When men speak of the “infallible” Word of God, they mean that it may be relied on as having all the infallible certainty of what God says; and they are quite right. But no person, speaking carefully, would say that the apostles were infallible. We have one of them rebuking another to his face; so that he did not think so. Thousands of devoted Christians have canvassed Paul's vows and purifyings at Jerusalem: no true and sound-minded one has questioned the divine authority and truth of the Scripture that speaks of it. What I look for in a revelation is a perfect representation of the divine mind as to all the ways in which God is pleased to make Himself known in dealing with man. In order to have this, I must have a full display or exposure of man as he really is; and this, being historically and dogmatically given, affords the ground of human conscience and divine light. Now this is the greatest boon, save the power to use it, that God can give to man (not speaking of the salvation itself, which it is the means of making known to him): he gets the knowledge of Himself and of what God is toward Himself, such as he really is; and he is brought into the perfect light, and that in grace.
But for this purpose, how many things very different from God's will and thoughts, contrary to what God would have inspired, and mixed when He has acted on the affections, shall we find! If God shows us the truth, we must have things as they really are. We must have an apostle's failures as well as all else—man's path under the highest power of the Holy Ghost bestowed on him. For this he must often express himself. Only with this we need the positive revelation of God's own mind in an unquestionable way to be able to judge, supposing we are spiritual, of all this; and that the Scriptures afford us. This human character is, in the New Testament, especially drawn out and unfolded. In the Old, we have the history of man divinely given, and certain oracles imparted with “thus saith the Lord,” with comparatively little, save in the Psalms, of the effect of the working of the Holy Ghost in man, so as to produce affections and thoughts in which the divine spring is seen, but the forms of human thoughts, because it was the Holy Ghost working in man. In this latter case there may be various degrees of spiritual clearness of thought according to the state of the person in whom the Holy Ghost works. It may be such as spiritual men have now, only of course the thoughts conformed to the state of the dispensation. Thus it was in the case of Deborah's song; and if I am to know man and God's dealings, and man under them, I must have this. A person may be filled with the Holy Ghost, and so express his mind, that, though it be his feelings and so given, yet what nature would have produced is absent; and it is only what the Holy Ghost has produced, though in his heart. Thus his heart is a proper vessel of the Holy Ghost; and his utterance may he recorded as being really of God and proper inspiration, though in a human heart. So Elizabeth's song in Luke 1, Zachariah's in the same chapter, and Simeon's in chapter ii. In these cases, such outgoings of heart being directly from the Spirit will be prophecies, properly speaking. Such we have in the Psalms, though they be expressions often of feelings in the writer's heart at the time, and I doubt not, prepared for the remnant of Israel in the latter day, as giving them divine comfort in their tried feelings and exercised hearts then. Of David's psalms we are expressly informed by himself, the sweet Psalmist of Israel, “the Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue.”
This kind of working of the Holy Ghost even in our hearts, and that in cases where our minds are not sufficiently taught of God to know what to look for, is spoken of in Rom. 8, where he says, “He who searcheth the heart knoweth the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.” It is merely saying that the Holy Ghost can work in the affections where the intelligence may not be sufficiently formed to express itself on particular subjects, or point out the positive answer to those affections. If, beforehand, God communicated the answer to a heart so exercised, it becomes real prophecy or inspired truth, as well as divinely-given feelings. If even the Spirit gives, such expression to the sorrow of the heart that it should be according to God, this may be more than personal, though it be such, and rise to the full revelation of that personal or sympathetic sorrow which was, in the heart of Jesus, from the same cause more fully developed, and without counteracting or modifying evil. And this might be without the knowledge, in him who uttered it, of what it applied to. Such a principle is clearly recognized in the New Testament; for Peter speaks of the prophets who, by the Spirit of Christ which was in them, testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glories which should follow; and they searched what and what manner of time it referred to, and found that it was not for themselves but for us. The Jews had the same notion, and as an opinion, it was well-founded, though they joined unsound notions as to inspiration with it. They taught that there was the grades Mosaicus, or Moses' degree, the grades propheticus, and the Bath Idol, or daughter of a voice: the two first founded on Num. 12:6-86And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. 7My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. 