90 REV. A. H. T. CLARKE, M.A., ON THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. 



failings ! " It is true that the Holy Spirit, in His Word, has given 

 us a Divinely faithful record of their lives, without any attempt at 

 " hushing up " their faults, as a merely human writer would have 

 done. But, that same Holy Spirit gives us their true character in 

 II Peter i, 21, as u holy men of God" ! 



Nor could I follow Mr. Clarke in, what seemed to be the essence 

 of his Lecture, that prophecy was to be traced to some " insight " 

 on the part of the prophets. 



This seems to me, if I may humbly say so, altogether wrong. 

 For, in the first place, the prophets did not always understand their 

 own prophecies ! and apparently had, at times, to study their own 

 writings, in order to understand the meaning of the Spirit's message 

 through themselves. See I Peter i, 10, 11. 



But, more than that, we are clearly told in n Peter i, 21, just 

 how prophecy did come, viz : — " holy men of God spake as 

 they were moved by the Holy Ghost" And the word rendered 

 " moved " really means swept along as by an irresistible torrent ! 

 which is the very opposite of anything in the nature of personal 

 " insight." 



I am sorry to have to say that, — as it seemed to me, — the 

 Lecturer failed to give due importance to the work of the Holy 

 Spirit in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and that lies at the very 

 foundation of our faith. (See n Timothy iii, 16.) 



The Kev. John Tuckwell said : I am sure we must all be grateful 

 for the very able paper to which we have just listened. At the same 

 time there were one or two details upon which we could not all quite 

 agree. 



First of all, I do not think the Lecturer did full justice to II Peter i, 

 20. The word which is rendered " private " ("Stos) means that 

 which is "a man's own," and the word "personal" would beyond 

 all dispute quite correctly represent it. The word rendered 

 " interpretation " is nowhere else used in the New Testament. It 

 is derived from the verb IttiAvw, meaning " to release," " to loose," 

 "to untie." The noun here used would thus carry in it the 

 meaning of "a release," "a loosening," " a setting free," and in the 

 matter of speech "an utterance," "an expression." The sense of 

 the passage is thus, " no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private 

 or personal utterance." This is fully borne out by the next verse, 

 which reads : " For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of 



