odies (Deut. 4:19), we understand
at once a drawing and a driving that are in accordance with their free
intelligent and responsible nature. Other illustrations of this
principle will be given in the following chapter, which treats of the
figurative language of Scripture.

(3.) The same quality of good sense will enable the interpreter to make
those _limitations_ in the language of the sacred writers which are
common in popular discourse. In the language of daily life many
statements are made in general terms that require for their exact
truthfulness various qualifications which the readers or hearers can
readily supply for themselves. Honest men, addressing honest men, are
not in the habit of guarding their words against every possible
misconstruction. It is enough if they speak so that all who will can
understand them.

It is said, for example (Gen. 41:57), that "all countries (literally,
_all the earth_) came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn; because the
famine was sore in all the earth." It would be only trifling to ask
whether "all the earth" included the people of Europe and India. The
reader naturally understands all the lands around Egypt, since they only
could come thither for corn. So when it is said in the account of the
deluge that "all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were
covered" (Gen. 7:19), it is straining the sacred writer's words to give
them a rigid geographical application, as if they must needs include the
mountains about the North pole. "All the high hills under the whole
heaven" were those where man dwelt, and which were consequently known to
man. "The Holy Ghost," says John, "was not yet given, because that Jesus
was not yet glorified." John 7:39. Yet David prayed ages before: "Take
not thy Holy Spirit from me" (Psa. 51:11); Isaiah says of ancient Israel
that "they rebelled and vexed his Holy Spirit" (Isa. 63:10); the
Saviour, long before his glorification, promised the Holy Spirit to all
that should ask for him (Luke 11:13); and it is a fundamental article of
our faith that from Abel to the archangel's trump all holiness is the
fruit of the Spirit. But John's readers, who lived after the plenary
gift of the Holy Spirit from the day of Pentecost and onward, could not
fail to understand him as referring to the gift of the Spirit in that
special sense. The apostle Paul says (1 Tim. 2:4) that God "will have
all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth." Yet