y toss the book contemptuously from
you as the crazy lucubration of a fool.

If in reading John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy you come
upon this theory, cautiously broached, you are constrained to treat it
with the consideration due an acknowledged master in this science. If
again in the first elaborate work of a new author, Progress and Poverty,
you meet this same theory, boldly laid down as the central theme of the
book, and contended for as the real solution of the persistent problem of
pauperism, you are disposed to pass it by unheeded. The author's name
carries to your mind no prestige of tradition. He speaks from no
time-honored university chair. No array of imposing titles hang upon the
plain 'Henry George,' of the title page. But you become interested in
these brilliant pages of genius and follow the author, with growing
sympathy, to the end.

You lay the book down, feeling as though a spell had been upon you, in
which you could form no sound judgment. You lay it by accordingly, to take
it up after some weeks, work over its positions, and find your first
impressions confirmed; to realize that here is a work of real, rare power;
an epoch-making book, which, if it does not carry your conviction,
commands your careful consideration.

Precisely so we are to be affected by the Biblical authors. There are
writings in the Bible by utterly unknown writers. A letter of an obscure
author cannot come with the weight of a letter from St. Paul. There are
writings of widely different mental force. Biblical authors varied in
personal power as much as other authors. Inspiration cannot do away with
the limitations of the human individuality. It must be modified by its
instrumentality. The saints are of various orders. Even the diamond books
which reflect the light of God so brilliantly may not be all of first
water. We must allow for the hues in the less perfect prisms. Were the
greatest musical genius in the world to sit before the key-boards he could
not draw from a harmonium the notes of a Lucerne organ. The impact of a
writing on our souls must be proportionate to the spiritual and ethical
force with which it is charged. Everyone recognizes this practically. None
of us, however orthodox, professes to be as much inspired by Esther as by
Job; by Chronicles as by Kings; by Daniel as by Isaiah; by Jude as by
Paul. That simply means that there is not as much inspiration in some
Biblical authors as in others. No