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Unity of the Bible to Its Inspiration whole and arranging the parts, then we can understand how Moses’ grand anthem of creation glided into Isaiah’s oratorio of the Messiah; by and by sinks into Jeremiah’s plaintive wail, swells into Ezekiel’s awful chorus, changes into Daniel’s rapturous lyric; and, after the quartette of the evangelists, closes with John’s full choir of saints and angels! The temple, first built upon Mount Moriah, was built of stone, made ready before it was brought thither; there was neither hammer nor ax nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in building. What insured symmetry in the tem- ple when constructed, and harmony between the workmen in the quarries and the shops, and the builders on the hill? One presiding mind planned the whole; one intelligence built that whole structure in ideal before it was in fact. The builders built more wisely than they knew, putting together the ideas of the architect and not their own. Only so can we account for the structural unity of the Word of God. The structure was planned and wrought out in the mind of a Divine Archi- tect, who superintended His own workmen and work. Moses laid its foundations, not knowing who should build after him, or what form the structure should assume. Workman after workman followed; he might see that there was agreement with what went before, but he could not foresee that what should come after would be only the sublime carrying out of the grand plan. During all those sixteen centuries through which the building rose toward completion, there was no sound of ax or hammer, no chipping or hacking to make one part fit its fellow. Everything is in agreement with everything else, because the whole Bible was built in the thought of God before one book was laid in order. The building rose steadily from corner-stone to cap-stone, foundations first, then story after story, pillars on pedestals, and capitals on pillars, and arches on capitals, till, like a dome flashing back the splendors of the noonday, the Apocalypse spans and crowns and com- pletes the whole, glorious with celestial visions.
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