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 The argu 
 
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 : Brownlow, b. 1877]| 
 ment from Prophecy I 
 
 DELS eee aev cia 
 
 Vewrese 
 
 a 
 
= , ’ 
 
THE 
 
 ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. BROWN LOW” MAITLAND, M.A., 
 
 AUTHOR OF “SCEPTICISM AND FAITH,” ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 ‘THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE COMMITTEE OF THE 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE; 
 
 a SOLD AT THE DEPOSITORIES : 
 
 77, GREAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS 5 
 4, ROYAL EXCHANGE ; 48, PICCADILLY ; 
 AND BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 New York: Port, Youne, & Co. 
 1877. 
 
THE Christian Evidence Committee of the S.P.C.K., 
 while giving its general approval to this work of 
 the Christian Evidence Series, does not hold itself 
 responsible for every statement or every line of 
 argument. 
 
 The responsibility of each writer extends to his 
 own work only. 
 
PREFACH. 
 
 In the following pages the Christian Reader 
 may perhaps miss some of the considerations 
 which he has been accustomed to associate with 
 the Argument from Prophecy, as contributing 
 to its strength and completeness. The thought 
 may also occur to him that a view of Hebrew 
 Prophecy has been acquiesced in or accepted, 
 which attributes to it too little of distinct and 
 definite prediction. 
 
 At the outset, therefore, I hope he will 
 allow me to remind him that not every con- 
 sideration or particular application which is 
 forcible and interesting to the Believer is avail- 
 able to impress the Sceptic, against whom the 
 
 Argument is maintained ; and that the tendency 
 A 2 
 
1V PREFACE. 
 
 of modern critical research has been in the 
 direction of reducing the proportion of the 
 definitely predictive element, and raising 
 doubts about the evidence of it generally, so 
 as to make it less fitted than formerly to bear 
 
 ' the weight of the Argument. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 PRELIMINARY REMARKS.—OBJECT AND NATURE OF THE 
 ARGUMENT.—THE ARGUMENT SUBSIDIARY, CUMU- 
 LATIVE, PRESUPPOSES THEISM . . ’ : . 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 SCEPTICAL OBJECTIONS TO THE PRINCIPLE AND APPLI- 
 CATION OF THE ARGUMENT: CONSIDERED.—CONDI- 
 TIONS TO BE OBSERVED . ° ° : . 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 THE HISTORICAL CONNEXION BETWEEN JUDAISM AND 
 CHRISTIANITY . . . ° ‘ 5 . . 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 THE FORECAST OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION . . . 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 THE MESSIANIC FORECAST.—FIRST ELEMENT, THE 
 FINAL TRIUMPH OF GOOD.—SECOND ELEMENT, A 
 
 a 
 
 GLORIOUS MESSIAH . . ‘ ° . : : 
 
 - SECTION VI. 
 
 THE MESSIANIC FORECAST CONTINUED.—THIRD ELE- 
 
 MENT, A SUFFERING MESSIAH . ° . . ste 
 
 PAGE 
 
 20 
 
 43 
 
 50 
 
 58 
 
 98 
 
igs CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 THE FORECAST OF A SPIRITUAL RELIGION . . - 122 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF THE FORECASTS IN CHRISTIANITY 148 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 CORROBORATIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ARGU- 
 MENT ; s i : J : i uJ . 189 
 
- 
 
 ev? 
 7 
 / 
 
 4: 
 
 TEXTS REFERRED TOA\ © 
 
 GENESIS. 
 xv. 6. 
 xxii. 18. 
 xlix. 10. 
 EXoDvUs. 
 XX;,.53 
 xxxili. 16. 
 LEVITICUS. 
 iv. 3, 5, 16. 
 xx. 26. 
 XXV1. 
 NUMBERS. 
 Xxlii. 9. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 vil. 2, 6. 
 
 Xill. 1—3, Be 
 
 XXVI111. 
 JOSHUA. 
 
 vii. 24, 25. 
 
 - x. 40. 
 
 \ 1 SAMUEL. 
 xv. 3, 22. 
 xxiv. 6. 
 
 1 CHRONICLES. 
 XXVill. 9, 
 odo ead a 
 
 EZRA. 
 
 ax; (6: 
 x, 
 NEHEMIAH. 
 
 xl. 6—8. 
 xlv. 
 
 1. 7—10, 13, 14, 23. 
 GIB R LT s 
 lv. 16, 17. 
 Ixix. 
 
 lxxil. 
 
 xxiv. 8. 
 Ixxxuili. 18. 
 ]xxxix. 
 
 xc. 2. 
 
 cil. 8. 
 
 ev. 15. 
 
 cx. 
 
 CXViil. 
 CXXXil. 
 CXXxv. 4. 
 exxxvil. 1. 
 exli. 2. 
 
 exlv. 17. 
 
 ISATAH. 
 4310-17, 
 ite By voe 
 iv. 2. 
 vil. 14, 
 vili. 14. 
 1x: 23.6; :7< 
 x1, 1—9. 
 xxiv. 23. 
 2B 
 xxviii. 5, 14, 16. 
 EXXR ts 4, ‘S 
 XXXli. esd; 15—17. 
 Kitt he Ge ge 
 xliv. 6, 8. 
 xlv. 1, 6, 22, 23. 
 die 6, 8. 
 lii. 13, 14. 
 liii. 
 lv. 6—9. 
 Wi6,5'Z5 
 lvii. 15. 
 
 >; 
 
 lx. 1, 2, eo | 
 xi. 6, 8. Bo 
 Ixvi. 1—3, 23. ° 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 2 b ¢ ‘¥ 4 
 | xi. 20. 
 xx. 9. 
 
 xxlil, 5, 6, 24. 
 Xxiv. 7. 
 xxxi. 831— 33. 
 xxxii. 40, 
 Xxxlil, 15, 16. 
 LAMENTATIONS. = 
 iv. 20. 
 EZEKIEL. 
 xi. 19, 20. 
 XVill. 
 xxxiv. 11, 22—24, 
 29. 
 Xxxvil. 24, 26, 
 
 DANIEL. 
 11. 35, 44, 
 vi. 10. 
 vii. 18, 14, 21. 
 ix, 3,'24, 27: 
 
 HOSEA. 
 vi. 6. 
 J OFL. 
 iil, 13, 28, 29, 32. 
 AMOS. 
 Vi 2h Ae 
 JONAH. 
 ili. 10. 
 Mrioan. 
 iv. 1, 2, 
 v. 2, 4, 5. 
 vi. 6—8. 
 HABAKKUK, 
 Lo 
 14. 
 Haq GAT. 
 Te Gare 
 
Vill 
 
 TEXTS REFERRED TO. 
 
 Cee ee een ee saeco een ee eee nn a GPa aE LSE LISS Ca a 
 
 ZECHARIAH. 
 ii. 10O—13, 
 vi. 12, 13. 
 xe QO, 
 xii. 10. 
 xlil. 7. 
 xiv.’ 9. 
 MALaACcHi. 
 hea ba BR 
 iii, 1, 2, 16, 17. 
 iv. 2. 
 Mae 
 i. 22, 
 ii. 5, ig “iB 7518, 
 23. 
 
 Xli. i. 18, 40, 42. 
 xxi. 4, 5, 13, 42. 
 xxv. 34. 
 xxvi. 31, 56, 63. 
 xxvii. 9, 10, 35, 46. 
 xxviii. 19. 
 
 Mark. 
 
 eee e12 83. 
 xix. 38 
 
 xxiv. 25, 26, 44, 
 
 46, 47. 
 JOHN. 
 i. 19, 20, 29. 
 Vee yf 
 lil. 14. ‘ 
 iv. 23, 24. 
 vii. 26. 
 Kit kD. 
 
 xii. 13, 37—41. 
 
 xiii. 18. 
 xviii. 36, 37. 
 
 xix. 28—380, 36, 37. 
 
 C6 AN 
 
 Acts. 
 i. 6, 8, 16, 20. 
 iil. 25—31, 36. 
 
 iii, 14, 15, 17, 18, 
 
 21—238. 
 
 Vill. 32—385. 
 
 ix, 22. 
 
 x. 28. 
 
 xiii. 27, 35—37. 
 
 xv. 9, 14. 
 
 xvil. 2, 3. 
 
 xxii. 21, 22. 
 
 xxvi. 22, 23. 
 
 RoMANS. 
 
 1. 4. 
 
 iv. 25 
 
 viii. 16, 17, 29, 38, 
 39. 
 
 > ie 75 
 
 xi.-33. 
 
 KVL oAds 
 
 XV. os 
 1 CoRINTHIANS. 
 
 2 CORINTHIANS. 
 ili. 8. 
 iv. 6. 
 xiii. 4. 
 GALATIANS. 
 un. 1d: 
 
 iil. 16, 23, 24, 
 iv. 9,20. 
 v. 6, 16, 17. 
 WI. ate 
 EPHESIANS. 
 i, 22, 23. 
 il. 6, "11, 12, 14, 17,. 
 21, 22. 
 ili. 6. 
 PHILIPPIANS. 
 lied, Oe 
 COLOSSIANS. 
 il. 17, 20, 21. 
 Wied: 
 1 THESSALONIANS. 
 VoL ds 
 1 TrmoTHy. 
 ui. 8. 
 HEBREWS. 
 
 vii. 25. 
 ix. 10, 14, 28. 
 1 PETER. 
 12108715 
 i. 6—8. 
 ili. 18, 22. 
 2 PETER. 
 i. 21. 
 1 JOHN. 
 iv. 16. 
 Vs 
 REVELATION, 
 i. 18. 
 ii. 14. 
 v. 2, 6. 
 vi. 2. 
 vii. 9. 
 xvii. 14. 
 xix 10; 
 
THE 5 pee: 
 ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. - 
 
 A 
 rrr 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 PRELIMINARY REMARKS—OBJECT AND NATURE 
 OF THE ARGUMENT—THE ARGUMENT SUB- 
 SIDIARY, CUMULATIVE, PRESUPPOSES THEISM. 
 
 Tue aim of the following: pages is to exhibit, 
 in a compact and popular form, the argument 
 for the supernatural origin and divine authority 
 of Christianity, which may be derived from 
 the prophetical element in the Scriptures of 
 the Old Testament. I wish to clear the 
 argument from such superfluous adjuncts as 
 cloud rather than illuminate its progress, or 
 waste its strength in needless digressions and 
 _generalities ; and also from such considerations 
 as the advance of critical research has shown 
 to be trivial, or of doubtful validity, or not 
 properly available for proof against the sceptic. 
 To enter into philological discussions, to pursue 
 critical inquiries, to exhibit learning whether 
 B 
 
12 - THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 original or borrowed from the accumulated 
 stores of scholarly divines, are objects entirely 
 foreign to my purpose. My argument will be 
 founded on the broad, plain outlines of the 
 Bible, and is intended for the general reader to 
 whom critical subtleties and learned disquisi- 
 tions are distasteful, and perhaps even scarcely 
 intelligible. It 1s my conviction that every- 
 thing which is perplexing and repulsive in 
 elaborate scientific criticism may be kept out 
 of sight, and the argument be drawn out in a 
 simple and popular manner, without losing 
 its impressiveness or being shorn of its 
 strength. 
 
 Before entering on the main subject, there 
 are several preliminary matters which it will be 
 useful to consider, in order to clear the way and 
 obtain a distinct idea of the purpose in hand. 
 
 What is it that we wish to prove? Chris- 
 tianity is a great fact; the greatest fact of the 
 modern world: the noblest and most fruitful 
 system of belief and conduct, which has ever 
 arisen in the domain of human thought and 
 action. But whence came it, and what gives 
 to it its energy and grandeur? Was ita natural 
 growth of the human mind, deriving all its 
 character and force from the enlightened and 
 advancing reason of the most cultivated portion 
 
ITS OBJECT. o 
 
 of mankind? Or had it a supernatural origin, 
 and does it contain a revelation from God, in 
 virtue of which it presents itself to us clothed 
 with a divine authority and sacredness? To 
 sustain the latter view is the object of the 
 argument from prophecy. We wish to show 
 that, in the ages which preceded the rise of 
 Christianity, there was such a _ preparation 
 made for it by prophetic intimations and 
 foreshadowings of its character and story, as to 
 set on it the seal of divine origination, and 
 
 stamp it with the mark of the supernatural ” 
 
 and heavenly. 
 
 Now about this particular argument for the 
 divineness of Christianity there are three 
 things needful to be borne in mind, in order 
 to avoid mistakes about its nature and force. 
 
 The first is, that the argument is strictly 
 subsidiary and subordinate. 
 
 There was a time when the whole edifice of 
 Christianity was supposed to rest mainly on two 
 great pillars, Miracles and Prophecy, which in 
 
 _fact were reducible to one, prophecy being but 
 a special kind of miracle." These were sup- 
 
 1 Bishop Waterland’s position, for instance, is thus de- 
 scribed by Mr, Leslie Stephen: ‘‘ We must believe in God, 
 but we must believe in Him for the right reason.... The 
 historical basis was the sole and sufficient basis, and all that 
 men could do was to receive with due reverence whatever was 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 posed to be the only satisfactory means of 
 authenticating it as something more than the 
 product of human reason and imagination, and 
 proving that it had its origin in the direct inter- 
 vention of God. That was a view which grew up 
 naturally in an age when the prevalent bent of 
 men’s minds inclined them to lay more stress 
 on external evidences addressed to the logical 
 understanding, than on those internal evidences 
 of divine righteousness, wisdom, and grace which 
 speak directly to the spiritual faculty. But it 
 had two disadvantages. By directing attention 
 chiefly to the external credentials of revelation, 
 it invested Christianity with somewhat of a 
 cold, mechanical, rationalistic aspect; and by 
 resting the main defence of revelation on 
 miracles, it laid Christianity peculiarly open to 
 be discredited, when it became the prevalent 
 fashion to scoff at the miraculous as incapable 
 
 confirmed by miracles.” Hnglish Thought, vol. i. p. 258. 
 So Pascal says, “ La plus grande des preuves de Jésus Christ 
 ce sont les prophéties.”— Pensées, Partie II. art. xi. 1. With 
 reference to this exaggeration of the evidential force of 
 miracles Dean Milman says: “I do not see without apprehen- 
 sion the whole truth and authority of Christianity rested, as 
 even now it is, by some very able writers, on what may be 
 called ‘the argument from miracles.’...... Men believe in 
 miracles because they are religious; I doubt their becoming 
 religious through the belief in miracles.” —Hist. of Jews, Pret. 
 to last Ed. 
 
SUBSIDIARY. Ly 
 
 of proof and practically incredible, if not 
 logically impossible. The recoil that followed 
 seems to have led many to an opposite extreme, 
 in which the external evidences are too slightly 
 estimated, and the miraculous is kept as much 
 as possible in the background, and treated as 
 something which is of the nature of an incum- 
 brance and a difficulty. Not satisfied with 
 recognizing a mutual dependence on each other - 
 of the internal substance of the revelation, and 
 the external miraculous attestation to its truth, 
 the miracles proving the doctrines, and the 
 doctrines approving the miracles; or even with 
 laying the greater stress on the internal - 
 evidence, and suggesting that it is rather for 
 Christ’s sake that we believe the miracles than 
 Christ for the miracles’ sake ;? the mind which 
 is impatient of the miraculous, and recoils from 
 it with an instinctive repugnance, and yet 
 cannot surrender the blessedness of faith in 
 Christ, gives expression to its struggle in the 
 
 2 See Archbp. Trench, Miracles, p. 95. Also Pascal, 
 Pensées, Partie II. Art. xvi. 1: “Il faut juger de la doctrine 
 _ par les miracles; il faut juger des miracles par la doctrine. 
 La doctrine discerne les miracles, et les miracles discernent la 
 doctrine.” I may add the following remark from Bishop 
 Alexander’s recent Bampton Lectures on the Psalms, p. 84: 
 «They (the first witnesses) did not so much believe in Christ 
 because they believed the miracle; they rather believed in 
 the miracle because they believed Him.’’ 
 
6 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 sentiment that we believe in spite of the 
 miracles rather than because of the miracles; 
 as if the miracles were an obstacle to be got 
 over, with a painful effort, instead of being signs 
 of God’s working, and helps to man’s faith. 
 The just view, I would urge, lies between 
 these extremes. To the thoughtful mind, 
 endowed with spiritual sensibility, quick to 
 hear and respond to the voice of God, and “ in- 
 structed unto the kingdom of heaven,” * the 
 central proof of the divineness of Christianity 
 must ever be found in Christianity itself. The 
 religion which is summed up in, or clusters 
 round, the adorable and matchless Person and 
 character of Jesus Christ; which combines all 
 the highest elements of moral and spiritual 
 beauty, and meets the deepest needs of the 
 struggling, suffering human soul; wearsits own 
 witness on its front, and carries conviction with 
 it to the earnest seeker after truth. ‘‘Hvery 
 one that is of the truth,” said Christ, “ heareth 
 My voice.” * But the coming of such a religion 
 into the world, such a manifestation of the 
 mercy and love of God, and of the way of 
 reconciliation to Him, was, we may well sup- 
 
 * »-pose, scarcely likely to be unattended by any 
 
 _ signs to attract attention, or external testimonies 
 3 Matt. xiii. 52. 4 John xviii. 37. 
 
f 
 
 SUBSIDIARY. 7 
 
 to assist belief. One would naturally look for 
 preparation to be made for it beforehand, where- 
 by men’s hearts should be set on watching for its 
 advent, and brought into a readiness to under- 
 stand and welcome it; and as naturally we 
 should expect its presence to be signalized by a 
 disturbance of tne familiar course and current 
 of human life, an environment of illustrative 
 wonders, an outbreak of divine power and 
 erace even in the visible domain of nature. To 
 show that these probable anticipations were 
 realized, the former in ancient Hebrew prophecy, 
 the latter in the miracles of the Gospels, thus 
 becomes an important, though subordinate, part 
 of the argument for Christianity. Prophecy and 
 miracles, if established on a firm foundation, 
 will be seen to have sustained their appropriate 
 
 functions in the setting up of the kingdom of | 
 
 b 
 } 
 
 “ee 
 
 heaven among mankind; and they will take — 
 
 their rightful places in the scheme of Christian 
 evidence, as. weighty yet subsidiary witnesses 
 
 for Christianity, the one pointing to and pre- « 
 
 paring for, the other illustrating and rendering 
 
 conspicuous, the shining forth of ‘the light of 
 
 the knowledge of the glory of God in the face 
 of Jesus Christ.” * 
 
 5 2 Cor. iv. 6. “It is not the accomplishment of one por- 
 tion of prophecy, nor of the entire series of it, which consti- 
 
8 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 The second feature of the argument which 
 claims notice is its cumulative character. 
 
 Its form is that of an induction from a very 
 large number of particulars, and its cogency is 
 derived from their combination. Hundreds of 
 aspirations, promises, predictions, emblems, 
 types, mysterious narratives and personages, go 
 to make it up; and its peculiarity les in this, 
 —that each of these particulars, if separated 
 from the rest and cross-examined by itself in a 
 hostile spirit, is more or less disputable and 
 open to cavil, and may leave little or no 
 impression on the mind; and yet the whole 
 viewed in connexion, and combined under the 
 guidance of a leading idea or general scheme, 
 carries with it a force which it is very hard to 
 resist.° 
 
 tutes the proof of our religion.”’—Davison, Discourses on 
 Prophecy, viii. ‘The proof of the Gospel is in every-day 
 facts, in their own inward experience, in the wants of man- 
 kind, in the nobler instincts and convictions of the human 
 race, in the order of nature and the harmony of society. 
 These things do not produce the Gospel, which has come from 
 God, and is the heritage of Christendom; but they are the 
 facts by which, when it is doubted, it is practically and neces- 
 . sarily tried.”—Rey. LI. Davies, Signs of the Kingdom, p. 48. 
 
 6 «Though the evidence be but small from the completion 
 of any one prophecy, taken separately, the amount of the 
 whole evidence, resulting from a great number of prophecies, 
 all relative to the same design, may be considerable; like 
 many scattered rays, which, though each be weak in itself, 
 
f 
 
 CUMULATIVE. 9 
 
 Tf the reader should hesitate to admit, that a 
 strong case can possibly be constructed out of 
 the concurrence of many particulars, each of 
 which by itself seems uncertain or trivial, let 
 him recall to mind those chains of minute 
 circumstantial evidence, which often fix guilt 
 irresistibly on persons accused of crime. Or 
 let him remember the certainty with which a 
 practised eye will detect a trail, every separate 
 mark of which, when examined by itself, ap- 
 pears vague, indefinite, and possibly accidental. 
 In the former case, it is the fitting together of 
 the various petty circumstances in a continuous 
 course of action that imparts such strength to 
 the chain; in the latter, if 1s the constant re- 
 currence of the imperfect marks in a definite 
 track which demonstrates them to be no casual, 
 unmeaning indentations of the soil, but the 
 prints of real footsteps, whether of man or beast. 
 
 But as this is a point of much importance 
 to the proper appreciation of our argument, I 
 beg the reader’s indulgence while I endeavour 
 to make it clear by the use of a homely illus- 
 tration. 
 
 I land, suppose, on the shore of a newly-dis- 
 
 yet concentered into one point shall form a strong light, and 
 strike the sense very powerfully.”—Bishop Hurd, Second 
 Sermon on Prophecy. 
 
10 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 covered island, at a sheltered spot forming a 
 natural harbour or bay, and find a number of 
 workmen excavating, embanking, and building 
 close to the water’s edge, with the purpose 
 apparently of constructing a quay or landing- 
 place. On my asking them what they are 
 about, they tell me that they are obeying orders, 
 but do not know the exact object of their labours. 
 Wandering into the interior as the fancy takes 
 me, I come upon a second party, hewing a nar- 
 row clearing through a belt of forest, and re- 
 eelve from them a similar answer. Still con- 
 tinuing my exploration I light in one place on 
 some diggers, excavating a passage through a 
 precipitous face of rock that bars my path; in an- 
 other I observe labourers filling in a bank across 
 a ravine ; in yet another a gang of masons be- 
 ginning to throw a bridge over a rapid stream. 
 In every case I am puzzled to account for these 
 scattered and apparently unconnected works of 
 industrious toil. From the workmen I can 
 obtain no explanation ; and each work seems to 
 be isolated and aimless, to originate in no suffi. 
 cient cause, and contribute to no desirable result. 
 Discerning at last a lofty eminence from which: 
 -an extensive prospect may be gained, I ascend 
 andlook around. In the centre ofa distant plain 
 my eye is caught by all the signs of construc- 
 
CUMULATIVE. iil 
 
 tive activity; streets are being laid out, houses 
 are rising, a city is springing into existence. 
 And then, traversing with my glance the whole 
 line, from this rising metropolis back to the bay 
 where I had landed, Iam struck with surprise 
 at discovering, that every one of the works which 
 had perplexed me lies exactly and precisely in 
 that line. Of course the mystery is at once 
 solved. The various parties, each working at 
 its appointed task by itself, are really carrying 
 out the design of a directing engineer, and 
 making a high road from the port to the future 
 capital. What the separate, scattered portions 
 of the work could not suggest to me, I learn 
 with instant and absolute certainty from seeing 
 them in combination with each other, and in 
 connexion with the end to which they lead up ; 
 and so far from a shadow of doubt remaining on 
 my mind, I am only inclined to wonder at my- 
 self for not having sooner divined the solution. 
 Now it may be said to be by a similar com- 
 bination of many particulars, which separately 
 are doubtful and perplexing, that the argument 
 from prophecy gathers shape and conclusive- 
 ness. If without any clue to guide us we wan- 
 der over the field of the Old Testament Scrip- 
 tures, examining them here and there at ran- 
 dom, it is very likely that we shall meet with 
 
1 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 much that is dark and unintelligible. We may 
 » come across personages, of whom things are 
 ~“*s“said that appear inapplicable and preposterous; 
 institutions that strike our minds as strange and 
 inexplicable; predictions that contain inconsis- 
 tent and contradictory elements; aspirations 
 that strain after the impracticable ; hopes that 
 are too glowing for the murky atmosphere of 
 this world. Many a passage may prompt 
 the perplexing question, “Of whom speaketh 
 the prophet this?”’?’ many a promise may 
 seem to wrap up its scope in midnight obscurity. 
 A certain unrest in the present, a vague striv- 
 ing and pointing onwards to the future, will 
 probably be apparent to us; but where or how 
 the want is to find its satisfaction, or what the 
 end shall be which may possibly crown the pro- 
 gress, will be a bafiling and insoluble problem. 
 In a word we should probably feel as if we were 
 wandering in a labyrinth without a clue to its 
 tortuous windings, or puzzling over an enigma 
 of which the key was not in our possession. 
 Well, in such a case, might the cry go up from 
 our lips for some revealer, “ to open the book, 
 and to loose the seals thereof.” ® 
 
 It is Christianity that pours back light on 
 the dark sayings of the older dispensation, and 
 
 ‘ Acts vili. 34. 8 Rey. v.°2. 
 
