The Inspiration of the Bible 35 the earth moved round the sun but only the false theological assumptions about it. In this way advancing light has removed many of these discrepancies, and it is fair to presume with Dr. Charles Hodge that further light would remove all. 2. There are the differences in the narratives themselves. In the first .place, the New Testament writers sometimes change important words in quoting from the Old Testament, which it is assumed could not be the case if in both instances the writers were inspired. But it is forgotten that in the scrip tures we are dealing not so much with different human authors as with one Divine Author., I t is a principle in ordinary liter ature that an author 'may' quote himself as he pleases, and give a different turn to an expression here and there as a changed condition of affairs renders it necessary or desirable. Shall we deny this privilege to the Holy Spirit? May we not find, indeed, that some of these supposed misquotations show such progress of truth, such evident application of the teach ing of an earlier dispensation to the circumstances of a later one,, as to afford a confirmation of their divine origin rather than an argument against it? We offered illustrations of this earlier, but to those would now add Isaiah 59:20 quoted in Romans 11:26, and Amos 9:11 quoted in Acts 15:16. And to any .desiring to further examine the subject we would recommend the valuable work of Professor Franklin Johnson, of Chicago University, entitled “The Quotations in the New Testament from the Old.” Another class of differences, however, is where the same event is sometimes given differently by different writers. Take that most frequently used by the objectors, the inscription on the cross, recorded by all the evangelists and yet differently by each. How can such records be inspired, it is asked. It is to be remembered in reply, that the inscription was written in three languages calling for a different arrangement of the words in each case, and that one evangelist may have translated the Hebrew, and another the Latin, while a third
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