a mere myth, until this tunnel was found, explored and the Hebrew inscription telling of the two sets of workmen laboring from both its ends met in the middle, where it was chiseled, was deciphered. Archaeology giving the solid facts of ancient history has made a sorry mess of "the assured results" of higher criticism. As with Biblical Numerics, so with Archaeology, God allowed the higher critics to make worldwide their denials of the Bible's being a Divine

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revelation, and of its being true to facts; He then nicely brought these two sciences to light in relation to the Bible, to the confounding of the so-called higher critics.

The argument from silence is used by the critics to deny statements of the Bible. They assume that practically every history given in the Bible is false, unless and until corroborated by the archaeology of Egypt or Babylon or Palestine. It is this principle that nerved them, before pertinent archaeological discoveries of the 19th and 20th centuries, to deny the historicity of most Old Testament stories. But the argument from silence is decidedly unscientific, which is proven so by archaeological finds disproving one point after another of the critics' denial of Old Testament facts based upon the silence of extra-Biblical corroborations. They fought every one of these findings at its early announcement, until they were compelled by facts to yield a reluctant acceptance of them. One would think that the great numbers of the overthrowals of their points before claimed as "assured results" of their principles would destroy their pertinent dogmatism on their principles; but not so; for they are of those "ever learning but never coming to a knowledge of the Truth."

Another great error of their methods leading to "assured results" (!) is their course of making Oriental literature to conform to Occidental notions, methods, forms of thought, habits of life and rules of interpretation. Oriental literature, of which the Bible is a part, has a coloring, works with methods, illustrates forms of thought, reveals habits of life and follows rules of interpretation so different from pertinent Occidental ways that to make the former conform to the latter results in gross misunderstandings. Take for example, Abraham's negotiations for a burial place of Sarah (Gen. 23). No occidental can understand this story unless he understands Oriental ways of bargaining. Among Orientals one must obtain consent for the sale of property from the pertinent compatriots of the seller; and the thing bargained for is always offered

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free at first and that to ingratiate the seller with the buyer, and often ends with charging a price many times larger than the property is worth. Note that unlike with us, everything in the land bought at an Oriental sale must be expressly mentioned, e.g., trees, grass, a path, etc., etc., otherwise it is not included in the sale of a piece of land, which accounts for the mention of certain details in this story. The sale must be witnessed, as well as be sanctioned, by the generality of the seller's compatriots. At first, not knowing these things, higher critics ruled the whole story as a myth; but its conformity to Oriental customs found out later made them recede from their denials. But impractical professor critics still insist in making Occidental views force their ways into construing Oriental matters to their greater confusion.

Another false method of these critics is in making words the criterion of history. They start out with an array of words, often of uncertain and fanciful etymologies, many of which are of uncertain derivation and sense. To these words, to which often arbitrary and fanciful meanings are attached, they seek to make facts conform, and if they do not conform, so much the worse for the facts. A method that makes historical facts conform to theoretical views by false rules based upon words frequently misunderstood is certainly a false one; for nothing is more illusive than making words the criterion of facts; for we are not to look to grammars and dictionaries for historical facts. Certainly, we need words to decipher the record of facts, history. But those words do not create those facts, nor make the facts bend to the words. The history of words, the varied meanings that many words have (e.g., the word nathan, he gives, has about 70 different translations in our A. V.), the changes in meanings that they assume (e.g., the word, prevent, etymologically means, and used to mean, precede [1 Thes. 4:15]; but it has lost that meaning and now means to hinder) and the uncertain use of words with many

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meanings all go to prove that facts of history must not bend to words, but words must bend to the facts. But this false use and uncertain use of words characterizes the methods of higher criticism and time and again the facts of Biblical history have by it been set aside in the interests of word-stickling higher critics—to their confusion when archaeology corroborated the Bible.

Their claim to be able to tell who wrote what in ancient literature, and that written in a dead language, confessedly not thoroughly understood now, resulting, e.g., in their claim that from seven different documents Genesis has been compounded, and that other Bible books likewise have been compounded from a number of documents by unknown editors, is preposterous in the extreme. They cannot even do this with compounded writings of their own language, written by authors whom they know, with whose style and modes of thought they are familiar, let alone with (alleged) writings of unknown authors, written in a dead language in many ways unclear to them, allegedly mixed together by unknown editors of whose existence nobody ever heard, until the imaginations of higher critics conjured them up. It so happens that in our times several authors have collaborated in the writing of various books, e.g., Messrs. Besant and Rice have together written a number of books. But though scholars have attempted to find out where one ends and the other begins and which one of them wrote any specific part, none of them has succeeded in finding this out. For years Prof. A. H. Sayce, one of the greatest of secular and Biblical archaeologists, an invincible opponent of higher criticism, challenged critics to point out the parts of the books that each of several co-authors wrote in well known modern languages, and the critics have failed to do so. At a Methodist conference where the higher critics present propagandized their theories, two ministers present, whose writings were familiar to all there, challenged those critics to decipher who wrote what in an account of the conference that they offered

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to write. They then retired, wrote their accounts separately, combined them into one account and returned to the conference, but none of the critics could, after much study, tell who wrote what in that combined account. How much less can the critics do this with the alleged documents, allegedly underlying the Bible?

To the Bible believer, and to others of a fair mind, one of the most objectionable things about higher criticism is its implying that Jesus and the Apostles were mistaken as some, and dishonest as other higher critics say in assigning the Pentateuch to Moses' authorship, many of the Psalms to David's, Joshua, Judges and Ruth to Samuel's, Isaiah to Isaiah's, etc., for some of them claim that they were ignorant on the subject; others of the critics make them deceivers in the matter, alleging that they knew that the above-named were not the authors, but spoke of them as such, because they did not wish to disturb unduly in their faith the common people. But Jesus and the Apostles, by their appeals to and uses of those writings, prove that they believed them to have been authored by the ones that they named as such. Jesus and the Apostles used these writings as inspired revelations, and rested the proof of their case upon those writings. According to some critics Jesus and the Apostles were ignorant of the subject, higher criticism not yet having been born; and according to others they were willful deceivers thereon the better to palm off their opinions. Words fail us properly to characterize such blasphemies.

Their splitting up Bible books into their alleged documentary sources has created new and grave difficulties not before had; and it could not reasonably be otherwise. As shown above, there are difficulties in the Bible, one reason for which is, that as an oriental book it cannot be otherwise than that it should contain difficulties to occidentals. The main reason for this, however, we also pointed out above: God drew it up in a way to test the faith, hope, love and obedience of His people, and to manifest and stumble the unbelieving,

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disobedient and unfaithful among them. But the difficulties that arise through the splitting up of the Bible into its alleged sourcal documents are decidedly more and graver, and are in many cases inexplicable. In Princeton University's Dr. Green's controversy with Chicago University's Dr. Harper on the structure and authorship of Genesis, the former pointed out how the Mosaic authorship of it maintains its unity, harmony, clarity and simplicity as a literary product, and how Dr. Harper's documentary view of its authorship destroyed its unity, harmony, clarity and simplicity. Dr. Delitzsch, in his old age, became a so-called evangelical higher critic, believing still in the inspiration of the alleged editors who were supposed to have compiled the pertinent books. His commentaries on Genesis, Psalms and Isaiah, written and published in several editions before he became a higher critic, were perhaps the ablest commentaries on these books; but after he became a higher critic, even a so-called evangelical one, he revised these commentaries, and certainly made them a mass of confusion, for which doubtless his advanced years were in part responsible.

Higher criticism has been unfruitful of good results, and has certainly produced evil results. Who ever heard of higher critics leading sinners to Christ, and then leading justified sinners to consecration, and the consecrated unto making their calling and election sure, which should be the objects of all Bible study? But in the cases of ten thousands of ministers, they have made skeptics of them, and in the case of millions of the laity they have made unbelievers of them. Thus barrenness of real good and irreligiousness of many are the fruits of higher criticism. And we may be sure such effects have resulted in the corruption of good characters; for such are the results of unbelief. "By their fruits ye shall know them!" This is a good criterion.

