339 
minds, so as to cause them to be expressed in human language 
to men. 
I am careful to make this part of our subject clear, because 
the entire importance of all true defence of the Bible hinges 
on the idea of a real inspiration of the thoughts communicated 
in that record by the Infinite One. The relation of science to 
Milton's “ Paradise Lost,-” for example, is a matter of little or 
no moment ; and if the Books of Moses had no other inspira- 
tion than those of Milton, and others of like genius, the 
relation of science to them would be equally unimportant. It 
is the belief that God spake by Moses, and meant that the 
words which Moses wrote should express His own divine 
thoughts, and this belief alone, which gives the relation of 
Science to Scripture its intense interest. Thus saith the 
Lord, 3 ' are words that express the grand peculiarity of Sacred 
Scripture, and they can have no meaning short of that to which 
we are now directing attention. 
There is, however, another aspect of this matter which re- 
quires to be carefully considered here. If thought is to pass 
from the Divine to the human mind, that thought will be 
affected both in form and degree, because of the nature of the 
mind which it enters. It must be evident, at a glance, to 
any one, that the infinite conceptions of God cannot be com- 
prehended in the extremely limited intelligence of man. So 
must it be evident that the absolute harmony which appears 
to the Omniscient, because of His omniscience, cannot be made 
to appear to those who can, in the nature of the case, see only 
a few fragments of the vast whole. This is true even in the 
communication of truth from a largely informed to a little 
informed mind among men. If any one who has mastered a 
great subject is desirous to communicate some portion of his 
thoughts to another who is as yet very ignorant not only of 
that subject but of things in general, he must present only a 
portion of those thoughts, and that such a portion as cannot 
represent the loftiness and harmony of that which delights his 
own mind. While, then, the believer in the divine inspiration 
of the Sacred Scriptures, regards them as the expression of 
God's thoughts, he does not imagine that these Scriptures 
were-ever intended to express all God's Thoughts on any sub- 
ject, or to represent the harmony of truth as it is seen in the 
Infinite Mind. He means only that the thoughts, so far as 
expressed, are God's own thoughts, and hence infallibly true. 
But if these thoughts are affected by the nature of the mind 
which they enter, they are still more affected as they pass from 
one human mind to another. We all know how seldom anything’ 
is told twice over in exactly the same shade of meaning*, and 
