When it is said, once more, that men are drawn to Christ (John 6:44), or driven to worship the heavenly bodies (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 the same apostle teaches that some will remain in ignorance of the truth, and thus perish. 2 Thess. 1:  8, 9; 2:11, 12.  The reader’s good sense readily reconciles the former with the latter passages.  He understands God’s will to have all men saved as the will of benevolent desire; just as God says of ancient Israel (Psa. 81:13).  “Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways!” but because they would not do this, he “gave them up to their own heart’s lust, and they walked in their own counsels” (ver. 12).  Many like illustrations might be added.