Higher criticism, in its evolutionary form, is ever a greater evil than in its documentary form: for it is possible to believe in the inspiration of the Bible while

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accepting the latter, as we just saw to be the case with Dr. Delitzsch, but it is impossible so to do while accepting the former. Evolutionary higher critics claim that people had not evolved sufficiently in Moses' time to have arrived at the moral and religious heights of the Pentateuch, hence Moses, they say, could not have given Israel the high morals, e.g., the ten commandments and the civil laws of the Pentateuch, nor its elevated doctrines, e.g., monotheism; but here archaeology has given the critics a death blow, revealing that a Pharaoh of about Moses' time sought to put away polytheism and introduce monotheism, and Egyptian and Babylonian monuments attest that they had high standards of ethics. As for the civil laws of the Pentateuch being too far advanced for the learned and unlearned of Moses' time, since allegedly they had not evoluted high enough, the discovery of the code of Khammer-rabi, the Amraphel of Gen. 14, proves that 400 years before Moses' time very elaborated and remarkable civil laws were in operation, some of them like those of the Pentateuch, others different from them. In human history evolution is a delusion. Human history proves that nations and civilizations are like a human being; they begin, progress, become stationary, decay and dissolve, e.g., this has been true of Israel, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, the Holy Roman Empire and modern nations, which are now rushing to disintegration. The seeming exception to this now manifested in science, education, invention, etc., is not due to evolution; but to God's giving Millennial foregleams in preparation for the Kingdom, some of these being used to overthrow Satan's empire, now taking place, and some of these to producing agencies for the Millennial transformations shortly ahead of us. Not along evolutionary lines, but along advancing lines as due God caused His revelation to progress (Prov. 4:18) from the simple to the more complex, adapting certain of its features then due to the capacities of the various generations of Israel; but concealing

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in Old Testament types, prophecies and symbols its main features, until the Gospel Age (Col. 1:27; Rom. 16:25, 26) for the special use of the Christ.

Higher criticism's placing the origin of the Pentateuch from the 17th to the 5th century B. C. is in most striking contradiction of the geography as well as of the antiquities of Egypt. The geography of Egypt during the days of Moses was strikingly different from that of 400 years later, let alone from 1,000 to 1,200 years later when allegedly the Pentateuch was written. Above we have seen how the "assured results" of higher criticism have fallen to the ground before the facts of archaeology, law and religion. We will now turn to the geography of ancient Egypt and show that it meets the same fate at its hands. The political changes through which Egypt passed greatly changed its geography from time to time; for the geography of the Eastern Delta differed greatly at different periods of Egyptian history, e.g., a map of Egypt for the 19th Dynasty differs greatly from maps of other periods. The Old Testament history touched Egypt at three different periods: that of the patriarchs, that of the Exodus and that of Israel's kings. Let us now note that of the Exodus. If the Exodus was written 1,000-1,200 years later than Moses' time, as the higher critics claim, it would be full of geographical mistakes; for the geography of the seventh, sixth and fifth centuries B. C. was wholly unlike that of the 17th century B C. Moreover, those living in the former centuries knew almost nothing of the differences between the former's and the latter's geography; for the latter's geography was not known in those centuries; indeed, was not known until lately, when archaeology brought it to light. E.g., nothing in the fifth century was known from its geography of the store cities, Pithom and Raamses, which lay unknown, buried under sand at that time; but in 1884 Dr. E. Naville discovered them through his excavations, and by inscriptions learned that Rameses II, the Pharaoh of the oppression, at whose court Moses was raised,

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was the builder of both, the name Raamses also serving to identify one of them. But the geographical details of Egypt given in Exodus agree completely with the geography that archaeology has discovered to be that of Egypt during the 19th dynasty, whose ablest representative was Rameses II. Through papyri we have found out much of Egypt's geography during the 19th Dynasty. Through them we have been able to locate the great fortification wall, that guarded Egypt from Asia, the Shur as Exodus calls it, and that compelled Israel to go south to the Red Sea to avoid it.

To the west of it was the district of Thukot, the Exodus' Succoth, of which Pithom was the capital, Goshen was just where Gen. and Ex. place it. Meneptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, built Khetem, the Etham of Ex. Migdol of Ex. has also been found. These facts of geography did not exist during the 18th Dynasty, nor in any others following the 19th. Exodus, therefore, must have been written about the time of the 19th Dynasty, and certainly not 1,100 years later, when the knowledge of the pertinent geography had been lost. The papyri state that Goshen had then been set aside for Asiatic herdsmen (Jacob's sons and their descendants were such), but later papyri speak of that land as deserted by its herdsmen. All this agrees in detail with the descriptions of Exodus. Thus history, archaeology and geography fix the Exodus at the time that Exodus gives. If Exodus had been invented even three centuries after the 19th Dynasty, because of the great geographical changes following its fall and that of the 20th Dynasty, wiping out the cities, etc., existing during the former one, the pertinent geographical allusions would have been different, as the former ones were forgotten, buried under Egypt's drifting sands. What shall we say would have been such allusions, if Exodus had been written 1,100 or 1,200 years later—after the exile? It would have been full of geographical mistakes. Hence geography overthrows the critics' "assured results" as to the date of Exodus' composition.

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In its evolutionary form higher criticism is an erroneous theory. This is apparent from a number of standpoints. From the standpoint of Biblical numerics its denial of the Bible's being a Divine revelation is completely overthrown; for Biblical Numerics is so manysided, detailed, superhuman and superangelic that it cannot be accounted for on other grounds than that it has sprung from an omniscient mind, i.e., from God; hence it is a Divine revelation, which overthrows higher criticism's chief claim for its evolutionary form—the Bible is no revelation but a record, product and expression of Israel's religious evolution. Again Biblical Numerics' manysidedness, details, superhuman and superangelic mechanism proves the Bible's inspiration, which, in addition to its refuting the documentary form of higher criticism, completely overthrows its evolutionary form, which as basal to itself denies inspiration. These facts make it entirely unnecessary and entirely fallacious to assume, as higher criticism does, that the Bible is the record, product and expression of Israel's development along evolutionary lines. If the Bible were such a record, product and expression, why was it that it was produced by Israelites alone and not at least in part by Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Indians, Chinese or Greeks, all of whom were very richly endowed with the religious sense, as their religions show? Certainly Israel was by far less gifted than most of the foregoing nations, in natural religion, proved by the facts that they repeatedly fell away from the true into the false religions of some of these, and that it took, not evolution, but severe and repeated chastisements to bring them back to the Old Testament oracles. Had the alleged documentary editors, including allegedly Ezra and colaborers, evoluted so highly as to produce what only omniscience can?! Had they evoluted so much as to have produced the Divine Miracle of Biblical Numerics, as it were, in their sleep, since they were entirely unconscious of its operation, and since higher criticism denies inspiration?!

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Higher criticism, holding that Amos and Hosea wrote their named books, believes them to have been unlearned men, as, according to the Bible, they actually were. How then, we ask, could they have of themselves produced the highly cultivated style characteristic of their books? And how could such uneducated men, of themselves, have worked out the Biblical numerics that underlie their books? Repeatedly they teach monotheism, which higher criticism makes arise two centuries later. Again, take for example, Israel's rise as a nation full sprung as such at the Exodus and in David's time acting as a dominating nation. Higher criticism in its extreme evolutionary form denies Moses' and David's existence. We know from history that no nation or empire suddenly sprang into national and dominating existence without some special and dominating leader. Babylon had its Nebuchadnezzar; Persia its Cyrus; Greece, its Solon and Alexander; Rome, its Julius and Augustus Caesar; the Holy Roman Empire, its Charlemagne; England, its Elizabeth; France, its Napoleon; Germany, its Bismarck; Russia, its Peter the Great; the U. S., its Washington. Since archaeology apart from the Bible testifies to Israel's springing forth as a full fledged nation at the time of the Exodus, it must have had a dominating leader—a Moses; and at the time of Israel's ascendancy, it must have had a dominating leader—a David. Great and dominating personalities invariably are found in great national and empire movements. Hence, evolutionary higher criticism, denying the reality of Moses and David, presents us with a monstrosity—the only great national movements without great personalities—dominating leaders. In view of the above and other considerations the following is our judgment: Higher criticism is bankrupt as a method of investigation. It is dangerous as a study. It is a perversion of Truth. It debauches history. It misuses words. It denies revelation. It rejects inspiration. It desecrates religion. It traduces the Bible. It degrades Moses and the Prophets. It belies the

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Apostles. It makes Jesus a deceiver. It blasphemes God! Hence it is an object of abhorrence to God's children, because it is an object of abhorrence to God.

Like evolution, to use the terms that Virchow, the greatest scientist of the 19th century, applied to it, higher criticism is nothing but "a windy hypothesis, in defense of which not one fact speaks authoritatively." It was born in Satan's head and palmed off on the world by men whom God had rejected from His special favor; for it is a part of the second slaughter weapon of Ezek. 9, whereby certain unfaithful ones were sifted out from among God's people and became sifters, and it is a part of the second Harvest's siftings' antitypical golden calf, and its proponents are, among others, typed by erratic Aaron as the maker of that calf. Thanks be to God that in the face of Biblical numerics, history, archaeology and geography, it lies slain; and God's inspired revelation, the Bible, comes out of its battle with the critics victorious and all the stronger for the battle. It is also true of the Bible, as it is true of the Sarah Covenant in its appliers to God's children: "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that riseth against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord" (Is. 54:17). Amen and Amen! Therefore "rejoice in the Lord all ye righteous"; and "give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness"; for strong is the Lord God that upholdeth you and all His enemies shall flee from before the blast of His trumpet, which, as the seventh, is now sounding and will continue to sound until the end of the Millennial Kingdom, wherein it shall be glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will to men.

