262 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870- 



When this supposed biblical support has been removed 

 from the opinion now under consideration, we shall have 

 no difficulty in showing its thorough untenableness. If 

 the prophet were a mere mechanical organ of the Spirit, 

 exegesis would, of course, have nothing at all to do with 

 his personality. The human element would disappear 

 from the Old Testament. The exegesis of prophecy 

 would have nothing in common with the principles of the 

 interpretation of human writings because the psychological 

 basis of all hermeneutic could have no application where 

 the Divine Spirit is conceived as the immediate author. 

 In general I presume the absurdities of extreme literalism 

 are based on a fallacy at this point. The human side of 

 prophecy is ignored in favour of an overstrained doctrine 

 of inspiration, and yet the canon of human hermeneutic 

 which bids us always adopt the natural sense unless a 

 figure is manifestly designed, is without scruple applied 

 to utterances from which all human character has been 

 withdrawn. If the divine revelation destroyed the 

 human personality of the speakers, are we entitled to 

 assume that it respected the principles of human expres 

 sion ? Far more consistent, though not less fanatical, is 

 the theory that, since divine revelation is a thing absolutely 

 sui generis, it must also have its own canon of interpreta 

 tion. 



If, on the other hand, the prophet s personality is 

 not suppressed in the production of his prophecies, if he 

 remained self-conscious, and if his own mind was at work 

 in expressing the truth to which by divine revelation he 

 had attained, it is impossible to speak of the Spirit as the 

 author of the prophecy in any strict sense. Nor are the 

 Spirit and the prophet joint authors, so that something 

 comes from God and something is added by man. Such 

 an hypothesis is both religiously inadequate and critically 

 untenable. Every prophecy of the Old Testament has a 

 beautiful unity of plan. There is nothing of patchwork 

 about the prophetic utterances. They flow, as the 



