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that which, takes place when any one either speaks to ns him- 
self, or sends another, for the purpose of telling us the very 
thoughts and feelings of his own mind. In the former case, 
we indirectly learn something regarding the mind of the 
person whose deeds we observe, — we may, so to speak, guess 
correctly his feelings and designs ; but, in the latter case, we 
are not left to guess at all. We are directly told the thoughts 
and feelings, as well as the true intentions of his heart. He 
who, in any proper sense, believes in the divine authorship 
of the Bible, sees in it an expression of God's own thoughts, 
and that by Himself, as really addressing Himself to man- 
kind. 
This view is greatly strengthened, when we remember that 
portions of the Sacred Scriptures consist of God's own state- 
ments of such doings of His as could not, in the nature of the 
case, be otherwise known to man. The account of the creation 
is plainly of this character. It could not be gathered from any 
other source than God's own testimony. Man seeks in vain 
for it in the so-called “ Book of Nature." He finds it in the 
plain testimony of the inspired teacher, who is made to com- 
municate God's own thoughts of it to mankind. W e see in it 
the teaching of the Creator himself as to His work not the 
teaching of the work, but of Him by whom the work was 
performed. 
But there are other distinctions of great moment to be 
noticed. We must not confound the noblest productions of 
men as authors, with this Word of God. To take, therefore, 
another illustrative example. If we open a book which has 
been written by one of ourselves in the ordinary way, we 
gather merely the thoughts of the man who has originally 
written the book. If we open the book of Genesis, we gathei 
not merely thoughts which passed through the mind of Moses, 
but the thoughts of God, which He passed through the mind of 
the Hebrew, that they might be communicated to us. No modi- 
fication of the idea of inspiration, which allows any fragment of 
that idea to remain in the mind, can dispense with this view o. 
the divine origin of those thoughts that are embodied and 
expressed in the Sacred Scriptures. These Scriptures must 
be accepted as God's expression of His thoughts, as truly as 
man's scripture is his expression of his own thoughts, or we 
are not regarded as possessing any true Word of God in tne 
Bible. What is called “ the inspiration of the poet," is no 
more cc inspiration," such as that of Sacred Scripture, thanks 
ordinary thought of the dullest kind. Both are only the 
thoughts of human beings. But the inspiration of the Bible 
is really God's personally passing His thoughts through human 