The main objections to both revelation and inspiration are made by higher criticism; and we have, in the foregoing, shown the erroneousness of higher criticism in its two forms—its documentary theory and its evolutionary theory. The Biblical difficulties

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that it points out are all solvable, and have been solved by proper explanations, the details belonging to commentaries, and not to a discussion of them like that made here. We have solved some of the main ones in our answer to Mr. Darrow's presentation of them (EA, 354-372). The main other ones we will answer here. Some object to the verbal and sense inspiration of the Bible, on what they consider Bible reasons. These will be considered first of all. Luke 1:3 is presented as such an one, the objector claiming that inspiration precludes investigation on the part of the inspired writer. We quote the passage as given in the I. V.: "It seemed good to me also, having traced from above [by Divine help] all things accurately, to write to thee in order." It will be noted that St. Luke expressly states that it was from above, God, that he traced these matters. Through Luke's investigations God revealed to him what he should write and what he should avoid writing, evidenced by the fact that, though he traced all things as to Jesus' life and teachings, he omitted many things that, e.g., Matthew, Mark and John gave on these subjects, and gave many things that they omit. Biblical numerics prove that both his words and thoughts were inspired. Accordingly, we see that one's study does not exclude the idea of revelation and inspiration. Those who think so think unfactually, as the pertinent facts in Luke's case prove the contrary. Luke's reference to the enrollment of Joseph and Mary (Luke 2:2) as occurring in the governorship of Cyrenius is alleged by some to be a disproof of the inerrancy and hence of the inspiration of the Bible, the allegers claiming that Cyrenius was not the governor of Syria until 6-9 A. D. But the investigations of Dr. Zumpt led to the discovery that Cyrenius was governor of Syria twice, the two periods beginning 3 B. C. and 6 A. D. respectively, a coin of the first governorship being found, confirming that first governorship. Thus the objection falls to the ground.

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Some of St. Paul's statements in 1 Cor. 7 on the subject of marriage and divorce are by some interpreted as meaning that some of his pertinent teachings are uninspired, e.g., v. 6: "I speak this by permission, and not by commandment," is, by such, interpreted to mean that what he had just said on marital continence was not a matter of God's command, i.e., inspired, but something of his own origination, whereas the Apostle's thought is that such continence is not a matter that the Lord commands as a duty, but permits as a privilege. Hence the Apostle does not here disclaim inspiration as to that remark. In vs. 10, 12, 25 some think that he disclaims inspiration on the pertinent statements, thus v. 10: "I command, yet not I, but the Lord"; v. 12: "To the rest speak I, not the Lord"; v. 25: "Concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord; yet I give my judgment." To this objection we give the following answer: St. Paul is not contrasting human thought with inspiration, but his apostolic teachings, which were all inspired, with Jesus' inspired utterances while in the flesh. Thus, as to v. 10 Jesus in Matt. 19 had given the same thought, commandment, as St. Paul gives in v. 10, i.e., that consecrated husbands should not divorce their consecrated wives nor vice versa. On the subject of a consecrated spouse living with an unconsecrated spouse (v. 12), Jesus had not expressed Himself while in the flesh, hence Paul said that Jesus had not then issued a command on the subject; but after He left the flesh He evidently revealed it to the Apostle to charge that the consecrated spouse should not put away the unconsecrated spouse, which revelation is here given by inspiration. Thus in this verse St. Paul does not disclaim inspiration. As to v. 25 the Apostle is discussing the question of whether the consecrated should marry or not, and thereon declares that for them the matter was not by God made obligatory, a command, that they should or should not marry, nor had Jesus while in the flesh given commandments on that subject. Then

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the Apostle proceeds to give His judgment, which is that of an inspired Apostle. His inspired judgment was that these unmarried consecrated brethren will do better not to marry, if they can live chastily without marriage, since they would be spared many a trial thereby, and be freer to serve the Lord than if married; but if not able to live chastily without marriage, they will do better to marry. Thus what he gives is an inspired counsel, not a command; and thus, whether the consecrated marry or not must be left to the judgment of each one as to whether he can live chastily without marriage or not. For the unconsecrated God's general ordinance is that they marry; for it is not good that such be alone. Hence St. Paul's language in 1 Cor. 7 does not disclaim inspiration on anything.

Several other expressions of St. Paul are by some claimed to be disclaimed by St. Paul to be inspired. One of these is Rom. 6:18, 19: "I speak after the manner of men." An understanding of the Apostle's thought refutes such a view. In the connection he speaks of some as the slaves of sin, and of others (God's people) as slaves of righteousness. Actually God's people are not His slaves (Gal. 4:7: the word doulos translated in the A. V. as servants is the same word as in Rom. 6:18, 19 is translated servants, but should have been rendered slaves in both passages), but are sons, who serve God and righteousness more zealously than the most devoted slave serves his master. Hence St. Paul here uses the word doulos, slave, figuratively. And such figurative speech is what he means when he says that he speaks after the manner of men. But in the use of such figurative, human speech, he was inspired as well as when he used literal speech. 2 Cor. 11:17 is another passage that some think is an example of St. Paul's disclaiming inspiration by the words, "That which I speak, I speak not after the Lord, but as in foolishness." The circumstances were these: Some apostates were trying to undermine the Apostle's character, office and works with the Corinthians, and were

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doing so much mischief against the brethren that the Apostle, like Jesus and later servants of God, e.g., the Parousia and Epiphany Messengers, to prevent injury from being permanently done God's work at enemies' hands, had to defend his character, apostolic office and work. Among other ways he used, in irony, the very charges that enemies brought against him, "he speaks not after the Lord, but in foolishness," to disarm their charges, also to prevent them from charging his words as being fulsome self-praise. Therefore, he talks ironically of himself as not being Divinely ordered in speech and as being foolish, while recounting his praiseworthy deeds, character and office, and thus blunts the edge of their charge that he was fulsomely praising himself. But was he really speaking undivinely? Was he really indulging in foolishness? Certainly not! for he was plainly using irony, his thought through its use being actually the opposite of what the words would have meant, if not spoken in irony. The situation could best be met by this; hence under inspiration he used it thus and disarmed the opponents, by arousing through his irony the resentment of the faithful against his opponents, thus preventing these from injuring others.

2 Cor. 12:2, 3 is by some alleged to be a disclaimer of inspiration by St. Paul: "Whether in [with, i.e., whether he saw the mentioned things with his bodily eyes] the body or out of [apart from, i.e., whether he saw the mentioned things with his mental eyes] the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth." What St. Paul saw was so vivid, and so completely engrossed his attention, that he did not at the time think on whether the thing was a physical or mental object, i.e., did not know whether God caused physical objects to appear before his physical eyes or caused only mental objects to appear before his mental eyes. But such lack of knowledge does not negative revelation or inspiration, even as the prophets' not understanding the revelations that they received and wrote out did not annul their revelation and inspiration (Dan. 12:8, Matt. 13:17; 1 Pet. 1:10—12).

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Neither revelation nor inspiration guarantees omniscience in, nor even the knowledge or understanding of what they uttered by those who were their agents; all they guarantee is infallibility in telling and writing them out. In the present case St. Paul received the inspiration to write of his visions and revelations, but God, in this particular case, withheld from him the knowledge as to whether the vision and revelation were given his physical or mental eyes to see. Finally, some cite as a disclaimer of inspiration by Paul, 1 Cor. 1:16: "I know not whether I baptized any other." The objector here assumes that inspiration makes the memory retain every occurrence or every feature of an occurrence to which the inspired might allude. As inspiration does not guarantee omniscience to its agents, but leaves them in ignorance of some things connected with cited experiences, neither does it guarantee that they will remember everything connected with their cited experiences. As it was not necessary to the inspiration of St. Paul's cogent argument against the propriety of his or others' building up a sect of personal and sectarian followers, for him to remember how many others he had baptized, if there were others that he baptized, God did not here do the unnecessary thing—inspire his memory to recall if he had baptized others than those that he named in this connection. Thus this objection, misbased on this passage, is shown to be a fallacy.

