Another fact is the agreement of one part of the Bible with another, notwithstanding the long intervals during which its different parts were produced. The weight of this as an evidence of its divinity, will be felt by those who remember that in human productions each successive contributor imparts his own sentiments. Diversity of character belongs to every human work in which many actors have been engaged during a series of ages. Instead of that, this book is absolutely one. Whether you take Moses, Malachi, or Christ, there is the same depreciation of human nature; the same supreme exaltation of God; the same stern enunciation of duty; the same uncompromising rebuke of departure from the way of right. The spirit of the book in this respect is identical throughout, and this cannot be said of any literature under the sun in which a variety of writers of different ages have been employed, nor is there any book under the sun characterised by the sentiments just enumerated. The Bible stands absolutely alone in this respect, like a majestic mountain among hillocks of rubbish.

Then there is the same hope, in all the books of the Bible, of a coming age in which Christ, as King of Israel, shall rule on earth universally, and mankind be blessed.

If the Bible were a merely human production, there would not be this absolute identity of hope among writers, extending over three thousand years. The existence of this identity is a proof of the controlling presence of a common guidance in all the writers, even the guidance professed in the book itself:

"Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Pet. 1:21). The force of this argument will be appreciated by those who realise the endless and contradictory diversities of human authorship of different ages. Its force is somewhat hidden by the corruptions of orthodox Christendom, which has long ago abandoned the one apostolic "hope of Israel," common to the whole scriptures, and embraced the miserable substitute of an imagined post mortem beatification of an imaginary personal invisibility, in regions above the stars.

Then consider the Bible scheme of future life. This scheme defers all reward till an appointed era, to be inaugurated by the personal re-appearance of Christ in the earth, when many generations shall have yielded -- first to the grave, and then to the resurrection -- their quota of tried men, tried in necessary times of evil. The vastness and splendour of this scheme stamps it as divine. Man would never have invented such a scheme.

CHAPTER 12: Perfect Candour Of The Bible