CONFIRMATORY EVIDENCE.

The direct and positive evidence of inspiration is that which we have given in previous chapters, especially in the first three. In addition to this, there are considerations based on the characteristics of the writers, which, though they might not suggest or prove inspiration, if considered alone, furnish strong confirmatory evidence to support the Scripture statements. While the fact noted in a former chapter, that these writers were left each to his own natural style, does not militate against the conclusion that they were all inspired, yet we should naturally suppose that if the Holy Spirit guided them they would possess in common some peculiarities of style resulting from this guidance. This supposition accords with the facts, as we shall now proceed to show.

We mention, first, the purely dramatic form in which all of the New Testament writers depict the characters of men. They allow all of the actors in the scenes which they describe to play their several parts without a word of comment, without an expression of approval or disapproval, and entirely without those attempts at analysis of character in which other historians indulge. We believe that they stand alone in this respect; and the fact is the more remarkable when we consider the great variety of striking characters which figure upon their pages.

Next we notice the unexampled impartiality with which they record facts, speaking with as little reserve concerning the sins and follies of themselves and their friends as of the wicked deeds of their enemies; as freely, for instance, of Peter's denial of his Lord, as of the malice and cruelty of Caiaphas. This characteristic is so prominent that it has not escaped the notice of any thoughtful reader.

Not less striking is the imperturbable calmness with which they trace the current of history, relating with as little apparent feeling the most wonderful and exciting event-, as those the most trivial; as calmly, for instance, the final sufferings of Jesus as the fact of his taking a scat on Peter's fishing-boat to address the people. They appear to have been restrained by some supernatural power from giving natural utterance to the intense feeling which burned within them, or to have been lifted above all human weakness, so as to speak like him,

"Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world."1

We next observe the unaccountable brevity of the New Testament narratives; and first, their brevity as whole books. Never were men burdened with a theme so momentous in their own estimation, or so momentous in reality, as that of the four Evangelists. Never were writers so oppressed, if brevity were aimed at, by the multitude of the details before them, and the difficulty of determining what to leave out when the welfare of a world depended on what should be written. One of them shows the oppression of his own mind by these details, when he is forced to exclaim in hyperbolic style: "If they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written." What then could have led these four writers, thus pressed by the copiousness of their matter, the importance of their theme, and their burning desire to defend and exalt their Master, to compress their accounts into an average of fifty-four small pages of long primer type? What, but some overruling and superhuman power? As to the book of Acts, the argument is the same in kind, and perhaps greater in force; for this writer had to deal with the widespread progress and evervarying fortunes of the church through a period of thirty years, the most thrillingly interesting period of all its history; and yet he condenses all into about the same number of pages. When, secondly, we notice their brevity as to particular incidents, the wonder continues the same. The baptism of Jesus, for instance, accompanied as it was by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon him, and his formal acknowledgment by God in an audible voice from heaven, is disposed of in twelve lines by the first Evangelist, in six each by the second and third, and in a mere allusion quoted from another person by the fourth. Of the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection, of which there were twelve in all, only two are mentioned by the first Evangelist, only three by the second, only three by the third, and only four by the fourth. In Acts, the dispersion and apparent destruction of the only church then planted is r corded in four lines; and the death of the Apostle James, a calamity of fearful magnitude, is disposed of in eleven words. If it were truly said of Jesus, "Never man spake like this man," it could be as truly said of his historians, Never men wrote as these men; and the logical inference is that they wrote, as he spoke, from the fullness of the Spirit of God.

The argument from the brevity of the narratives is not seen in its full force until it is viewed in connection with the remarkable omissions by which it was brought about. For example, by Mark and John the whole of the first thirty years of the life of Jesus is left blank; and by Matthew and Luke all between his infancy and his thirtieth year is omitted, except a single incident recorded by Luke. By the Synoptists all of the visits of Jesus to Jerusalem except the last are omitted, and by John all of the Galilean ministry, except a single miracle and a conversation which grew out of it. From Acts are omitted nearly all the labors of ten apostles, and from the career of the one whose labors are most fully recorded many of the most thrilling incidents are omitted. Who, unconstrained by some higher power, could have omitted from the narrative the details of those heart stirring incidents in the life of Paul, which are merely mentioned by him in the eleventh and twelfth chapters of Second Corinthians? And who, while inserting the detailed account of the voyage from Caesarea to Rome, could have been willing to omit the account of Paul's trial before Nero?