Some object to inspiration because of the difficulties in the Scriptures, alleging that an omniscient and inerrant Inspirer would have avoided difficulties and ambiguities. Without any doubt there are difficulties and obscurities in the Bible. But the Bible is not the only revelation of God that contains them; His other revelation, nature, has them. Many indeed are the parables, symbols, figures, types and dark sayings in the Bible, all of which make for difficulties and obscurities. The very fact that the Bible is an oriental book makes it difficult and obscure for occidentals to decipher it. The fact that it is written in what are now dead languages,

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imperfectly understood, makes for more difficulties in the path of the translator, and hence in the path of those dependent on translations. And since the natural man cannot understand spiritual things, and a large part of the Bible treats of spiritual things, it is full of difficulties and obscurities to the natural man; and even to the more or less developed new creatures it has such. The fact that it contains mysteries increases these difficulties and obscurities. The fact that none of these mysteries can be understood even by the Lord's special mouthpieces until due, and then for their understanding require a special direct illumination from the Lord, vouchsafed to none but such mouthpieces, increases these difficulties and obscurities. The fact that the Lord will clarify these mysteries to those only who by faithfulness amid trial, demonstrate fitness to receive the clarification, makes it necessary for the Bible to abound in difficulties. The objection that an omniscient and inerrant Inspirer must give a clear revelation free from difficulties and obscurities is not only refuted by the above-given seven considerations, but is a superficial fallacy, based on ignorance of the Bible's nature and purpose. It presumes that the Bible is now intended for the whole world's understanding, whereas it is intended now for the variously graded understanding of the Lord's people according to their various standings and hearts' attitude before Him (Rev. 5:1; 1 Cor. 2:1-16; Mark 4:11, 12). It is designed to be not only now not understood by people in general, but to be misunderstood by the unfaithful (Is. 28:7-13). These designs are benevolent, since they are helpful to the faithful now under trial, enabling them to demonstrate and maintain their faithfulness, and to prevent the unfaithful from increasing their guilt, and thereby making their later reformation easier, if such repentance is possible, which is not the case with the utterly unfaithful (Heb. 6:4-6; 10:26-29). It is benevolent to the world, because, if they understood these mysteries, it would increase their present guilt and make their Millennial

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trial harder. It is a mercy to the unbelief class that it cannot understand these mysteries; for that prevents any of them coming on trial now amid conditions under which none of them could overcome, and reserves them to their one trial for life in the Millennium, whose conditions will be conducive for all to gain life. Thus when we appreciate God's wise, just, loving and powerful designs in making the Bible, as an obscure book, difficult to be understood, the objection that an omniscient and inerrant Inspirer must make His written revelation clear and free from ambiguities and difficulties is seen to be both superficial and erroneous.

Some allege that mistakes and contradictions occur in the Bible; hence they reason that it is not inspired. They instance as mistakes matters like the following: That according to 2 Chro. 22:2 Ahaziah was 42 years old when he began to reign, and according to 2 Kings 8:26 he was 22, and according to the former he was older than his father (2 Chro. 21:20); that the numbers in Ezra 2 and Neh. 7 are in some cases at variance with each other; etc. These and similar mistakes were not in the original copies as these came from God's hand. They arose from the mistakes of men who copied the Bible. Thus in 2 Chro. 22:2 a copyist, trusting a faulty memory instead of keeping his eye upon the text, put 42 instead of 22 into the text, which proves that Ahaziah's father was 18 years older than he was and not 2 years younger than he, as the mistaken copyist caused it to teach. Similarly, the discrepancies between the figures of Ezra and Nehemiah are due to copyists' mistakes. But be it noted that the Bible does not teach the inspiration of copyists and translators; but of itself, as it was written by God's direct penmen. Hence we stand not for the inspiration and inerrancy of present copies of the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek, much less of Bible translations; but for the original manuscripts as these came from God.

As for alleged contradictions in the Scriptures, we would say, There are none there. What are alleged as

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such are due to the allegers' lack of understanding, e.g., they allege that Luke contradicts Paul when the former says that Paul's companions heard Jesus' voice (Acts 9:7) and the latter said they heard not his voice (Acts 22:9). To this we reply, The word to hear means at least three things in the Bible: (1) to take in sound by the physical ear, the ordinary meaning of the word, (2) to take in the sense of words by the mental ear, i.e., to understand, and (3) to obey. In Acts 9:7 to take in sound by the physical ear is meant; and in Acts 22:9 to take in the sense of words by the mental ear, to understand, is meant. Luke, therefore, tells us that they heard Jesus' voice speaking, and Paul tells us that they did not understand what His voice said. Very often in the Bible this second sense of this word occurs, e.g., Matt. 13:15, 16; Mark 4:9, 12; Rev. 2:7, 11, 17, 29, etc. The difference in the accounts of the four evangelists' records of events of Jesus' life and His sayings are alleged as contradictions. But most of these are accountable as arising out of the different purposes that the evangelists had in writing, and the different features of the events that most impressed them individually, as two of them (Matthew and John) saw them, and as Peter told Mark, and Paul told Luke. Judge Greenleaf, one of the ablest jurists that America has produced, an especially able authority on legal evidence, drew up a harmony of the four Gospels and stated that the four evangelists in their records stood successfully the test of the strictest demands of the rules of legal evidence.

Some have thought that the variant readings in the Greek and Hebrew MSS. of the Bible nullify the doctrine of inspiration. In reply we will, in the first place, quote what Westcott and Hort, two of the ablest critics of the Greek text of the New Testament, say on these variant readings: "With regard to the great bulk of the words of the New Testament, as of most other ancient writings, there is no variation or other ground of doubt and, therefore, no room for textual criticism; and here, therefore, an editor is merely a transcriber. The same

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may be said with substantial truth respecting those various readings which never have been received and in all probability never will be received into any printed text. The proportion of words virtually accepted on all hands as raised above doubt is very great, not less, on a rough computation, than ⅞ of the whole. The remaining ⅛, therefore, formed in great part of changes of order and other comparative trivialities [e.g., differences in spelling, interchange of synonyms, etc.], constitute the whole area of criticism. If the principles followed in the present edition are sound, this area may be greatly reduced. Recognizing to the full the duty of abstinence from preemptory decision in cases where the evidence leaves the judgment in suspense between two or more readings, we find that, setting aside differences of orthography, the words in our opinion still subject to doubt make up only 1/60 of the whole New Testament. In this second estimate [that concerning the 1/60] the proportion of comparatively trivial variations is beyond measure larger than the former; so that the amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation is but a small fraction of the whole residuary variation, and can hardly form more than 1/1000 part of the entire text"—The New Testament in Greek, Vol. II, 2. This quotation shows that the variant readings, though considerable in number, are in point of weight not consequential. Secondly, we reply to this objection that as a matter of fact there is not one doctrine or one teaching of ethics nullified by them, since such are abundantly proved by other undoubted passages. Thirdly, Biblical numerics is greatly reducing these variants, e.g., Westcott and Hort give 16 passages that they mark as interpolations; but 14 of them are by Biblical numerics proved to be genuine. Biblical numerics is continually eliminating uncertainty as to which of two or more readings is genuine, and what are interpolations and what are genuine; and before long we will, if not wholly by Biblical numerics, by the returned Bible's writers, have the genuine text restored

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to its original purity. Hence the objection here considered falls to the ground.

Some object that the traditional teachings of the Churches, the creeds set forth as the teachings of the Bible, are, in not a few cases, so unreasonable and devilish as certainly not to be accepted as emanating from an inspired source. They assert further that since all the creeds base their views on the Bible it cannot be inspired, since such based creeds conflict each with itself and all with one another. We agree that many things taught in denominational creeds are unreasonable and devilish, and cannot, therefore, have emanated from an inspired source, e.g., how could there have emanated from an inspired source such unreasonable and self-contradictory things as the trinity implying that three times one=one!; human immortality, implying that God having so created man cannot destroy him, however desirable the destruction of the incorrigibly wicked is; eternal torment which blasphemes God, violates His character, denies the ransom, undermines godliness and makes infidels; absolute predestination, implying without regard to character that God coerces some few to be saved and the bulk to be lost in eternal torment; and many other unreasonable and self-contradictory doctrines? But from this creedal unreasonableness and devilishness, the objector draws a false conclusion, i.e., that these unreasonable and devilish teachings emanate from the Bible. They emanate from Satan, the enemy of God, who, to blaspheme God, alleges them to be Bible teachings. What if he does quote Scripture in alleged proof of them as coming from the Bible? Are not such Scriptures misapplied by him, even as he misapplied Scriptures when tempting our Lord in the wilderness? And does he not misapply Scripture when seeking to mislead us? The Bible is, indeed, a book which has been used to teach many errors; but this is due to misapplications made of it. It is said that it is like a fiddle on which one can play any tune desired; while this is

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true, it is not true that one can make it play any desired tune harmoniously with a true use of its passages and teachings. The creeds in their errors—all unreasonable and devilish in some way or other—do not emanate from the Bible harmonious with itself, with all its passages and doctrines, with God's character, Christ's ransom, facts and its purpose. Hence in their unreasonable, erroneous and devilish features, they do not emanate from the Bible, but from Satan's perversions of the Bible. Hence their teaching unreasonable, erroneous and devilish things does not at all nullify inspiration.