PRESUPPOSES THEISM. ta 
 
 fits its parts together in an harmonious scheme. 
 When at the close of the long vista of Judaism, 
 with its eventful story, unique institutions, and 
 burning, prophetic strains, we see rising in 
 unearthly light and beauty the Kingdom of 
 heaven, destined to spread through the nations 
 and fill the world ; when warrior and saint and 
 prophet and king of the older days at last give 
 place to the perfect ideal, even Jesus the Christ 
 of God, of whom each has been in some measure 
 a faint shadow or blurred, prelusive image; 
 then the key of the enigma, the clue of the laby- 
 rinth, is in our hands, and the ancient Scrip- 
 tures become luminous to our eyes. Gazing 
 first on the consummation of prophecy in Christ 
 the Lord, and then turning back a comprehen- 
 sive glance over the sacred Past, we see the 
 fragments that perplexed us fit together into a 
 divine scheme; and discern how by types and 
 emblems, by prophecies and promises, by de- 
 liverances and judgments, by institutions and 
 laws, the way of the Anointed King was pre- 
 _ pared of old. ‘The testimony of Jesus is the 
 spirit of prophecy.’’® 
 
 There is one more feature of the argument to 
 benoticed in these preliminary remarks ; namely, 
 its need of a theistic basis on which to rest. 
 
 9 Rey. xix. 10. 
 
14 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 Every debate requires some common ground 
 on which the disputants agree to stand; and in 
 the case before us that common ground can be 
 nothing less than the belief in a God who cares 
 for mankind, and guides the course of the world. 
 
 This will plainly appear, if we remember that 
 in building up by argument the doctrinal edifice 
 of the Christian faith a certain logical order 
 and progress is indispensable. First comes the 
 existence of a divine Author of the universe ; 
 out of that grows the idea of a natural or 
 ordinary system of providence, a general rule 
 and superintendence of the world’s affairs by 
 means of natural laws and second causes. Not 
 till these elementary articles of the faith are 
 established, can we advance with any assurance 
 to consider special or direct imterventions of 
 God, in revelation and miracle and prophecy, 
 in the growth of Judaism and the rise of 
 Christianity. An inversion of the order would 
 throw the whole process into confusion. ‘To 
 endeavour. to draw out a proof of special or 
 supernatural instances of the divine agency, 
 before a basis was laid for them in those which 
 are natural and ordinary, would be like 
 attempting to build a house without a foun- 
 dation, to balance a pyramid on its apex, or to 
 hang a heavy globe on the yielding air. Were 
 
ld 
 
 PRESUPPOSES THEISM. . 15 
 
 we to invite an atheist to recognize in some 
 wonderful occurrence the convincing sign of a 
 supernatural or divine agency, his inevitable 
 reply would be, that the phenomenon to which 
 we asked his attention might possibly be very 
 uncommon, and even inexplicable in the 
 present state of, our science, but that he knew 
 nothing of any supernatural order or power to 
 which it could be referred. We must, in fact, 
 believe in God, before we are in a position to 
 argue, that any unusual phenomenon is really 
 miraculous; that is, that it belongs to the order 
 of His special and direct operation, rather than 
 to the order of the natural world. Apart from 
 theism, the evidence which establishes the 
 truth of some unaccountable event points to 
 nothing more than the existence of some 
 previously unknown law of nature, and cannot 
 compel the mind to look above nature for a 
 divine Agent. Testimony indeed, or our own 
 experience, might satisfactorily assure us that 
 something had really happened, of which we 
 _ were unable on any known principles to assign 
 the cause; such, for instance, as a true predic- 
 tion, or the cure of disease by a word or touch, 
 or the restoration of a dead body to life. But 
 so long as we had no prior reason to believe in 
 ‘the existence of a God, it would always be 
 
16 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 DS 5 a aR eaiath = 4 SR A Wee MER ik oN cee 
 easier to suppose the action of some hitherto 
 undetected natural law or force, than to invent 
 a God to account for the strange occurrence. 
 I repeat, therefore, that it is impracticable to 
 demonstrate to the atheist the real miraculous- 
 ness of any event, however wonderful and unac- 
 countable it may be. A miracle presupposes 
 a God, as one element in the very idea of it; 
 and without starting from a theistic basis, 
 the miraculous is practically incapable of 
 proof. 
 
 Hence with the absolute atheist, or with the 
 sceptic who while confessing the bare exist- 
 ence of an unknowable God denies the divine 
 providence altogether, the argument from 
 prophecy cannot be maintained to any good 
 purpose. If neither in the manifold wonders 
 of the physical universe, nor in the spiritual 
 constitution and religious history of mankind, 
 nor in the voice of his own conscience and the 
 emotions of his own heart, a man can discern 
 any traces of God; to undertake to convince 
 him of the divine presence and agency in the 
 world, by means of correspondences between 
 ancient predictions and subsequent events, 
 would be the vainest of enterprises; one 
 might as reasonably expect him to be sensible 
 of the feeble glimmer of a star, when he 
 
PRESUPPOSES THEISM. 17 
 is stone-blind to the blaze of the noon-day 
 sun.! 
 
 It is theists alone, therefore, whom I have 
 any hope of impressing by the argument which 
 I shall endeavour to draw out and exhibit in 
 these pages.. They confess that there is some- 
 thing more than blind force at work in this world 
 of ours. They believe in a divine purpose 
 embracing the families of mankind, and in 
 a divine wisdom and goodness directing the 
 evolution of their destinies. This belief, by 
 infusing into history a spiritual meaning and 
 unity, establishes that real and divinely-ordered 
 connexion between its successive stages, in 
 which alone the argument from prophecy can 
 firmly root itself. 
 
 These three things, therefore, the reader 
 will do well to bear in mind, concerning the 
 argument to which his attention is invited. 
 
 First, that it occupies a subordinate place 
 in the scheme of Christian evidence, and is 
 subsidiary to the great central proof which 
 Christianity itself furnishes of its own divine- 
 ness, 
 
 1 “Tf we do not find God within ourselves, the whole fabric 
 of the visible universe may whisper to us of Him, but the 
 whisper will be unintelligible.’—Tulloch, Rational Theology, 
 il, 191, 
 
 Cc 
 
18 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 Secondly, that it is a cumulative argument, 
 of which the strength is not to be found in the 
 separate particulars of which it is composed, so 
 much as in their combination and concurrence. 
 
 Lhirdly, that it presupposes theism, and 
 requires a belief in the divine providence for 
 its support.” 
 
 2 As the need of a theistic basis for the proof of miraclesis 
 a point of primary importance in the controversy, but seems 
 to have been often overlooked, especially in the construction 
 of refutations of Hume’s celebrated argument, I subjoin the 
 following extracts from well-known writers in support of it:— 
 
 “Tf we do not already believe in supernatural agencies, no 
 miracle can prove to us their existence. The miracle itself, 
 considered merely as an extraordinary fact, may be satis- 
 factorily certified by our senses or by testimony, but nothing 
 can ever prove that it is a miracle; there is still another 
 possible hypothesis, that of its being the result of some 
 unknown natural cause; and this possibility cannot be so 
 completely shut out as to leave no alternative but that of 
 admitting the existence and intervention of a being superior 
 to nature.”—Mill’s Logic, ii. p. 168. 
 
 “The effect we ascribe simply to the volition of the Deity, of 
 whose existence and power, not to say of whose presence and 
 agency, we have previous and independent proof... . Ina 
 word, once believe that there is a God, and miracles are not 
 incredible.”—Paley, Hvidences, Introd. 
 
 “The great truth upon which the evidence of all lesser 
 instances of supernatural power depends is the truth of the 
 supernatural origin of this world—that this world is caused 
 by the will of a Personal Being; that. it is sustained by that 
 will, and that therefore there is a God who is the object of 
 prayer and worship.””—Mozley, Ox Miracles, Lect. V. 
 
 “The peculiarity of the argument of miracles is that it be- 
 
PRESUPPOSES THEISM. 19 
 
 Swot ee ee a SALLE CIS BOTA RO NT ee 
 gins and ends with an assumption ; I mean an assumption rela- 
 tively to that argument. We assume the existence of a Personal 
 Deity prior to the proof of miracles in the religious sense... 
 The question of miracles is thus shut up within the enclosure 
 of one assumption ; viz. that of the existence of a God.’_Id. 
 Lect. IV. “Unless a man brings the belief in God to a 
 miracle, he does not get it from the miracle.’”—JZb. Lect, V. 
 
 “The Christian argument for miracles takes for granted two 
 elementary truths—the Omnipotence and Personality of God.” 
 —Prof. W. Lee (of Dublin), Hssay on Miracles. ; 
 
 “The miracle of miracles must be the existence of a Living 
 God. If we do not believe this, it is impossible that any 
 smaller miracles should prove it to us.’’—Rey. Ll. Davies, 
 Signs of the Kingdom of Heaven, p. 35. 
 
 “For physical students as such, and for those who take 
 their impressions of the universe solely from them, miracles 
 can have no real existence.”—Wescott, Gospel of the Resur- 
 rection, p. 45. 
 
 a 
 
 , 
 
20 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 SCEPTICAL OBJECTIONS TO THE PRINCIPLE AND 
 APPLICATION OF THE ARGUMENT CONSIDERED 
 —CONDITIONS TO BE OBSERVED. 
 
 THE nature, and place among Christian evi- 
 dences, of the argument from prophecy having 
 been briefly indicated in the preceding section, 
 we are ready to enter on the task of gathering 
 together the various particulars of which it is 
 composed, and drawing out of them the con- 
 clusion to which they point. But I beg the 
 reader to allow me to interpose some additional 
 considerations, before we settle down together 
 to our work. 
 
 The argument which we are about to examine 
 has been before the world for eighteen cen- 
 turies. By the New Testament writers it is 
 repeatedly used, both in a general and a 
 fragmentary or allusive way. About the 
 middle of the second century Justin Martyr 
 urged it at great length, in his Dialogue against 
 
 Trypho the Jew. With Christian apologists 
 
OBJECTIONS TO THE ARGUMENT. 21 
 
 it has ever since been a standing part of their 
 defence of Christianity. The English Deists of 
 the last century made a powerful attack on its 
 validity, which called forth numerous replies of 
 various degrees of merit. Since the rise of the 
 modern critical school the dispute over it has 
 been incessantly renewed, with all the weapons 
 that can be drawn from the accumulated re- 
 sources of philological and historical erudition.! 
 One result of this long discussion and con- 
 flict has been to clear the argument from 
 
 1 Those who wish to see all that can be urged in support 
 of the naturalistic view of Hebrew prophecy will find it in 
 the two learned works of Dr. A Kuenen, Prof. of Theology in 
 the University of Leyden, The Religion of Israel, and Pro- 
 phets and Prophecy in Israel, both of which have been 
 translated into English. The following extract from the 
 former will show the stand-point from which he views the 
 rise and growth of Judaism :—“ It is only by comparison that 
 we can determine whether many persons are right in assuming 
 a specific difference between Israel’s religion and its sisters. 
 Without a shadow of doubt, then, we deny the existence of 
 such a difference. .... The belief in the exceptional origin 
 of the religion of the Israelites is founded simply and solely 
 on the testimony of their holy records. But that appearance | 
 vanishes as soon as we look at it more closelys.: 4". Al. 
 though, considered as a whole, the Old Testament may with 
 justice be adduced as testifying in favour of supernaturalism ; 
 its separate parts, regarded by the light of criticism, speak 
 loudly for a natural development both of the Israelitish 
 religion itself, and of the belief in its heavenly origin, As 
 soon as the dispute between the whole and its parts is noticed, 
 it is decided.” —Religion of Israel, vol. i. pp. 10, 11, 
 
ph THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 misleading issues, to lay bare its weaker points, 
 and elucidate the conditions under which alone 
 it can be fairly maintained. 
 
 In restating the argument in these pages, I 
 shall endeavour to profit by the lessons of the 
 past. But besides bearing them in mind for 
 my own guidance, I think it will be for the 
 advantage of the reader to point out beforehand 
 the difficulties which modern critics, of the 
 naturalistic or organic school of religious 
 thought, find in the argument, and on the 
 strength of which they deny its cogency. 
 
 As I have already said, the objectors to whom 
 the argument is addressed are theists ; Indeed, 
 many of them do not disdain the name of 
 Christian in their peculiar sense, as holding 
 Christianity to be, on the whole, the best among 
 the natural, earth-born religions of the world. 
 They believe in an Order of nature, 110 which 
 God rules all things according to fixed, in- 
 variable laws, upholding the physical universe 
 by His power, and energizing by His Spirit in 
 the moral and spiritual development of His 
 reasonable creatures. But beyond this they 
 are unable to advance. They cannot bring 
 themselves to believe in an Order above nature, 
 to which miracles and special revelations, if 
 there be such things, must of necessity belong. 
 
OBJECTION TO ITS PRINCIPLE. 20 
 To this latter Order, Christianity, if it be as we 
 contend a divine and authoritative religion, 
 must of course be assigned. In our sense it 
 _ originated outside and above the sphere of 
 nature, and beyond the range of the providence 
 which insensibly sustains and governs the 
 world’s course. It was distinctly miraculous. 
 It claimed to be founded on direct revelations 
 from above. It is a religion of faith im an 
 historical Person, who demands unlimited sub- 
 mission, trust, and devotion towards Himself, 
 as being the human manifestation of the in- 
 visible God, and the rightful Lord of the con- 
 sciences of mankind. In a word, the Chris- 
 tianity of the Bible and of the Church is 
 supernatural; and to our opponents in this 
 argument the supernatural appears to be un- 
 proved and inadmissible. 
 
 This is their position, and when among other 
 arguments we urge upon them that which is 
 derived from ancient Hebrew prophecy, they 
 meet us with a twofold answer. They demur 
 to its principle, and they question its appli- 
 cation. 
 
 The first part of their objection may be 
 stated in this way. 
 
 “Certain predictions,’ you say, “were 
 made and put on record in ancient days by 
 
24 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 persons who professed to speak in the name of 
 God, and those predictions have been accom- 
 plished in Christ and His religion; from 
 whence you draw the conclusion that the 
 predictors were supernaturally inspired, and 
 Christianity is of divine origin. 
 
 “Such is the structure of your argument, 
 and to us it appears to be wanting in coherence. 
 Why, we ask, are we bound to consider a 
 person to have been supernaturally inspired, 
 because some prediction which he ventured to 
 utter has eventually turned out to be true? 
 Have there been no such things as sagacious 
 forecasts, lucky guesses, and inexplicable 
 coincidences in the history of the world? 
 Recollect, for instance, the famous pagan pro- 
 gnostication, founded on the augury of the 
 twelve vultures, of twelve centuries of inde- 
 pendent sovereignty fof the city of Rome, and 
 how the course of history singularly verified it. 
 You yourself would hardly claim for that a 
 divine inspiration. Let it be granted that we 
 have no means of satisfactorily accounting for 
 an apparent prescience of a future contingent 
 event, by any of the ascertained laws which 
 regulate the acquisition of knowledge; still, is 
 there not a long interval between our ignorance, 
 and the momentous assertion that the know- 
 
OBJECTION TO ITS PRINCIPLE. 25 
 
 ledge of the future was specially revealed by 
 God ? 
 
 “We do not deny that if the prophet were 
 already known with certainty, on other grounds, 
 to be God’s messenger, speaking by special 
 inspiration, his prediction would in that case be 
 properly authenticated by his office, and its 
 subsequent fulfilment would be justly recognized 
 as a part of a divine scheme of operation. 
 But that is not the case before us. We are 
 still seeking for a proof of the prophet’s 
 supernatural mission ; as yet we know him only 
 as a man who has hazarded a prediction, which 
 afterwards happens, we know not how, to come 
 true. Under such circumstances, the bare fact of 
 the fulfilment of his word seems far from being 
 sufficient by itself to sustain the tremendous 
 conclusion, that the infinite God of heaven and 
 earth was verily and indeed speaking by his 
 mouth. 
 
 “ And if there were no sure ground, in the 
 historical verification of the prediction, for 
 attributing to it a supernatural character, 
 neither would there be for distinguishing the 
 
 event which fulfilled it from the class of ordinary »%*,* ey 
 and natural occurrences, at least so far as the AL. eh ot 
 character of that event could be inferred from 
 
 the mere fact of its having been foretold; and 
 
26 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 the result would be, that your entire argument 
 would fall to the ground.” 
 
 Now it must, I think, be confessed that 
 there is a certain amount of weight in the 
 preliminary difficulty thus raised. Undoubt- 
 edly it would be in no slight degree irrational 
 and hazardous to act on the principle, that a 
 single instance of successful prediction, of what- 
 ever kind, and under whatever circumstances it 
 might occur, is a sufficient warrant of divine 
 inspiration. The Bible itself asserts the con- 
 trary, im a very remarkable passage of the 
 Pentateuch. “If there arise among you a 
 prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth 
 thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the 
 wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto 
 thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which 
 thou hast not known, and let us serve them ; 
 thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that 
 prophet, or that dreamer of dreams;..... 
 and that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, 
 shall be put to death; ..... so shalt thou 
 put the evil away from the midst of thee.’ 2 
 And if a single prediction is not sufficient to 
 carry with it a proof of inspiration, the 
 multiplication of instances would not necessarily 
 add the confirmation that is needed. The 
 
 9 Deut xis 1-49; 5, 
 
OBJECTION TO ITS PRINCIPLE. ad 
 
 marvel would be heightened, and the explana- 
 tion rendered more difficult, but still the 
 element of divineness would not be satisfactorily 
 established. Just as in the case of an alleged 
 miracle, more, far more, than the bare wonder 
 itself is needed to turn it into a witness of 
 divine intervention; the whole moral and 
 spiritual environment is an essential feature of 
 the case, and enters largely into its determina- 
 tion. 
 
 But suppose that instead of a single in- 
 cidental prediction or two we met with a long, 
 connected series of prophetic utterances, ex- . 
 tending over several centuries; suppose further 
 that these utterances formed an integral part - 
 of the teaching of a line of remarkable men, 
 who from age to age were the witnesses for 
 righteousness to their nation, and laboured to 
 elevate and refine its religion; suppose also 
 that the intimations, the foreshadowings, the - 
 prophetic hints and sketches of the future, 
 which were bound up with their teaching, 
 ultimately found a realization in a new and 
 more advanced order of things, the establish- 
 ment of which formed an important epoch in 
 the development of the human race; would not 
 this remarkable combination of circumstances 
 of the highest import to the world constitute a 
 
28 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 strong case to support the idea of a divine 
 inspiration and mission ?* Absolute demonstra- 
 tion in such a case is, of course, not possible ; 
 it never is possible in things of the spirit.. We 
 have to do with probabilities, with reasonable 
 explanations, with evidences and arguments 
 which to candid minds have a moral weight. 
 And to such minds we may appeal with 
 confidence to say whether any known laws of 
 human knowledge or growth or action would 
 be sufficient to account, even plausibly, for such 
 a conjunction of circumstances as that which 
 has just been sketched out. Surely to be 
 satisfied with seeing in its prophetic element 
 
 3 “<The correspondence between the doctrines of Christianity 
 and that promised revelation which directly or indirectly is 
 the key of the Old Testament, is not a verbal coincidence, 
 but a coincidence of facts .... It is obvious to say that 
 the concurrence was accidental; and if we were examining 
 the case of a single prediction, this might be a satisfactory 
 explanation, But the coincidences in the present case are not 
 of a kind, or if they were they are too numerous, to admit of 
 this supposition. It is not one fact, nor one truth, but many 
 facts and many truths, which were signified beforehand. 
 Neither are we speaking of facts and truths unconnected with 
 each other, or with any pre-understood design: but of events 
 which came to pass in regular sequence, and forming, when 
 put together, one great systematic whole. This does not look 
 like an effect of chance, but of a wisdom far above the kind 
 of knowledge which human agents have ever been seen to 
 display.”’—Dean Lyall’s Propedia Prophetica, p. 138. 
 
OBJECTIONS TO THE ARGUMENT. 99 
 
 nothing more than a succession of fortuitous 
 coincidences or sagacious guesses, would betray 
 a singular blindness to the unique character 
 and moral significance of the entire pheno- 
 menon. 
 
 But our opponents, besides demurring to 
 the principle, question the application of the 
 argument. They deny that there is a series 
 of prophecies, which have been actually and 
 definitely fulfilled in Christianity.‘ They vir- 
 tually accuse Christians, either of manufacturin o 
 the prophecies, by reading back into the Old 
 Testament meanings that do not really belong 
 to it; or else of inventing fulfilments, that 
 have no historical existence. 
 
 To make out these charges, they lay down 
 certain conditions, which must be satisfied in 
 order to constitute a real fulfilment of an 
 alleged prediction. The prediction, they say, 
 must precede in time, be intelligible and 
 definite in its terms, and foretell something 
 which at the time of its utterance lay beyond 
 
 4 «The argument would have the force which is attributed 
 to it, were the objectors able to lay their finger on a single 
 
 Old Testament prediction clearly referring to Jesus Christ, | 
 
 intended by the utterers of it to relate to Him, prefiguring 
 His character and career, and manifestly fulfilled in His 
 appearance on earth. This they cannot do.”—Greg’s Creed of 
 Christendom, p. 85, 3rd Ed. 
 
 i 
 y 4 
 
* ay 
 
 30 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 the ability of merely human sagacity to foresee 
 or conjecture. On the other hand, the fulfl- 
 ment must be an event historically certain, 
 undoubtedly posterior to the prediction, and 
 accurately corresponding to its terms; it must 
 also be above the suspicion of having been 
 brought about by human contrivance, for the 
 purpose of forming a colourable accomplish- 
 ment.’ 
 
 5 The conditions laid down by Davison, on the orthodox 
 side, are practically equivalent to these. “ First, the known 
 promulgation of the prophecy prior to the event. Secondly, 
 the clear and palpable fulfilment of it. Lastly, the nature of 
 the event itself, if, when the prediction of it was given, it lay 
 remote from human view, and was such as could not be fore- 
 seen by any supposable effort of reason, or be deduced trom 
 probability or eperience.”—Discourses on Prophecy, viii. 
 Mr. Meyrick, Art. Prophet in Smith’s Dict. of Bible, re- 
 marks that ‘“Davison’s second condition, ‘the clear and 
 palpable fulfilment of the prophecy,’ should be so far modi- 
 fied as to take into account the necessary difficulty, more or 
 less great, in recognizing the fulfilment of a prophecy which 
 results from the necessary vagueness and obscurity of the 
 prophecy itself’? On the other hand Bishop Alexander (of 
 Derry), in his Bampton Lectures on the Witness of the 
 Psalms, p. 11, says, “ Those who believe in the divine origin 
 of prophecy can afford to be more exacting, and to give 
 additional stringency to the tests proposed by Mr. Davison. 
 They may claim beyond those—(4) That the prediction, 
 though capable of being considered separately, shall not in 
 itself be detached and isolated, but part of a connected and 
 systematic whole. (5) That the sufficiency of correspondence 
 shall be enhanced by a prediction not absolutely general and 
 
PROPHECY NOT PREDICTION. OL 
 
 Having laid down these conditions, they pro- 
 ceed to apply them as tests of those fulfil- 
 ments of prophecy, on which Christians are 
 accustomed to rely as evidences of a super- 
 natural prescience in the prophets of Israel. 
 