8With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? (Numbers 12:6‑8), and the third characterizing the chetubim or hagiographa. This did not touch the authority but the character of the writings. But it is often of deep interest to know the manner of God's speaking to us; though, in whatever way He speak, His word has always the same authority. Not one jot or tittle can pass from the law; and all that is written in Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning Christ, must be fulfilled. Yet when the apostle says, “God, who, in sundry times and in divers mariners spake in times past, hath in these last days spoken to us by the Son” [in the Son, in the person of the Son, ἐν ιγιφ], is it not of the deepest possible interest to see the testimony of God brought to us in the person of the Son Himself?—God Himself speaking there; “For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God, for God giveth not the Spirit [to him] in measure.” Everything there was the expression of God Himself. It was not, “Thus saith the Lord,” for some precious sentences, and then a man's relapsing into his ordinary though perhaps sanctified existence. All that came forth breathed God—God in human kindness or philanthropy—as the apostle speaks, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” If He took up a child, if He spoke to a sinner, if He sat at the well wearied, with a yet more weary and desolate heart beside Him, a woman who came at that strange time to draw water, one justly in a sense ill seen by men, and yet, however dark, with secret wants beyond them, a sign to His eye that the fields were white for harvest; if He touched an outcast leper with a gracious and sovereign “I will:” all told that God was there, amongst men, with men, because of men; and gracious words proceeded out of His mouth. Surely they made men wonder; for how long had they been away from God? And if a prophet's words were just as sure, because the Spirit of Christ really space them, yet surely I need not speak of the bright and blessed interest which accompanied the existence of such a testimony as His who spike as never man spoke. A Savior's voice came, if indeed heard, with divine grace itself to the ear! It was the mercy that it spoke of. “If thou knewest the gift [free-giving, δωρεάν] of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink [who has come so low as to be dependent on you for a drink of water], you would have asked of him [entire confidence of heart in God—such a God!—would have been produced, nor would it have been disappointed in grace or power to answer], and he would have given thee living water.”
This was indeed revealing God. Here we have not a long and dreary, because true, picture of man, cultivated in vain by the great husbandman, and the testimonies and warnings of God sent to him, or prophecies of brighter days to come through grace. We have perfect, gracious Man, walking before God, for our eyes to rest on and learn: and God walking before men in all the near grace they needed, come to them just where they were, that they might learn what He was, and by it be drawn out of what they were. It was presented to them in all their distance from God, and in all their misery, where grace could be best felt, that they might be drawn out of that misery, and know with joy the God who had done so.
But the inspiration of the New Testament is interesting in another way. The Holy Ghost Himself is come to dwell in the saints, and to take the things of Christ and show them to us; and He dwells in us as a seal that we are children of God, heirs of all and joint-heirs with Christ. He at the same time brings all the love of God into the sorrows of the way; enables us to apprehend according to God the present state of things, while it marks out a road suited to those who are one with Christ in heaven, for His members by the way. Hence the New Testament is not, in the general tenor of its revelations, a mere testimony of “thus saith the Lord.” It has the prophetic character sometimes; but, in general, it is the expression of the mind and sympathies of God in all that concerns the saints on earth. It is the Holy Ghost in a man who is a member of the body, communicating all the privileges of the body to it, and entering into all its sorrows, while it reveals the love and wisdom of the Father and the Son leading into all truth, and casting the light of God on all that went before, and showing things to come; in this last having more the character assumed before in prophecy, as we read, “The Spirit speaketh expressly.” “Let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches,” &c. Hence there is (while often rising to the most glorious testimonies of blessing in the revelation of God, and of His designs for the glory of Christ, and the Church with Him) a familiarity, an entering into detail into all that concerns the body, and what becomes its heavenly path down here, an expression of the feelings of the instrument who addresses it, which gives the most touching picture of the effect of the presence of the Holy Ghost, and brings down the love of God into the details and circumstances of man's Christian life. It is not indeed Christ Himself; but it is His Spirit lifting up His members to Him by the revelation of Him, and coming down to them in all their trials and conflicts, in all through which they pass, to be the spring of feeling there, through His assured sympathy. Such God would show Himself; and surely all that He says there has the tenderest claim and the perfect authority of Him who speaks thus in love. It is the word of God; the Holy Ghost on earth in the apostle or prophet, or, speaking generally, in the Church—not an inferior separate Spirit, but as He hears so He speaks, in union with the Father and the Son, the Wisdom of God amongst men.
