I BELIEVE in the fullest way in the inspiration of Scripture; but that does not mean, that all that it contains was inspired in the mouths of those who uttered it. We have Satan's words, wicked men's words, human accounts of divers facts recorded by inspiration, but not themselves inspired. A revelation should give (it is what it means) the perfect presentation of the divine mind on the subject of which it treats, to one spiritually capable of understanding it; but in doing this, as to man, as to Israel, it must give me a true, real picture of what man, what Israel is. And this it does, not merely by a dogmatic statement, but by a large historical development of what man has done, what he has felt, what he has been in various circumstances, under various advantages, and in states of progress through the revelations already afforded him. If the Bible had merely given us God's judgment, we never should have had the same testimony to conscience as we have by its affording us man's actual history, under the various dispensations of God towards him. But to do this, I must have him as he was, his feelings expressed as they were in him; whether without God, or under the influence of piety, yet ill-informed in God's mind; or animated as to his heart by God's Spirit, yet the result a mixed one, and taking the forms of thought and feeling, which were and must have been such as his state of moral education would have produced. Otherwise it would not have been the true and needed account of man; consequently, not a divine one.
In the midst of all this, we get positive revelations from God, given in order to act upon men in this state. In this last case, I get inspired testimony of what God's own mind is. Yet even here grace has adapted it to the conscience and spiritual information possessed, and God's dealings with men in such or such a state. If He deigned to deal with them, thus He must have done, in condescendence, for their blessing. He leads them up and onward indeed: but it is them He is to lead. A gracious father speaks to his child according to what suits it; yet never what is unworthy of himself: it is worthy of him to suit himself to them. So has God dealt with men, with Israel. How else could He have dealt with them, if He meant them to be morally developed?
Thus in the Old Testament we have a perfect, divinely-given picture of man, under this gracious process, in the various relationships in which he was placed with God, so as to get his whole condition fully brought out, that by a divinely-given history we might know ourselves, and at the same time the whole course of God's dealings, and what man was under them, till his need of perfect and supreme grace should be manifested, and God manifested in Christ as the supreme grace he needed, and man and God get into the relationship which was in His full purpose, according to the security of the unchangeableness of His nature, and the perfectness of His love. When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Hence it is said, “For the forgiveness of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare at this time His righteousness.” He dealt with them for the full development of His ways. He received them according to His knowledge of the perfect work to be accomplished in Christ.
Now God has given us a perfect revelation of all this. But we should not have the knowledge either of man or of our God Himself, and of his wondrous and all-perfect and patient ways with us, if we had not men at each step exactly as they were; it would not be the truth else. The statement of morality simply by God, would no doubt have shown what man ought to be. That we have in the law. But it would not have shown us what man is; nor that, under the various dealings of God. Now we have this; and, I repeat, to have it, we must have man, even when under the influence of God's Spirit, just as he was under it; the effect produced being according to the degree in which his own soul was acted on, the medium in which he lived, and the measure of revelation afforded him.
Such was Deborah's song. It is not a communication of God's thoughts, but of Deborah's feelings. Doubtless her heart was moved by the Spirit in thankfulness for the deliverance of God's beloved people; but there is not a sign of its being a communication from God to that people. Now such a song may vary in the spiritual conformity to the highest measure of light which is possessed—may be more or less mixed with man, and may be colored by the general condition of the people, and the nearness of the individual's soul to God. It may express much greater nearness, because the mass are far gone from Him—as in Hannah's, whose weakness is entirely cast on God, and hence points vividly to Christ; or in Simeon's, whose soul can go in peace, because the hope of his devout heart is fulfilled in the midst of the desolations of Israel; or (if God interferes in outward mercy and gives a temporal reviving, because He will not destroy, but make Himself known, and that in mercy to His people), the thanksgiving or the praise will descend to the measure of the present interference, by which God has hindered His people from having their remembrance blotted out of the earth.
Such is, in fact, Deborah's song. It does not rise above it. If I am to know what Israel was then, it ought not—if I am to know the way of God's dealing with them, it must not—pass beyond it. Israel gradually sunk; and the character of deliverers and deliverances sunk, till God, had to come in afresh in Samuel and David, when “He had delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemies' hand.” How am I to learn this, and know what was the real condition of the people and the truth of God's dealings were, if I do not have them just as they were? A song of David, of Simeon, or of Hannah, would have been morally out of place to celebrate the deeds of Barak the son of Abinoam, and of the prophetess of the palm-tree in Mount Ephraim. The thing objected to is a perfection in the revelation. I judge many things in the revelation by a clearer light. I learn many things in God's ways. How could I if they were not there? The skeptic neither states the fact correctly, nor reasons justly from what he observes. It is never given as “an inspired psalm.” It is only said, “Then sang Deborah, and Barak the son of Abinoam.” I pass a moral judgment on many things in the Old Testament, because God has given us the true light, and the darkness is now passed. But how does that show that it is not an inspired revelation that has given me them? I judge them in the perfect light. But it is He who is light who has given me them to judge of, and the light to judge them by. He means to inform my spiritual judgment, and to reveal His ways to me, to show me that He has never ceased dealing with men, that the world has not gone on without His knowledge. He has given me the key to everything, and therefore He has afforded me all these elements with divine perfectness, on which and by which my judgment is to be spiritually formed, and my senses exercised to discern good and evil, as man has learned it through ages, or as it has been displayed and developed in his history; while Christ has given the perfect key by which to judge of it all. Hence Paul says, the Scriptures are “able to make us wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” And so when poor Peter would have put Moses and Elias in the same rank with Christ, they disappear, and “a voice came from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him. And.... Jesus was found alone.”
Then I do get direct addresses to the conscience at the time in the prophets, and the directing the eye of the saints, suffering under the evil state of God's people, to that better day, which the Christ who should visit them as the dayspring should bring in, to set all things right. They looked on to it, and were saved by hope, as we are—if not so clear a hope, yet as true, and indeed the same, though only partially revealed, and in its earthly part—yet so as that heaven was necessarily brought in by it. Abraham rejoiced to see Christ's day; and he saw it and was glad; and, a stranger in the Canaan which had been promised him, he looked for “a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” in the glory of which he will enjoy the blessings of the inheritance of his children in a better and sweeter way than those who shall actually possess them. The Old Testament is gained, not lost, thus; we have it from our God's own hand to instruct us. What happened as proofs of God's present interference in a temporal way to them, which was what suited their state and God's government of the earth, is spiritual instruction for us, written for our learning, which is what we want, that by which we can more fully know God; while all He teaches in it is perfect, and from that I learn His ways.