32 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 
words of God. Their conception of inspira¬ 
tion is that the various writers merely held the 
pen while God caused it to move over the sur¬ 
face of the parchment tracing the characters 
that spelled his very words. The fact that the 
various books of the Bible are written in al¬ 
most as many different styles would seem to 
disprove verbal inspiration to any thinking 
mind. Certainly, those books called the Bible 
are inspired, and in precisely the same sense as 
Shakespeare’s plays, Burns’ poems and Emer¬ 
son’s essays are inspired—that is, the writers 
felt strongly an impulse to write; and in every 
instance the writings were stamped with the 
individuality of the author. 
All inspiration is not on the same level—the 
higher the spirituality the deeper the source. 
For example, as one writer has pointed out, 
when Paul said, “Alexander the coppersmith 
did me much evil; the Lord reward him ac¬ 
cording to his works,” he was not inspired in 
the same sublime degree as was Jesus, when, 
rising above his own sufferings, he remembered 
his tormentors in the prayer: “Father, forgive 
them; they know not what they do.” 
The belief in verbal inspiration has scotched 
the wheels of progress at every turn. Four 
hundred years ago those who taught the ro¬ 
tundity of the earth were denounced as heretics. 
It was a belief in verbal inspiration that in¬ 
spired the church to force Galileo, who taught 
that the earth is not the center of the universe, 
but that it revolves around the sun, to make the 
recantation: “I, Galileo, being in my seventieth 
year, being a prisoner and on my knees before 
