The Inspiration of the Bible 17 But returning to the argument, if the divine influence upon the writers did not extend to the form as well as the substance of their writings; if, in other words, God gave them only the thought, permitting them to express it in their own words, what guarantee have we that they have done so ? An illustration the writer has frequently used will help to make this clear. A stenographer in a mercantile house was asked by his employer to write as follows: “Gentlemen: We misunderstood your letter and will now fill your order.” Imagine the employer’s surprise, however, when a little later this was set before him for his signature: “Gentlemen: We misunderstood your letter and will not fill your order.” The mistake was only of a single letter, but it was entirely subversive of his meaning. And yet the thought was given clearly to the stenographer, and the words, too, for that mat ter. Moreover, the latter was capable and faithful, but he was human, and it is human to err. Had not his employer con trolled his expression down to the very letter, the thought intended to be conveyed would have failed of utterance. In the same way the human authors of the Bible were men of like passions with ourselves. Their motives were pure, their intentions good, but even if their subject-matter were the commonplaces of men, to say nothing of the mysterious and transcendent revelation of a holy God, how could it be an ab solute transcript of the mind from which it came in the absence of miraculous control? In the last analysis, it is the Bible itself, of course, which must settle the question of its inspiration and the extent of it, and to this we come in the consideration of the proof, but we may be allowed a final question. Can even God Himself give a thought to man without the words that clothe it? Are not the two inseparable, as much so “as a sum and its figures, or a tune and its notes ?” Has any case been known in human his-
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