 “See,” ‘they say, “how indefinite and in- 
 adequate most of those predictions are! Some 
 are so vague that it is difficult to fix on them 
 any distinct meaning whatever; others are not 
 distinguishable from the forecasts of ordinary 
 human sagacity. There are not a few among 
 them which have not the air of being predic- 
 tions at all, and would never have been sus- 
 pected of foretelling anything, had not later 
 writers, to make out a case for Christianity, 
 applied them by way of accommodation to 
 subsequent events. In several of the most 
 important instances critical proof is entirely 
 wanting either of the priority of the predic- 
 tron, or of the historical reality of the event 
 which is said to have verified it. So that on 
 the whole, after deducting everything uncer- 
 tain, irrelevant, or entirely unfounded, the 
 residue of the prophetical element, if any at all 
 
 colourless, but enriched with a certain number of particular 
 
 adjuncts. (6) On the moral side,—That the prediction shall 
 not be of a nature merely to gratify private feeling, or stimu- ‘ 
 late an otiose curiosity, but shall have some reference to an 
 end worthy of a divine author.” 
 
o2 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 be left, is far too insignificant to furnish any 
 appreciable support to the supernatural pre- 
 tensions of Christianity.” 
 
 To justify this indictment of the argument, 
 they go on to examine in detail the predic- 
 tions to which they think Christians in general 
 attach most importance in an evidential sense ; 
 those, namely, which are said to have been 
 fulfilled in the miraculous birth, the character 
 and works, the death and resurrection, of the 
 ereat Founder of Christianity. 
 
 “Ts there one of these,” they ask, ‘ which is 
 a definite, unimpeachable prediction of a well- 
 ascertained historical event, or which does not 
 really owe its significance to an assumption of 
 the very facts which it is employed to es- 
 tablish? Let any one candidly examine the 
 prophecies, on which the writers of the New 
 Testament themselves rely; and he will be 
 convinced that those so-called prophecies are 
 referred to and used, not critically or logic- 
 ally, but rhetorically, and in the way of 
 ingenious application of records and phrases, 
 which in their origin had quite another inten- 
 tion and force. The seed to spring from the 
 father of Israel, numerous as the stars of 
 heaven and the ocean-sands;° the prophet to 
 . 6 Gal, iii. 16. 
 
PROPHECY NOT PREDICTION. 33 
 
 resemble Moses, announced by the Deutero- 
 nomist, apparently to support a contemporary 
 reformation ;’ the high priest of the ancient 
 sacrificial ritual;' David and_ other pious 
 psalmists, oppressed almost to death by the 
 wicked, but ultimately rescued and restored ;? a 
 Jonah coming forth alive from a three days’ 
 entombment in the whale’s belly ;3 the child 
 born of the prophetess to Isaiah as a sign to 
 Ahaz of approaching deliverance;‘ a mysterious 
 servant of Jehovah, whether some individual 
 prophet or the collective nation, despised and 
 rejected of men, but vindicated by God;* the 
 rock of the desert yielding water at the stroke 
 of the mystic rod ;° the serpent of brass lifted 
 up for the healing of the people when dying of 
 the fiery bite ;’ the lamb of the passover ;° the 
 burnt offerings of the temple-worship ;°—such 
 are the personages and things of the Old 
 Testament which are rhetorically appealed to 
 by the primitive advocates of Christianity, and 
 taken as figures or emblems of its Founder. Is 
 it not plain, that in all these cases it is not 
 with real fulfilments of genuine prophecy that 
 
 7 Acts iii, 22, 23, 1 Heb, iis 1 v5. 
 
 * Matt. xxvii. 35, 41; Acts ii. 25—31; Rom. xv. 3. 
 
 3 Matt. xii.40. 4) Matt. i. 22, 23. 5 Acts viii. 8235, 
 
 6 1 Cor. x. 4, 7 John iii. 14, 
 8 1 Cor. v. 7. 9 Heb. ix. 14, 28, 
 
 D 
 
34 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 we are presented, but only with pious and 
 imaginative applications of the ancient Serip- 
 tures to supposed features in the story and 
 character of Jesus of Nazareth ?’’’ 
 
 Under this treatment the strength of the 
 argument may at first appear to evaporate and 
 vanish away. But let us examine if this be in 
 truth a fair representation of the case. I should 
 say that the apparent victory is won, by an 
 ingenious substitution of the narrow idea of 
 prediction for the far wider one of prophecy. 
 Were the argument really to depend for its 
 force on our discovering literally exact fulfil- 
 ments of definite and precise predictions, I 
 confess that it would appear to me exceedingly 
 difficult to establish. But so far is that from 
 being the case that I am convinced we might 
 give over to the sceptic’s destructive analysis 
 all the specific predictions of particular incidents, 
 
 1 This was the line of argument adopted by Collins in his 
 Grounds and Reasons, published in 1724. 
 
 2 «We take, in my judgment, a narrow view of Hebrew 
 prophecy, if we confine and limit it to the more or less 
 distinct anticipation of future events... . . Hebrew prophecy 
 was a vast vaticimation, not only in special texts and, as it 
 were, premature allusions to facts and circumstances in the 
 evangelic history, but of the Gospel itself; a twilight, a dim 
 twilight, of Christian righteousness; a necessary opening act 
 
 in the great drama of the -providential government of the 
 
 world.’——Dean Milman, Sermon on Hebrew Prophecy. 
 
PROPHECY NOT PREDICTION. oo 
 
 and allow that each of them by itself is more 
 or less disputable, without surrendering any 
 material portion of the argument. To suspend 
 the issue on a demonstration that a certain 
 number of clearly-expressed prophecies have 
 been verified in as many definite events literally 
 and exactly corresponding to them, would be to 
 court discomfiture and refutation. There was 
 much good sense in the remark made by a 
 celebrated apologist for Christianity a century 
 and a half ago:* “They who consider the 
 prophecies under the Old Testament as somany 
 predictions only, independent of each other, can 
 never form a right judgment of the argument 
 for the truth of Christianity drawn from this 
 topic, nor be able to satisfy themselves when 
 they are confronted with the objections of 
 unbelievers ;” a statement which certainly has 
 not lost, but rather gained, force and weight 
 from the progress achieved since his days in 
 philological and historical criticism.* 
 
 Doubtless it has been too common among the 
 
 3 Bp. Sherlock, Discourses on Prophecy, Preface. 
 
 4 “« After all, it is not on separate passages that we depend 
 for our proof, so much as on the manner in which the whole 
 Bible prepares for and teaches Christ. The whole atmosphere 
 of the Old Testament is instinct with prophecy. Judaism 
 from first to last is a progress towards the Gospel.”—Dean 
 Payne Smith’s Bampton Lectures on Prophecy, vi. 
 
 Tie 
 
36 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 defenders as well as the opponents of revelation, 
 to confound the grand prophetical spirit, which 
 was characterized as much byits spiritual insight 
 as by its wide outlook over the future, with a 
 narrow prescience of specific and isolated events... 
 Both attack and defence have been too often 
 conducted on the supposition, that the qualifi- 
 cation of the prophet for his office must be 
 looked for in the faculty of foretelling particular 
 incidents with verbal accuracy, rather than in 
 the illumination which enabled him to grasp 
 the great principles that shape the course of 
 human destiny, and to divine the broad out- 
 lines of the issue in the dispensations of 
 God.° 
 
 In drawing out, therefore, the argument in 
 its several branches, I shall not take my stand 
 on those instances of fulfilled prediction, of 
 which the sceptic makes so little account. 
 The dispute over them would be endless, and 
 lead to no satisfactory result. Rather would I 
 allow, that many of the instances most commonly 
 brought forward, however suited to confirm 
 and edify the believer, are not equally avail- 
 
 5 The once popular works of Newton and Keith, which 
 rested the argument chiefly on supposed exact predictions of 
 future events, have in consequence become quite inadequate to 
 meet modern critical objections. | 
 
PROPHECY NOT PREDICTION. OF 
 
 able to convince the gainsayer. They rest on 
 Christianity, not Christianity on them. 
 
 Lest, however, the reader should think that 
 1 am surrendering the citadel of the argument 
 by this concession, I would ask him to consider 
 for a moment how the case stands, in regard to 
 the evidential value of many of these pre- 
 dictions. 
 
 It is plain, that to constitute areal fulfilment 
 there must be an undoubted historical event to 
 correspond with the prediction. But how do we 
 satisfy ourselves that the verifying event ever 
 really happened? The bare assertion of an Evan- 
 gelist is no sufficient proof to the sceptic, to 
 whom the veracity of the Gospels is not a thing 
 to be taken for granted. Corroboration from an 
 independent source is required; and in many 
 cases that is to be obtained in no other way, 
 than by arguing back from the already -ascer- 
 tained divineness of the revelation. The 
 Evangelists, for instance, find fulfilments of 
 prophecy in the miraculous conception,’ the 
 nativity in Bethlehem,’ the flight into Egypt, 
 the slaughter of the innocents,’ the settling at 
 Nazareth,'the miracles of healing,?the triumphal 
 
 6 Matt. 1..22, 23. 7 Matt. ii. 5, 6. 8 Matt. ii. 15. 
 » Matt. 11.17,18.  } Matt. ii. 23. 2 Matt. viii. 17. 
 
38 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 entry on the ass’s colt,’ the betrayal by Judas, 
 and the price paid for his treachery,’ the arrest,” 
 the flight of the disciples,’ the parting of the 
 garments by lot,® the offer of the vinegar,” the 
 piercing of theside,' the preservation of the sacred 
 limbsfrom fracture.? But when weareasked how 
 we can be sure that these events, of which there 
 is no other record, really occurred, and were 
 not merely pious inventions suggested by the 
 supposed predictions, it is obviously not enough 
 to reply that they are related in the Gospels. 
 Our proof must be. more indirect and complex. 
 We must begin by falling back on the general 
 evidence, and insisting that. the preparation 
 made by divine providence for Christianity, the 
 broad features of its rise and growth, and the © 
 intrinsic character of its doctrines, together 
 furnish a reasonable proof that it was of God. 
 And then, turning back to the narratives which 
 
 were the earliest authorized embodiments and. 
 
 organs of its teaching, we must maintain that the 
 proved divineness of the religion authenticates 
 those narratives generally, and guarantees their 
 substantial truthfulness and accuracy, in the 
 
 3 Matt. xxi. 4, 5. 
 
 4 John xiii. 18; Acts i. 16, 20. 5 Matt. xxvii. 9; 10. 
 6 Matt. xxvi. 56. 7 Matt. xxvi. 31. 
 $ Matt. xxvii. 35. 9 John xix. 28. 
 
 1 John xix. 37. 2 John xix. 36. 
 
ITS CONDITIONS. 39 
 
 ——_~. 
 
 particulars in which they are without corrobo- 
 ration from independent historical sources. 
 
 Now if it is by no other than this round- 
 about process that the historical reality of these 
 minor and specific fulfilments of prophecy can 
 be established, it is manifest that we cannot 
 rely on them in our debate with the sceptic, 
 with whom the divine origin of Christianity is 
 the very thing in question.° 
 
 There is one matter, however, in which I am 
 in full accord with our opponents; namely, 
 that in conducting this argument we must take 
 care not to read back New Testament ideas 
 into the Old, and ‘then argue from them as if 
 they were originally found there. That would 
 be to reason in a circle, and to beg the question 
 by relying on assumptions the proof of which 
 is dependent on the conclusion we are endea- 
 vouring to reach. It is permitted to believers, 
 who haye already accepted the entire Bible as 
 the record of a divine revelation, and discerned 
 in Christ the crown and fulfilment of the pur- 
 
 3 After what has been said, it seems needless to add that 
 the argument must be conducted without assuming the his- 
 torical truth of the Gospels. If their narratives be true 
 Christianity must be divine, and the argument from prephecy 
 would be superfluous. It is an additional argument, resting 
 on the correspondence between ancient prophecy and the 
 religion which originated in the teaching of Jesus. 
 
40 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 poses of God, to seek both pleasure and profit 
 in tracing out minute coincidences and corre- 
 spondences between the earlier and later revela- 
 tions, and to confirm their faith by discover- 
 ing allusions to, or prefigurations of, the Christ 
 of God in an hundred mysterious personages, 
 institutions, incidents, types, promises, and pre- 
 dictions, which are scattered along the track of 
 the Hebrew sacred literature. But for the 
 purpose of convincing the unbeliever that 
 method of dealing with Scripture is not avail- 
 able. We must not ask him to look at the 
 Old Testament with Christian eyes, nor expect 
 him to accept the meanings which evangelists 
 and apostles have taught us to find init. In: 
 arguing with him we must take the ancient 
 records simply as they appear of themselves to 
 the critical student, and insist on nothing but 
 that which historical research or philological 
 analysis can sustain or render probable. Theuses 
 made of prophecy in the New Testament, or in 
 later Christian writings, may indeed set us on 
 looking for meanings that might otherwise 
 have escaped our notice; but it is only when 
 those meanings turn out to be firmly rooted in 
 the original documents, that they become avail- 
 able for our purpose. 
 
 But after putting aside every topic that is 
 
ITS MATERIALS. 41 
 ‘inconsistent with this condition of all sound 
 reasoning, there will remain, as lam persuaded 
 and hope to show, abundant materials for con- 
 structing a real and forcible argument from 
 prophecy, on behalf of the divine origin and 
 authority of the Christian revelation. No cri- 
 ticism can get rid of the Old Testament. After 
 sceptical ingenuity has done its utmost, in 
 scrutinizing the origin, date, integrity, and 
 purport of the various portions of the Old Tes- 
 tament Canon, the venerable Book still stands 
 and witnesses before the world, as it has stood 
 and witnessed for more than two thousand 
 years. very part of it is universally acknow- 
 ledged to be prior to Christianity. Of the earli- 
 est portions the date is admitted by the most 
 adverse critics to be not less than a thousand 
 years before the beginning of our era; and the 
 latest preceded the rise of Christianity by at 
 least more than one century. It was the gradual 
 growth of ages, within the bosom of a single - 
 small nation, whose unique history and spiritual 
 development it mirrors and records; so that, 
 however varied and diverse its parts may be, 
 it is no miscellaneous collection of alien and 
 irreconcileable documents, but an organic whole, 
 bound together by the unity that springs out 
 of a continuous growth and progress. And the 
 
42 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 question to which we want a solution is this: 
 Does this remarkable Book exhibit a real pre- 
 sentiment and foreshadowing of the Chris- 
 tianity that was born into the world after its 
 ' close, of such a nature as to suggest a divine 
 ordering and connexion, a divinely-wrought 
 fulfilment of a divinely-inspired forecast? If 
 this question can be answered in the aflirma- 
 tive, then the argument from prophecy may be 
 justly reckoned among the defences of Chris- 
 ' tianity. 
 
 - 
 
JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 43 
 
 : SECTION III. 
 
 THE HISTORICAL CONNEXION BETWEEN JUDAISM 
 AND CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Tux reader has now been detained long enough 
 with preliminary discussions, and will perhaps 
 be impatient to enter on the argument itself. 
 Tf in consequence of what has been premised he 
 finds himself, as I hope he will, in a better posi- 
 tion to estimate the nature and tenour of the 
 argument, and its place in the wide scheme of 
 Christian evidence, the time already occupied 
 will not have been thrown away. 
 
 What-I shall endeavour to show is this; 
 that Hebrew prophecy was animated and per- 
 vaded by certain great presentiments and ) 
 aspirations, which transcended the natural 
 operation and foresight of the unassisted reason ; 
 and which were afterwards realized and ful- | 
 filled in Christianity, in a way that equally 
 transcended the powers of human nature, and 
 indicated a divine ordering and guidance of the 
 course of events. 
 
“~ 
 
 44 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 Our first step must be, to establish the his- 
 torical connexion of the two religions which 
 meet at the junction of the Old Testament with 
 the New. . 
 
 Christianity undoubtedly was rooted in the 
 soil of Judaism, and sprang, with whatever 
 superadded elements, out of Jewish thought and 
 culture. How Judaism was gradually formed, 
 and attained the strength and temper to serve 
 as the ground or cradle of the new religion, we 
 learn from the books collected together in the 
 Old Testament, which not only recorded the 
 national history, but also gave expression, age 
 after age, to whatever of religious knowledge 
 and spiritual attainment was highest and best 
 in the nation at their respective dates. Com- 
 paring these books, whether of history, or 
 devotion, or moral and prophetical instruction, 
 with the literature of the rest of the ancient 
 world, it becomes manifest that they present 
 to our view a development that had no parallel 
 elsewhere. Small though the land was, a mere 
 strip of country in a corner of the vast con- 
 tinent, and insignificant as the people were by 
 the side of the mighty empires of the Hast 
 and West, there sprang out of them a succession 
 of historians, of psalmists, and of prophets, 
 which was absolutely unique, and by the united 
 
JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 45 
 
 labours of whom was built up a system of 
 religious thought, which, for sublimity of con- 
 ception and moral elevation, immeasurably 
 surpassed all contemporary systems. It was 
 there alone that the one, eternal, everliving 
 God was set forth as the Maker and Ruler of 
 all things, the infinitely righteous and holy 
 One, rich in mercy and bounteous in giving, 
 the strength and salvation of His people; there 
 alone that man was represented as the child of 
 the heavenly Parent, formed in His image, 
 taken into covenant with Him, and destined to 
 find his strength and peace by humble trust 
 and obedient righteousness. For such concep- 
 tions of God and man, and the relation between 
 them, conceptions so lofty, so spiritual, and so 
 fraught with moral energy and fruitfulness, we 
 search in vain among all the other religions of 
 antiquity. 
 
 Out of the midst of this Judaism in its ma- 
 turity sprang Christianity, incorporating all its 
 purest and noblest elements, and combining 
 them into a universal religion, which has 
 gathered all the foremost nations within its 
 embrace. And just as Judaism had no parallel 
 in the old world, so has Christianity no parallel 
 in the new. Itis unique in its spirituality, 
 its beneficence, its power over the heart, its 
 
4G THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 A Pat itgiel nat Ns CERN NEDA 0S 6D ee aa 
 expansive energy and its moral fruitfulness. 
 True it unhappily is, that Christendom at large 
 has not yet reached the high level of Christian- 
 ity, any more than the Jewish people in general 
 ever rose to the height of the religion set 
 forth by their psalmists and prophets. But 
 the ideal is not the less noble and true, because 
 through human infirmity the actual always falls 
 below it. The Judaism of the later psalms 
 and prophetical writings, and the Christianity 
 of the New Testament, are the noblest moral 
 and spiritual growths of the old and new 
 worlds respectively, and they form an historic 
 sequence in organic connexion with each. 
 other. * 
 
 Now to the theist these facts cannot fail to b 
 
 of the highest significance. Believing that 
 God really governs the world, and guides the 
 course of human progress, he cannot ascribe to 
 blind accident or unconscious fate this remark- 
 able development and sequence, which more 
 than any other has moulded and fashioned the 
 destinies of mankind. He must believe God to 
 have been in some way concerned in it, if not 
 by special interferences and revelations, yet at 
 least by a providential oversight and unperceived 
 euidance. To be consistent with his theistic 
 view of the world, he can scarcely fall short of 
 
JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 47 
 
 discerning in Judaism a preparation divinely 
 adapted to lead on to the universal religion of 
 Christianity. If the phrase ‘God in history ” 
 has any meaning at all, it cannot mean less 
 than this. For to suppose that there should 
 be a providential superintendence and divine 
 guidance in the rise and fall of nations, and 
 their advance in the arts and sciences of civiliza- 
 tion, and not in the noblest and most influential 
 erowths of religion, seems too inconsistent and 
 improbable to be maintained by any one.’ But 
 if in the purpose of God Judaism did prepare 
 the way for Christianity, and formed the system 
 . of moral and religious thought out of which 
 the latter grew, it plaimly follows that there 
 must have been such a relation, such a correspon- 
 dence, between them, as to invest the earlier in 
 some sense with the aspect of.a prophecy or prog- 
 nostication, and the later with that of a fulfil- 
 ment.’ ‘The young shoot is a prophecy of the 
 full-grown tree; the child of the mature man; 
 
 1 Even the celebrated rationalistic writer, De Wette, 
 acknowledges this, in a striking passage quoted from one of 
 his occasional papers by Bahr, and reproduced in Fairbairn’s 
 Typology of Scripture, p. 45: “ Christianity sprang out of 
 Judaism. . . The entire Old Testament is a great prophecy, 
 a great type of Him who was to come and has come..... 
 Christianity lay in Judaism as leaves and fruit do in the seed, 
 though certainly it needed the divine sun to bring them 
 forth.” 
 
48 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 the original sketch of the completed picture. In 
 this sense, in a divinely-ordered world, such as 
 the theist admits our world to be, Judaism 
 gradually fashioned, and growing to maturity 
 during more than a thousand years, must be con- 
 sidered as a providential preparation for, and 
 fore-shadowing of, the Christianity that at length 
 rose out of it, and in completing it absorbed and 
 replaced it. 
 
 This, however, is only the primary step in the 
 argument, a laying out of the ground on which 
 itis to be built up. We can conceive of a 
 natural progress of our race, under the general 
 superintendence of God’s providence, unaccom- 
 panied by any supernatural interference or. 
 special revelation. The religious instinct or 
 sentiment of mankind might be supposed to 
 unfold itself by its own inherent energy, and to 
 advance by a purely natural growth from stage 
 to stage of spiritual culture, each being in turn 
 a stepping-stone to a higher; and it might be 
 urged, as indeed it is urged by the naturalistic 
 school of theology, that Judaism and Christian- 
 ity are simply two of these stages of develop- 
 ment, and that others may be expected to follow, 
 on the same line indeed, but dropping by the 
 way the unsound and fantastic notions of the 
 Past, and exhibiting novel and improved ele- 
 
JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 49 
 
 ments of religious thought. In such an order 
 of things a religion originating in revelation 
 and possessed of divine authority would, of 
 course, find no place. 
 
 We must therefore go on to inquire, whether 
 the historical and organic connexion between 
 Judaism and Christianity, in virtue of which 
 the one must be considered as in some sort and 
 measure a preparation for and adumbration of 
 the other, was of such a kind as to transcend. > 
 any effects which can be reasonably attributed to — 
 the unassisted religious instinct of mankind, and 
 to imply the direct or supernatural interposition 
 of God. : 
 
 To this inquiry the answer must primarily 
 be sought in the great specific forecasts which 
 form the burden of Hebrew prophecy, and im- 
 part to it its unique character and force. These 
 forecasts are three in number, and are to be 
 gathered from a survey of the ancient Scriptures. 
 To making that survey in a manner that will be 
 sufficient, [hope, for theargument, without being 
 too protracted and wearisome to the reader, the 
 following sections will be devoted. 
 
50 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 SECTION IY. 
 
 THE FORECAST OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 
 
 Tue first of the characteristic forecasts of 
 Hebrew prophecy that invites attention is its 
 forecast of a Universal Religion. 
 
 The Jewish policy was founded on the idea of 
 isolation. Israel on one side, the world on the 
 other; Israel holy to the Lord, the world 
 profane; Israel in God’s covenant, the world. 
 alien from it; such was the conception that lay 
 at the root of the national life, and was embodied. 
 in the ordinances and institutions of the law, 
 and infused a fiery strength into the patriotism 
 of all orders and ranks in the land. . 
 