Similarly, this contradicting, each one itself and all of them one another, does not in the slightest impinge against inspiration. That the creeds contradict, each itself, is manifest on all hands, e.g., those that teach eternal torment and absolute predestination of the few to bliss and of the many to eternal torment, in the next breath teach that God is wise, just and loving, which qualities are certainly in violent contradiction to such doctrines. Again, take the Baptist teaching that claims that no one can enter the church without immersion nor be saved outside the church; yet Baptist teaching holds that unimmersed members of other churches are saved. That the creeds contradict one another is evident on all sides: The unitarian creeds contradict the trinitarian creeds on many points, e.g., the trinity, God-manism, etc.; the Lutheran creed conflicts with the Romanist and Calvinist creeds on many points. But what have these contradictions to do with the Bible's inspiration? They do not affect it at all. It is true that it proves that on many subjects the Bible is not clear to all, and that if a truth of the Bible is not due, no one, least of all the unconsecrated, can understand it, and that when due even the only measurably faithful cannot understand it, as it also proves that Satan misrepresents, through deceivelings, its teachings; but it does not in the slightest impinge against the Bible's inspiration. In fact it corroborates inspiration from one standpoint, i.e., keeping in mind

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God's purpose in concealing its teachings until due, and then when due making it understood by the faithful only, and misunderstood by all others, we can see that it required the inspiration of an omniscient One so to construct the Bible as to effect these results, not taking into account its other proofs of inspiration.

Some object to the Bible's inspiration on alleged moral grounds. They say that the Bible tells of immoralities, e.g., as between Judah and his daughter-in-law, Tamar, David and Bath-sheba, etc., sodomies and rapes, e.g., the rape of Dinah, Jacob's daughter, of the Levite's concubine and of David's daughter, Tamar, by her brother, Amnon, and the incests of Lot and his daughters. They say that the Bible tells of murders, e.g., of Uriah at David's charge, of John the Baptist at Herod's charge, of Naboth at Jezebel's instigation, of polygamy, of more or less easy divorce, etc. In reply, we would say that the Bible not only does not sanction the aforesaid adulteries, sodomies, rapes, incests and murder, but positively disapproves of them, and tells them to warn against such sins, as well as to forecast antitypes of evil deeds. As for polygamy and more or less easy divorce: the Bible does not sanction them; it merely tolerates them as a concession to the deeply depraved condition of men and of social conditions, before God's people, by His teachings and disciplines, had time enough to be raised to conditions wherein such things were no longer to be tolerated. Hence Christ's teachings in Matt. 19, not only expressly set aside divorce, except on the one ground of adultery, but also by implication, through sanctioning monogamy alone, condemns polygamy. But none of these crimes affect inspiration, let alone nullify it. Rather, they are in favor of inspiration, since they are told as warning examples; and the temporarily tolerated easy divorce and polygamy are in harmony with inspiration, which, as seen, proceeds wisely to uplift its subjects in most practical ways, by a condescension to human conditions due to deep depravity. Certainly, to

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demand instant reformation of these evils from people on so low a plane of degradation would have been most unwise and unloving, however justly justice could have demanded it; and certainly the interests of reformation were best attained by the toleration that God's wisdom and love allowed, His justice in the meantime afflicting by family troubles the indulgers in these practices, without its being at all against the Bible's inspiration.

Another feature of the objection now being considered is that God Himself has brought great calamities upon individuals and nations, yea, upon the whole race, which the objectors claim militate against the Bible, both as revelatory and inspired. This involves the question of why God permits evil, which was before discussed in some detail as the fifth internal reason for the Bible's being a Divine revelation, which refutes this objection so far as concerns its use against its being a Divine revelation, since it is a proof of its being such a revelation, and of Divine inspiration. But a consideration of some of the calamities as objections to the Bible's being a Divinely inspired revelation will prove helpful. Apart from the experience of evil on the whole race, which we saw was for the educational purpose of helping the race hate and avoid sin, when it by contrast comes to its educational experience with righteousness, teaching it to love and practice righteousness, and apart from the elects' suffering to prepare them properly to minister to the world Millennially, the following calamities are impressive ones coming under consideration here: the flood, the destruction of Sodom and its sister cities, the death of Egypt's firstborn and its host in the Red Sea, and the command to extirpate the seven nations of Canaan, but imperfectly carried out, and the Amalekites. God destroyed the bulk of the race by the flood, because its wickedness had so increased as to make this necessary for moral and social reasons; for the race had so greatly depraved itself, and the giant offsprings of the fallen angels and women had so oppressed the Adamic race, that Divine justice

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could no longer permit their continuance, that of the hybrid giants, whose existence was not only not authorized but was also contrary to God's order in nature, and, therefore, had to be obliterated, and that of the wicked, for they had so greatly contaminated themselves that it would have been a great wrong to have permitted them to propagate themselves, since the law of heredity would have produced too great corruption in the race. Moreover, they were all under the death sentence, and, so far as they were concerned, they suffered less by being drowned, which is one of the easiest of deaths, than if they had succumbed to the pains of long diseases, so that no injustice was done these unworthy ones by the nature of their deaths.

A similar situation is presented in the case of Sodom and her sister cities of the plains. The crime that they attempted to commit against the two angels, additional to the gross sins that plagued the righteous Lot, reveals their unutterable depravity, which called for God's justice punishing them with an exemplary stroke, which prevented their further wrong and prevented them from propagating descendants who would have inherited their gross depravity. The wickedness of the Egyptians in general, and in particular as to God and Israel, fully justified God's justice in the retribution against them involved in the death of their firstborn and of their army at the Red Sea. As to the seven nations of Canaan and the Amalekites: in Genesis we read that their sins were not yet full, in Abraham's day, but in later Biblical times these did so greatly abound that God charged Israel to act as the executors of His sentence against them, and rewarded them to the degree of their doing so with that degree of possessing their land. Archaeological discoveries have revealed that venereal diseases, especially syphilis, increased through the practice of their unchaste religious rites, had literally rotted them, causing them to be so weak as to fall easily at Israel's hands. It was a mercy that, instead of succumbing to a slow painful dying process naturally endured,

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they died suddenly in war, and thus were estopped from spreading their loathsome venereal diseases and from bringing offspring into existence so contaminated. Thus in all these cases no wrong was done them, since they were already under the death sentence, which their ungodliness deservedly brought upon them more quickly, but less sufferingly, than if they had gradually died. In executing retribution upon them God made them types of the punishment of other wicked ones connected with his plan, and thus these types became revelatory of such features of His plan.

Thus the flood and its destruction of the order then prevailing and the wicked became a type of the great tribulation and its destruction of the present evil world and its wicked ones (Matt. 24:37-39); the destruction of the people of Sodom and her sister cities became a type of the eternal destruction of the incorrigibly wicked (Jude 7, see margin of A. R. V.). The death of the firstborn types the eternal destruction of those who once were God's people and then gave themselves up wholly to serve Satan, the antitype of Pharaoh, while the destruction of Pharaoh and the Egyptian army in the Red Sea types the eternal annihilation of Satan, his unrepentant fallen angels and those of the restitution class who will turn to sin during the Little Season. The destruction of the seven nations of Canaan and the Amalekites types the destruction of sin, error, selfishness and worldliness at the hands of God's overcoming people. Thus these experiences are a part of revelation and their recording in the Bible is a part of inspiration. Hence instead of their militating against revelation and inspiration they are a part of them and a proof of them. Thus there are no real moral objections to the Bible's account of these things. On the contrary, they are given in the interests of good morals. Certainly, the Bible standard of morals is the highest and most sublime in existence, a proof of its Divine origin.

Some have objected to its inspiration because of its being allegedly unscientific. On this we have given

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complete refutations in detail, in our reply to Mr. Darrow (EA, 354-372) and in our discussion of creation and the flood in EB, 165-585. Hence we will say nothing more on this than that the Bible is in full harmony, not with the speculations and guesses of so-called science, which are exploded theories, almost as soon as they are announced, but with all the assured results of scientific findings, as the ablest scientists also hold. Nor will we give detailed answers to what some say are too trivial to be a part of a Divinely-inspired revelation, like some things in the Mosaic laws (all of which as types belong, and the genealogies, by their nature, to an inspired revelation), the Apostolic greetings (which reveal Christian sociability and friendship, and thus are worthy), Paul's direction to Timothy as to the latter's health (which shows his love, a worthy thing), and his desire for his mantle and manuscripts (needed by Paul in his cold cell and for his study of the Word), which certainly are worthy of a place in an inspired revelation. Such little things inspired by God show His love and care for His children and this love and care are thus fittingly a part of an inspired revelation.

