An Evangelist, if you please, is inspired. It becomes necessary to introduce a genealogy. Following the Divine guidance, (the nature of which, neither you nor I know anything at all about,) he applies in a certain quarter, and obtains access to a certain document. Or he repairs to a well-known repository of public archives, and out of the whole collection he is guided to make choice of one particular writing. He proceeds to transcribe it,--omitting names (dropping three generations for instance,)--or inserting names (the second Cainan for example,)--or, if you please, neither omitting nor inserting anything. The document, (suppose,) requires no correction whatever.--Well but, this man was inspired a moment ago, in what he was writing; and no reason has been shewn why he should not be inspired still. He has adopted a document, by incorporating it into his narrative. By transcribing it, he has made it his own. I am at a loss to see that its claim to be an inspired writing, from that moment forward, is in any respect inferior to the rest of the narrative in which it stands. You are requested to remember that when we call the Bible an inspired book, we mean nothing more than that the words of it are the very utterance of the HOLY SPIRIT;--that the Book is as much the Word of GOD as if high Heaven were open, and we heard GOD speaking to us with human voice. All I am contending for _now_, is, that this is at least as true of one part of the Gospel as of another: that if it be true of anything in the Gospel, it is at least _as_ true of the Genealogy of CHRIST. The _subject-matter_ indeed is different; but it is a mere confusion of thought to infer therefrom a different degree of _Inspiration_. Let me try and make this plainer by a few familiar illustrations. 1. When the Sovereign reads a speech from the Throne, does she speak the words of it in any _different sense_ from the words of a speech which she has herself composed?--Nay, are words of investiture, mere words of form and state, in any _less degree spoken_, than words of confidence, and private friendship? 2. Again. The substance of paper and the substance of gold, are widely different. And yet, when paper has been subjected to a certain process, and stamped with a certain impress, there is practically _no difference whatever_ between the value of what was, a moment ago, absolutely worthless, and an ingot of the purest gold. 3. Consider how the case stands with a merely human author. An historian has occasion to introduce into his narrative the descent of a House, or the preamble of an Act, or any other lifeless thing. Does his responsibility cease when he comes to it, and recommence immediately afterwards? Is he not responsible just to the same extent for _that_, as for every other part of his story?