 The God of Israel was Jehovah who had 
 ‘severed them from all other people that they 
 should be His,’’? and whose covenant with them 
 was based on this separation of them for Him- 
 self; ‘‘ Thou art an holy people unto the Lord 
 thy God; the Lord thy God hath chosen thee 
 to be a special people unto Himself, above all 
 
 1 Ley. xx. 26. 
 
A UNIVERSAL RELIGION. ew! 
 
 ed ren eer ye renter ppt nena oat ae — wR: Yveeaaria 
 
 people that are upon the face of thi earth.’?? 
 Of this peculiar consecration the manifest 
 presence of the Lord with them was to be the 
 standing sign. ‘‘ Wherein shall it be known,” 
 said Moses, “that [ and Thy people have found 
 grace in Thy sight? is it not in that Thou 
 goest with us? ? so shall we be separated, I and 
 Thy people, from all the people that are on the 
 face of the earth.”’* The boastful style of the 
 nation accordin gly was, ““ We who are Jews by 
 
 nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles ”’:* and 
 their dearest belief that ‘‘ the Lord had ghéven 
 Israel for His peculiar treasure,’ while the 
 Gentiles were “ aliens from the commonwealth of 
 Israel, strangers from the covenants of pr omise, 
 haying no hope, and without God in the 
 world.”’® 
 
 Of this idea, of the national consecration to 
 Jehovah, the prophets were the foremost ex- 
 ponents. As patriots and politicians they were 
 possessed. by it. It inspired their burning 
 addresses to their fellow-countrymen, and 
 prescribed their policy towards the surrounding 
 nations. To keep Israel a separate and holy 
 people, dwelling apart in their mountain fast- 
 nesses under the peculiar protection of Jehovah, 
 2 Deut. vii. 6. 3 Exod, xxxili. 16. # Gal. ii, 15. 
 
 5 Ps, exxxv, 4. 6 Eph. ii. 11, 12. 
 E2 
 
BS THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 y Rabel au SLA ey 1 SSS yk oO Oe ee 
 
 unentangled by foreign alliances, and uncon- 
 taminated by heathen customs, was the great 
 aim which grew up with the nation’s growth, 
 and was handed on from prophet to prophet 
 with accumulating intensity; and which survived 
 the captivity to shape the reformation under 
 Ezra and Nehemiah,’ to animate Jewish 
 heroism in the Maccabzean wars, and finally in 
 a perverted and intractable form to dash the 
 nation to pieces against the mighty power of 
 Rome.* 
 
 It need not be said how intensely local this 
 
 7 Ezra x.; Neh. xiii. 
 
 8 In Canon Rawlinson’s St. Paul in Damascus and Arabia 
 (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) there is a vivid 
 description of the isolation kept up by the Jews living in 
 heathen cities under the Roman empire: “The Jew would 
 have no intercourse with his alien neighbours except for 
 trading purposes; he would neither intermarry with them, 
 nor take his meals with them, nor attend their places of 
 education, nor join in their amusements, nor take part in their 
 political gatherings, nor buy his meat in their markets, nor 
 exchange a greeting with them except sullenly. Much less 
 would he consent to any religious communion. Every grove, 
 every temple, every place where worship was offered to a god 
 whom he could not distinctly identify with his own God, was 
 an abomination to him. He viewed the heathen as alto- 
 gether given up to atheism or idolatry. It was his object to 
 keep himself pure, so. far as he possibly could, from all 
 ceremonial as well’ as from all moral pollution; and for this 
 purpose it was necessary that he should separate himself as 
 completely as he could from those of another religion.” 
 
 % 
 
A UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 5d 
 
 a ip 
 
 idea made the national religion; how it bound 
 down ordinance and ceremonial to a fixed 
 centre and limited priesthood, and set the . 
 whole mind of the people against the thought 
 of the removal of the barriers that fenced them 
 round, and the admission of the outlying 
 world to share freely in their peculiar 
 privileges and honours. Nothing was so 
 exasperating to the Jew as the hint that 
 Irsael’s blessing might pass away to the 
 heathen ;* or that a prophet might be with- 
 drawn from Jerusalem by the mandate, “ Depart, 
 for I will send thee. far hence unto the 
 Gentiles.” * 3 
 
 Yet in spite of this hereditary training and 
 these national prepossessions, there was a clear 
 ‘strain of an opposite kind ever blending with 
 the utterances of the prophets. Notwithstanding 
 the fiery patriotism and religious exclusive- 
 ness in which they were bred, a vision was 
 continually rising before their gaze of the 
 sweeping away of the separating barriers, within 
 which their people “dwelt alone and were not 
 numbered among the nations,” and of the 
 establishment of a universal religion, which 
 should gather within its embrace all the tribes 
 
 9 Luke iv. 25—29. T Acts xxii. 21, 22. 
 2 Num. xxiii, 9. 
 
54 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 of mankind. The very promise in which the 
 nation read the original charta of its privileges 
 asserted the future extension of its blessing to 
 the world at large: ‘In thy seed shall all the ’ 
 nations of the earth be blessed.”* The more 
 glowing, in after ages, became the prophetic 
 anticipations of isael’s future greatness, the 
 less exclusive was their tenour and _ scope, 
 
 and the more familiar to prophecy grew the 
 idea that God would at last “visit the Gentiles, 
 to take out of them a people for His name.”* 
 Let us listen to the strain, as it peals loud and 
 clear across the ages. 
 
 Thus sang the prophets. as they bent their 
 ardent gaze on the future :— 
 
 “Tn the last days when the mountain of the 
 Lord’s house shall be established in the top of 
 the mountains, and shall be exalted above the 
 hills, all nations shall fow unto it. And many 
 people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go 
 up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house 
 of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of 
 His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for 
 out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word 
 of the Lord from Jerusalem.’ ” 
 
 When the light of Zion shall come, and the 
 
 3 Gen, xxii. 18. 4 Acts xy. 14. 
 5 Isa. ii. 2,33; Micah iv. 1, 2. 
 
A UNIVERSAL RELIGION. a0 
 
 glory of the Lord shall arise upon her, the 
 Gentiles shall come to her light, and kings to 
 the brightness of her rising. Her gates shall 
 be open continually, that men may bring unto 
 her the forces of the Gentiles, and that their 
 kings may be brought.° Her God shall become 
 King over all the earth ; in that day shall there 
 be one Lord, and His name one.’ From one 
 new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to 
 another, all flesh shall come to worship before — 
 the Lord.* He will pour out His Spirit upon 
 all flesh.? His salvation shall be unto the ends 
 of the earth. From the rising of the sun and 
 from the west they shall know that there is none 
 beside God ;? and the earth shall be full of the 
 knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the 
 waters cover the sea.° 
 
 The little stone, cut out without hands, the 
 emblem of the Kingdom which the God of 
 heaven will set up, and which shall never be 
 destroyed, shall become a great mountain, and 
 shall fill the whole earth.* The Lord has sworn 
 by Himself, and the word has gone out of His 
 mouth in righteousness, that unto Him every 
 knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear.’ 
 6 Jsa.Ix.1,2,]1. 7 Zech. xiv. 9. 8 Isa. Ixvi. 23. 
 
 9 Joel ii. 28. 1 Tsa, xlv. 22; xlix. 6. 2 Isa. xlv. 6. 
 3 Hab. ii. 14. 4 Dan. ii. 35, 44. 5 Isa. xlv. 23. 
 
56 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 US el Pes tach Sols GO aa Dpee Mn LNs Ue a eal 
 So from the rising of the sun even unto the 
 going down of the same, His name shall be 
 ereat among the Gentiles; and in every place 
 incense shall be offered unto His name, and a 
 pure offering; for His name shall be great among 
 the Gentiles.* 
 
 So sang the Hebrew prophets, and we know 
 what the result has been. Are we not justified 
 then in thinking, that in this forecast of a 
 universal religion, embracing all nations, and 
 gathering them to the worship of the one 
 serail God to whom Israel was consecrated, 
 we hear the ring of genuine prophecy? Itwas 
 a forecast which was neither in harmony with 
 the exclusiveness of the national genius, nor 
 could have been borrowed from any foreign 
 source. Religions, in those times, were of the 
 soil; each people had its own gods and its own 
 worship, and was content to let the others keep | 
 their own. There were no exclusive claims, at 
 least outside Judaism, to the possession of the 
 truth; no zeal to propagate a creed or a ritual; 
 no looking forward to religious conquests or 
 spiritual empire. Whence, then, in the bosom 
 alone of the petty tribe of Israel, the most 
 isolated and the most jealously exclusive of all 
 peoples, sprang up, in despite of all their pre- 
 
 6 “Mal. i. 11. 
 
A UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 57 
 possessions, their glowing anticipation of a reli- 
 gion that should go forth “ conquering and to 
 conquer,”’ and in the common possession of 
 which there should be ‘‘no difference between the 
 Jew and the Greek, and the same Lord over all 
 should be rich. unto all that call upon Him ?” * 
 Does not the answer spring to our lips? It is 
 because “ prophecy came notin old time by the 
 will of man, but holy men of God spake as they 
 were moved by the Holy Ghost.”” 
 
 ts Rey? wit, 2a.) 8 Rom. x. 12. 9 2 Pet. i. 21. 
 
58 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 THE MESSIANIC FORECAST—FIRST ELEMENT, THE 
 FINAL TRIUMPH OF GOOD—SECOND ELEMENT, 
 A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. 
 
 Tue second great forecast of Hebrew prophecy 
 which we have to establish .is one that more or 
 less pervades and colours almost every part of 
 it, from first to last. This is the presentiment 
 of a Messiah, whom God would raise up in the 
 latter days, to set all crooked things straight, 
 and establish an everlasting kingdom of right- 
 eousness and truth. 
 
 The Messianic idea was a complex one, and 
 each of its parts requires separate considera- 
 tion. 
 
 At the foundation of it lay the ineradicable 
 conviction of the ultimate triumph of good over 
 evil. The genuine prophet, in whose heart the 
 divine word was “asa burning fire shut up in his 
 bones,’’! walked among his fellow-men as one 
 who was set apart, and commissioned to be in 
 an especial sense a servant of righteousness, a 
 
 1. Jer.xx.. 9. 
 
THE MESSIANIC FORECAST. 59 
 
 soldier of God in the great warfare against 
 falsehood and wrong. ‘The world was the bat- 
 tle-field, and Israel was chosen out of the na- 
 tions to be the witness for God, the representa- 
 tive of His cause, the earthly image of His 
 kingdom, the centre of the theocracy from 
 which the world might learn the idea of the 
 divine rule over the children of men. And 
 however the long battle might fluctuate from 
 one generation to another, and evil seem to 
 approach its triumph, at one time through 
 Israel’s perverseness or apostasy, at another 
 through the prevalence of the world’s unhal- 
 lowed tyranny and godless might, in the pro- | 
 phet’s mind the final result was never doubtful. 
 The enemies of God must perish, falsehood and 
 wrong must be swept out of existence, the 
 night of conflict and sorrow must at length pass 
 away before the dawn of the everlasting day ; 
 and the blissful time should surely arrive, when 
 “the Lord should reign in Mount Zion, and in 
 Jerusalem, and before His ancients, glori- 
 ously.’’ ? 
 
 Armed with this inspiriting conviction, the 
 prophet threw himself into the thick of the 
 ‘conflict. By turns a preacher of righteousness, 
 a reprover of sin, a consoler in affliction, a 
 
 2 Isa. xxiv. 28. 
 
60 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 herald of deliverance, a denouncer of ven- 
 geance on the insolent heathen, a patriot, poli- 
 tician, and religious instructor, he sustained the 
 cause of God, and led the little army of hght 
 in the part of the world-long warfare that fell 
 in ‘his own days. How often the battle would 
 have to be renewed, and to what remote era the 
 ultimate victory might be deferred, it was not 
 given to him to know; but across the din and 
 the turmoil his straining eyes ever caught faint 
 but rapture-giving glimpses of triumphant truth 
 and goodness, filling the world with gladness 
 in the unclouded light of Jehovah’s counte- 
 nance. 
 
 Now I do not found on this elementary par 
 of the Messianic idea, taken by itself, any claim 
 toa supernatural inspiration for the prophets of 
 Israel. It might well have grown of itself out 
 of their intense theistic instinct. They needed 
 no voice from heaven to assure them, that the 
 world of a righteous God could not finally and 
 for ever be the prey of evil. The eternal 
 power, wisdom, and goodness which made and 
 ruled the world were to them a sufficient pledge 
 of its ultimate redemption. 
 
 But the case is altered when from this ele- 
 mentary idea we go on to the next part of the 
 Messianic conception. For the prophets were 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. 61 
 
 enabled to foresee something more than the bare 
 issue of the conflict. It was given to them also 
 to perceive, that the triumph and the glory 
 would centre ina Person. The burden of their 
 prophecies was not only redemption, but a Re- 
 deemer. ‘This was a forecast to which neither 
 human sagacity, nor the unassisted theistic in- 
 stinct, would naturally give birth. The victory 
 _ of good over evil might easily have been ex- 
 pected to be wrought otherwise; by a gradual 
 amelioration, by a “stream of tendency,” by 
 each servant of righteousness contributing a 
 little towards it; so that it would march on- 
 wards with an almost insensible progress, like 
 the ordinary growths of civilization and science. 
 But such general ideas as these did not enter 
 into the prophetic forecast of the future age of 
 purity and happiness. That fastened on a 
 Person, and was summed up in a Deliverer 
 anointed for His office by God; in a Messiah, 
 and not in an impersonal tendency or growth. 
 
 That such was the real. expectation of the 
 prophets, and is the true interpretation of their 
 utterances, and not a mere gloss unwarrantably 
 put on them by Christian expositors in subse- 
 quent times, we have the clear and decisive 
 attestation of historical fact. 
 
 The Messianic idea was indubitably not’ of 
 
62 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 Christian, but Jewish, origin. Long before the 
 
 birth of Jesus, the whole mind of the chosen 
 
 nation was impregnated and possessed by the 
 expectation of a Messiah.° That it was-so we 
 have ample evidence in the ancient interpreta- 
 tions of prophecy recorded in the Targums, and 
 in the earlier Rabbinical writings, and in con- 
 temporary Pagan literature; indeed’ the fact 
 is universally acknowledged, and is beyond dis- 
 pute* The reader of the New Testament finds 
 it underlying the sacred narratives, in a man- 
 ner which leaves no doubt of its historical 
 reality. He will remember how, when John 
 the Baptist was interrogated by the Pharisees 
 about his office,® and again when the claims of 
 Jesus were under debate,’ the question was 
 never raised, “Is a Messiah to be looked for P”’ 
 but only, “Is this the right person?” The 
 truth of the expectation was universally con- 
 ceded, and the entire debate turned on the 
 identification of the Claimant. How could this 
 
 *3 Dean Milman’s Hist. of Christ., vol. i. p. 54. 
 
 4 “Jt is very certain that the Jews, before the coming of 
 Christ, gave this construction to their Scriptures; they even 
 looked beyond the letter of their sacred books, and conceived 
 the testimony of the Messiah to be the soul and end of the 
 commandment.”—Bp. Hurd, Second Sermon on Prophecy. 
 
 5 John i. 19, 20. 
 
 6 Matt. xi. 3 xxvi. 63; John vil. 26; Acts ix. 22. 
 
 ee 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. 63 
 
 universal conviction of a Messiah to come ever 
 have prevailed, if the ancient Scriptures had 
 not testified concerning Him with no uncertain 
 voiceP It is utterly beside the mark to say, 
 that subsequent events led to a meaning being 
 put on the Scriptures which did not truly 
 belong to them. The meaning was found there 
 before there were any events to suggest it. If 
 we cannot find it there now, surely the cause 
 must be sought in our own blindness, not in the 
 silence or obscurity of the written prophecies. 
 
 The student of the Old Testament, who is 
 not content with a superficial glance at its con- 
 tents, and does not approach it with a predeter- 
 mination to shut his eyes to everything that 
 does not square with his theories, will be at no 
 loss to understand how the Messianic expecta- 
 tion arose out of its teaching. To him it will 
 be plain that if no personal Messiah, of more 
 than human dignity and grace, be foretold in 
 it, a large part of the prophetical writings 
 would be justly chargeable with unmeaning 
 and incredible exaggeration; and the more 
 deeply he enters into the spirit of those writ- 
 ings, and perceives their moral earnestness and 
 ardour for truth and reality, the more will such 
 a view of them appear to him unworthy and 
 inadmissible. 
 
64 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 It is true that each prophet spoke from his 
 own standpoint, dealt with the affairs of his 
 own time, and clothed his anticipations of the 
 future in the form and costume furnished to 
 him by contemporary events. This was in ac- 
 cordance with the genius of Hebrew prophecy ; 
 it ever rooted itself in the present, and bor- 
 rowed its shape and colour from the surround- 
 ing circumstances. Hence to a superficial 
 observer it might easily appear to be always ~ 
 limited to the immediate circle of events, and 
 to have no outlook towards the distant future. 
 But a closer examination will soon lead us to 
 distrust this first impression. We have only 
 to mark the course which each great prophetic 
 announcement invariably ran. Beginning 
 with the present emergency, the contemporary 
 fears, or sufferings, or sins, and delivering such 
 messages of encouragement, or such reproofs, 
 consolations, or warnings, as the immediate 
 case demanded, the prophet soon breaks away 
 from the comparatively petty occasion ; and 
 lifting his glance to the heavens, and widening | 
 it to the ends of the earth, rises into sublime 
 strains of universal judgment, deliverance, 
 and triumph, such as entirely transcend the 
 interests and events of his own day. 
 
 To make it clear how the prophetic utter- 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. 65 
 
 ances were continually rising from the level of 
 the immediate circumstances to the loftier topic 
 of Messianic hopes, quotation at some length 
 is unavoidable; and I proceed, as briefly as 
 possible, to lay before the reader some of the 
 leading instances, 
 
 Here is a psalmist’ declaring that, in spite 
 of ail opposition, God will set His King on His 
 holy hill of Zion. Probably the establishment 
 of David’s throne over the whole of Israel is 
 intended, and furnishes the immediate theme; 
 at any rate, some event of that class must have 
 prompted the psalm. But no sooner is the 
 announcement made than the language swells 
 to loftier proportions, and altogether trans- 
 cends the occasion. ‘Thou art My Son, this 
 day have I begotten thee. Ask of Me, and I 
 will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, 
 and the uttermost parts’ of the earth for thy 
 possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod 
 of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a 
 potter’s vessel.” | 
 
 Here is another psalmist,* singing apparently 
 of the splendour of Solomon’s reign. Peaceful 
 prosperity, abundant riches, tribute from the 
 neighbouring tribes, a wise and just administra- 
 tion, form the immediate burden of his song. 
 
 Pas 8 Ps. xxii. 
 FE 
 
66. THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 But when presently we observe him breaking 
 away from the local and temporary current of 
 events, to enlarge his strain with the far vaster 
 topics of an everlasting dominion and a divine 
 glory and beneficence ; when of his royal hero 
 he pours forth the stupendous prediction, “‘ He 
 shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from 
 the river unto the ends of the earth. All kings 
 shall fall down before him, all nations shall serve 
 him. He shall deliver the needy when he 
 erieth, the poor also, and him that hath no 
 helper. His name shall endure for ever; his 
 name shall be continued as long as the sun; 
 and men shall be blessed in him; all nations 
 shall call him blessed ;” how can we acquit the 
 sweet singer of preposterous and almost blas- 
 phemous exaggeration, unless on the suppo- 
 sition that the spirit of prophecy has seized 
 upon him, and that “a greater than Solomon 
 is here’??? 
 
 So also is it with others of the psalms, which 
 like those just cited appear to have originated 
 in the praise of some victorious or popular 
 king. 
 
 There is, for instance, the marriage ode,’ in 
 which the royal bridegroom is not only praised 
 for his beauty and grace, but addressed in such 
 
 9 Matt. xii. 42, ' Ps, xlyv. 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. 67 
 
 terms of laudation and honour as rise into a 
 strain of worship. ‘Thy throne, O God, is for 
 ever and ever; the sceptre of thy kingdom is a 
 right sceptre. Thou lovest righteousness, and 
 hatest wickedness; therefore God, thy God, 
 hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness 
 above thy fellows.” 
 
 There is the psalm? of the exaltation, of 
 
 which we have lost all trace of the historical »,— 
 
 occasion. “The Lord said unto my lord,’ Sit 
 thou at My right hand, until I make thine 
 enemies thy footstool. The Lord hath sworn, 
 and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever, 
 after the order of Melchisedek.” 
 
 Then there is the probably later psalm,” of 
 the pleading of David’s covenant on behalf of 
 the nation in its adversity, where the promise 
 outruns all local and temporal limitations, and 
 swells into a strain which can belong only to a 
 far grander future. ‘I will make him My first- 
 born, higHer than the kings of the earth. My 
 mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and 
 My covenant shall stand fast with him. His 
 
 2 Ps.°cx. 
 
 3 Probably equivalent in its original and lower meaning to 
 “my lord the king’ According to some expositors this 
 Psalm commemorates the going forth to war of David, or 
 
 some later king, with a divine augury of triumph. 
 4~-Pai Iexxixs 
 
 FQ 
 
68 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 seed also will I make to endure for ever, and 
 his throne as the days of heaven. My covenant 
 will I not break, nor alter the thing that. is 
 gone out of My lips. Once have I sworn by 
 My holiness that I will not lie unto David. 
 His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne 
 as the sun before Me. It shall be established 
 for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness 
 in heaven.” 
 
 At a later date still, in a psalm® evidently 
 composed after the Captivity, when the tem- 
 poral royalty had finally departed from David’s 
 line, the like assurance is once more given. 
 “The Lord hath sworn in truth unto David. 
 He will not shrink from it; Of the fruit of 
 thy body will I set upon thy throne. For 
 the Lord hath chosen Zion; He hath desired 
 it for His habitation. There will I make the 
 horn. of David to bud; I have ordained a 
 lamp for Mine anointed. His enemies will I 
 clothe with shame, but upon himself shall his 
 crown flourish.” 
 
 Now let it be remembered that these and 
 other psalms like them were the compositions 
 of an order of persons, whose especial mission 
 it was to protest against idolatry, and jealously 
 guard the honour of the God of Israel; and 
 
 5 Ps, cxxxli. 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. 69 
 
 that their fervid strains were no independent 
 nor unconnected utterances, but parts of a- 
 great stream of progressive teaching, embodying 
 the deepest convictions and brightest hopes of 
 the nation, into whose solemn worship they 
 were grafted as a permanent and most precious 
 element. Let this be borne in mind, and I 
 think the conclusion will be reached, that no 
 explanation of them is sufficient or fairly 
 probable, which does not recognize in them a 
 meaning transcending the temporary occasion, 
 and rising into a mysterious forecast of One 
 greater oe David or Solomon or any of 
 their successors, who in the latter days should 
 be manifested as God’s anointed King, the 
 Messiah who should bring about “the restitution 
 of all things.” ® 
 
 This inference is greatly strengthened, when 
 from the Psalms we turn to the prophetical 
 books, which, beginning from about the middle 
 or end of the ninth century before our era, 
 stretch across a space of perhaps six or seven 
 hundred eventful years. The exact dates of 
 the earliest and latest books may be doubtful, 
 but the uncertainty of the limits does not 
 affect their testimony, except in one instance, 
 that of the apocalyptic book of Daniel, to 
 
 § Acts ili, 21. 
 
70 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 —_——— 
 
 which special reference will be made in its 
 place. 
 
 How rich Isaiah is in grand Messianic - 
 anticipations, ever piercing with rapt and eager 
 vision beyond the surrounding circumstances, 
 and exhausting all the resources of poetic 
 imagery to portray the glory that seemed to 
 the prophet’s eye to glow in the far future! 
 