Many of the difficulties of the Bible have made not a few doubt its inspiration. Some infidels are wont to gather together these difficulties and to fling them at Bible believers and Bible skeptics as proof that the Bible is not inspired. A correspondent of ours, who evidently has been presented with many of these difficulties as alleged contradictions in the Bible, has written us a letter with a long list of these alleged contradictions, desiring that we harmonize them with our view of the Bible's inspiration. Some of these alleged contradictions are found in the differing statements of the four Gospels on certain of their events and teachings. In a general way we would say that these differences are due to several causes. Those that make Jesus express Himself differently on the same matters in the same discourse are explainable reasonably, on the ground that Jesus gave some of His discourses at

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different times and places, and thus varied the expressions connected with the same thought, e.g., Matthew's and Luke's accounts of what is popularly called the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5—7; Luke 6:20-49). Only Matthew's account gives the sermon as delivered on the mount; for we are expressly told that Jesus withdrew from the multitude, and had only His disciples as His audience in the sermon on the mount (Matt. 5:1, 2). Thereafter, having gone down from the mountain to the plain, His disciples, being with Him, heard again parts of the same talk, this time given additionally to all the people (Luke 6:17; 7:1).

That Jesus gave the same talks in different places is evident from the fact that He went everywhere in Galilee, etc., preaching the kingdom message; but naturally, while giving the same talks, He would vary His wording. The writer, traveling from church to church throughout the U. S., Canada, the Tropics and Europe, frequently gives the same discourse, since he speaks to totally different audiences; but memorizing not his words, but his thoughts, he never gives the same lecture in exactly the same words. This fact of Jesus' giving the same discourse at different times and places makes it very evident that He not seldom varied the words expressive of the same thought. Yea, frequently in the same talk He would repeat the same thought in somewhat different words, or sometimes would give added, but related thoughts in different words, which made Him vary His words. Again, some of these differences are due to some of the Gospel writers' having been especially impressed with certain features of events and discourses, while others of the four Evangelists were especially impressed with others; and some of the differences are due to the different purposes that each writer had from the others. As we come to the various points that our correspondent brings up we will refer to these reasons as they apply to the pertinent cases. We will take up the various matters thought by our correspondent to be contrary

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to one another, and thus thought to disprove inspiration, in the order of their presentation in the letter.

The first point is this: How many times did the cock crow in connection with Peter's denial of our Lord? In Matt. 26:34 it is said that before the cock would crow he would deny Jesus three times; and in Mark 14:30 it is said that before it would crow twice he would deny Him thrice. Is this not a contradiction, disharmonious with inspiration? our correspondent asks. To this we reply, No! The harmony is seen in the following way: The expression, "before the cock crow," is used in a technical sense and in a natural sense. In its technical sense it means 3:00 A.M. (Mark 13:35), because at that time in the Orient cocks habitually crow. Hence arose the custom of calling 3:00 A.M. cockcrowing. Jesus' statement in Matt. 26:34 uses the expression in this technical sense. Hence we may paraphrase it as follows: Before 3:00 o'clock of this very night thou shalt deny me three times. In Mark 14:30, 68, 72, Jesus uses the words naturally, i.e., that night before the cock would crow two times Peter would deny Jesus three times. The second crowing here referred to was one that occurred at the usual time, 3:00 A.M.; and the first one occurred earlier at an unusual time; for it is a fact of experience that exceptionally some cocks crow quite a while before cocks in general crow, i.e., in this case a cock crowed some time before 3:00 A.M., or before cockcrowing time. We understand that Jesus first used the expression of Matt. 26:34; and then after Peter vehemently denied Jesus' statement, the Latter added by way of emphasis the statement that the threefold denial would be before two cockcrowings, an unusually early one and the usual one. This harmonizes the matter; and, of course, there is nothing against inspiration in these two statements.

The second point brought out is that the Bible in Matt. 10:2-4; Mark 3:16-19 and Luke 6:13-16 allegedly mentions more than twelve Apostles as appointed by Jesus, since there are more than twelve

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names in these three passages; hence our correspondent thinks that there is here a contradiction. In reply we would say that each one of the eleven Apostles is given the same name in all three accounts. But three different names occur that are not given to any of the eleven just referred to. Some have, therefore, inferred that Jesus appointed 14 Apostles. But it will be noted that in all three accounts, Matt. 10:2; Mark 3:16 and Luke 6:13, the number appointed is definitely limited to twelve. Hence one of these twelve must be mentioned under three names: Labbaeus, Thaddaeus and Judas, the brother of James (John 14:22). The harmony is not far to be sought; it is found in this: He had three names, and each of the three Evangelists calls him by a different one of these three names, e.g., sometimes the writer is called Paul, at other times Samuel, at other times Leo and still at other times Johnson; but who would therefrom conclude that four persons are thereby meant? Nothing here militates against inspiration.

The fact that Jesus is called a carpenter (Mark 6:3) and a carpenter's son (Matt. 13:55) is our correspondent's third point. There is no contradiction here. How many a son and how many an adopted son has followed his father's or foster father's trade! Nothing here is unfactual, unreasonable or self-contradictory; hence nothing here impinges against inspiration. Next there is thought to be contradictions in the accounts of the different ones visiting the tomb of Jesus and the connected events (Matt. 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-11; Luke 24:1-11; John 20:1-18) on the morning of His resurrection. Before attempting a harmony we would say that each of the four Evangelists gives such facts as best fit his pertinent experiences and information and his peculiar purpose in writing and the peculiar people for whom he especially wrote. These facts will account for the differences (which are not at all contradictory) in their pertinent accounts. The following is offered as a full harmonization of these four accounts: There were two companies of women who set

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out, and that at different times, for the sepulcher. The first company consisted of three: Mary Magdalene, Mary, James' mother, and Salome, who early Sunday morning started out without spices (Mark 16:1; Matt. 28:1). A little later the other women followed with spices (Luke 24:1). The first three found the stone rolled away, which moved Mary Magdalene to leave the other two and hasten to meet the coming Apostles (John 20:2); the other two remained and saw one angel sitting upon the stone (Mark 16:2-7). These two women went back to meet the second company of women, those who were bringing the spices. In the absence of all the women Peter and John arrived at the tomb and found it empty (John 20:3-10). Mary Magdalene then returned to the tomb and saw two angels in the grave (John 20:12). Turning around she saw Jesus, at whose charge she went and told the disciples of Jesus' resurrection (John 20:14-18). The other two women, astounded at the angel's statement that Jesus had arisen, after leaving the tomb, met the spice-bearing women. All of these, the two and the spice-bearing women, visited the tomb and saw the two angels standing (Luke 24:4-7), but just as they entered one of them was sitting at the right side (Mark 16:5). Going back toward the city, they met the risen Lord (Matt. 28:9). It is from Luke's account that we get the thought of the two companies of women; for Matthew and Mark tell of the two Marys' watching Jesus' burial, Mark adding Salome to the two, in Mark 16:1 (Matt. 27:61; Mark 15:47), while Luke mentions other women as doing the same, and later all as preparing the spices (Luke 23:55, 56); and Luke speaks of them collectively as bringing the spices, but none of the other three Evangelists mention the three as bringing spices, whence we infer that there were two companies: (1) the three and (2) the others, a larger company, bearing the spices. The above harmonizes the accounts of the various visits at the tomb and the events connected therewith. Here inspiration holds.

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Our correspondent thinks the Evangelists contradict one another as to the time of the women's starting out for and their visiting at the tomb (Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1), asking us to harmonize this matter with our view of inspiration. All four Evangelists fix the women's visit at the tomb as occurring at early dawn, or early twilight, as can be seen from the citations just given. The apparent discrepancy arises from Mark's expression, "at the rising of the sun," literally, "after the sun rising," yet his expression, "very early," fixes the time as the same as that given by the other three Evangelists. How is this to be harmonized? By understanding the expression, "after the sun rising," to mean, as popularly used, the dawn, when the light of the sun rises and struggles with the darkness and makes the dawn, or twilight, begin. In other words, the word sun is frequently used to mean sunlight, e.g., when Joshua prayed that the sunlight be kept from Mt. Gibeon (by the falling hail darkening it); for the sunlight, not the sun, was on that mountain (Josh. 10:12-14). The usage in Mark's Greek is the same as the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, uses in the following passages, in which the word sun means the light of the dawn before the sun itself appears above the horizon: Judg. 9:33 (where Abimelech waited all night, until early dawn to attack the city); Ps. 104:22 (lions seek their lairs at the earliest streaks of dawn, and do not wait so to do until the sun appears above the horizon); 2 Kings 3:22 (in the dim light of dawn the Moabites mistook its streaks of light on the water for blood, a thing that they would not have done, if the sun had been shining above the horizon on the water); 2 Sam. 23:4 (here the Truth of God, as symbolic light in the dawn of the Millennium, before the Sun of Righteousness will have appeared to mankind [Mal. 3:2], is referred to). These four cases prove that it is Greek usage to speak of the sun rising also to mean the light of the dawn before the sun appears above the horizon. This is evidently

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the use of the term in Mark 16:2, proven by the fact that he speaks of it as very early in the morning, i.e., during dawn, twilight, and second, by the fact that the other three Evangelists, as cited above, use synonymous terms. Here is no contradiction of inspiration.

