The Bible as a Revelation of God.
Two things are affirmed by this writer. First, that God spake to the Jewish nation by the prophets of the Old Testament, evidently in an especial and supernatural manner; and next, that He spake to them by a gradual revelation of the teaching, communicated to them in diversified ways.
I. Let it be admitted that the Bible is a supernatural revelation from God: then it is as much an incarnation of the Divine Spirit as the Emmanuel was of the Divine Son as the physical creation was of the Divine Father. If a theory of the inspiration of the Bible could be formulated, it would be an exception to every manifestation of God in the physical and in the moral world. It is one thing to understand the proof of a fact, it is another to recognise the fact that is proven. I can recognise the proofs that establish the facts that I am a living being, that the corn ripens, that the tides ebb and flow, that the needle points to the north, that an earthquake occurred yesterday; but I cannot understand what life, and tidal influence, and magnetism and electricity are. So I may understand the proofs that the Bible is a revelation from God, and that the Bible writers were inspired, without being able to understand the methods of revelation and inspiration.
II. In looking at the Bible, two classes of phenomena have to be accounted for. (1) First, the supernatural element has to be recognised and accounted for. The proofs of the Divine element in the Bible are almost inexhaustible. Almost every week, some unsuspected but harmonious line of proof is opened out to us, proclaiming the Divine. (2) The second great characteristic of the Bible are the marks and proofs of its human authorship. I cannot resolve the humanity of the sacred writers into passive instruments of the Divine. I cannot think all the pious passion of David, all the personal avowals of Paul unreal: I cannot reduce them to the mock personages of a sacred drama, and the inspiring spirit with the simulator of human voices and feelings. Only by fully and fearlessly recognising the human element in the authorship of Scripture can we even understand it.
H. Allon, The Indwelling Christ,p. 299.
References: Hebrews 1:1. Preacher's Lantern,vol. i., p. 144; F. W. Robertson, Sermons,2nd series, p. 136; Church of England Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 183; J. Bainton, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 219. Hebrews 1:1; Hebrews 1:2. Expositor,1st series, vol. i., p. 60; vol. x., p. 275; A. M. Brown, Christian World Pulpit,vol. v., p. 44; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 58; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., pp. 38, 39; H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty,vol. i., p. 31; Homiletic Magazine,vol. ix., p. 284; D. Rhys Jenkins, Eternal Life,p. 146. Hebrews 1:1-3. R. W. Dale, The Jewish Temple and the Christian Church,p. 11.