will contain nothing new; others, we trust, will be glad to see within the compass of a single Article the information we have tried to give. Having traveled many thousands of miles, on horseback, in Turkey, we have had abundant opportunity to see the rivers, mountains, plains, forests, plants, and animals of which we have spoken.

The peculiarities of the Physical Geography of the country have always deeply interested us. In some respects physical geography is the basis of everything. Looking to the future, and believing that Turkey is shut up to a course of great material, intellectual, and moral progress, we have studied the phys ical features of the country with great pleasure. From quite an extensive personal survey, we are convinced that there is a solid basis for unlimited advancement. The desired progress will really begin when a railroad is built from Constantinople through the heart of Asia Minor to the river Tigris, and thence down the valley of the Euphrates to Bagdad.

The wealth of the East, the arts, the sciences, the energy of the West, will soon meet,-they are even now meeting,-on the soil of Turkey.

When man begins to appreciate Nature in Turkey, Nature will show that she has prepared a magnificent country for the residence and healthy development of millions of men. In the good time for which all hope, her rivers, mountains, plains, fountains, her iron, silver, copper, and marble, her noble forests, her pure climate, all will be found answering the wise ends for which they were designed by their Creator. That good time is sure to come; the stars in their courses fight for it. We predict that when it has really come, mother Earth will not be able to show a more beautiful spot than the very regions that were chosen as the birth-place of the human race.

ARTICLE II.-ROTHE ON REVELATION AND INSPIRA

TION.

PART II-INSPIRATION, OR, THE DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.

TRANSLATED AND CONDENSED BY MR. E. JANES.

[Concluded.]

THE constant experience of every evangelical Christian testifies that in the Bible he possesses a means of grace, and one which is indispensable to his being an evangelical Christian. In the origin and development of his Christian life, he becomes experimentally conscious of the fact, that the holy Scripture is the chief agent and medium of God's redeeming power; that in it supernatural and divine powers exist and work with an adaptation to every religious susceptibility, in a soundness, purity, and fullness, in a fragrant freshness of life, in an unearthly, radiant beauty, and in a redeeming efficacy, which can be found nowhere else. It is an unparalleled phenomenon in literature.

The devout Christian seeks for an explanation of these unquestioned facts, and finds it in the assumption of God's coöperation in the formation of the Bible, and calls this by the name -inspiration. And how could he do otherwise? Does not logic itself demand a peculiarly divine origin for the peculiarly divine quality of the Bible? The only question can be, whether that divine coöperation which is expressed by the term "inspiration," as used in our dogmatics, gives a true explanation of that religious experience which it attempts to render comprehensible. I must deny that it does so. For the dogma referred to derives the holy Scripture from the divine causality exclusively; but the Scriptures impress us as not only divine, but also perfectly and naturally human, neither quality abridging or overshadowing the other. Through its humanity the Bible has a freshness and a charm which lay hold upon us most deeply; and the pious reader finds the inter-working of the divine and human to be its most characteristic and peculiar quality. In this two-sidedness lies the explanation of the facts of religious experience to which we have referred.

Whoever believes the Bible to be a Holy Scripture, must have observed that it is the divine-human in it which comes into play in all religious experience.

God can effectively reveal himself to men only in men, in human events, and human destiny; and the completed revelation cannot be conceived of otherwise than as an incarnation. The old dogmatics took a partial and one-sided view of the facts. It left the chief element of the problem in the background, and gave over the phenomena to be explained, entirely into the realm of the strange and inexplicable. And this was not done by chance, or mere neglect, but followed naturally and necessarily from an unsatisfactory view of revelation itself. So long as it held that revelation is the direct impartation from God himself of religious doctrine, and that the Bible is this revelation, in the concrete, it could not help holding to a mechanical theory of the origin of the Bible. For only on such a theory could the Bible bear the burden which the system laid upon its shoulders. The belief that inspiration was passive and mechanical was not an excrescence, but a proper out-growth of the system; and it is a useless labor to attempt to take away this doctrine from our older dogmatics, and yet retain the Bible in the same position which was assigned to it by the early Protestant Church. There are only two ways in which writ ings can be infallible: either the writers must be absolutely infallible individuals, or they must be, not the real authors, but the mechanical instruments of the Holy Spirit. The first supposition is inconceivable; according to it, the writers would be, not apostles and prophets, but Christs. The second flies in the face of all psychology and the plainest facts of history. For we do not find the actual Bible answering to this theory, or corresponding to human needs in any such way as it presupposes. It cannot possibly do so, as may be seen from two facts;-first, the text of the Bible is not given to us with absolute certainty, but has to be ascertained through a scientific process of investigation, through approximative criticism, and hence no one can be certain that the holy Scripture which he holds in his hand is verbally inspired; and, second, there are differences of interpretation which can never be completely reconciled.

