44
STRONGHOLD OF TRUTH
That is doing what I have already warned you against; it is taking a text without a context and making it a pre text; and we must not do that, whether on one side or the other. But again some one says: "We want the inspiration of the thoughts, not of the words." \,Yell, I would ask : What is your theory of inspiration? What do you really mean by the inspiration or authority in the thoughts, surely it must be expressed in the words, and the objections that are raised to the inspiration of words are just as valid against the inspiration of thoughts. To show that I am not going too far in saying this, let us notice 1 Cor. 14 :37, "If any man think himself to be spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things I write are the commandments of the Lord." There is the human "the things that I write;" words. "The commandments of the Lord"-there is the Divine inspiration and author ity behind. Now I venture to say that the use of the Bible today is a wonderful confirmation of this view. We use it as our authoritative court of appeal, and we rest upon its words as our warrant. If I may be permitted a personal reference, I would say that the three men more than any others who confirmed me in this view of inspiration, were Vvestcott, Lightfoot, and Vaughan. Their exegesis impressed me with the conviction that there was Divine life and authority in the words. And the fact that we use a concordance is another testimony, be it Greek, or Hebrew, or English. It points to the value, the meaning, the force and extent of words. And this was the view of the Apostolic Church. Bishop Westcott, in the essay to which I have already referred, says that the doctrine of inspiration in the Apostolic ~hurches was that it was supernatural in source, unerring m truthfulness, and comprising words as well as subject matter. That, according to Bishop Westcott, is the view of the earliest churches, and certainly it has also been that of a ~reat many churches since the Apostolic days. We notice, too, the appeal of the New Testament to the Old: "It is written." It is not "it is thought," "it is
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