When it is said that the Si)irit searches the deep things of God and then bestows a knowledge of these deep things on men, it is not meant that there is a mechanical transference of information. The process is dynamic, and not mechanical. What is meant is that the same Holy Spirit which mirrors, as it were, the consciousness of Deity, so
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acts upon the human faculties, so stimulates and directs them, as to produce in them a conscious- ness of God which is after its own pattern. The self-consciousness of God must needs be in itself altogether transcendent and incommunicable ; the reflexion of it in the heart of man is not absolute, but relative ; it is expressed in human measures ; it is still a reaching forth of the human soul to- wards God, feeUng after Him if haply it may find Him. But it is such a reaching forth as is Kara 6e6v (Ro 8^^), what God would have it to be, a human product stamped with Divine sanction and approval.
4. Prophetic inspiration. — The above is an ex- planation— so far as explanation can be given — of the process of inspiration. It really covers all the varied furms that inspiration can take. But it is natural to ask in what relation it stands to the prophecy of the OT.
The prophetic inspiration is really the outstand- ing phenomenon of the OT. It is the fundamental attribute which gives to the OT its character as a sacred book ; it marks the point at which God meets man ; it is Israel's most characteristic possession.
Comparing what we know of OT prophecy with the account just given of inspiration by St. Paul, there is nothing that clashes or is essentially different. It is only the difference of a simpler and a more advanced dispensation. OT prophecy is best known by its effects. The main note of it is that certain men spoke with an authority con- ferred upon them directly by God ; they were em- powered to say, 'Thus saith the Lord.' In the earlier documents stress is frequently laid on the giving of 'signs' as proofs that a prophet's mission is from God (Ex 4iff- ^of-, 1 S 2''\ 1 K 13^ 2 K IQ-^ 208*^-,_ Is T^*"^), and a test is laid down for distin- guishing true from false prophecy in Dt 18'"^^-. But in the days when prophecy was most active the confidence (irXrjpocpopia.) with which the prophet spoke would seem to have been taken as creden- tials enough. Even when the prophet was un- popular and his message was resisted by king or people (as in the case of Micaiah and Jeremiah), it was with an uneasy conscience and with a sense of revolt against the Divine will.
It should be remembered that the existence of a prophetic order is characteristic of the NT as well as of the OT. We read in Ac 13^ of ' prophets and teachers' as collected at Antioch. Individual pro- phets are repeatedly mentioned, as Agabus in Ac ll2821i''ff , Judas and Silas in 15^2, thedaughters of Philip in 2P. A passage hke 13-^- supplies the key to others such as 16^'- 20'-^^ ; when it is said that 'the Holy Ghost' or 'the Spirit of Jesus' forbade such and such an act, or that the Holy Ghost 'testified' to such and such an effect, what is meant is the Holy Ghost speaking by the mouth of inspired prophets. In the Epistles 'prophets' are frequently mentioned along with, but after, 'apostles' as a standing office in the Church (1 Co 1228f-, Eph 2-0 3* 4"). The difference between OT and NT prophets lies, not in the nature of the gift or of the functions in which it was exercised, but only in the comparative degree of their import- ance. The NT prophets were overshadowed by the apostles, who possessed the special quahfica- tion of having been in the immediate company of the Lord Jesus (Ac 1-^^). Those who are men- tioned expressly as 'prophets' occupy as a rule a secondary, rather than a primary, place in the history of the Church. At the same time it was quite possible for an apostle, and even a leading apostle hke St. Paul, to be endowed with the gift of prophecy along with other gifts (cf. 1 Co 14^^^).
5. Apostolic inspiration. — We may really couple together ' apostles ' and ' prophets ' as representing the characteristic forms of inspiration in apostolic times. But this inspiration must not be thought
of as something isolated. It was not a peculiar and exceptional phenomenon standing by itself ; it was rather the culminating point, or one of the culminating points, in a wide movement. This movement dates in its outward manifestation from Pentecost ; it was what we should call in modern phrase a 'wave' of rehgious enthusiasm, the greatest of all such waves that history records, and the one that had most clearly what we call a supernatural origin. Language of this kind is always relative; it is not as if the supernatural was present in himian life at certain periods, and absent at others. The supernatural is always present and always active, but in infinitely varied degrees ; and the Incarnate Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, with its consequences, is an epoch in the world's history like no other that has ever been before or since ; in it the Spirit moved on the face of the waters of humanity as it had done before over the physical waters of the Creation. This particular movement was, in a higher sense than any before it, spiritually creative.