 When in a dangerous political crisis, arising 
 out of a confederation between the kings of 
 Syria and of Israel to attack and reduce to 
 subjection the kingdom of Judah, Isaiah was - 
 instructed to foretell the breaking up of the 
 alliance and the death of the hostile kings, and 
 to give Ahaz, the faint-hearted king of Judah, 
 a sign, in the birth of a child, of the coming 
 deliverance; his prevision extends far beyond 
 the occasion, and his language labours with 
 the thought of a greater child and a more 
 glorious deliverance. The prophetic rapture 
 comes upon him, and with kindled imagination 
 and hope he foresees a time, when “a virgin 
 shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call 
 his name Immanuel;”’ and breaks forth into 
 
 7 Isa. vii. 14. “ Which being interpreted is, God with us ” 
 (Matt. i. 23.) The English reader needs perhaps to be warned 
 that Isaiah’s language does not necessarily imply a miraculous 
 conception. 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. 71 
 
 ee 
 
 the exulting strain, “The people that walked 
 in darkness have seen a great light; they that 
 dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon 
 them hath the light shined... .. For unto us 
 a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the 
 government shall be upon his shoulder; and 
 his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, 
 the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the 
 Prince of Peace. Ofthe increase of his govern- 
 ment and peace there shall be no end, upon the 
 throne of David and upon his kingdom, to 
 order it, and to establish it with judgment and 
 with justice, from henceforth even for ever. 
 The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform 
 this.’’* 
 
 Amidst all the confusions of the time, with 
 dissensions and idolatries and evil doings within 
 the land, and the ominous shadow of the 
 mighty Assyrian empire darkening over it from 
 the outside, on Isaiah’s mind rose a vision of 
 the setting right of all things, and the coming 
 of a golden age. The passage must be given 
 at length, for it is too beautiful to be abridged. 
 “There shall come forth a rod out of the stem 
 of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his 
 roots; and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon 
 him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, 
 
 8 Isa. ix. 2, 6,7. 
 
72 |THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of 
 knowledge and. of the fear of the Lord; and 
 shall make him of quick understanding in the 
 fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after 
 the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the 
 hearing of his ears; but with righteousness 
 shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity 
 for the meek of the earth; and he shall smite 
 the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with 
 the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. 
 And righteousness shall be the girdle of his 
 loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. 
 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,and 
 the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and 
 the calf and the young lion and the fatling 
 together ; and a little child shall lead them. 
 And the sucking child shall play on the hole 
 of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his 
 hand on the cockatrice’ den.. They shall not 
 hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain; for 
 the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the 
 Lord as the waters cover the sea.’’® 
 
 Again, under the dread of invasion by 
 Assyria, when the people, forgetting the cove- 
 nant of Jehovah with them, were clamouring 
 for an alliance with Egypt, and Isaiah lifted up 
 his voice to rebuke this trust in an arm of flesh, 
 
 9 Tega ixi 1-9: 
 
A GLORIOUS: MESSIAH. io 
 
 and to assure them that if they “turned unto 
 Him from whom the children of Israel have 
 deeply revolted,’ “the Lord of Hosts would 
 come down to fight for mount Zion, and for the 
 hill thereof ;””’ the prophet’s thoughts instinct- 
 ively sprang forward to a better time, when 
 “a King shall reign in righteousness, and 
 princes shall rule in judgment. And a man 
 shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and 
 a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in 
 a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a 
 weary land. And the eyes of them that see 
 shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear 
 shall hearken. ‘The heart also of the rash shall 
 understand knowledge, and the tongue of the 
 stammerer shall be ready to speak plainly ;” 
 a time when “the Spirit shall be poured out 
 from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful 
 field, and the fruitful field be counted for 
 a forest. Then judgment shall dwell in the 
 wilderness, and righteousness remain in the 
 fruitful field. And the work of righteousness 
 shall.be peace, and the effect of righteousness 
 quietness and assurance for ever.” ” 
 
 Once more, in that wonderful series of pro- 
 phecies respecting the ‘Servant of Jehovah,” 
 which are spread through several of the most 
 
 1 Isa. xxxi. 1, 4, 6. 2 Isa. xxxii. 1—4, 15—17. 
 
74 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 remarkable and glowing chapters of our Book 
 of Isaiah, whether they belong to the remains 
 of “the son of Amoz,”* or are the production 
 of some later prophet, “the great Unnamed,” * 
 raised up in the spirit and power of Isaiah, to pro- 
 phesy during the captivity; in these most re- 
 markable outpourings of the prophetic spirit, in 
 its grandest and most spiritual mood, it seems 
 impossible to avoid perceiving how thoroughly 
 they are impregnated and pervaded by a Messi- 
 anic forecast. In that mysterious agent, elect of 
 God, called in righteousness, endowed with the 
 Divine Spirit, appointed for a covenant of the peo- 
 ple and a light of the Gentiles ; whose mission 
 should be to open the blind eyes and bring the 
 prisoners out of prison, to establish the earth 
 and cause to inherit the desolate heritages; to 
 raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the 
 preserved of Israel, and to be God’s salvation 
 unto the ends of the earth ;°\—if in that won- 
 derful personage some great anointed minister 
 of the divine purposes be not shadowed forth, it 
 seems to me that language more misleading 
 could scarcely have been employed. 
 
 From Isaiah we pass to Micah, who was 
 partly contemporary with him, and who, in the 
 alarm excited by the prospect of an Assyrian 
 
 3 Isa.i.1. 4 Ewald. 5 Isa. xlii. 1, 6, 7; xlix. 6, 8. 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. wis 
 
 invasion, encouraged the people by foretelling 
 the rise of “a man who shall be the peace 
 when the Assyrian shall come into our land.’’® 
 Here again we observe the same phenomenon, 
 of the singular widening of the prophet’s outlook, 
 and heightening of the tone of his prediction 
 beyond and above anything that was propor- 
 tioned to the occasion; suggesting that his 
 thoughts leaped forward from the circumstances 
 of the time, to anticipate the appearance on the 
 world’s scene of a far greater deliverer. ‘ But 
 thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be 
 little among the thousands of Israel, yet out of 
 thee shall he come forth unto Me that is to 
 be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have 
 been from of old, from everlasting. .. . . And 
 he shall stand and feed in the strength of the 
 Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his 
 God; and they shall abide, for now shall he be 
 great unto the ends of the earth.” 7 
 
 We pass on a century and come to the sad 
 
 6 Micah v. 5. 
 
 7 Micah v, 2, 4. The view taken by many, that this 
 passage originally indicated the Davidic lineage, rather than 
 the birthplace, of the promised deliverer seems worthy of 
 notice, as obviating the objection that a direct prediction of ~ 
 so minute a circumstance as the name of the village where 
 Christ should be born would be contrary to the general 
 method and character of Messianic prophecy. 
 
76 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 time when darkness was fast closing in on the 
 kingdom of Judah, and the throne of Dayid’s 
 line was trembling to its fall. Ere city and 
 temple went down with a crash, and the people 
 were swept into captivity, Jeremiah, the prophet 
 of tears, lifted up his voice in repeated warnings, 
 rebukes, and entreaties; and even in the midst 
 of his fears and sorrows there rose on his soul a 
 vision of distant glory, and he poured forth his 
 hope in the bright strain which occurs twice in 
 his collected prophecies :—‘ Behold the days 
 come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David 
 a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and 
 prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice 
 in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, 
 and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his 
 name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our 
 Righteousness.” § 
 
 Even from the depths of the captivity the 
 like voice of promise was heard, to keep alive 
 the hope of the exiles. By the river of Chebar 
 Ezekiel cheered the remnant of his afflicted 
 people with such Messianic passages as these: 
 “Thus saith the Lord God; Behold I, even J, 
 
 S Jer. xxiii. 5,6; xxxiii. 15,16. It is doubtful whether 
 the last clause does not mean that the ransomed nation shall 
 be called by a name signifying “Jehovah is our Righteous- 
 ness.” 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. at 
 
 will both search My sheep and seek them out. 
 . . . I will save My flock, and they shall be no 
 more a prey,. . . . and I will set up one shep- 
 herd over them, and he shall feed them, even 
 my servant David; he shall feed them, and he 
 shall be their shepherd. And I the Lord will 
 be their God, and My servant David a prince 
 among them; I, the Lord, have spoken it.’ ° 
 And again: “ And David My servant shall be 
 king over them, and they shall all have one 
 shepherd; they shall also walk in My judg- 
 ments, and observe My statutes, and do them. 
 . . . . Moreover, I will make a covenant of 
 peace with them ; and it shall bean everlasting 
 covenant with them; and I will place them, 
 and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary 
 in the midst of them for evermore.’ ! 
 
 It may be doubtful whether we are to 
 place the apocalyptic visions of the book of 
 Daniel at this epoch, or whether they belong 
 to one which followed two or three centuries 
 later. On a point on which critical opinion is 
 so much divided, it would be foolish to dogma- 
 tize. But the uncertainty of their date does 
 not materially affect their value for our pre- 
 sent purpose. Whether earlier or later, they 
 add a mystic testimony to the witness of the 
 
 9 Ezek. xxxiv. 11, 22—24. 1 Kzek, xxxvii. 24, 26. 
 
A 
 
 78 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 preceding prophets, and speak not indistinctly 
 of the connexion of God’s future and uni- 
 versal kingdom of righteousness with a personal 
 Head. ‘I saw,” says the Seer, “in the night 
 visions, and behold one like the son of man 
 came with the clouds of heaven, and came 
 to the Ancient of days, and they brought him 
 near before Him. And there was given him 
 dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all 
 people, nations, and languages should serve 
 him; hisdominion is an everlasting dominion, 
 which shall not pass away, and his kingdom 
 that which shall not be destroyed.” * 
 
 Now it is quite true, that our translation 
 gives to this passage a definiteness that does 
 not properly belong to it. The original speaks 
 only of a son of man;’ and as the explanation 
 which is afterwards granted says that ‘the 
 kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of 
 the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be 
 given to the people of the saints of the most 
 High, whose kingdom is an everlasting king- 
 dom, and all dominions shall serve and obey 
 Him ;’’* there is some reason for seeing in the 
 expression ‘‘a son of man,” at least in its 
 primary intention, a personification, in an 
 
 2 Dan. vii. 18, 14. 3 See Speaker's Commentary. 
 4 Dan. vil. 27. 
 
 a ie _ ee ~ oa 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. 79 
 
 individual representative, of the whole body of 
 the saints afterwards mentioned.’ Moreover, 
 if the later date assigned by some critics to the 
 passage be the true one, it may possibly be that 
 the immediate and primary scope of the passage 
 is limited to the triumphs of the Jews under 
 their Maccabzan leaders, as some expositors 
 maintain. 
 
 But even ‘granting the possibility of all this, 
 which for the purpose of our argument is the 
 only safe course, it may be reasonably urged 
 that the elevated tone of the whole passage 
 almost irresistibly carries on the mind to a far 
 loftier issue. The primary meaning need not 
 be the whole meaning. In the interpretation 
 of sacred prophecy, if we would catch its under- 
 tone and understand its mysterious hints, 
 nothing may be neglected. Here we can 
 hardly help thinking that the expectation of 
 the Messianic kingdom, foretold by the earlier 
 prophets, exalts and colours the seer’s thought; 
 his anticipation seems to swell beyond the 
 immediate occasion, to embrace the time when 
 that kingdom shall be set up, finally and for 
 ever, in the glorified persons of all God’s faith- 
 ful servants. And when this establishment of 
 the divine rule is mystically figured by the 
 
 ® See Stanley’s Jewish Church, vol. iii. 
 
80 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 Ber a I oo Re ihe Oar Ware ewe EF OP 
 delivery of the kingdom to “a son of man,” 
 with the utmost celestial pomp and solemnity, 
 and the widest promises of universality and 
 perpetuity, I think that we should miss some- 
 thing of the full significance of the symbols, if 
 we did not discern in them a foreshadowing of 
 One, in whom the wider and more lasting 
 dominion shall centre, as being emphatically 
 the Son of man, the Head and Representative 
 of the saints, “the First-born among many 
 brethren.’’® 
 
 We now pass on to the time subsequent to 
 the return from Babylon, when the prophetic 
 voice was again for a season heard in the land 
 of Israel. If the annihilation of the northern 
 kingdom, and the carrying away of Judah 
 into captivity, could not prevail, as we have 
 seen, to extinguish the Messianic hope, it 
 might well be expected to burn brightly after 
 the restoration of the exiles to their beloved 
 land. Accordingly, from none of the three 
 subsequent prophetical books which are extant 
 is the inspiring theme absent. | 
 
 Let us turn first to Haggai, the earliest of 
 the three. To what else than the days of 
 Messiah can his language point, when to 
 encourage the little band of weak and trembling 
 
 6 Rom. viil. 29. 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. 81 
 AEE EMESIS SV Sd ne toe 
 Jews he pours forth the lofty and solemn 
 strain, “Thus saith the Lord of hosts; yet 
 once, it is a little while, and I will shake the 
 heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the 
 dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the 
 desire of all nations shall come; and I will 
 fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of 
 hosts ??’? 
 
 The prophecies ascribed to Zechariah, who 
 came next, fall into two divisions; the former 
 of which, comprising the first eight chapters, 
 undoubtedly belongs to this period, while the 
 last six chapters may possibly be the com- 
 position of an earlier prophet, in the years pre- 
 ceding the captivity.* But throughout both 
 parts of the book the bright Messianic expecta- 
 tion breaks out again and again, in strains of 
 
 * Haggai ii. 6,7. It is but fair to state that the expres- 
 sion here rendered “ the desire of all nations,” and popularly 
 applied to the Messiah, as being He for whom all nations were 
 consciously or unconsciously waiting and longing, has a very 
 different meaning put upon it by some expositors, They 
 understand the prophet to say that the choicest or best of all 
 nations shall come to worship Jehovah in His temple. Ifthis 
 interpretation, which is also that of the Septuagint, be adopted, 
 something of the peculiar point and definiteness of the 
 passage will obviously disappear; but its general Messianic 
 character will still be sufficiently plain. 
 
 ® See Speaker’s Commentary, Introduction to Zechariah, 
 sec. lil, 
 
 G 
 
82 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 oxultation and triumph strangely contrasted 
 with the actual feebleness and precarious con- 
 dition of the people to whom, whether earlier 
 or later, they were addressed. Here is an 
 instance: “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of 
 Zion; for lo, I come, and I will dwell in 
 the midst of thee, saith the Lord. And many 
 nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day, 
 and shall be My people; and I will dwell in 
 the midst of thee, and thou shalt know that the 
 Lord of hosts hath sent me unto thee. And 
 the Lord shall inherit Judah His portion in the 
 holy land, and shall choose Jerusalem again. 
 Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord; for He 
 is raised up out of His holy habitation.”’” 
 Again, we find Zechariah taking up on two 
 different occasions the famous prediction of the 
 Branch, which in slightly different forms 1s 
 found in Isaiah, Jeremiah,” and Ezekiel ;*> and 
 while apparently making some immediate appli- 
 cation of it, he connects it with a promise 
 which in its fulness can belong only to the 
 Messiah. “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, 
 Behold the man whose name is the Branch; 
 and he shall grow up out of his place, and he 
 shall build the temple of the Lord; even he 
 
 9 Zech, ii. 1O—13. 1 Tsa. iv. 2; xi. 1. 
 2 Jer, xxiii. 5; ¥zxili. 15. 3 Ezek. xxxiv. 29. 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. 83 
 
 shall build the temple of the Lord; and he 
 shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule 
 upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon 
 his throne; and the counsel of peace shall be 
 between them both.’’4 | 
 
 From the same prophet also we receive the 
 celebrated -prediction, which sounds across the 
 ages with a strange predictive emphasis. “ Re- 
 joice greatly, O daughter of Zion: shout, O 
 daughter of Jerusalem; behold, thy King com- 
 eth unto thee: he is just, and having salvation ; 
 lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt 
 the foal of an ass.”’* 
 
 One prophet only remains, the last of the lon g 
 
 4 Zech. vi, 12; 13. 
 
 ° Zech. ix. 9. It is obvious that we must not press the 
 literal prediction, “riding upon. an ass, and upon a colt the 
 foal of an ass,” against the sceptic, for two reasons; first, 
 because it is open to him to say that, whatever the prophecy 
 originally meant, which was probably a poetical contrast of 
 Israel’s peaceful king with the warrior kings of the great 
 Gentile monarchies, borne along’ in their war chariots in the 
 pride of martial pomp, the corresponding action of Jesus was 
 done, consciously and expressly, to fit it with a fulfilment; 
 and secondly, because the sceptic does not acknowledge the 
 historical character’ of the Gospels, which are our: only 
 authority for the fulfilment. As Dean Lyall candidly remarks 
 on the passage: “This would seem to have been a mark’so 
 easily assumed, that it ought not to be numbered among the 
 notes of the Messiah .... .... As a prophecy it can have little 
 weight, except in’ confirmation of a foregone conclusion.”— 
 Pro. Proph.-p: 214)- 
 
 G2 
 
84 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 SU ae ea ce ENE ie ER 
 line, who about a century later once more broke 
 the silence, and left to his people the solemn 
 warning to be on the outlook for Him that should 
 come. In Malachi’s message the great pro- 
 phetic testimony is summed up and brought to 
 a point. ‘ Behold, I will send My messenger, 
 and he shall prepare the way before Me; and 
 the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come 
 to His temple, even the Messenger of the 
 covenant whom ye delight in; behold, He shall 
 come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may 
 abide the day of His coming ? and who shall 
 stand when He appeareth? . . . . But unto you 
 that fear My name shall the Sun of righteous- 
 ness arise with healing in his wings.” 
 
 Such was the continuous burden of Hebrew 
 prophecy, a strain reiterated and amplified 
 from prophet to prophet, and broadening down 
 for half a dozen centuries. Now what, as 
 
 6 Mal. iii. 1,2; iv. 2. To the foregoing quotations I have 
 forborne to add the very obscure passage in Gen. xlix. 10, 
 from the blessing of J udah, because its reference to the 
 Messiah seems to be extremely doubtful. It is never alluded 
 to in the New Testament; everywhere else Shiloh means 
 simply the town in Ephraim where the tabernacle was set up ; 
 and on critical grounds we are told that the rendering “ until 
 Shiloh come” must be given up for “until he come to 
 Shiloh.” The Septuagint version gets rid of Shiloh alto- 
 gether, and translates “ until the things laid up for bim shall 
 come.?—See Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, art. Shiloh. 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. 85 
 
 intelligent and honest students of this unique 
 literature, are we to make of it? Can we 
 really satisfy ourselves with seeing in the psalm- 
 ists and prophets no more than flatterers of 
 contemporary kings, or dealers in Oriental 
 exaggerations? To be content with such a 
 meagre explanation, in the face of the lofty 
 theism, the intense sincerity, and the courage- 
 ous protests against idolatry and falsehood, 
 which stamp their writings as a whole with a 
 divine elevation and force, would, it seems to 
 me, convict the critic of utter incapacity to 
 appreciate them. Or shall we dispose of them as 
 patriotic enthusiasts and idealists, deluding them- 
 selves with expectations of an impossible national 
 greatness? Had there been in the whole range 
 of their compositions just a single instance 
 or two of such utterances to be found, it might 
 perhaps have been urged with some degree of 
 plausibility, that in these exceptional cases the 
 prophet might possibly have been carried away 
 by his enthusiasm beyond the bounds of sober 
 truth or rational anticipation, and that we 
 must clip the pinions of his “ winged words,” 
 and tie them down to some petty event of his 
 own time. But.a continuous tradition, and 
 continually growing amplification of the theme, 
 cannot be so easily disposed of. It is no indi- 
 
86 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 vidual peculiarity or private fancy of one 
 prophet, or two, that we have to account for 
 and estimate, but the uniform habit and con- 
 sentient testimony of the whole order. Nor is it 
 at all more satisfactory, or in accordance with the 
 most evident features of their writings, to de- 
 scribe them as a tribe of imitators or copyists, 
 who repeated and handed on with fanciful 
 amplifications some lofty poetic strain, to 
 which in the primitive age of the nation an 
 original genius may have swept his prophetic 
 harp. For nothing on the whole is more 
 characteristic of the Hebrew prophets than 
 » their individuality and independence of each 
 other, and the vital relation in which the utter- 
 ances of each stood to the events of his own age. 
 Yet with all their differences, all their idiosyn- 
 cracies, they agree in this, that their common 
 glance is onwards to a bright future ; their 
 common hope is fastened on some great person- 
 age to come, who should be, under God, the 
 restorer of Israel, and the redeemer of the 
 world from sorrow and wrong. 
 
 Even on the extreme supposition, that each 
 prophet and psalmist in turn was consciously 
 thinking of nothing beyond his own present, or 
 the immediate future, and was unaware of 
 transcending in his language the circumstances 
 
A GLORIOUS MESSIAH. 87 
 of his own time, even on this supposition the 
 inference from their united testimony is not 
 materially weakened.’ The result of their 
 prophesyings and sacred minstrelsy stands 
 before us in their collected remains, and it is 
 one of an unparalleled and most impressive 
 character. Whatever each by himself may 
 possibly have thought or intended, their suc- 
 cessive contributions to the prophetic hterature 
 of their nation are found to fit harmoniously 
 together, and to make up a consistent whole. 
 The individual workmen might perhaps furnish 
 their separate portions to the work, without 
 possessing any clear conception of the structure 
 to which they were contributing; but the 
 edifice slowly rising out of their unintelligent 
 labours would not be the less real, nor the less 
 
 7 «The showing, even to a high probability, if that could 
 be, that the prophets thought of some other events, in such 
 and such predictions, and not those at all which Christians 
 allege to be completions of those predictions ; or that such 
 and such prophecies are capable of being applied to other 
 events than those to which Christians apply them ; this would 
 not confute or destroy the force of the argument from pro- 
 phecy, even with regard to those very instances. .... The 
 question is, whether a series of prophecy has been fulfilled in 
 a natural or proper, that is, in any real sense of the words of 
 it. For such completion is equally a proof of foresight more 
 than human, whether the prophets are, or are not, supposed 
 to have understood it in a different sense.”— Butler, Analogy, 
 
 tiie 
 
88 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 Seppe eee are te OS ees 
 in accordance with a fore-ordained design. 
 What the method or process of prophecy was, 
 while it was gradually growing up during the 
 ages into a complete and mature body or system, 
 is not the essential question, but what is its 
 character, what its outcome, when it has 
 reached its full development, and stands in its 
 perfect proportions before the world. And 
 about this there really is no room for contro- 
 versy. As I have before remarked, history 
 itself has conclusively settled it. The prophet- 
 ical literature, when seen in its connexion and 
 completeness, did create in the Jewish mind the 
 invincible expectation of a personal Messiah ; 
 an expectation not limited to this or that school 
 of learned thought or traditional lore, but 
 unanimous and universal; not superficial nor 
 transient, but so deep-rooted and abiding that 
 nothing has ever been able to eradicate it.° 
 
 8 «In whatever form or character they expected him to 
 appear, King, Conqueror, or even God, in this the Jewish race 
 agreed, that the Messiah was to be the King, the Conqueror, 
 the God of Israel.”—Milman’s Hist. of Jews, vol. i. p. 425. 
 
 4 
 \ 
 7 
 ; 
 ; 
 . 
 ‘ 
 ' 
 i 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. &9 
 
 Oe ree ao) A AR OE Oy 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 THE MESSIANIC FORECAST CONTINUED—THIRD 
 ELEMENT, A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 
 
 We have now considered two elements of the 
 Messianic forecast, as it is to be discovered by 
 an examination of the Old Testament Scrip- 
 tures ; namely, the anticipation of final triumph 
 for God’s cause, and the centering of that 
 triumph in a Person, whom God would raise 
 up and anoint for the purpose in the latter 
 days. 
 
 But these two elements do not complete the 
 propheticalidea. There is a third, mysteriously 
 and darkly interwoven with them, which to 
 the Jew has been a standing source of perplexity. 
 This is the element of suffering, mingled with ~ 
 the triumph. The Messiah should indeed come 
 in the power of the most High, and conquer, 
 and reign in glory ; but there are intimations, 
 hints, whispers in an undertone, that the victory 
 and the redemption should only come through 
 humiliation and sore struggle, and even rejec- 
 tion by His own people. How this darker side 
 
90 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 of the Messianic forecast is exhibited in the 
 Old Testament, we must now apply ourselves to 
 examine. 
 
