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— "Men spake — from God" (R.V.). It is a definition of inspiration. A definition simple, precise, exhaustive. "Men spoke" — spoke, without ceasing to be men; spoke with all those characteristics of phrase and style, of thought and mind, of position and history which mark and make the man; yet "spoke from God," with a message and mission, under an influence and an impulse, a control and a suggestion, which gave to the word spoken a force and a fire, a touch and a contact, a sight and an insight, unlike other utterances because of a breath of God in it, the God of the spirits of all flesh. "Men spake." "Human beings," St. Peter says — the "men" is emphatic. Shall we blame those who, first of all, would ask, Who? would busy themselves in the endeavour, by examination and comparison, to learn what can be learnt of the authorship of particular books; and would then go on to ask, What? in other words, to bring every appliance, of manuscript and version and ancient quotation, to bear upon the text of Scripture. Inquiries like these are only for the learned. But let us, who can but look on or listen, at least refrain from denunciations of a process for which we ought to have the deepest respect. Men spake. And does not St. Peter as good as say, And remained men in the speaking? Where is the authority for supposing that the inspiring Spirit levelled the intellects, obliterated the characteristics, overwhelmed the peculiarities, of the several writers? Men spake. And one of them has told us how. By a careful investigation of various writings going before, and an earnest endeavour to arrange in their true order the facts of the history which he was to chronicle. Men spake — and men wrote — and they were men still. Matters which toil and pains could ascertain — matters which lay in the province of intellect, whether in the way of research or in the way of discovery — matters for which God had provided the instrument of knowledge in the human being as by Him created, even though ages and generations might come and go before the actual knowledge was made his own — on these things inspiration was silent. Men spake, and in speaking were men still. Even their message, even the thing they were sent to tell, must be expressed in terms of human speech, through a medium therefore of adaptation and accommodation, Men spake — from God. "Moved by the Holy Ghost." The two halves of the text are dependent upon each other. Not angels — or they had no sympathetic, no audible voice for man. Not machines — or speech (which is, by definition, intelligence in communication) had been a contradiction in terms. These human beings spake from God; for He had something to say, and to say to man. There is something which God only can say. There is something which reason cannot say, nor experience, nor discovery, nor the deepest insight, nor the happiest guessing, nor the most sagacious foresight. There is a world of heaven, which flesh and blood cannot penetrate. There is a world of spirit, impervious even to mind. There is a world beyond death, between which and the living there is an impassable gulf fixed. More than this — there is a world of cause and consequence, which no moralist can connect or piece together. There is a world of providence, which gives no account of itself to the observer. More yet than this. There is a fact of sin, inherited and handed on, working everywhere in hearts and lives, spoiling God's work and ruining man's welfare. Who can tell, concerning this, whether indeed there is any recovery from this deep, this terrible, this fatal fall? And yet man needs to hear of these things. And confess now, you who have gone with us thus far, how utterly beside the mark of such a work as this would have been an inspiration of science, or an inspiration of geography, or an inspiration of history, or an inspiration of geology, astronomy, botany, or chemistry. Men spake, and they spake from God. He had that to tell which men by searching could not find out. He set this human being to tell it to his fellows. But oh, trust God to do the right thing! Do not mistrust Him, and summon Him to the bar of your poor intellect every time that you cannot quite see what He was about. How can you account for a slaughter of twenty thousand men in one tiny battlefield in Beth-horon or on Mount Ephraim? how can you explain the dumb ass speaking with man's voice, and Samuel coming up again at the bidding of the witch of Endor, etc. Say, if you are wise, with the three Israelites to King Nebuchadnezzar, "I am not careful to answer thee in this matter." Men spake — and, while they spake, they were men still. But they spake from God — and what they said from Him was truth and nothing but truth, and in it, thus spoken, is the very light of my life. Never will I part with that light till I reach a world which no longer wants it, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the light thereof.

(Dean Vaughan.).

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KJV: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

WEB: knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation.