fossil inspiration, the supernatural illumination which fell upon the apostles being herein stored up for the use of the church throughout the ages.[2] "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God [_theopneustos_--God-breathed], and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (3 Tim. 3: 16). As the Lord breathed the Spirit into certain men, and thereby committed to them his own prerogative of forgiving sin, so he breathed his Spirit into certain books and endowed them with his infallibility in teaching truth. God did not choose to inspire all good books, though he has chosen to {169} inbreathe one book, thereby separating it and setting it apart from all other books.[3] The phrase, "the Bible is simply literature," which some are using to-day, as a suggestion against bibliolatry, is not true. Literature is the letter; Scripture is the letter inspired by the Spirit. What Jesus said in justification of his doctrine of the new birth is equally applicable to the doctrine of inspiration: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Educate, develop, and refine the natural man to the highest possible point, and yet he is not a spiritual man till, through the new birth, the Holy Ghost renews and indwells him. So of literature; however elevated its tone, however lofty its thought, it is not Scripture. Scripture is literature indwelt by the Spirit of God. The absence of the Holy Ghost from any writing constitutes the impassable gulf between it and Scripture. Our Lord, in speaking of his own doctrine, uses the same language, to show its separateness from common teaching which he employs above to mark the distinction of the new man. He says: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; _the words that I have spoken unto {170} you are spirit and are life_" (John 6: 63, R. V.). Words they were, and in that respect, literature; but words divinely inbreathed and therefore Scripture. In fine, the one fact which makes the word of God a unique book, standing apart in solitary separateness from all other writings, is that which also parts off the man of God from common men--the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Therefore we may say truly of the Bible, not merely that it _was_ inspired, but it _is_ inspired; that the Holy Ghost breathes within it, making it not only authoritative in its doctrine but life-giving in its substance, so that they who receive its promises by faith "have been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God which liveth and abideth" (1 Peter 1: 23, R. V.).