The untenable nature of this theory having begun to be generally recognized, an attempt was made, naturally enough, to improve it. Calixtus opened the way, making a distinction between revelation and assistance or direction. Pfaff distinguished between a revelation of things unknown, and direction in things known, and permission to introduce the writer's own notions. Baumgarten and Töllner laid aside the idea of inspiration as a passive condition. Since their time inspiration has been more and more considered as standing in direct connection with the purpose of revelation, and as consisting chiefly in a preservation of the biblical writers from error, at least such error as would defeat the end of revelation. The inspiration of the letter has generally been permitted to drop. But such a distinction is untenable and entirely arbitrary and subjective. Who shall decide what is in direct relation with divine revelation, or who place the boundary between the religious and nonreligious elements? Nor is the distinction often made between the contents and the form of the sacred book any more available. It is the form which first of all gives an impression of its divinity. It is not so much that it tells us about divine things, as that it tells of divine things in a really divine way, which makes the deepest impression upon us. And if the truth revealed by God is to be made known through the Scripture, it cannot, without danger of corruption, be entrusted, as to its expression in words, to sinful and defective men. One carelessly false expression might alter the whole contents. In general, too, words and thoughts are inseparable. There is no such thing as thought without words.

In more recent times the inadequacy of this first attempt to improve upon the doctrine has been generally acknowledged. The idea of a direct inspiration of the biblical writings has been given up, and we have fallen back upon the idea of the inspiration of men, of the writers, in which the writings partake only indirectly; yet this inspiration of the writers as such has been held to be a very different one from that which accompanied them in their ordinary gospel labors. But in fact, the inspiration of persons, which once was so lightly dismissed, is amply sufficient to explain the facts which the dogma of the inspiration of the Scriptures has brought into view, and to justify the

trust which we repose in the Scriptures as normative authority. If this is rightly understood, the supposition of a specific activity of the Holy Spirit in writing will be seen to be superfluous, at least in reference to the New Testament, to which the theory we oppose is almost wholly confined. The sacred writers, especially those of the New Testament, are distinguished from all others by the fact that they were persons who bore a part in the historical realization of divine revelation, and were, at the same time, its organs. But they were this previous to, and apart from, all their employment as writers. In consequence of their historical position, their religious consciousness was normative, in its specific peculiarities, for all later times. But they not only belonged to the historical circle in which divine revelation came to pass, but belonged to it in such a way that the most essential element of revelation, the subjective and interior one, inspiration, resided in them; whilst, at the same time, they were persons who had to do with the other element, the objective and external one, that is, divine manifestation. As men entrusted with this inspiration, they were the possessors of a right understanding of the divine manifestation, and therefore the authentic exponents of revelation, hence the only ones. But this limitation (which was dwelt upon in the second essay) must not be lost sight of; that absolute, perfect inspiration belongs to Christ alone, as the only bearer of the divine manifestation, so that the Apostles received their inspiration through him.

It is remarkable that the Redeemer admitted into the most intimate personal communion with himself, men who had so little share in the culture peculiar to their age, and who were thus able to receive from his personal presence, more sound and complete impressions than any other men could have received. And just because there floated in their souls so clear, distinct, and living an image, was it possible for the Holy Spirit to supply what was lacking in their knowledge, through their recollections of Christ and what he had told them, and to restrain them from the misleading influences of the world. So that we cannot be surprised to find a peculiar purity and power in the historical picture which these men drew, and an ideal Christian piety, which makes them shine forth among all their