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The distinction here is not between his uninspired and inspired commands. If we say that he usually writes under Divine inspiration, but that when he speaks about celibacy it fails him, to return suddenly when he enters on the question of divorce, again to desert him when he writes on the case of mixed marriages, inspiration becomes at once(1) arbitrary, because there is nothing in the nature of the subjects to account for the difference; and(2) mechanical, because it comes and goes independently of the writer's mental activity. The explanation is that on the question of divorce Christ had legislated (Matthew 5:32; Matthew 19:9); but on the other questions gave no direct decision. The question of divorce touches the inmost nature of marriage, as it was instituted by God at the beginning, and afterwards connected by Christianity with the union between Christ and the Church. For this reason Christ, as the Divine lawgiver, rescinded the Mosaic permission to divorce for other causes than adultery, and restored the original idea of marriage. Paul never dared to rescind a law of Moses. Yet the apostle draws various inferences from the words of Christ. One distinction between the teaching of Christ and of His apostles must necessarily be that Christ always commands. He never arrived at a conclusion through a process of reasoning, much less discussed a question and left it unanswered. This absolute certitude is essential in the revelation of central principles. But it would be destructive of all that is valuable in human effort if it extended to the minute details of life; if it decided beforehand every possible case of conscience, and reduced our moral activity to a mechanical conformity with unswerving and merely authoritative regulations. The danger attaches to all books of casuistry; but in a book accepted by the doubting conscience as containing Divinely-inspired casuistry, the effect is fatal. The writings of the apostles abound, on the other hand, in argument and inference, which sometimes end in practical decisions, sometimes only in the expression of an opinion. The decision is often left to the enlightened conscience of the spiritual man (cf. ver. 25). But apart from the teaching of Christ, the fons et origo of revelation, the inspiration of the apostles would have been an altogether different thing from what it is. We need not suppose that Christ gave the apostle an immediate revelation on the question of divorce. The general tradition of the Early Church and the narrative in the Acts points to an intimate connection between Paul and Luke. Indeed, our Lord's doctrine on that subject was in that age singular, and cannot fail to have been known among Christians throughout the world.

(Principal Edwards.)

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KJV: And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband:

WEB: But to the married I command—not I, but the Lord—that the wife not leave her husband