 In this part of our inquiry, I venture to 
 suggest to the reader, there is especial need 
 of a sensitive and scrupulous candour. The 
 materials to be examined may be said to be 
 almost too delicate to bear the rough handling 
 of critical discussion. The inquirer must 
 honestly try to enter into the circumstances, the 
 thoughts, the emotions, of the ancient writers ; 
 to watch the play of the shadows that mingle 
 with the lights, in the visions of the future 
 which rose vague and mysterious on their awe- 
 struck souls; to catch glimpses of a background 
 that is mostly veiled; to listen for the faint 
 notes of disappointment and sorrow, that are 
 almost drowned in the songs of triumph to 
 which they swept the harp of prophecy, and 
 for the whisperings of judgment that mix 
 strangely with the hopes and promises of the 
 covenant. It is only by putting himself into 
 sympathetic relation with the prophetic strains, 
 and laying his mind open to all their varying 
 moods, that he can hope to be, intellectually and 
 spiritually, sensitive enough to appreciate their 
 testimony to this part of the Messianic idea, 
 which from its very nature must have been 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 9] 
 
 kept comparatively in the background, and 
 veiled in a mysterious sadness. 
 
 For observe how the case stood. The pro- 
 phets were, as we have seen, intensely national 
 and patriotic. The feeling that Israel was 
 God’s peculiar people, the exclusive heirs 
 of His covenant and representatives of His 
 cause, reached in them its highest pitch. 
 When therefore there arose on their ardent 
 souls a vision of the ultimate triumph of God’s 
 cause, and of the universal establishment of 
 the worship of Jehovah, through a Messiah who 
 should spring out of the chosen nation, they 
 were impelled by all their dearest wishes and 
 hopes, and all their most familiar habits of 
 thought, to identify the future of Israel with 
 this bright vision, and to array the national 
 destinies in the glory of the latter days. To 
 conceive of a triumph for the cause of Israel’s 
 God, in which Israel should not share; of a 
 glorious and universal kingdom of Israel’s own 
 Messiah, from all part in which Israel by its 
 own perverseness and apostasy should shut 
 itself out; could not have been to them other- 
 wise than inexpressibly repugnant, and barely 
 even possible. But suppose that this tremen- 
 dous catastrophe was indeed to happen,—for 
 that is the Christian hypothesis. Suppose that 
 
92 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 in the radiant Messianic forecast and hope 
 Israel’s sin and fall and casting away must of 
 necessity be included. In what way might so 
 strange a dislocation of the apparently fore- 
 ordained course of events, so tragic a frustra- 
 tion and dashing to pieces of the national hope, 
 be expected to be announced by the reluctant 
 organs of prophecy? Surely not in plain, 
 blunt predictions, which might either have 
 crushed the nation’s energies under a withering 
 sense of inevitable doom, or else have stimu- 
 lated them to thwart, if possible, the myste- 
 rious purpose. Rather should we look for the 
 announcement in obscure hints and dark say- 
 ings; in reluctant warnings of what sin might 
 possibly bring to pass; in flickering shadows 
 occasionally falling across the track of glory; 
 in types and enigmas hard to decipher: s6 that 
 the awful secret, although told, might still 
 remain a secret, until the future had worked 
 itself out, and the mystery of God been accom- 
 plished. 
 
 Such is the way in which, as it seems to me, 
 this third element of the Messianic forecast 
 might be expected to appear in the prophetic 
 writings, supposing it to be a real component 
 of the idea ; and if so, to discern and appreciate 
 it would be especially reserved for candid and 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 93 
 
 sensitive hearts. In the temper of mind thus 
 indicated let us again open the sacred Yolume. 
 
 We have already noticed that the genius 
 of Hebrew prophecy is to root itself in the 
 present ; to take its departure from surround- 
 ing circumstances, and, while apparently deal- 
 ing with them, to expand and soar away to 
 wider hopes and grander events. Thus the 
 contemporary king, or deliverer, or witness for 
 righteousness, or servant of Jehovah, of whom 
 the prophet or psalmist is speaking, serves as a 
 figure on which to hang the Messianic predic- 
 tion, and becomes in some measure a type or 
 shadow of Him that is to come. 
 
 In the story or description, then, of these 
 typical personages, it may be possible from 
 time to time to trace some faint foreshadowings 
 of Messiah’s person or work. Does the pro- 
 phetic writer represent them as undergoing a 
 hard struggle and treading a weary path of 
 suffering, ere'God vindicates them and brings 
 _ them to honour? It may possibly be thus 
 that a glimpse is fora moment permitted of the 
 sufferings through which He who is the “ King 
 of kings,”? the “faithful and true Witness,” ? 
 the divine “Servant,”* must enter into His 
 
 1 Matt. xxv. 34. Rev. xvii. 14. 2 Rey. iii. 14, 
 3 Matt. xii, 18. Phil. ii. 7. 
 
J4 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 eo ER rarer 
 glory. Has the prophet reason to charge his 
 people with opposing and rejecting the mes-_ 
 senger sent to them by God? It may be 
 thus that Israel’s attitude towards the Divine 
 Messenger,’ who should visit them in the fulness 
 of time, is dimly foreshadowed. Not that, 
 without the clue being put into our hands, it 1s 
 necessary that we should have been able to 
 detect the transition from the lower to the 
 higher topic, or to separate between the type 
 and its far-off fulfilment. It is enough if, when 
 the clue has been given, and.we come back to: 
 the prophetic writings with hearts spiritually 
 quickened and on the alert, we are able to read 
 (as it were) between the lines, and comprehend 
 the mysterious intimations, which would other- 
 wise have sorely perplexed us, or else altogether 
 have eluded our perception. 7 
 
 With these ideas in our minds, let us dip 
 again into the Book of Psalms. 
 
 In the 22nd, we have a very remarkable 
 composition, one ofa class to which, I believe, 
 no parallel can be found outside the Bible, 
 search as we may through the whole round of 
 ancient literature. Two-thirds of it are a 
 pathetic appeal to God from the lowest depths 
 of abandonment and oppression. The sufferer 
 
 4 John xx. 21. Heb. iii, 1.- John xii. 37—41. 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 95 
 
 a ee re con De 
 has been God’s chosen servant from his birth,° 
 but now he complains of being forsaken.” The 
 wicked have prevailed against him; they have 
 attacked him like strong bulls and roaring 
 lions;’ they have spoiled him of his garments; 
 they have pierced his hands-and his feet; they . 
 taunt him with his pious trust’ in God; he 
 faints and is ready to expire.2 Then the strain 
 suddenly changes, and sings of deliverance and 
 triumph. Rescued and brought to honour, he 
 will give thanks in the great congregation.® 
 But he does not end there. He treats his 
 deliverance as a'matter of national congratula- 
 tion and a cause of more than national bless- 
 ings. He not only calls on his fellow-country- 
 men to join him in his’ thanksgiving,—“ Ye 
 that fear the Lord, praise’ Him; all ye the 
 seed of Jacob, glorify Him; and fear Him, all 
 ye the seed of Israel ;”’* but breaks out into an 
 announcement which draws the whole world 
 within the consequences of his triumph. “ All 
 the ends of the earth shall remember and turn 
 unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the 
 nations shall worship before Thee. For the 
 with git Aa Cae A ol 7 vy. 12, 13. mh ey 
 
 ® v.16. Some translators render this, “like a lion'on my 
 hands and my feet.” It is remarkable that the passage is 
 
 not among those applied by the Evangelists to the Crucifixion. 
 1 vy. 7, 8. 2 vy. 14515: 3 vy. 22, 25. 4. ¥, 23. 
 
96 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 eae OE 
 kingdom is the Lord’s, and He is the Governor 
 among the nations. . . . They shall come, and 
 shall declare His righteousness, unto a people 
 _ that shall be born, that He hath done this.”’ 
 It is the latter part of this psalm that espe- 
 cially arrests our attention. Here is that sud- 
 den expansion of thought, and exaltation of the 
 style, above anything that the apparent occasion 
 can justify, which has before seemed to indicate 
 the entrance of the Messianic idea. The 
 personal deliverance swells beyond all private 
 proportions, and has for its sequence the setting 
 up of God’s Kingdom over the whole world. 
 Now we cannot charge such a writer, in his 
 mood of solemn thanksgiving, with uttering 
 wild extravagance and nonsense; yet how cun 
 his character for sobriety and good sense be 
 vindicated, except by viewing him as carried 
 out of himself and his own individual cireum- 
 stances, by some presage of the Messiah sweeping 
 across his spirit ? But if in his deliverance and 
 its consequences he prefigures the Messiah, in 
 however dim a manner, is it not possible, we 
 ask, nay probable, and even required by the 
 coherence of the composition, that he fore- 
 shadows the Messiah in his sufferings also F 
 For let us remember that this psalm does not 
 5 vv. 27, 28, 31. 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 97 
 so he RAR AR 81 7 ee 
 stand alone. The sixty-ninth is an almost 
 exact parallel to it. There, too, the suppliant 
 is God’s servant, the champion of His cause,° in 
 sustaining which he is brought down to the 
 lowest depths of suffering ;7 there, too, the 
 pathetic lament is suddenly turned into an 
 exulting burst of praise, far transcending the 
 private occasion. ‘Let the heaven and earth 
 praise Him, the seas, and everything that 
 moveth therein. For God will save Zion, and 
 will build the cities of Judah: that they may 
 dwell there, and have it in possession. The 
 seed also of His servants shall inherit it, and 
 they that love His name shall dwell therein.’ 
 
 There are other psalms, besides, which furnish 
 briefer examples of a like unexpected expansion 
 of the idea and phrase, in the transition from 
 humiliation or suffering to exaltation or joy. 
 A signal one may be pointed out in the 16th, 
 where nothing is suggested that seems to lie 
 beyond the writer’s individual experience till 
 near the close; but then, while expressing his 
 confidence that God would throw His protection 
 over him in the hour of darkness, he suddenly 
 identifies himself with the Holy One of God, and 
 rises into a strain which, if not prophetical and 
 Messianic, appears wholly unaccountable. “Thou 
 
 6 vv. 6—9, ? vy. 1—8, 20, 21. 8 vy. 34— 86, 
 
 H 
 
98 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 Tee ee eee na tai ees 
 wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt 
 Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption. 
 Thou wilt show me the path of life; in Thy 
 presence is fulness of Joy: at Thy right hand 
 there are pleasures for evermore.” ° 
 
 To avoid prolixity I will refer to one more 
 only of the sacred lyrics. This is the 118th, 
 apparently composed after the captivity to 
 celebrate the rebuilding of the city and temple. 
 Here also the strain swells from an ordinary 
 giving of praise for help and deliverance, into 
 one which strikes the mind as burdened with a 
 mysterious grandeur, somewhat beyond the 
 occasion. ‘To understand its force we must 
 glance at the prophetical passage to which 
 allusion is made by the psalmist. Isaiah, when 
 threatening the rebellious with judgment, and 
 foretelling a day when “the Lord of hosts shall 
 be fora crown of glory, and for a diadem of 
 beauty, unto the residue of His people,” * had 
 made the mysterious announcement ; “Therefore 
 thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion 
 for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious 
 
 9 vy. 10, 11. The plural reading “holy ones,” though 
 preferred by some critics, has too little support to entitle it 
 to serious notice. Hven if adopted, it would by no means 
 destroy the Messianic presage with which the passage seems 
 
 to be instinct, but only widen its basis by including others in 
 the writer’s glorious hope. 1 Tsa, xxviii. 5. 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 99 
 
 corner stone, a sure foundation: he that 
 believeth shall not make haste.” 2 What this 
 exactly meant, if would be difficult to guess, if 
 if stood alone. Some peculiarly solemn and 
 sacred means of deliverance seems to be hinted 
 at, which should act like a test, severing between 
 the good and the evil, being to the one “a 
 sanctuary,’ as a similar prophecy says, and to 
 the other “a stone of stumbling and a rock of 
 offence.” * But when we approach this difficult 
 passage with the Messianic idea in our minds, 
 we can hardly avoid seeing in it a presage of 
 Him whom God would send to Zion for salvation 
 and judgment. This foundation stone, tried 
 and precious and sure, solemnly laid in Zion 
 by the Eternal, for salvation to the faithful and 
 judgment to the scornful and rebellious,‘ can it 
 point to less than the Messiah, or mean less 
 than that to some He would prove a stone of 
 stumbling and rock of offence? Now it is to 
 this mysterious Messianic passage that the 
 composer of the 118th psalm plainly refers, when 
 he breaks out in the exulting strain :— The 
 stone which the builders refused is become the 
 head stone of the corner. This is the Lord’s 
 doing; it is marvellous in our eyes. This is 
 the day which the Lord hath made; we will 
 Seva. 3 Isa. viii. 14. * Isa, xxviii, 14. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 rejoice and be glad init. .... Blessed be he 
 that cometh in the name of the Lord; we have 
 blessed you out of the house of the Lord. God 
 is the Lord which hath showed us light; bind 
 the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of 
 the altar.””* And if that be the reference, then 
 here we have another of those amplifications of 
 the immediate theme, which are already familiar 
 to us as evidence of its transition into the 
 Messianic sphere of thought; and we learn 
 from the psalm that the Messiah should suffer 
 rejection from the leaders of the nation, before 
 He should be exalted to honour. 
 
 Before we go on to search in the prophetical 
 books for testimonies to the existence of an 
 element of suffering in the Messianic forecast, 
 let me ask the reader to pause for a moment, 
 and remind himself of the exact line in which 
 our inquiry is proceeding. 
 
 Iivery reader of the New Testament knows, 
 that the passages from the psalms and from 
 Isaiah, just referred to, are applied by the 
 evangelists and apostles to the passion and 
 exaltation of Jesus Christ.’ In those passages 
 they recognize Messianic predictions; in Him 
 
 5 Ps, cxviiic. 22—24, 26, 27. 
 
 6 Matt. xxi. 42; xxvii. 85, 46. John ii. 17; xix. 29, 30, 
 Acts ii. 25—81; iv. 11; xiii. 85—37. Rom. xv.3. 1 Pet. 
 ii. 6—8. 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 101 
 
 they discern the fulfilment of them. But at 
 the present stage of our argument we are not 
 concerned with the question of fulfilment at 
 all. We have not got so far as yet. Our 
 business now is simply with the passages, as 
 they stand in the ancient Scriptures. Looking 
 at them there, we want to find out what they 
 mean; whether they contain any prophetic 
 element at all, and if so, of what nature it is. 
 They might prophesy, and yet prophesy falsely ; 
 that is another question, to be hereafter con- 
 sidered. Our present question is, have they 
 any outlook towards the. future at all? do 
 they express any expectation of what shall 
 be? 
 
 In pursuing this inquiry, we notice in these 
 passages the presence of that forecast of the 
 triumph of God’s cause, through the instru- 
 mentality of a personal agent or champion, 
 which we haye already traced in other parts of 
 the Old Testament Scriptures; but here it is 
 blended with shadows, which suggest a myste- 
 rious qualification of it by an element of 
 humiliation and suffering. It might well be 
 that, left to ourselves to puzzle out the meaning 
 of this, we might be at a loss to fit the appa- 
 rently discordant features harmoniously together, 
 or to make out what was intended by the 
 
102 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 writers, or at least was involved in their lan- 
 guage. But let us once get hold of the idea, 
 it matters not from whence, that these passages 
 derive their sombre shadows from the obscurely- 
 hinted presage of-the rejection of the Messiah 
 by His own nation, and of His subjection to 
 shame and death in the accomplishment of His 
 work, and they then fall into harmony and 
 become luminous. That idea unlocks the per- 
 plexity, fits together the parts of the puzzle, 
 lights up the darkness, and thus approves itself 
 as the true idea of the passages, the idea which 
 we shall be justified in attributing to them, and 
 drawing out of them for our own use. 
 
 With this reminder to ourselves of what we 
 are doing, let us now look for similar intimations 
 in the prophetic books. Those which are avail- 
 able for our purpose are not numerous. 
 
 One of the first to occur to our minds will 
 probably be the celebrated prophecy of the 
 seventy weeks in Daniel,’ which seems to speak 
 so explicitly of “ Messiah”’ being “ cut off.” 
 Here, however, it must be confessed that we 
 are on somewhat doubtful ground. The very 
 explicitness of the prediction marks it off so 
 widely frony all the rest of Hebrew Messianic 
 prophecy, as to suggest a suspicion that, after 
 
 7 Dan, ix. 24, 27. | 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 103, 
 all, it may not, in its original sense, refer 
 directly to the Christ of God.* And when we 
 inquire further we are forced to admit that the 
 Messianic interpretation has been so seriously 
 shaken by modern critical inquiry into the date 
 and purport of the prediction, as to prevent the 
 honest defender of Christianity from pressing 
 it any longer against the sceptical position with 
 the confidence of his predecessors in the argu- 
 ment.’ Only this, I think, may be fairly sug- 
 gested, that even if the primary intention of 
 the passage be limited to the events which 
 occurred in the time of the Maccabees, as many 
 expositors contend, and its object were to 
 animate the Jews to a valiant resistance of 
 their enemies in the deadly struggle for their 
 independence; still, even on this view it is by 
 no means improbable that the language was 
 coloured by a later and grander hope when it 
 spoke of a time determined “to finish the 
 transgression, and to make an end of sins, and 
 
 8 The expression is indefinite: “An anointed one shall be 
 eut off.’ It should be remembered that the term is not 
 confined to the object of the great Messianic hope. The 
 famous Persian conqueror Koresh, or Cyrus, is expressly 
 called Jehovah’s Messiah, in Isaiah xlv.1. It is used of the 
 high priests, Lev. iv. 8, 5,16; the kings, 1 Sam. xxiv. 6, 
 Lam. iv. 20; and even the people of Israel, Psalm cv. 15. 
 
 9 See Speaker’s Commentary, Introd. to Dan., sec. iil. 
 
104 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring 
 in everlasting righteousness.”’! 
 
 Next in explicitness of phraseology come 
 two passages from the book of Zechariah. The 
 last three chapters contain a very striking 
 prophecy of Israel’s future, in which the final 
 triumph and salvation are depicted as being 
 preceded by a season of penitence for the sins 
 that had provoked the divine judgment. In 
 the midst of the description this word is 
 represented as issuing from the mouth of the 
 Kternal : “I will pour upon the house of David, 
 and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the 
 spirit of grace and of supplications, and they 
 shall look upon me (or him)? whom they have 
 pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one 
 mourneth for his only son, and shall be in 
 bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness 
 for his first-born.” * And presently afterwards 
 the same voice invokes the sword to arise and 
 smite the man who is Jehovah’s fellow, and 
 who may be reasonably identified with him 
 whom the people just before are charged with 
 having pierced. “Awake, O sword, against 
 My shepherd, and against the man that is My 
 fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts; smite the 
 
 1 Dan. ix, 24. * See Speaker’s Commentary. 
 4 Zech? xii.10, 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. — 105 
 
 shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered ; 
 and I will turn Mine hand upon the little 
 ones.” “ Then follows a spirited description of 
 the great “day of the Lord” with its conflict 
 and victory, out of which shall emerge the 
 universal kingdom of righteousness, when “ the 
 Lord shall be king over all the earth, and there 
 shall be one Lord, and His name one.” 
 
 Now it is plain that the whole passage is 
 Messianic; that is, it treats of the great crisis 
 of Israel’s fate, when the expected deliverer 
 should arise and conquer. But when in the 
 midst of it we meet with a mysterious person- 
 age, one who is in a peculiar relation to God, 
 being called His “ fellow,’ and also to the 
 people, as being God’s “ shepherd ” over them ; 
 and we hear God Himself calling the sword to 
 awake and smite this person, and learn also 
 that he had been “pierced ” by the people in 
 their sin, it seems difficult to come to any 
 other conclusion than that the Messiah’s s path 
 to His triumph was expected to lie through 
 rejection and death. No doubt the whole 
 representation is obscure and mysterious, as we 
 saw reason to expect would be the case with 
 this sombre element of prophecy. But there it 
 is, for us to make what we can out of it: - and 
 
 4 Zech. xiii. 7. > Zech. xiv. 9. 
 
106 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 it certainly unites the Messianic forecast with 
 images of humiliation and suffering. Only let 
 us weigh the words, ‘‘ Him whom they have 
 pierced ;” ‘“ Awake, O sword, against My 
 shepherd, and against the man that is My 
 fellow.’”? Can we wonder, that in terms so 
 suggestive and impressive, an allusion to the 
 Messiah’s Passion should have been believed to 
 be veiled and wrapped up ? Or can we deny 
 the interpretation to be reasonable and appro- 
 priate P 
 
 I pass over remoter and vaguer expressions 
 which might be gleaned out of the prophetic 
 writings, but are scarcely likely to be admitted 
 as evidence by the sceptic; and hasten on to 
 the prophecy, or series of prophecies, concerning 
 the Servant of the Lord, which fill a large space 
 in the latter part of our book of Isaiah.’ It is 
 here that the darker element of the Messianic 
 forecast attains its fullest development. By 
 their mingled grandeur and pathos, and their 
 undeniable faithfulness to the Christian idea, 
 these wonderful prophecies have attracted the 
 world’s liveliest attention for more than eighteen 
 centuries. That mysterious Person on whose 
 conflict and triumph the dispensations of God 
 seem to depend for their unfolding and final 
 
 6 Isa, xlii., xlix.—liii., Ixi. 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 107 
 
 issue ; chosen and upheld by the Eternal, and 
 set for a restorer of Israel and a light to the 
 Gentiles, yet despised and rejected of men, a 
 man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; 
 delighted in by God, and hid in the shadow of 
 His almighty hand, yet bruised by Him, and 
 put to grief, and numbered among the trans- 
 gressors ; himself meek and spotless, yet bearing 
 the sin of many, and stricken for the trans- 
 gressions of the people ; marred in visage more 
 than any man, and his form more than the 
 sons of men, yet destined to be exalted and ex- 
 tolled, and be very high, to prolong his days,and 
 see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied :— 
 Who, it may well be asked with the liveliest 
 amazement, who can this be of whom the 
 prophet speaks such things ? 
 
 It is true that touches here and there in 
 the portrait might suggest some contemporary 
 subject. By some we might be reminded of 
 Jeremiah, the prophet of tears, who, in the 
 midst of dangers and storms of reproach, vainly 
 sought to avert the ruin of his country. In 
 others we might discern the writer himself, 
 supposed by some learned critics to have been 
 a “later Isaiah,” or “ great unnamed.”’ prophet 
 of the captivity, apparently described in some 
 ancient catalogues of the prophets as Abdadonai, 
 
108 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 the “servant of the Lord.”’ By others, again, 
 we might be led to think of a personification of 
 the nation, as God’s witness to the world, 
 oppressed and spoiled by the heathen, yet 
 reserved for a glorious future. 
 
 But take the whole delineation together, and 
 it seems impossible to rest in any of these 
 solutions, as if they adequately satisfied the 
 terms of the enigma. The mind, I speak at 
 least for myself, is irresistibly led on past them, 
 to search for some wider, completer fulfilment.* 
 Hach lesser application may possibly be true as 
 far as it goes; each may, for aught we can tell, 
 have in turn coloured, and left its trace in, the 
 texture of the marvellous strain. But surely 
 the whole soars to a loftier sphere, and demands 
 grander events for its full and final significa- 
 tion. In a word, nothing short of the great 
 
 Messianic expectation seems at all adequate to 
 
 satisty it; and of this it weaves together the 
 brighter and the more sombre elements, the 
 rejection and suffering with the exaltation and 
 
 7 See Dean Stanley’s Lectures on the Jewish Church, vol. 
 ili. page 18. 
 
 8 As an illustration of this the following comment on the 
 chapter may be quoted from Dr. Davidson’s Introduction to 
 the Old Testament, the general tone of which is adverse to 
 the predictive element in Hebrew prophecy. “As the pre- 
 ludings of a prophetic mind, breathed into by the Spirit of 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 109 
 8 SS REPEIR B00 750  aI  R a P 
 the glory, with a precision and a fulness that 
 could scarcely have been surpassed, if, instead 
 of being a mysterious fore-shadowing, it had 
 been an actual history, of the “cross and pas- 
 sion, the precious death and burial, the glorious 
 resurrection and ascension,” attributed by Chris- 
 tians to the Redeemer in whom they believe. 
 We have now completed our inquiry into the 
 Old Testament Scriptures, to ascertain whether 
 they exhibit, however dim and veiled, a fore- 
 cast of suffering as a part of the Messianic idea. 
 We certainly think that we detect it there, and 
 that without it many passages are inexplicable. 
 But it is urged by sceptics that we are deluding 
 ourselves; that under the influence of Christian 
 prepossessions we read back into the prophecies 
 a meaning which does not really belong to them, 
 and which would never have occurred to any 
 one who studied the ancient Scriptures without 
 bias or prejudice. No doubt, this disparage- 
 ment of the Christian interpretation finds sup- 
 
 God, it reaches into the future of God’s kingdom with 
 wondrous grasp and distinctness, so that the very Messiah 
 is revealed in terms of whose far-reaching import the seer 
 is unconscious. His soaring hopes, which the God-conscious- 
 ness within him could not consciously shape into a distinct 
 image of the Messiah, were so overruled as to find their 
 only perfect fulfilment in One,—the glorious Head of the 
 theocracy.” 
 
