The passage in the New Testament which speaks of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament as divinely inspired, gives us no definition of divine inspiration. It says, 'All Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, tending to make the man of God perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works:' but it goes no further. It does not say that all Scripture given by inspiration of God will be written in a superhuman language, or in a superhuman style. Nor does it say that all its allusions to natural things will be perfectly correct; that all the stories which it tells will be told in a superhuman way. Nor does it say that all the precepts, and all the institutions, and all the revelations, and all the examples of the Book will be up to the level of absolute perfection. What the passage _does_ say of such Scriptures as are given by inspiration of God, is true of the Old Testament writings as a whole, and still truer of the New Testament writings: they _are_ profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness; and they are adapted to make men perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. All this you can prove. But you cannot prove that they answer to the definitions of divine inspiration so often given in books of theology. There is another passage in the New Testament which says that 'Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.' This too is true of the Old Testament writings as a whole; but it gives no countenance to the definitions of Scripture inspiration given by dreamy theologians. Peter says that 'holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit;' but he does not say that everything spoken or written by holy men, when moved by the Holy Spirit, would answer to some human dream of absolute perfection. He does not say that the holy men, when moved to speak by the Holy Spirit, would cease to be men, or even be free from all the imperfections or misconceptions of their age and nation, and speak as if they had become at once perfect in the knowledge of natural philosophy, or of common history, or even on every point pertaining to religion. They might speak as moved by the Holy Spirit, and yet utter divine oracles in an imperfect human language, and in a defective human style, and even use illustrations based on erroneous conceptions of natural facts and historical events. A man moved to speak by the Holy Spirit would not exhort people to be idle or heedless; he would urge them to be industrious and prudent: but in enforcing his exhortation to those virtues by a reference to the ANT, he might give proof that his knowledge of the ANT was not perfect,--that his ideas of its ways were not in every little point correct.