the usual order of their personal work. Even the Apostle who left the largest amount of writings is no exception. But on this question, whether the New Testament claims to be inspired in the sense of our Church-dogmatics, it is equally important to consider the testimony which the writings themselves give, direct or indirect, as to the way and manner of their origin. The Bible presents itself to us throughout as a collection of writings brought together by an historical process, having their origin in the work of human writers. It would never occur to one reading the historical books of the Old Testament that the Holy Spirit prompted the pens of the writers. Why then should it be thought that the Holy Spirit suggested the contents, which might have been supplied by oral or written tradition? These books often expressly claim to rest on written sources. Is the poetry, then, of the Old Testament the dictation of the Holy Spirit? It has been well said by Kahnis, "there is no poetry apart from humanity; whoever finds poetry in the Old Testament recognizes the human element there." So in the proverbs of Solomon; "what a contradiction in the assumption that the Holy Spirit dictated their worldly wisdom." So, too, the prophets, "wrote as they spoke, out of their individual peculiarities. The one fact that the later and less original ones made use of the writings of the earlier, is enough to disprove the theory." The case is the same with the New Testament. Would any one recognize these books as writings in whose production the authors were in a passive condition, laboring mechanically, mere slate-pencils? The exact opposite strikes every reader. They take a position just like every honest historian, teacher, letter-writer. They were clearly conscious of the motive and end of their writings, and derived the impulse to write from the particular circumstances which surrounded them, and the relations in which they stood with both large Christian circles and individual persons for whom their message was intended. (Luke i, 1: Rom. i, 11; xv, 15: 1 Cor. i, 11; v, 1; vii, 1: 2 Cor. i, 8 f.; ii, 1 f.; vii, 12; xi, 1 f.: Gal. iii, 1 f.: Col. ii, 1: 2 Thes. ii, 1 f.) Excepting the historical books and the Apocalypse, these authors wrote, not for after generations or the whole of Christendom, but for the immediate present and its necessities. In their histories they go to work just as any careful reporter would do. They usually draw from written sources, sometimes from their own knowledge, sometimes that of others. (John xix, 35: 1 John i, 1-3.) They undeniably used, in part, each others writings, and interwove whole narratives of others in their own. Who can recog nize, in this process, the dictation of the Holy Spirit? How can the theory of the Church dogmatics remain, for instance, in spite of the account which Luke gives of the motives and method of his writing? Such passages give us a look into the workshop where these books were constructed. Where the apostolic writers put forth well considered religious doctrines, they expressly give us the result of deep, inspired reflection upon the great facts of the revelation of God in Christ, and the problems which there press upon the thinking mind. They did not all answer the same questions, nor from the same point of view, nor in the same manner. Even in the same author we find the same question, at different times and in different circumstances, approached from different sides, and solutions advanced not in the same terms. And as the New Testament writers derived their material from ordinary, natural sources, so they used it just as other writers. In the treatment of it their peculiarities of mind and of religious experience are most apparent. As Riehm says: "The testimony of the biblical and especially of the New Testament writers is not only that of the Holy Spirit, but also and most intimately their own, derived not only from divine inspiration, but also from the deepest depths of the human spirit, from the hints of experience, from the pains of humiliation, from the formation and development of the new man within them, from the long apprenticeship of the spiritual life." Moreover, these writers have each his own peculiar characteristic style of writing, and in the most of them we find a certain awkwardness in the use of language, and a ruggedness and stiffness of the forms of speech, as is natural and usual with writers who have not had much of the training of the schools, and are not accustomed to express their thoughts in writing. These things do not impair the value of the books for the purposes intended, but how can they be attributed to the Holy Spirit? tament. It is certain, also, that the earliest Church, immediately after the Apostles, knew of no holy Scriptures except the Old TesThe course of events soon led to the equalization of these books with the Old Testament and the transference to them of the same ideas, but it was a gradual process. It was natural that the Saviour's words and the record which contained them should be thought of equal value with the word of the Old Testament. Yet we do not find the New Testament expressly declared to be inspired and placed in the same rank with the Old earlier than Theophilus of Antioch, in 180. From that time it is universal. But though we are thus completely perplexed by the holy Scripture, on the supposition that it is inspired in the ordinary sense, yet this is only one side of the answer to our question. To this it must be added that the Bible does impress us with the thought that it is an inspired book. If there is any dogma that has religious roots, that is, an expression of the religious consciousness of the evangelical Christian, in the sphere of his personal religious experience, it is the dogma of the inspiration of the Bible. [To be continued.] ARTICLE VI.