But let us look at this book. It is a book of history and of biography, of prophecy and precepts; of promises and of miracles; of laws and precepts; of promises and threatenings; of poetry and of narrative. It is to be judged by the ordinary rules of grammar, of rhetoric and of logic. It is written in human language. There is a language spoken by the persons in the Godhead, and had God revealed himself in that language we could not have understood the terms. There is a language spoken by the angels that blaze before the throne; had God spoken to us in angelic language we could not have understood the terms. But he took human language, with all its poverty and imperfections, and with all its excellencies. He has spoken to us in terms by which we can understand his pleasure concerning us. But it is a great fact, my friends, that all that is written in the Bible is neither approved by the Almighty, nor was it written for our imitation. Achan stole a Babylonish garment and a wedge of gold. God did not approve the theft, nor are those acts recorded in the Bible for our imitation. We are to read Bible history as we read Xenophon, Tacitus, and Herodotus, and, in modern times, Hume, Gibbon and Bancroft, with this distinction--when we take down Herodotus, Tacitus, or others I have not mentioned, we are not always sure that what we read is true, but we are sure that what is recorded in the Bible is true, whether it be prophetic truth, mandatory truth or historic truth. We should therefore make a distinction, according to the kind of composition we are reading. If we are reading history, read it as history, and make a distinction between what is simply recorded as part and parcel of the record of a great nation, or part and parcel of the record or biography of some eminent man, and that which is recorded there for our imitation, for which we shall have to give an account at God's bar. So take the poetry of the Bible. Scriptural poetry is subject to the same rules as the poetry in Homer, Virgil, Milton or Young, with this exception--that the poetry of the Bible is used to convey a grand thought, and there is no redundancy of thought or imagery in Bible poetry.