We mention next their angelology. Among men of all nations there has existed a fondness for depicting invisible beings; hence the demigods, fairies, genii, and sylphs of ancient and modern story, all either grotesque, childish, impure, or malicious. In contrast with these, the angels of the New Testament and of the whole Bible are holy, mighty, humble, compassionate, self-poised, and every way worthy to be the messengers of God. Tins character is uniformly maintained whenever and wherever angels appear in any part of the book. "Unlike men. they are always like themselves." Nothing like them was ever conceived by any other class of writers, or depicted in any other literature. They are so unlike the creations of human imagination, that the latter has not allowed the divine picture to remain as it was; but Christian poets and painters have falsely and persistently given to angels the form of woman. It is incredible that all of this is the product of the unaided powers of shepherds, fishermen, herdsmen, and publicans of those early and dark ages, and of such men among just one people, and that not the most imaginative. Supernatural aid is clearly implied, and the doctrine of inspiration alone accounts for the phenomenon.

In the seventh place, we notice the air of infallibility which the writers of the New Testament everywhere assume. Though they speak on some themes which have baffled the skill of all other thinkers and writers, such as the nature of God, his eternal purposes, his present will, angels, disembodied spirits, the introduction of sin, its forgiveness and its punishment, the future of this earth, and the final destiny of us all; on all subjects and on all occasions they speak with unhesitating confidence, never admitting the possibility of a mistake. They were the most arrogant of men, next to Jesus himself, in whom this characteristic was preeminent, it they were not inspired.

Finally, we mention the inherent power of the New Testament to convince the reader of its own divine origin, and to move him to holy living. That it has such power in a most remarkable degree is the testimony from experience of every believer. As to its self-evidencing power, it is the testimony of a vast multitude that it has been the chief cause of turning men from unbelief to belief; and its power to move in the direction of holy living is attested by the whole host of the good and pure in every Christian age and country. This was the expectation of the writers, one of whom expressly declares that his purpose in writing was that his readers might believe, and that believing they might obtain eternal life; and it was also the expectation of Him who promised them the Holy Spirit; for he said: "When he is come, he will convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment." Now it is not of the nature of error or of falsehood to effect such beneficent changes in human character: these are the product of truth alone; and herein is a final and conclusive evidence that the writers of the New Testament books wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

We have now completed four of the inquiries which we undertook in the beginning of this work. We have found that the original text of the New Testament has been preserved in such a way that the many errors of transcribers which crept into it in the course of ages have, by the diligence of Christian scholars, been discovered and corrected to such an extent as to guard both the Greek scholar and the English reader from being misled thereby. We have found, in the second place, that all of the separate books of the volume are traced back by satisfactory evidence to the authors to whom they are credited-- that they are genuine writings. In the third place, we have found ample evidence that all of their representations of the personal career of Jesus are thoroughly reliable, and that he is, therefore, the Christ of the Old Testament prophets, and the real Son of God. We have found, lastly, that these writers were guided in all that they wrote by the Spirit of God, imparted to them for the very purpose of such guidance; and that what they have written was written precisely as God willed. We have thus gone over all the ground of evidence necessary to the proof of the divine origin and authority of the Christian religion, and of the infallibility of the records of it contained in the New Testament; and while the remaining inquiries which we proposed at the outset are necessary to the vindication of the whole Bible, the line of evidence now before the reader is complete in reference to the Christian religion as distinguished from the Jewish and the Patriarchal.

1 "What reader has failed to notice how the cold sententiousness of Tacitus expands into tenderness, and warms with passion, when he turns aside to weep over the last moments of Agricola? But compare with this natural outpouring of feeling the record of the evangelists. There no expression of human sympathy accompanies the story of the agony in the garden, the awful scene before Pilate, the horrors of the cross. No burst of emotion attends the Master's body to the grave, or welcomes his resurrection." Lee, On Inspiration, 229.

"Their history, from the narrative of our Lord's persecution to those of Paul, the abomination of the Jews, embraces scenes and personages which claim from the ordinary reader a continual effusion of sorrow, or wonder, or indignation. In writers who were friends of the parties, and adherents of the cause for which they did and suffered so great things, the absence of it is, on ordinary grounds, incomprehensible." Bishop Hinds, On Inspiration, 83. See Gaussen, Origin and Inspiration of the Bible, 289-292.