2. Through Philosophy.—Wise men and thinkers have read the revelation in nature and gathered it up from human thought, and the highest philosophy, as that of a Socrates and a Plato, finds God.
3. Through Prophecy.—In the earlier ages, and perhaps through all the ages, God has communed with chosen men who have lived in fellowship with himself; and has made them the mouthpiece uttering his will to the world.
4. Through Preaching.—The pulpit, when it is true to its mission, voices the message of God to man.
V. We find also that this divine revelation has been written out, under a divine direction:
1. In Various Books.—The Bible is not one book, but sixty-six books, a whole library, presenting the divine revelation under varied aspects, but all under one divine origin and supervision.
2. By Various Writers.—Not less than thirty authors, and probably many more, shared in the composition of the Scriptures, but all wrote under a divine control, and expressed, each in his own style, the mind of the Spirit.
3. Through Various Ages.—Moses may have begun the writing, doubtless from earlier documents. Samuel, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Ezra, Matthew, Paul, John, each in turn carried on the work through a period of sixteen hundred years. The book grew like a cathedral, rising through the centuries, under many successive master-builders, yet according to one plan of one divine Architect.
4. In Various Languages.—Two great tongues, one Semitic, the other Aryan, were employed, the Hebrew in the Old Testament, the Greek in the new; but the Hebrew of Moses is not that of Daniel a thousand years later.
VI. We find this divine revelation preserved:
1. By being stereotyped into Dead Languages.—A living language is ever changing the meaning of its words; and truth written in it is in danger of being misunderstood by another generation. But the words of a dead language, like the Hebrew and the Greek, are fixed in their meaning, and once understood are not likely to be perverted. Soon after the Bible was completed, both its languages ceased to be spoken, and have been kept since as the shrine for the great truths contained in the Word.