All the other prophets were terrified; but with Moses it was not so; and this is what the Scripture says—' As a man speaketh unto his friend' (Exod. xxxiii., II). (4.) All the other prophets could not prophesy at any time that they wished; but with Moses it was not so, but at any time when he wished for it, the Holy Spirit came upon him, so that it was not necessary for him to prepare his mind, for he was always ready for it, like the ministering angels."

His prophecies, too, and their literal fulfilment afford additional and indisputable evidence of his Divine inspiration, and of his high communion with the Lord, "As a man speaketh unto his friend," "Mouth to mouth," till his very countenance was radiant with heavenly glory. His writings abound with direct prophecies of the Messiah, and are repeatedly referred to by the Apostles. He describes in glowing language, without having seen or lived in it, the beauties and qualities of the promised land, the fate of the inhabitants and the future destinies of their dispossessors; he anticipates their ingratitude, idolatry, defeat, disgrace, and slavery; the invasions of powerful nations; the extremity of distress, when parents should eat their own children for food; the change in the very soil of Palestine from verdure and fertility to barrenness; nay, the condition of the Jewish people at this hour. Deut. xxviii., 64, 65, “And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people from the one end of the earth even unto the other, among these nations shall thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest."

CHAPTER X.

In the preceding chapter, we have considered the various methods by which holy men of old were enabled to write those works which have come down to our times. That portion of Genesis, which narrates the deeds of the Almighty in the creation of the world, is of an entirely different character from the portions treating of the earlier families of the human race, and the most remarkable events of their times. The latter may, to some extent, have been derived from tradition; but the former must have been supplied to Moses, or to some preceding author, through a channel other than human, inasmuch as the events and developments lie beyond human knowledge and experience.

It has been urged that, like as the intuitive knowledge given to man, which he possessed in his state of innocence, and by which he was enabled to judge of the habits, and so name the animals brought before him, so the same knowledge, aided by reflection, enabled him to understand and describe his own creation, and that of the world. Although it be true that man thus named all the animals, it does not follow that a knowledge of all their habits was the result of intuition alone; or, even if it had been,—as he named all the beasts of the field, the serpent included— his knowledge must, to some extent, have been imperfect, otherwise he would not have listened to its subtle and deluding arguments.

Again, man did not know by intuitive knowledge the origin and nature of all things presented to him. He knew not, until it was revealed to him, that to eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden would subject him to death; nor could he have known by intuition, without Divine revelation, that God blessed and sanctified the seventh day. It follows, therefore, that the account of creation must have been revealed in the same manner in which the prophets in later days learned the events of periods far distant in futurity. The Holy Spirit knows neither past nor future. To Him, everything is eternally present. Thus, there can be no difference between the revelation of the past and the future. In Genesis, there is a truthfulness and a vividness of pictorial description which induces the feeling that the writer must have seen what he describes, and the manner in which the momentous occurrences took place. Each scene of the great historical drama, as it was unrolled before his prophetic vision, is thus given in language of the most sublime character :"It scarcely seems necessary to justify the use of the term vision, in describing the revelation given to Moses at the time here spoken of, to enable him to record the acts of creation. Unless we adopt the extreme opinion of supposing a literal and verbal inspiration, how else, than by vision, can he have been made to conceive of things buried in so remote a past? It seems but the natural language, in contemplating such a revelation, to say with Coleridge, 'Let us carry us back in spirit to the mysterious weekthe teeming work-days of the creation-as they rose in vision before the eyes of the inspired historian.' Indeed, the best writers on inspiration will tell us that, oftentimes,

in no other way could the human faculties have been employed to communicate Divine revelations at all, except by 'visions,' and imaginative pictures presented to the mind, unless we are to suppose those faculties altogether superseded and suspended, and no use of them made in receiving or imparting the supernatural information conveyed. Thus, the 'seer' was the very title of the prophet (1 Sam. ix., 9; I Chron. xxix., 29). St. Paul says, 'I will come to visions and revelations ;' and St. John is bid

to write what he had seen,' he bare record of the word of God, and of all things that he saw' (2 Cor. xii., I; Rev. i., 2, 19). The following is the remark of a judicious writer :- When the ideas to be conveyed related to things which surpass the bounds of human experience, it is plain that ordinary language must fail to convey to others what was thus revealed. It was necessary, therefore, that such symbols, or visible representations, should be moulded, as it were, for the occasion, which would best conform to those ideas. And in the case of such visions, as in cases of natural poetic effusions, the imaginative faculty of the prophets naturally comes into play the Divine Spirit guiding the imagination, while clothing the ideas with appropriate symbols.""

Hugh Miller, in his "Testimony of the Rocks," entertains and conveys the same views, in language of no ordinary beauty. Several authors, and particularly Dr Kalisch, criticise this portion of Mr Miller's writings in no measured terms, attempting, without effect, to turn them rather into ridicule than dispose of their conclusions by sober argument, ascribing many things to Miller which he nowhere asserts. Perhaps it is somewhat to be regretted

that Mr Miller, instead of urging the hypothesis of Moses having been instructed by vision, attempted to describe the manner in which the vision probably was given, thus yielding reason to the flights of fancy.

Of men who have, like Moses, been so divinely favoured, we have in Scripture several examples. To these, the visions have been given so vividly, and so minutely, that their descriptions convey to the reader the most distinct mental realization of the events and actors; but not only so, the seers were themselves not only beholders, but actors, in the wondrous scenes; they heard, spake, fell down, rose up, walked, and were sensible to the touch of their supernatural companions. Need we recall the visions and personal experiences during the visions of Ezekiel, Daniel, Paul, Peter, and John in the island of Patmos ? Compared with the Revelation made to St John, does the vision afforded to Moses appear more wonderful?

In describing what was presented to the eye of Moses, "the Man of God," there is no necessity for insisting that the nature of the revelation included the literal words in which it was his province to record the wondrous events. The facts, so far as preternaturally conveyed, he was impelled to narrate, but only in the manner in which they were optically evident, and in language in common use, suited to common understandings, and similar to what other and uninspired men would have employed, regarding any scene or event in natural scenery or common life, which they had beheld, or in which they had been actors. In our own day, a modern poet, perfectly cognizant of the motions of the heavenly bodies, thus beautifully expresses himself in accordance with common language