110 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 port in the facility with which the mind 
 persuades itself, that it has actually discovered 
 what it has eagerly sought for, and earnestly 
 wished to find. Let the reader, therefore, 
 kindly consider what may be said in reply. 
 
 It has been already remarked that, long before 
 the commencement of the Christian era, the an- 
 cient Scriptures led the Jewish nation to expect 
 a personal and glorious Messiah, and that the 
 stamp of historical fact is thus set on the just- 
 ness of the Messianic interpretation. Now, it 
 was not to be expected that the contrasted idea 
 of a rejected and suffering Messiah, assuming 
 it to be really anherent in the prophecies, 
 would be as readily seized upon, or as thoroughly 
 incorporated in the national expectation. From 
 its peculiar and delicate nature, this trait in 
 the portraiture of Him that was to come would, 
 as I have had occasion already to point out, be 
 likely to be treated with much more reserve by 
 the prophets in general, and it would cer- 
 tainly encounter the utmost dislike and resist- 
 ance in the minds of the people. ‘That they 
 should prove so recreant from their high calling 
 as to reject God’s noblest gift, and should thus 
 quench all ‘their glorious hopes in apostasy 
 and irremediable ruin, must have been the 
 most odious and intolerable thought that could 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 111 
 
 be suggested to a Jew. It was sure to be 
 struggled against to the utmost, and prevented 
 if possible from obtaining any lodgment in the 
 national mind. 
 
 Yet it is historically certain, that this sombre 
 and disappointing feature of the Messianic idea 
 did, in some measure, assert its right to be 
 considered as a part of the prophetic teaching. 
 From the Jewish Targums, or paraphrases, 
 which, if later in their present form than the rise 
 of Christianity, at least record the earlier tradi- 
 tions of Rabbinical interpretation, we learn that 
 the conception of a suffering Messiah forced 
 itself on the reluctant attention of the scribes 
 and authorized expositors of Scripture, excited 
 grave perplexity in their minds, and gave birth 
 to the curious theory of two Messiahs, invested 
 with different functions. To the one, whom 
 they named the son of Joseph or of Ephraim, 
 they assigned the humiliation and death; to 
 the other, the son of David, the triumph and 
 glory. Other evidence to the same effect may 
 be found in the Talmud, and in the primitive 
 prayers of the synagogue ; in closing a review 
 of which Hengstenberg says, “The result 
 we have obtained is this: the doctrine of a suf- 
 fering and atoning Messiah existed among the 
 Jews from the very earliest times, and was not 
 
112 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 the result of Christian influence, but was de- 
 rived from the Old Testament.”® Thus this 
 part also of the Messianic interpretation has 
 the seal of historical fact to its correctness. 
 
 Another proof of its being well founded is 
 furnished by the immediate and enthusiastic 
 reception, which it manifestly found among the 
 primitive believers in Christ. 
 
 It is evident from the earliest Christian 
 writings that are extant, whether within or 
 outside the sacred Canon, that in the controversy 
 with the Jews in behalf of Christianity, the 
 fulfilment of prophecy in the suffering and 
 death of Jesus was a topic most continually 
 urged, and confidently relied upon, as a proof 
 of His being the expected Messiah. The New 
 Testament abounds in appeals to the prophets, 
 and shows by the whole tone and tenour of its 
 language how thoroughly the early Christian 
 mind was possessed by the conviction, that the 
 Messiah’s sufferings were unmistakably fore- 
 
 9 Christology, vol. iv. p. 363 in Clarke’s series. See also 
 Pearson on the Creed, art. iv., and Speaker’s Commentary on 
 Isaiah lili, note A. Also Dean Payne Smith’s remark in his 
 Sixth Bampton Lecture on Prophecy: “ Any one acquainted 
 with the Targums and with Jewish expositors is well aware 
 what an utter puzzle this portraiture was and is to them, and 
 how it contradicted and still contradicts all their deepest 
 feelings and their patriotic hopes.” 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. Ltn 
 
 Shadowed in the Old Testament. It will be 
 enough to point to a few of the assertions, than 
 which nothing could be broader or more uncom- 
 promising. For the purpose of evidence we 
 need not assume anything about their author- 
 ship or date; all we require is their existence in 
 the text. 
 
 Thus into the mouth of Jesus Himself these 
 sayings are put. ° 
 
 “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all 
 things that are written by the prophets con- 
 cerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished. 
 For He shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, 
 and shall be mocked and spitefully entreated, 
 and spitted on; and they shall scourge Him, 
 and put Him to death; and the third day He 
 shall rise again.” ! 
 
 “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that 
 the prophets have spoken; ought not Christ to 
 have suffered these things, and to enter into His 
 gtory Cry i 
 
 “These are the things which I spake unto 
 you while I was yet with you, that all things 
 must be fulfilled, which were written in the law 
 of Moses, and in the prophets and in the Psalms 
 concerning Me... . Thus it is written, and thus 
 
 1 Luke xviii. 31—33. 2 Luke xxiv. 25, 26, 
 fi 
 
114 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the 
 dead the third day.’’* 
 
 St. Peter is represented as saying to the 
 people in one of his earliest speeches :— 
 
 “Ye denied the holy One and the Just, and 
 desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and 
 killed the Prince of Life. . .. And,now, brethren, 
 I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did 
 also your rulers. But these things, which God 
 before had showed by the mouth of all His 
 prophets, that Christ should suffer, He hath so 
 fulfilled.’’ * 
 
 To the same effect he writes in his first 
 Epistle :— 
 
 _ Of which salvation the prophets have in- 
 
 quired and searched diligently, whe prophesied 
 
 of the grace that should come unto you; 
 
 searching what, or what manner of time, the _ 
 Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, 
 
 when it testified beforehand the sufferings of 
 Christ, and the glory that should follow.” ° 
 
 Similar statements are repeatedly ascribed 
 to Saint Paul, among which are the follow- 
 Ings) 
 
 “They that dwell at Jerusalem, and their 
 rulers, because they knew Him not, nor yet the 
 
 3 Luke xxiv. 44, 46, 47. 4 Acts iii. 14, 15, 17, 18. 
 5 1 Pet. i. 10, 11. 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 115 
 voices of the prophets which are read every 
 sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in con- 
 demning Him.’ ® 
 
 “ Out of the Scriptures opening and alleging 
 that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen 
 again from the dead; and that this Jesus whom 
 I preach unto you is Christ.” 7 
 
 ‘‘ Having therefore obtained help of God, I 
 continue unto this day, witnessing both to small 
 and great, saying none other things than those 
 which the prophets and Moses did say should 
 come; that Christ should suffer, and that He - 
 should be the first that should rise from the dead, 
 and should show light unto the people, and to 
 the Gentiles.” 8 
 
 Once more, in the Revelation, where Jesus is 
 said to describe Himself as “I am He that 
 liveth, and was dead, and, behold, I am ‘alive 
 for evermore,” and is represented under the 
 emblem of “a Lamb asit had been slain,’ } it is 
 broadly asserted that “the testimony of} Jesus 
 is the spirit of prophecy.” * 
 
 Such comprehensive and unqualified passages 
 as these, to say nothing of the very numerous 
 instances of the specific application of the 
 
 Gr Acts Xin. 274 7 Acts xvii. 2, 3. 
 8 Acts xxvi. 22, 23, 9 Rev. i318, 
 A” Reve-y, 6, 4 Rev. xix: 10, 
 
ca 
 
 wv 
 
 116 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 prophecies to events in our Lord’s humiliation 
 and passion, are amply sufficient to show that 
 from the first the Christian mind was thoroughly 
 impregnated with the idea, that suffering and 
 death were essential parts of the Messianic 
 forecast, as it was exhibited in the Hebrew 
 Scriptures. Nor need the reader’s patience be 
 exercised by quotations from the Fathers in 
 illustration of this fact. The topic was notori- 
 ously one of those most universally dwelt upon, 
 in every defence of Christian doctrine, especially 
 against the Jews, as in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue 
 with Trypho, to which reference has already 
 been made.® 
 
 Now, I beg the reader to observe the bearing 
 on the argument of this striking fact. 
 
 It is certain that, at the time in which 
 Christianity arose, the expectation of a triumph- 
 ant and glorious Messiah had gained almost 
 exclusive possession of the Jewish mind. The 
 contrasted idea lay in the background, dis- 
 countenanced, and as far as possible barred out 
 of the popular apprehension. And it was in 
 the bosom of the Jewish people that those who 
 became the earliest disciples of Jesus had been 
 nurtured. There they had been fed on the 
 hope of a coming glory for Israel, and been 
 
 3 Page 20. 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 117 
 taught to look with eager eyes for the King 
 who should come in the name of the Lord,‘ to 
 restore the kingdom unto Israel,® and to reign 
 over the house of Jacob for ever.’ Nourished 
 on these hopes of temporal splendour and 
 greatness, it must have run counter to all their 
 prepossessions and feelings, when they were 
 required to surrender their bright vision for a 
 Messiah who had been nailed to the accursed 
 cross, and for a spiritual kingdom in which 
 Israel as a nation should have no share. I do 
 not see how it would have been possible for 
 them, not barely to acquiesce in this entire 
 change in the character of their hope, but to 
 accept it with enthusiasm and to glory in it, as 
 they manifestly did, had not an irresistible 
 conviction from the first taken hold of their 
 minds, that this was the real meaning of their 
 prophets, and that the Scriptures, properly 
 understood, foretold a Messiah who should be 
 “ made perfect through sufferings.” 
 
 Thus, both in the interpretations of the 
 Jewish expositors before the Christian era, and 
 in the ardent convictions and faith of the first 
 converts to Christ from Judaism, we find a very 
 important,—may I not say decisive ?—confir- 
 
 4 Luke xix. 88; John xii. 13. 5 Acts i. 6. 
 6 Luke i. 33. 7 Heb. ii. 10. 
 
118 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 mation of the presence in the ancient Scriptures 
 of the third element of the Messianic idea— 
 the element of rejection, shame, and death. It 
 certainly was no Christian gloss, invented to 
 support Christianity and recommend it to the 
 Gentile world. Before Christianity arose, the 
 Jewish rabbis detected this element in their 
 sacred books, and were perplexed with the 
 mystery that seemed to shroud it. Afterwards, 
 when, in their battle with Christianity, it was 
 of the utmost consequence to them to get rid. 
 of it, if by any, means they could, they 
 were constrained to confess it, and driven to 
 strange shifts to weaken its force. Moreover, 
 as we have just seen, the conduct and convic- 
 tions of the early converts from Judaism afford 
 a striking, though indirect confirmation of the 
 Christian assumption, that the prophecies when 
 rightly interpreted really point to a suffering 
 Messiah. For it was not with these as with 
 the converts from heathenism. The latter 
 had no prepossessions to overcome, no _ life- 
 long training to reverse; in their minds the 
 Messianic idea found a virgin soil in which 
 to root itself. But with the others, as I would 
 again urge, it was very different. Bred up in 
 the popular expectation of a temporal Deliverer, 
 and taught to understand the prophecies in 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. 119 
 
 that sense alone, their adoption of Christianity 
 involved an abandonment of their dearest hope, 
 and a complete change of front in their view 
 of the prophecies on which that hope was 
 founded. Yet, as we have seen, they made 
 that change with enthusiasm, and surrendered 
 that hope without reserve or reluctance. The 
 idea that a suffering Messiah was foretold by 
 the prophets seized on their minds with the 
 irresistible force of a truth that was self-evident, 
 and needed only to be propounded to overcome 
 every adverse prepossession, and win unhesi- 
 tating acceptance. Far from being ashamed 
 of the cross, or keeping it in the background, 
 as it might have seemed natural for them to 
 do, these converts from Judaism took their 
 stand openly upon it, in their conflict with 
 their unbelieving countrymen, insisted that a 
 crucified Messiah was beyond all question the 
 only true fulfilment of the prophecies, and pro- 
 claimed “ Jesus Christ and Him crucified ”’ as 
 “the power of God and the wisdom of God.’ ® 
 And as I cannot deem it probable that this 
 fervid acceptance of and glorying in the Cross 
 had no better foundation than a false meaning 
 foisted into the familiar prophecies by the 
 propagandists of Christianity, I appeal to it as 
 § 1 Cor. i, 24. 
 
120 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 strong confirmatory evidence that the Christian 
 interpretation is the true one. 
 
 With these historical corroborations before 
 us of the view of Hebrew. prophecy which 
 traces in it a forecast of a suffering Messiah, I 
 think we may reasonably complain of the per- 
 verseness of those sceptical critics, who persist 
 in regarding the idea of a suffering Messiah as 
 being nothing more substantial than a fiction 
 invented by the advocates of Christianity, and 
 having no real standing ground in the text of 
 the Old Testament. Such a line of argument, 
 or rather assertion, appears to betray a resolve 
 to fly in the face of the plainest facts, sooner 
 than admit that “God hath made that same 
 Jesus who was crucified both Lord and Christ.” ° 
 
 The part of our argument which has been 
 pursued in this and the preceding section may 
 - now be summed up. 
 
 We have found the Scriptures of the Old 
 Testament to be pervaded by a great Messianic 
 forecast, in which these three elements are 
 combined. 
 
 First, a conviction of the ultimate triumph 
 of God’s cause, and the establishment of His 
 kingdom everywhere and for ever. 
 
 Secondly, a prescience of the accomplishment 
 
 9 Acts ii. 36. 
 
A SUFFERING MESSIAH. Tor 
 
 of this grand outcome of the world’s struggles 
 by the agency of a personal Champion or 
 Deliverer, raised up by God out of the bosom 
 of Israel, and destined to be victorious over all 
 the enemies of righteousness, and to reign in 
 glory, as God’s anointed, world without end. 
 Thirdly, a,mysterious foreshadowing of hu. 
 miliation, rejection, and suffering, to be under- 
 gone by this Deliverer, before He should 
 achieve His triumph, and enter on His glory. 
 By the forecast, of which these elements are 
 the component parts, the great body of Hebrew 
 prophecy appears to be penetrated and leavened. 
 
122 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 SECTION VIL. 
 
 THE FORECAST OF A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 
 
 I pass on now to the third and lagt of the great 
 prophetic forecasts. This may be described as 
 a practical anticipation of and preparation for 
 a Spiritual Religion, instead of a religion of 
 rigid precept and ceremonial observance. 
 
 In the bosom of Judaism, as more or less in 
 all religious systems, there were two forces in 
 conflict. “The flesh lusted against the spirit, 
 and the spirit against the flesh.”* The one 
 tended to bind down the religion to local forms 
 and external worship; the other to elevate it, 
 and make it a “worship in spirit and in 
 truth.” The former found its home and nutri- 
 ment among the ceremonies and sacrifices of 
 the Levitical law, the hereditary priesthood, 
 and the local worship of the sanctuary; the 
 other had for its organ the prophetical order. 
 
 Now if from the earliest times, and thence- 
 forward invariably throughout all the vicissi- 
 tudes of the national fortunes, the influence 
 of the prophets was thrown on the side of 
 
 WGalswe ky. 
 
A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 123 
 spirituality and against formalism, and was 
 evermore directed to unfold and stimulate the 
 higher elements of the religious life; if the 
 constant tendency of their teaching was to 
 treat as. subordinate the legal limitations of 
 time and place and ritual, to raise the minds of 
 the people to purer and loftier conceptions of 
 God, and to inculcate the supremacy of moral 
 and spiritual affections over all material acts 
 and bodily worship and service; then from the 
 very nature of the case we are justified in 
 seeing in this commanding feature of their 
 utterances a prognostic of the dispensation to 
 come. For Judaism was essentially a religion 
 that looked onwards, and contained the germ 
 of progress, and the promise of better things. 
 Its prophets, bending their ardent gaze on the 
 future, caught a glimpse, as we have already 
 seen, of the expansion of Judaism into a 
 universal religion. Towards that future de- 
 velopment they were working, so to speak, in 
 their endeavours to emancipate religion from 
 the bonds of the flesh ; the spirit of the coming 
 world-wide kingdom of heaven, however far 
 distant its realization might be, was already 
 stirring within them; of the principles which 
 would then be triumphant they were the heralds 
 and forerunners. 
 
124 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 Thus the work of the prophets, while it was 
 ever giving an onward impulse to the contempo- 
 rary Judaism, contained within itself a sign and 
 foreshadowing of the future. To an intelligent 
 eye, bent on divining from it the purpose of 
 God, its very texture and colour exhibited a 
 presentiment of the spirituality that should 
 characterize the wider dispensation to follow. 
 
 To bring out clearly the presence of this 
 forecast in the ancient Scriptures, we must 
 again have recourse to quotation, selecting some 
 chief passages as illustrations, rather than 
 exhibiting the evidence at full length. 
 
 It is remarkable that the keynote of the 
 expectation of a spiritual religion was given at 
 the outset, in the story of the great Father of 
 Israel. ‘Abraham believed in the Lord, and 
 He counted it to him for righteousness.”? No 
 outward act, no ritual observance or costly 
 sacrifice, lay at the root of the patriarch’s 
 acceptance and justification ; God looked at the 
 heart, and set His seal on the inward affection 
 of filial trust. On that foundation a whole 
 religion of the spirit might be built. And 
 grievously as the nation often fell below that 
 high level in after times, the pre-eminence of 
 the moral and spiritual over the ceremonial and 
 
 2 Gen. xv. 6, 
 
A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 125 
 material, thus asserted in the earliest dawn of 
 its life, was never left wholly without witness. 
 
 In proceeding now to draw out the evidence 
 by which the forecast of a spiritual religion is 
 established, it will be convenient to arrange it 
 under several distinct heads, making it our 
 aim to observe how, under the influence of the 
 prophetic teaching, the spiritual doctrines which 
 prepared the way for Christianity gradually 
 emerged out of those grosser conceptions that 
 encrusted the early faith of Israel. 
 
 We begin with the idea of God. 
 
 Nothing so debases a religion as a low, 
 limited, unworthy conception of the supreme 
 Object of worship. Whatever represents God 
 as tied down to country or race, or confines His 
 presence to local sanctuaries, or limits human 
 access to Him by artificial restrictions, or makes 
 His worship to centre in external acts, or clothes 
 Him with the coarser human passions, reacts 
 injuriously on the worshippers, and rivets on 
 their minds the debasing fetters of superstition. 
 It is on the very opposite conception that 
 Christianity is founded. It rests on the sublime 
 truth taught by the well of Sychar: ‘The hour 
 cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers 
 shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, 
 for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. 
 
126 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him 
 must worship Him in spirit and in truth.’ 
 That, indeed, was a strain beyond the reach of 
 even the greatest of the prophets of Israel. 
 But the point to be noticed is, that they were 
 always working towards it, clearing the way for 
 it, mingling not indistinct foreshadowings of it 
 with their teaching. 
 
 Watching the gradual unfolding of the idea * 
 
 of God in the prophetical literature, we find 
 it, along the main lines of its development, 
 dropping by degrees the limitations and grosser 
 conceptions of the earlier times, and soaring 
 towards a grander and more spiritual ideal. 
 
 God ceases to be imagined as the peculiar or 
 local God of Israel, which seems to have been 
 a very prevalent notion concerning Him in the 
 rude, disorderly days of the Judges ;* and is 
 proclaimed as the only God, “beside whom 
 there is none else,’’* the ‘‘ Jehovah, who is the 
 
 3 John iv. 28, 24, 
 
 4 «The relation of God to the Israelites as their special 
 sovereign, of the Israelites to God as His chosen and peculiar 
 people, led almost of necessity to the vulgar notion (and the 
 vulgar notion spread very widely), that Jehovah was the 
 national God; a greater God indeed than the gods of the 
 neighbouring and hostile nations, but still self-limited, as it 
 were, to the tutelar deity of the sons of Abraham.”—Milman’s 
 Hist. of Jews, vol. i. p. 488, note. 
 
 5 Isa. xliv. 6, 8. 
 
 4 
 . 
 
A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. ~- 127 
 
 most High over all the earth,” ° the “Lord of 
 the whole world and of all that dwell therein.” 7 
 All that is in heaven and earth is His, and He 
 reigns over all.* He inhabits eternity,® and is 
 from everlasting to everlasting.’ He fills heaven 
 and earth.” Heaven is His throne, and earth 
 is His footstool.* His kingdom is an everlast- 
 ing kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and 
 obey him.* 
 
 Again, His knowledge and His righteous 
 judgment are extended from the outer domain 
 of the visible life and conduct to the secrecies 
 of the human spirit. He tries the hearts and 
 the reins.’ He searches all hearts, and under- 
 stands all the imaginations of the thoughts.® 
 Hfe desires truth in the inward parts.’ He 
 bestows a new heart and a new spirit,’ and 
 dwells with him that is of an humble and con- 
 trite spirit.’ 
 
 Concurrently with this extension of the scope 
 of the divine knowledge and judgment, to em- 
 brace and scrutinize the inner life of the spirit, 
 and as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 strikingly says, to “pierce even to the 
 
 6 Ps, Ixxxiii. 18. 7 Ps. xxiv. 1. 
 8 1 Chron. xxix.11,12. 9 Isa. lvii. 15. E Pas xe 
 2 Jer. xxiii, 24. 8 Isa. Ixvi. 1. 4 Dan. vii. 27. 
 
 5 Ps. vii. 93 Jer..xi. 20; 6 1 Chron. xxviii. 9. 
 f° Ps lie6: 8 Ezek. xviii. 31. 9 Isa. lvii. 15. 
 
128 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and to be a 
 discerner of the thoughts and intents of the 
 heart,”’ the moral attributes of God are brought 
 out into increasing prominence, and invested 
 with a sacred supremacy. He is named em- 
 phatically “the Holy One.” He is of purer 
 eyes than to behold iniquity.’ He is righteous 
 in all His ways, and holy in all His works.’ 
 He loves judgment, and hates robbery for burnt 
 offering.* He is merciful and gracious, slow to 
 anger, and plenteous in mercy.® His counsels 
 are faithfulness and truth.° His judgments 
 are true and righteous altogether.’ All the 
 lower and coarser similitudes by which God 
 had been imaged forth, to bring down the con- 
 ception of His being to the level of the ignorant 
 and sensuous, are disused by degrees, or con- 
 fessed to be inadequate; and He stands revealed 
 as the infinite and all-perfect Being, who tran- 
 scends all resemblance and comparison. ‘ My 
 thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are 
 your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as 
 the heavens are higher than the earth, so are 
 My ways higher than your ways, and My 
 thoughts than your thoughts.” ® 
 1 Heb. iv. 12. 2 Hab. i. 13. 3 Ps, exly. 17. 
 
