10 The Fundamentals fathers discussed it, it was the great question once upon a time, it was sifted to the bottom, and a great storehouse of fact, and argument, and illustration has been left for us to draw upon in a day of need. For a long while the enemy’s attack has directed our ener gies to another part of the field, but victory there will drive us back here again. The other questions are outside of the Bible itself, this is inside. They lead men away from the con tents of the book to consider how they came, this brings us back to consider what they are. Happy the day when the inquiry returns here, and happy the generation which has not forgot ten how to meet it. I. DEF IN IT ION OF INSPIRATION 1. Inspiration is not revelation. As Dr. Charles Hodge expressed it, revelation is the act of communicating divine knowledge to the mind, but inspiration is the act of the same Spirit controlling those who make that knowledge known to others. In Chalmer’s happy phrase, the one is the influx, the other the efflux. Abraham received the influx, he was granted a revelation; but Moses was endued with the efflux, being in spired to record it for our learning. In the one case there was a flowing in and in the other a flowing out. Sometimes both of these experiences met in the same person, indeed Moses him self is an illustration of it, having received a revelation at an other time and also the inspiration to make it known, but it is of importance to distinguish between the two. 2. Inspiration is not illumination. Every regenerated Christian is illuminated in the simple fact that he is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but every such an one is not also inspired, but only the writers of the Old and New Testaments. Spir itual illumination is subject to degrees, some Chrisitans pos sessing more of it than others, but, as we understand it, inspi ration is not subject to degrees, being in every case the breath of God, expressing itself through a human personality.
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