The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 116

HOLY SCRIPTURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

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From

Holy Scripture must be considered, par excellence." Hence the divine and oft-repeated command: " Write." God did not only speak and act, leaving it to man whether His deeds and the tenor of His w^ords were to be forgotten or remembered but He also commanded that this standpoint the

being in fact

"

the Scripture

;

they should be recorded in writing.

And when

just before the

announcement and close of the divine revelation to John on Patmos, the Lord commanded him, " Write to the church" of Ephesus, Pergamos, etc., He repeated in a summary what was the design of all preceding revelations, viz., that they should be written and in the form of a Scripture, a gift of the Holy Spirit, and be deposited in the Church, which for that reason is called the " pillar and ground of the truth."

Not, according to a later interpretation, as tho the

truth were coticealed in the Church; but, according to the ancient

rendering, that Holy Scripture was entrusted to the Church for preservation.

However, we do not mean

to say that

with reference to every

commanded, " Write," as tho the had come into existence page after page.

verse and chapter the Holy Spirit Scripture as

we

possess

it

Assuredly the Scripture

is

divinely inspired:

a statement

dis-

beyond recognition by our Ethical theologians, if they understand by it that " prophets and apostles were personally animated by the Holy Spirit." This confounds illumiTia" Illumination " tion with revelation, and revelation with inspiration. is the clearing up of the spiritual consciousness which in His own time the Holy Spirit gives more or less to every child of God. " Revelation" is a communication of the thoughts of God given in extraordinary manner, by a miracle, to prophets and apostles. But "inspiration," wholly distinct from these, is that special and unique operation of the Holy Spirit whereby He directed the minds torted and perverted

of writing. " All Scripture given by inspiration of God " and this has no reference to ordinary illumination, nor extraordinary revelation, but to an operation of the writers of the Scripture in the act is

;

and which the Church has always of Inspiration. Hence inspiration is the name of that all-comprehensive operation of the Holy Spirit whereby He has bestowed on the Church a complete and infallible Scripture. We call this operation all-comprehensive, for it was that

stands

entirely

confessed under the

alone

name

organic, not mechanical.

The

practise of writing dates back to remote antiquity; pre-

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