The Scriptures of the New Testament are the perfect expression of the divine mind as communicated to, or working in, the Church of God; suited to the relationship in which God has thus placed them with Himself. But no one dreams of the apostles being infallible. A truth communicated cannot be infallible: it can only be absolute truth: and truth is truth. A person only can be infallible. The apostles may have been divinely kept while communicating truth, and thus not suffered to fail while thus used of God. In this secondary sense alone can they be, in any proper use of the word, infallible at that moment; but this is not the real meaning of the word. I do not doubt that God took care that all they have left us in the Scripture should perfectly present His mind; but this did not make the apostles infallible. God alone is infallible, that is, incapable of failing.
Neither omniscience nor dictation is necessary to inspiration. Omniscience contradicts it in terms; for inspiration is the communication of truth or facts, and “omniscience” means that all is known already. Nor is dictation necessary either. Suppose, as to historical Scripture, if God acted on my mind or memory so as to call up facts He chose to have related in the way, the connection, the order in which He chose them to be in my mind, and associated with the feelings which He thought proper to be produced in my soul by it, and the utterances of my memory and the expressions of my feelings to which they naturally give rise when thus produced, to the exclusion of all distracting or modifying thoughts of any kind, to deteriorate what the Holy Ghost produced in my mind and soul; and suppose that I write this down, as thus formed and producing itself in my mind, being full of the Holy Ghost, so that no other idea whatever intruded itself but such as the Holy Ghost had produced, and that He approved the necessary expression of it, acting on the mind, not on the lips, should I not have and give the perfect mind of God, only through the mind of man!
Again, if Christ had spoken, and the Holy Ghost recalled to my memory His words, or a particular part of His words, and I write down these words (so of facts), this would not be dictation. Supposing He formed in my soul the substance of what passed, and I wrote it down, from the perfect spiritual apprehension of it, as He put it in my mind, to the exclusion of all else, I should have the perfect mind of God; yet the Holy Ghost, acting on my mind, would use it as an instrument, and the communication would have the form of the mind it passed through. Why, if God has expressly formed the instrument, can He not then use it for the purpose for which He has formed it, according to what He has made it? Now, that is style. It is merely supposing that the Holy Ghost cannot use man's mind, such as it is, and govern his words, without annihilating him and making use of his lips, as of the dumb ass to rebuke the prophet.
The apostle does not speak of the mere use of the organ without the intelligence, as the highest kind of inspiration, but as the lowest; and that it was of a higher order when the man was mentally made partaker of what He communicated, and thus did with his own thoughts and feeling engaged (which produces style), though the Holy Ghost produced these thoughts and feelings. The spout, which gives a form to the current that flows from it, may transmit the water as pure as it flows in. I do not say the Holy Ghost did not give the words, but that it was not necessarily mere dictation of them. Nay, if He did dictate them, He could do it in the form of mind and thought of the person He deigned to use, so that it should be his style. The Holy Ghost gave the thoughts, and they were not left to the uncertainty of man's account of them He caused them to be communicated in words He taught; but why should He not work in a mind according to the form He had designedly given it? See 1 Cor. 2:12-1412Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. 13Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:12‑14). This passage attributes these things to the Spirit—the original reception of the truth by the instrument employed, the manner of its communication, and its reception by the hearer. I should translate πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συγκίνοντες, “using a spiritual medium of communicating for spiritual things,” or “communicating spiritual things by spiritual means.” This shows how much the mind is connected with the expressions used in communicating truth. The whole question is—Can the Holy Ghost employ the mind, and through it language, to the exclusion of all other influence? or is He forced to leave the mind out and dictate the words? The apostle speaks of both, and prefers having the mind in use in inspiration.