Next our correspondent asks us to harmonize Acts 9:7 and 26:14 with our understanding of inspiration. Above we harmonized the matter of the two hearings referred to in these verses; but our correspondent desires to have harmonized the expressions, "stood speechless, hearing a voice," and "when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking." We harmonize as follows: All at first stood speechless, hearing a sound whose sense they did not understand; thereafter they all fell to the ground, and Paul alone understood what that voice said thereafter, though the others while prostrate heard the sound of the voice speaking to Paul. Hence there is nothing here contrary to inspiration. We are asked to harmonize the accounts of Matt. 20:29-34 with Mark 10:46-52 and Luke 18:35-19:1, Matthew saying that there were two blind men healed, and that after Jesus had left Jericho, while Mark and Luke speak of but one, Mark, like Matthew, saying that the cure was done after Jesus left, and Luke saying it was done as He was coming to, Jericho. The following harmonizes the two accounts: There were two Jerichos: the old Jericho and the new Jericho, about a mile apart, the old one being north of the new one, and Jesus, traveling from the north, naturally reached the old one first. The two blind men were, one outside of old Jericho, the other not far away from him toward the new Jericho, both being near each other between the two Jerichos. Jesus, coming from the north, had already left the old Jericho when He healed the first one, named Bartimaeus (Matt. 20:29-34; Mark 10:46-52); and walking a very little further toward the new Jericho (Luke 18:35, drew nigh, R. V.). He healed the other, the unnamed blind man. The two healings occurring very near together

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between the two Jerichos, Matthew an eye-witness, records both, Mark and Luke, not being eye-witnesses, each records a different one of the healings, Mark getting his from Peter, Luke getting his from Paul. This proves that nothing here is contrary to inspiration.

Our correspondent claims that in some places the Bible teaches that Jesus was crucified, in other places that He was hanged, citing 1 Pet. 2:24; Acts 5:30; 10:39 and Gal. 3:13 as proof of the latter thought, and thinks that this is contradictory. We reply that in crucifixion one was hanged, not by a rope about his neck, but either by nails driven through his hands and feet, or by being bound to a cross at hands and feet. That both Peter and Paul understood Jesus' hanging on a tree to mean His crucifixion is evident from the following passages, first, some giving Peter's thought, who also gave Mark his thought: Mark 15:13-15, 20, 24, 25, 27, 32; Acts 2:23, 36; 4:10, second, some giving Paul's thought, who also gave Luke his thought: Luke 23:21, 23, 33; 24:7, 20; Rom. 6:6; 1 Cor. 1:23; 2:2, 8; 2 Cor. 13:4; Gal. 2:20; 3:1. Hence there is here nothing against inspiration.

Our correspondent says that John (Rev. 2:2) calls Paul a liar, while the latter claimed to speak the Truth (Rom. 9:1; 2 Cor. 4:2; 7:14; Gal. 4:16; 1 Tim. 2:7). Our correspondent lies under a misapprehension of the facts. John, rather Jesus, does not mean Paul by those who lyingly claimed to be Apostles, but false teachers who claimed to be Apostles and were not, and whom Paul and Peter and John opposed right and left (2 Cor. 11:13-15; 2 Pet. 2:1-22). In the opening verse of almost all his epistles Paul by inspiration claimed to be a true Apostle; thus God witnessed through him to his being a true Apostle and speaker of the Truth. Hence John did not call Paul a liar. There is nothing in this charge against inspiration. Next we are asked to harmonize the (alleged) contradiction between Matt. 27:5, where Judas is said to have hanged himself, and Acts 1:18, where he is said to have fallen

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down and burst, his bowels falling out of him. The accounts are harmonious: Judas hanged himself and the thing on which he hanged himself, perhaps a branch of a tree, broke, which caused him to fall, whereby he burst open and his bowels dropped out of him. Matt. 1:16 and Luke 3:23 are by our correspondent claimed to contradict each other, he alleging that Jacob is called Joseph's father by Matthew and Heli by Luke. We harmonize as follows: Matthew gives Joseph's genealogy, saying that Jacob begat Joseph and thus was his real father, while Luke gives Mary's genealogy, whose father was Joseph's father-in-law and, therefore, according to Jewish custom was as Mary's husband the son of Heli, Mary's father. Thus David was by Saul, his father-in-law, called his son (1 Sam. 24:16) and God addresses Jesus' bride, His daughter-in-law, as daughter (Ps. 45:10). Deut. 5:4 and 34:10, where God and Moses are said to have spoken face to face, are alleged to contradict John 1:18, where it is said that no man ever saw God. Be it noted that Deut. 5:4; 34:10 do not say that Moses saw God face to face, but spoke to Him face to face, i.e., God spoke orally "mouth to mouth"—to him and he to God, without Moses seeing Him, and not in dreams and visions, as God spoke to other prophets, even as this matter is set forth in Num. 12:6-8. The most that Moses ever saw was a similitude of God (v. 8). Hence here is no contradiction, nor any thing against inspiration.

Next 1 Cor. 15:52 is cited as contradicting Is. 26:14; Job 7:9 and Eccl. 3:19, 20. In reply we would say that there is no contradiction between the first and the rest of the passages; for 1 Cor. 15:52 treats of the first resurrection, i.e., that of the Church and only that of the Church (Rev. 20:4-6), even as 1 Cor. 15:41-56 treats of that resurrection. But Is. 26:14 and Job 7:9 treat of those who in this life have been given the opportunity of gaining Brideship with Christ, and not only failed to gain it, but willfully sinned unto death, the second death. These, as no longer being

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saints, will not only not share in the first resurrection of 1 Cor. 15:50, but as second-deathers will not share in any other resurrection. They are dead, annihilated eternally, as Is. 26:14 and Job 7:9 teach. Eccl. 3:19, 20 treats of natural men, those who did not have in this life the opportunity of being Christ's Bride. It does not treat of the resurrection at all; but it shows that so far as the life-principle, here called the spirit, is concerned, there is no difference between theirs and that of beasts, as respects their ability to return to life and their condition in death. But other Scriptures tell us that, unlike beasts, they are redeemed by Christ's precious blood, and, therefore, will live again, despite the fact that while in death their condition, apart from the ransom, is just like that of beasts—dead. Thus none of these three passages contradict 1 Cor. 15:52, and there is here no impingement against inspiration.

Our correspondent supposes that 2 Cor. 11:17 contradicts the statement of 2 Tim. 3:16 on all Scripture being inspired. As in a previous part of our discussion on inspiration we refuted this claim, we will go no further into it here. Next our correspondent thinks that 2 Sam. 6:23, which says that Michal, Saul's daughter and David's wife, was childless, and 2 Sam. 21:8, which says that she had five sons, contradict each other. The answer is simple: Several Hebrew MSS., the Septuagint and the Syriac translations, two targums and some Hebrew variants, all more ancient than our present Hebrew Massoretic text, have in 2 Sam. 21:8 the name Merab, Saul's older daughter, and not Michal, his younger daughter; and that this is correct is evident, for Merab, not Michal, was the wife of Adriel (1 Sam. 18:19), while Michal was David's wife, later given by Saul to Phalti, or Phaltiel, and still later restored to David (1 Sam. 18:27; 25:44; 2 Sam. 3:14-16). Hence there is here no contradiction, nor anything against inspiration. Next this correspondent claims that in Rom. 2:7 (which tells us some seek immortality) and 1 Cor. 15:53 (which tells us that the Church will

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attain immortality in the resurrection) contradict 1 Tim. 6:15, 16 (which affirms that only Jesus had immortality). In 1 Tim. 6:15, 16 evidently Jesus is referred to as alone having immortality, as He, as the connection shows, is the one spoken of there. This is not to be taken to deny that God has immortality; for He is not included in the comparison here; for here Jesus is compared with all the other kings and lords, of whom He is King and Lord (Rev. 19:16); for Jesus expressly says that God has immortality, life in Himself, and had promised it to Jesus, if He were faithful unto death (John 5:26; Heb. 12:2). Thus here the comparison is not between God and Christ, but between Christ and the future kings and lords (Christ's faithful followers), of whom Jesus is King and Lord. And at the time Paul wrote 1 Tim. 6:15, 16 Jesus alone of these had immortality; for it is only first in the first resurrection that His faithful followers became immortal, as Rom. 2:7 implies and 1 Cor. 15:53, 54 says. Hence there is no contradiction here nor anything against inspiration. Next our correspondent claims that Paul's statement made in 1 Cor. 2:9 is a misstatement, as it is nowhere else to be found in the Bible. We reply that Paul does not say that he is there making a verbal quotation. He is there merely expressing by a paraphrase that he makes of it a thought that is written elsewhere in the Bible, which thought is given in Is. 64:4. In other words, he is expressing in his own words the thought of Is. 64:4, a thing that is done often by writers with the writings of others. Our correspondent has imagined that Paul here makes a misstatement, not seeing that he is here not quoting verbally, but paraphrasing the thought written in Is. 64:4. Hence here is nothing against inspiration.