-APOSTOLIC PREACHING. PREACHING never has been and never can be the instrument of ceremonial and sensuous faiths; and since it does not belong to merely natural religions, nor even properly to the old Hebrew economy, except when the God-commissioned "prophet" proclaimed in startling tones-soon silenced-the word of the Lord; and since Christ appointed preaching to be the new instrumentality of propagating his faith, as the most spiritual agency of a spiritual religion, a religion which is itself, above all, a Word, we are compelled to go to the Word of God to learn the true nature of preaching, and are led to modify our theories, however plausible and splendid, in accordance with the teaching of the Scriptures, especially of the New Tes tament. There is a comprehensive passage in the first chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians which sets forth the spiritual and profound nature of Christian preaching; and we venture to make a literal translation of this, while at the same time endeavoring to bring out its full meaning: "For the word (the doctrine-the preaching) of the cross is indeed folly to them that perish, but to us, the saved, it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will bring to nothing the prudence of the prudent. Where remains the wise? Where the learned disputant of this world? Has not God made the wisdom of this world to be folly? For since in the wisdom of God the world by means of its false wisdom knew not God, it has pleased God through the folly of the preaching (of Christ) to save the believing; since the Jews demand a sign, and the Greeks strive after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks a folly; but to the called themselves, whether Jews or Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For what is counted the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye perceive the nature of your calling, brethren, that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are among you; but the things that are counted foolish by the world God has chosen, that he might put to shame the wise; and the weak things of the world God has chosen, that he might put to shame those that are mighty; and the things that the world thinks ignoble, and those that are despised, God has chosen, and what is even of no worth, that he might destroy what is esteemed of worth: so that no flesh might glory in God's sight. But through him ye are in Christ Jesus, who has become to us wisdom of God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, as it is written, whoever will glory, let him glory in the Lord. So also I, when I came to you, came not with excellence of speech or of wisdom, to preach to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any. thing among you but Jesus Christ alone, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling, and my teaching and my preaching consisted not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power, in order that your faith should not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power." The party in the Church of Corinth who were instructed in Greek philosophy, and the Jew-Christians who cultivated the dialectics of Rabbinic theology, and all who were attracted by the classic eloquence of the skilled Alexandrian preacher, Apollos, were strongly inclined to the view that the gospel demanded for its success the aid of philosophy and the persuasive influence of trained eloquence. When, however, the gospel, as simply and earnestly preached by Paul and the other apostles, began to show the living fruits of its tillage in the hearts and characters of renewed men, blossoming out like a garden or a vineyard, then what appeared to be foolishness was seen to be wisdom, and not only wisdom but power; so that in those overwhelming manifestations of divine energy in the gospel, all mere human wisdom and its teachers were swept away. This foolishness of preaching was not foolish preaching; but it was foolish only in the estimation of unbelieving men who trusted in philosophy and in learned reasoning for living spiritual results. Such persons made the gospel of none effect, while they left out of preaching the vital thing, the water of life that creates life, the element of the Cross, rendered effectual by the demonstration and power of the Spirit. On the other hand, they, however unlearned and contemptible in the world's estimation, who yielded themselves readily to the call of God in the gospel, rose into the circle of that higher wisdom of God. The crucified Christ, the manifestation of the love of God in his Son sacrificing himself for men, the coming of Deity into humanity to work out a new divine life in our sinful nature, a truth ever new and life-giving, this forms the divine element in preaching. Preachers may differ in their ways of setting forth this truth; they may differ as widely as did the bold, unartistic Paul and the skilled Apollos; but if they have placed supreme reliance on the wisdom of the |