Our correspondent claims that there is a contradiction of at least nine years between the statement of Matt. 2:1 (where Jesus is said to have been born in the days of Herod the king) and Luke 2:2 (where it is said to have occurred in the days of Cyrenius as

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governor of Syria). We answer: Cyrenius was governor of Syria twice: once 3-1 B.C. and once 6-9 A.D. Jesus was born in the days of Herod, during Cyrenius' first governorship of Syria. For details please see our comments given before, when treating of another set of (alleged) objections to inspiration. Another contradiction is alleged to be between Mark 15:25 (where Jesus is said to have been crucified in the third hour) and John 19:14 (which the correspondent claims gives the sixth hour as that of the crucifixion, claming that Mark gives 9 A.M. and John noon as the time of crucifixion), whereas the latter seems to speak of the trial of Jesus going on about the sixth hour, though John may mean that the preparation of the Passover began about the sixth hour. However, John does not here say that Jesus was crucified about the sixth hour. Yet there is a difficulty between the passages, though not the one that our correspondent claims. The difficulty is solved as follows: Mark gives the Jewish, and John the Roman way of counting the hours, the latter beginning to count the hours from midnight and noon on, the former from evening and morning. There is an ambiguity in the expression, "It was about the sixth hour," i.e., around 6 A.M. Is this "it" the indefinite "it," such as we use in expressions like these: "It is 1 P. M.," "it thunders," "it lightnings," "it dawns," "it rains," "it snows," etc., or does this "it" refer to the preparation of the passover? We know that the preparation of the passover began about 6 A.M. And this may be John's meaning, or his meaning may be that the trial was going on about 6 A.M., Roman time. But in neither case is there a contradiction; for John does not give the time of the crucifixion, whereas Mark sets it as 9 A. M., the third morning hour, Jewish time. Hence there is no contradiction of inspiration.

Next Matt. 27:34 (where Jesus is said to have been offered vinegar mixed with gall) and Mark 15:23 (where He is said to have been offered wine mixed with myrrh) are by our correspondent thought to be

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contradictory and thus against inspiration. In reply we say, first, that Palestinian vinegar was sour wine. Hence there is no contradiction here. But the best MSS. and Greek recensions on Matt. 27:34 have the word wine, not vinegar. However, Luke calls it vinegar (Luke 23:36), which is to be explained as a kind of wine, for sour wine is vinegar. These references are to what was offered Jesus to drink shortly after He was crucified, but toward the end vinegar, sour wine, was offered to Him (Matt. 27:48; Mark 15:36; John 19:29, 30). It will be noted that Matthew says that the wine was mixed with gall, and Mark says with myrrh. Which is correct? Both are right; for it was mixed with both, since Matthew mentions one, and Mark the other; for when two Evangelists mention separate things connected with the same matter, we are not to assume that they contradict each other, but that they supplement each other, as often happens in court when some witnesses tell of certain things and others of other things connected with the case; the rules of legal evidence, other things being equal, require both to be accepted as evidence. Hence nothing in this matter is against inspiration. Again, our correspondent alleges a contradiction between Mark 15:32 (which speaks of both thieves reviling Jesus) and Luke 23:39, 40 (which speaks of one doing it and the other rebuking him for it). The accounts are harmonized as follows: At first both reviled Him, and that shortly after He was crucified, sometime before noon, before the sixth hour (Jewish time, Mark 15:32, 33), while at the sixth hour, one of the thieves, after observing Jesus' meekness under the hard conditions of His sufferings and mockings, was melted into repentance and, after rebuking the reviling thief, desired Jesus to remember him when He would come in His kingdom (Luke 23:39-44). Thus the accounts are harmonious with inspiration.

Our correspondent thinks that there is a contradiction between all four Evangelists on what was the inscription on the cross (Mark 15:26, "The king of the

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Jews"; Luke 23:38, "This is the king of the Jews"; Matt. 27:37, "This is Jesus the king of the Jews"; and John 19:19, "Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews"). The harmony is as follows: The inscription was in three languages (Luke 23:38; John 19:20, 21) and the wording was different in each of these languages, Matthew quoting one, Luke another and John the third, John quoting the Hebrew, which usually omits the verb is; while Mark, usually the briefest in his wording, gives what was common to all three and omits wherein the three give different wordings from one another. Thus here is harmony with inspiration.

Our correspondent thinks that there is a contradiction between Matt. 9:9 (where the publican called to be an Apostle is called Matthew) and Luke 5:27 (where he is called Levi). This is no contradiction; for this publican had two names, one the first, the other the second, like the king of Judah who in 2 Chro. 26 is called Uzziah and in 2 Kings 15:1-9 is called Azariah. Nothing here contradicts inspiration. On the one hand, Mark 6:8 (where the A. V. allows the Apostles to take only a staff for their journey) and, on the other hand, Matt. 10:10 and Luke 9:3 (where they were forbidden to take a staff along) are presented as contradictions. The difficulty is due to a mistranslation in the A. V. of Mark 6:8. The rendering should be "[They] should take nothing for their journey, no, if only a staff" [i.e., not even a staff, the almost invariable help for travelers, should be taken along]. Thus the right translation solves the difficulty. Hence there is nothing here derogatory of inspiration. Our correspondent thinks that Matt. 2:11 (where the wise men are said to come into the house where the child Jesus lay) teaches that Jesus was born in a house, and that this contradicts Luke 2:16 (where the shepherds found Him lying in a manger where Mary laid Him [v. 7] after His birth and swaddling, which manger our correspondent thinks was the place of His birth). Several things are here to be said: (1) Jesus was born neither

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in a manger, nor in a house, but in a stable, into one of whose mangers He was laid shortly after His birth (2) The shepherds' visit is referred to in Luke 2:16, while that of the wise men is given in Matt. 2:11; the scene of Luke 2:16 occurred the night of Jesus' birth (vs. 11, 15, 16), while the visit of the wise men occurred at least 40 days afterward, since on the 40th day He was presented to the Lord in the temple (Luke 2:22-38; compare with Lev. 12:1-8); for we read that shortly after the visit of the wise men Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt and remained there until after Herod died, and thus preserved the child's life from Herod's murderous designs (Matt. 2:12-15). It, therefore, appears that Joseph and Mary some time after Jesus' birth, either before or after His presentation in the temple on His 40th day, moved from the stable to a house. Here, too, is harmony with inspiration.

Finally, Jesus is supposed in Matt. 5:17, 18 (where Jesus says that not the least part of the Law Covenant would pass away before it would be fulfilled in antitype, and that heaven and earth would pass away rather than such a thing failing) to contradict Paul in Gal. 3:24, 25 (where Paul shows that Jewish Christians of his day were freed from the Law Covenant) and Rom. 7:6 (where Paul shows that Jewish Christians of his day had once been under bondage to the Law Covenant, but were delivered from it through coming into Christ). Neither Jesus nor Paul in the pertinent passages refer to the Divine law of justice, which subjects all beings, human and spiritual, to its mandates. They are speaking of the Mosaic Law Covenant, of which Jesus and Paul say that every part of it would be valid and operative until fulfilled in antitype, a thing done in Christ for Jewish Christians during the Gospel Age, without doing this for unbelieving Jews, who will not be freed from the Law Covenant until they become believers in the Millennium, when for them the New Covenant, the antitype of the Law Covenant, will displace it as its fulfillment. Here is no

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contradiction. Here all is in harmony with inspiration.

Our correspondent seemingly has culled these alleged contradictions from the writings of infidels, whose superficiality and lack of real Biblical knowledge our replies prove, and who, seeking to destroy faith in the inspired Word have, as the fruits of their long and hard research, assembled the above alleged contradictions. It is a case of mountains travailing and bearing a ridiculous mouse, a stillborn one at that. Our correspondent names, apparently as sources of these alleged contradictions, some of the leading infidels of the last two centuries. Surely the Bible stands on safe grounds as to harmony and inspiration, if such are the fruits of two centuries' toil of the leading infidels! Its harmony and their futile efforts to discredit it should increase our faith in its Divine origin and inspiration and our conviction of the uselessness of getting the waters of Truth from the dry wells of infidel higher critics.