 4 Isa, lxi. 8. 5 Ps, cili. 8. 6. [sadaxvpaly 
 +P xis, Ooo 8 Isa. ly. 8, 9. 
 
A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 129 
 
 1S CRN SARS ASAI IER PRR a OC 
 
 Thus, through the prophetical teaching, the 
 
 idea of God was gradually enlarged and elevated, 
 
 and the way was prepared for the full revelation 
 
 in Jesus Christ of the universal “« Father, of 
 whom are all things and we in Him.” ® 
 
 Let us next observe how the idea of a 
 spiritual worship, as distinguished from one 
 of outward acts, grew up under the influence 
 of ‘the prophets. 
 
 Considering the sanctions which bound the 
 sacrificial system of worship on the conscience 
 of the people, it is startling to hear how boldly 
 and unmeasuredly the prophets pour scorn on it, 
 and vilify it as worse than worthless, when 
 regarded as a substitute for the worship of a 
 pure heart, and the righteousness of an obedient 
 life. The key-note of this high, indignant 
 strain is set in the words ascribed to Samuel, 
 the illustrious founder of the prophetic school. 
 Confronting the disobedient king, he demands 
 with a burning indignation, “ Hath the Lord 
 as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, 
 as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, 
 to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken 
 than the fat of rams.”’! 
 
 In a similar strain God Himself is represented 
 by one of the Psalmists as addressing the na- 
 
 9 1 Cor. viii. 6. 1 1 Sam. xv. 22. 
 
 K 
 
1380 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 tion, and reproving it for imagining that heap- 
 ing His altar with victims would make up for 
 disregard of His righteous law. ‘‘ Hear,O My 
 people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will 
 testify against thee ; I am God, even thy God. 
 I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy 
 burnt offerings, to have been continually before 
 Me. I will take no bullock out of thy house, 
 nor he-goats out of thy folds. For every beast 
 of the forest is Mine, and the cattle upon a 
 thousand hills. .... Will I eat the flesh of 
 bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto 
 God thanksgiving, and pay thy vows unto the 
 most High: and call upon Me in the day of 
 trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt 
 rlaraty eve. imo s Whoso offereth praise glori- 
 fieth Me, and to him that ordereth his conversa- 
 tion aright will I show the salvation of God.’’* 
 
 In another psalm, one of the distinctly Mes- 
 sianic ones, the same idea is repeated. ‘Sacri- 
 fice and offering Thou didst not desire; .... 
 burnt offering and sin offering hast Thou. 
 not required. Then said I, Lo, I come; in the 
 volume of the book it is written of me, I delight 
 to do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy law is 
 within my heart.” ° 
 
 And in yet another, the solemn “ Miserere” 
 
 2 Ps. 1. 7---10, 13, 14, 23. 3 Ps, xl, 6—8. 
 
A SPIRITUAL ‘RELIGION. 131 
 
 of Christendom, it is shown in the exquisite 
 strain of the penitent mourner how much 
 more acceptable to God is godly sorrow for sin 
 than all the sacrifices of the material altar. 
 “Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give 
 it; Thou delightest not in burnt offering. The 
 sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken 
 and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not 
 despise.” * 
 
 By the mouth of Hosea also God enforces the 
 same lesson, of the superiority of the moral 
 over the ceremonial: “TI desired mercy, and 
 not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more 
 than burnt offerings.” ° 
 
 Still more energetic are the words in which 
 Isaiah expresses the divine abhorrence of the 
 sacrifices ordained by God Himself, when 
 brought to His altar by impure hands* In 
 their fiery wrath they seem to wither up and 
 blast the whole temple worship. 
 
 “Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of 
 Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye 
 people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the 
 multitude of your sacrifices unto Me? saith the 
 Lord; I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, 
 and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in 
 the blood of. bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. 
 
 4a) iw 16, 12:7: 5 Hosea vi. 6. 
 K 2 
 
132 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 When ye come to appear before Me, who hath 
 required this at your hands to tread My courts ? 
 Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an 
 abomination unto Me; the new moons and sab- 
 baths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away 
 with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. 
 Your new moons and your appointed feasts 
 My soul hateth ; they are a trouble unto Me; I 
 am weary to bear them. And when ye spread 
 forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from 
 you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will 
 not hear; your hands are full of blood. 
 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil 
 of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to 
 do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, 
 relieve the oppressed; judge the fatherless; 
 plead for the widow.” ° 
 
 At the close also of the same great Book of 
 prophecy the divine rejection of merely cere- 
 monial sacrifices is repeated, and this time with 
 a scorn which, if less vehement, is even more 
 concentrated and bitter. ‘He that killeth an 
 ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a 
 lamb as if he cut off a dog’s neck; he that 
 offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine’s 
 blood ; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed 
 an idol. Yea, they have chosen their own 
 
 6 Isa. i. 1O—17. 
 
A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. Toa 
 
 ways, and their soul delighteth in their abomi- 
 nations.” 7 : 
 
 By Amos a rebuke not less wrathful is 
 launched against the wicked, who think to 
 conciliate God with offerings, while they tread 
 down the poor, and “turn judgment to worm- 
 wood.” “TI hate, I despise your feast days, 
 and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. 
 Though ye offer Me burnt offerings and your 
 meat offerings, I will not accept them; neither 
 will I regard the peace offerings of your fat 
 beasts. Take thou away from Me thé noise of 
 thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of 
 thy viols. But let judgment run down as 
 waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.’ ° 
 
 And to quote one more illustration of the 
 same sentiment, we have the following ex- 
 quisitely beautiful strain in the book of 
 Micah :— | 
 
 ‘““Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and 
 bow myself before the high God? shall I come 
 before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of 
 a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with 
 thousands of rams, or with ten ‘thousands of 
 rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my 
 transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin 
 
 7 Isa. Ixvi. 3. 8 Amos v. 21—24. 
 
134 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, 
 
 what is good; and what doth the Lord require 
 of thee, but to do justly, and to lové mercy, 
 and to walk humbly with thy God?”’® 
 
 Closely connected with the depreciation by 
 the prophets of sacrificial expiations is the 
 efficacy ascribed by them to Repentance, as 
 some of the passages already cited strikingly 
 show. Others occur in abundance, of which two 
 or three specimens will suffice. 
 
 Jonah’s narrative is a case in point, and is 
 remarkable as extending the mercy of God to 
 a heathen city. Throwing aside the exclusive- 
 
 ness of his nation, the author of this book in a. 
 
 measure anticipates the calling of the Gentiles, 
 and tells us that even in the case of a heathen 
 city, ripe for judgment, the destruction might 
 be averted by crying humbly unto God, and 
 turning from evil ways. Not costly sacrifice 
 was the efficacious atonement, but penitence of 
 heart, and amendment. of life. These were 
 acceptable to the most-High. ‘God saw their 
 works, that they turned from their evil way ; 
 and God repented of the evil that He had said 
 
 ° Micah vi. 6—8: The ascription of this noble passage to 
 Balaam, by some of the commentators who follow in the wake 
 of Bishop Butler, seems to me to betray a singular lack of 
 critical insight. 
 
A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. sid Rs 
 
 that He would do unto them, and He did it 
 not.”’ ? | 
 
 By Joel a similar lesson is taught to Israel 
 when chastised for sin, in the beautiful words. 
 which to this day form one of the most moving 
 calls to penitence. ‘Rend your heart, and 
 not your garments, and turn unto the Lord 
 your God; for He is gracious and merciful, 
 slow to anger and of great kindness, and 
 repenteth Him of the evil.” ? 
 
 Not less beautiful and touching is the 
 pleading of Isaiah with the weary and sinful: 
 “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, 
 call ye upon Him while He is near. Let the 
 wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous 
 man his thoughts, and let him return unto the 
 Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and 
 to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” * 
 
 To multiply quotations is needless; for all 
 competent critics freely acknowledge “ the vast 
 interval between the morality and religion of 
 the Pentateuch, or even of the historical books, 
 and the morality and religion of the prophe- 
 cies.”* Yet to complete the testimony of 
 Seripture to the emergence of these spiritual 
 doctrines, under the influence of the prophetical 
 
 1 Jonah iii. 10. 2 Joel ii. 13. 3 Toa Lire 6) F. 
 4 J.S. Mill, Rep. Govt., p. 42. 
 
136 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 instruction, from the midst of ruder ideas, it 
 may be well to note these two things. 
 
 The first is, the growth of the idea of human 
 Individuality and Responsibility. 
 
 That “every one of us shall give account of 
 himself to God ”* is a truth which lies at the 
 root of Christianity. But it was slow to find 
 its place in the human consciousness, and in 
 the earlier ages of revelation it remained 
 obscure and undeveloped. The rough justice 
 of those primitive times was savage and indis- 
 criminate, and swept remorselessly over all the 
 
 connexions of the guilty one, however free they _ 
 
 may have been from complicity in the evil. The 
 sins of the fathers were visited on the children.® 
 
 The family of the criminal was exterminated | 
 
 with him.7~ Whole tribes were judicially 
 slaughtered, down to the meanest and young- 
 est,—“man and woman, infant and suckling.” § 
 It was only by degrees that the higher view 
 emerged and became paramount, and the 
 sacred individuality of every human being was 
 recognized, and each was understood to stand 
 in his own individual relation to God, and to 
 be responsible for himself. When we have 
 travelled along the successive stages of religi- 
 
 Rom. xiv. 12, 6 Exod. xx. 5. 7 Josh. vii. 24, 25. 
 8 Deut. vii. 2. Josh. x. 40. 1 Sam. xy. 3. 
 
 ES a a ae 
 
 = ed 
 
A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. TOR 
 
 ous development from the Exodus downwards, 
 and at last reach the divine message to Israel 
 by Ezekiel,? we cannot be insensible to the 
 immense advance which has been made on the 
 early conception. The proverb should no more 
 hold good, “The fathers have eaten sour 
 grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on 
 edge.”* Hach should answer for himself 
 alone. ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die ;’’? 
 not others because of its sin, nor it because of 
 another’s sin. ‘The son shall not bear the 
 iniquity of the father, neither shall the father 
 bear the iniquity of the son.” Each for him- 
 self. The righteous should live by his own 
 righteousness ; and on the wicked should be 
 laid his own sin. ‘When a righteous man 
 turneth away from his righteousness, and com- 
 mitteth iniquity, and dieth in them; for his 
 iniquity that he hath done shallhe die. Again, 
 when the wicked man turneth away from his 
 wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth 
 that which is lawful and right, he shall save 
 his soul alive.” 
 
 Here is the germ, already springing up 
 vigorously, of the spiritual truth, that each 
 human soul is in direct, individual relation 
 
 % Hzek. xviii. 1 Hzek. xviii. 2. 
 
 2 Ezek, xviii. 4. 3 Ezek. xviii, 20, 26, 27. 
 
138 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 with the Almighty God ;—a truth absolutely 
 necessary to lie at the basis of a univeral 
 religion of the spirit.‘ 
 
 The other point to be noticed is this; that . 
 just as the prophetic teaching brought into 
 prominence the rights and the responsibility of 
 the individual, so it also exhibited God as deal- 
 ing graciously with men, not merely in their 
 corporate or national capacity, but individually, 
 taking them one by one into covenant with 
 Himself, and cleansing and renewing their 
 hearts. : 
 
 Thus when Joel was instructed to foretell 
 the outpouring of the Spirit in the latter days, 
 the word put into his mouth described no 
 merely general or collective blessing, but an 
 individual or personal gift and promise to 
 members of all classes and ranks. “It shall 
 come to pass afterward that I will pour out My 
 Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your 
 daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall 
 dream dreams, your young men shall see 
 visions ; and also upon the servants and the 
 handmaids in those days I will pour out my 
 Spirit... . And it shall come to pass that 
 
 * See this point treated in a masterly manner in Prot 
 Mozley’s Ruling Ideas in Early Ages. 
 
A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 139 
 whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord 
 shall be saved.” ® 
 
 So when by Jeremiah was given the promise 
 of a new covenant, to replace ‘the old national 
 covenant, the same individualizing character 
 pervaded it. The grace was to enter into 
 individual souls for their healing and salvation. 
 “‘ Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that 
 I will make a new covenant with the house of 
 Israel, and with the house of Judah; not 
 according to: the covenant that I made with 
 their fathers in the day that I took them by 
 the hand to bring them out of the land of Hgypt. 
 . . - But tnis shall be the covenant that I will 
 make with the house of Israel: after those 
 days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in 
 their inward parts, and write it in their hearts: 
 and will be their God, and they shall be My 
 people.” ° Indeed, throughout the promises 
 sent by this prophet of the better days to come, 
 the gracious dealing of God with His people’s 
 hearts was made the prominent feature. ‘Thus 
 we read: ‘‘ I will give them an heart to know 
 Me, that I am the Lord ;”? andagain: “I will 
 put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not 
 depart from Me.’’’ | 
 
 5 Joel ii. 28,' 29, 32. 6 Jer. xxxi. 31—33. 
 70 SOP RRIV. Pe 8 Jer. xxxil. 40. 
 
140 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 To the same effect was the promise of divine 
 grace communicated through Ezekiel. “I will 
 give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit 
 within you; and I will take the stony heart 
 out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of 
 flesh ; that they may walk in My statutes, and 
 keep Mine ordinances, and do them: and they 
 shall be My people, and I will be their 
 God.” ® 
 
 As a further illustration of the topic the 
 
 glorious passage from Isaiah may be cited; 
 
 “Thus saith the high and lofty One that in- 
 habiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell 
 im the high and holy place, with him also that 
 is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the 
 spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of 
 the contrite ones.” ' To which may be added 
 Malachi’s description of God’s faithful servants, 
 in an age of indifference and unbelief: “Then 
 
 they that feared the Lord spake often one to 
 
 another; and the Lord hearkened and heard ibe 
 and a book of remembrance was written before 
 Him for them that feared the Lord, and thou oht 
 upon Hisname. And they shall be Mine, saith 
 the Lord, in that day when I make up My 
 jewels ; and I will spare them, as a man spareth 
 his own son that serveth him.” 2 
 
 9 Ezek. xi. 19, 20. 1 sa, lvii. 15. 2. Mal. iii. 16, 17. 
 
 ee a ee ee ee ere 
 
A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 141 
 
 Let me remind the reader, that the object for 
 which these passages are adduced is to illustrate 
 the progress which was effected under the 
 teaching of the prophets, from the lower idea 
 of the nation being taken collectively into re- 
 lation to God by an external, national covenant, 
 to the higher conception of a spiritual covenant, 
 under which an inward and vital relation, of 
 divine grace on one side, and holy faith and 
 trust on the other, should be established be- 
 tween the individual soul and its God. Itis 
 manifest that this advance towards a higher 
 spirituality was in the direction of Christianity, 
 and laid the foundation on which its doctrines 
 of grace were afterwards built up. 
 
 We returnnow tothe mainline ofourargument, 
 and note one more leading feature of the growth 
 of a spiritual religion under the influence of 
 the prophets. This is to be found in the in- 
 creased prominence given to Prayer. 
 
 Of course it is not meant that there could 
 ever have been a time when prayer did not in 
 some sense and degree enter into the practice 
 of religion, and form part of the worship offered 
 by men to their God. But there is a difference 
 between prayer as part of a local and external 
 ceremonial, of which burnt offerings and 
 material sacrifices and rites formed the chief 
 
142 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 features, and prayer as the uplifting of the 
 heart to God in private devotion, the sponta- 
 neous outpouring into His ear of the individual’s 
 inmost aspirations and desires. It was in the 
 latter direction that, under the prophets, the 
 idea of prayer was moulded. As time rolled 
 on this mode of intercourse between the soul 
 and God was gradually emancipated from 
 formal ceremonies and a local sanctuary, and 
 became the private habit of the devout and 
 faithful. Especially when temple and sacrifice 
 had been abolished, by the carrying away of 
 Judah into Babylon, a great impulse was given 
 to the free development of prayer. Then men 
 began to kneel three times a day in their 
 private chambers, and pray and give thanks 
 before their God. Then prayer was set forth 
 before God as incense, and the lifting up of 
 the hands as the evening sacrifice." Then in 
 the troubled soul grew up the resolve, “As 
 for me I will call upon God, and the Lord 
 shall save me. Evening, and morning, and at 
 noon will I pray, and He shall hear my voice.” ® 
 By the rivers of Assyria and of Babylon, and 
 in the cities and palaces of the heathen, the exiles 
 prayed to the God of their fathers, learning in 
 the absence of priest and altar and sanctuary 
 3 Dan. vi. 10. # Ps, cxli, 2. 5 Ps. lv. 16, 17. 
 
A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 143 
 
 that better language, which prompted by “the 
 spirit of grace and of supplications”® goes 
 straight up to the divine ear.’ The. habit 
 thus formed showed itself in the long, solemn 
 prayers of Kzra and Nehemiah after the re- 
 turn ;° and, as we learn from one of the Psalms, 
 wplildls internal evidence seems clearly to assign 
 to the Maccabeean period, the temple at Jerusa- 
 lem no longer satisfied the desire of the people 
 to meet before God in the solemn exercises of 
 public worship, and the land became studded 
 with synagogues for the purpose.® It was under 
 the same growing impulse to approach the . 
 most High in prayer, that the temple itself now 
 became known as the house of prayer; accord- 
 ing to the prophecy, “Also the sons of the 
 stranger, that join themselves to the Lord, to 
 serve Him and to love the name of the Lord, 
 . .even them will I bring to My holy 
 mountain, and make them joyful in My house 
 or prayer . .. . for My house shall be called 
 an house of prayer for all people.” ! 
 Thus by the gradual cultivation of the spirit 
 and practice of prayer, a sensible preparation 
 
 6 Zech. xii. 10. 
 
 7 Ezek, i.1. Ps. exxxvii.1. Dan. ix. 3. Neh. i. 4. 
 8 Ezra ix. 5; Neh. ix. 9 Ps, Ixxiy. 8. 
 1 Isa. lvi. 6,7. Matt. xxi. 13. 
 
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 ee ? Py paz : é 2 uJ y Pal : 
 ™ Fé fai fP*. Z id ¥ * Pa p - Ps me fi , . . 
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 Bd. 
 
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 Sev. FA tse ihe fe : Vid é 7 ie ‘ vf {, ne, ree “ 
 
 Aas wt pgs * Fhe 
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 - 
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 Ov a et Phe See Dies é, : oe 
 aren ode vom CEES 4 Pbk te tad ork ot Ait 
 ; ‘ 
 
 144. THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 was made for the time when prayer should 
 come to the forefront as a Christian ordinance 
 and habit, and “men should pray everywhere, | 
 lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubt- 
 ing,” and the precept, ‘‘ Pray without ceasing,’”* 
 should become a universal law of Christianity. 
 Looking back, now, over the whole field of the 
 prophetical teaching, I think it must be plain 
 that the idea of religion among the Jewish 
 people was continually rising towards a higher 
 level, and becoming liberated by degrees from 
 debasing limitations and superstitious encum- 
 brances. Amidst many fluctuations and hin- 
 drances, we cannot be mistaken in perceiving 
 a steady progress from age to age, a sensible 
 advance towards a universal religion of the 
 spirit. And when we recognize in this develop- 
 ment the special work of the prophets, and see 
 that it was one of the chief distinctive features 
 and fruits of their teaching, the question arises 
 to which I wish to ask the reader’s particular 
 attention. Can we, having all this progress in 
 view, stop short of believing that the propheti- 
 cal teaching as a whole contained a real fore- 
 cast of a future religion, which should be 
 spiritual in its character, as well as catholic in 
 its scope, a religion of the heart for all nations? 
 
 2 1 Tim. ii. 8. 3 1 Thess. v. 17. 
 
 2 
 
 Oe = a es 
 / 
 
A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 145 
 
 Of course it may be replied, and this is the 
 sceptical answer, that the development of moral 
 and spiritual ideas, which we have been tracing 
 in the prophetic literature, was a natural 
 growth, having its sole origin and impulse in ‘ 
 the mental constitution of mankind; and that — 
 we can only rightly look upon it as furnishing , 
 an illustration of the working of that spiritual | 
 reason or faculty, with which the Creator has ) 
 been pleased to endow His children, and not as 
 affording evidence of His speaking through the 
 prophets, and enabling them to exhibit a real 
 inspired forecast of the religion of the future. 
 
 But such an account of the matter leaves out 
 of consideration several of its essential features. 
 No doubt, the emergence of a higher spiri- 
 tuality, out of the lower and grosser elements of 
 primitive Judaism, was a real growth out of the 
 soil of humanity, and not a mere revelation 
 supernaturally induced on a dead or stagnant 
 
 material. But was the growth purely natural 9) 
 
 and self-evolved, or was it due to a divine ‘ 
 stimulus and guidance? That is the real ques- 
 tion, on the answer to which depends our right 
 to see a true forecast in this element of the 
 Old Testament Scriptures. And that the latter 
 view is the only adequate one, two considera- 
 tions seem clearly to point out. 
 L 
 
146 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 She ee SS a UNR Ee  e 
 
 First, this growth of a spiritual religion was 
 the unique product of Judaism. Nothing of 
 the kind was exhibited in other and contem- 
 porary religions. No higher spirituality sprang 
 out of their bosom; on the contrary, they sank 
 lower and lower, wore themselves out, and 
 perished. Here alone was steady advance, 
 continual ascent, onward struggle maintained 
 against all hindrances, and crowned at last 
 with triumph. Judaism ripened into Christi- 
 anity: ‘First the blade, then the ear; after 
 that, the full corn in the ear.” * 
 
 And secondly, the continuous advance in 
 spirituality was accompanied, as we have seen, 
 by a clear forecast of a universal religion to 
 be established in the latter days.* The prophets 
 were working towards a definite future. Their 
 own limited dispensation was avowedly pre- 
 paratory to a wider one; their own imperfect 
 national covenant was to be laid aside for one 
 of a higher and more beneficent character. If 
 their feet stood on the soil of Judaism, their 
 gaze was turned forwards to Christianity, as 
 yet hidden in the counsels of God. 
 
 Now these two features in combination give 
 to the prophetical teaching a significance, which 
 neither by itself alone could impart to it. The 
 
 4 Mark iv. 28. 5 See Section IV. 
 
A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 147 
 
 prophets busied themselves in widening and 
 elevating the religion of their own day, and 
 imparting to it a purer, freer scope; and at 
 the same time they looked forward to and pre- 
 dicted its extension beyond the narrow bounds 
 of Israel, to triumph over all idolatries, and 
 embrace all nations. Is it reasonable, I ask, 
 to separate these two things, and persuade our- 
 selves that no intimation of the religion of the 
 future was afforded by the increase of spiritu- 
 ality in the religion of the present? Are we 
 not justified in seeing in the character, which 
 the prophets were stamping on a progressive 
 Judaism, a true forecast of the nature of that 
 universal religion, into which Judaism was to 
 expand and be absorbed ? 
 
148 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY: 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF THE FORECASTS IN 
 CHRISTIANITY, 
 
 Tue argument which we are constructing falls 
 naturally into two chief parts; and it is from 
 the correspondence between these that its force 
 is derived. In the first we have to establish 
 the existence of certain prophetical intimations 
 or announcements; in the second to show that 
 events nave fulfilled them. The former task 
 we have now accomplished, and I trust the 
 reader has been convinced that the ancient 
 Scriptures of the Old Testament really contain, 
 and. are largely pervaded and coloured by, three 
 great forecasts of the future, which constitute 
 their distinct prophetical element. This charac- 
 teristic of them being established, it remains 
 for us to show that these forecasts have been 
 historically fulfilled; and not only fulfilled as 
 a matter of fact, but fulfilled in such a manner 
 as to indicate the agency of the Divine pre- 
 science, wisdom, and power. 
 
 For it is not every kind of fulfilment which 
 
FORECASTS CLASSIFIED. 149 
 
 suffices for proof of genuine foreknowledge 
 of the future. Forecasts, when classed with 
 reference to their verification by subsequent 
 events, may be divided into three kinds. First, 
 those which must be set aside as absolutely 
 false, being followed by no fulfilment at all. 
 Secondly, those which, though they are followed 
 by events that correspond to them and simulate a 
 fulfilment of them, fail to establish a real pre- 
 science; because the apparent fulfilment in 
 these cases might have been anticipated by 
 human sagacity, or may have been brought 
 about intentionally by human contrivance in 
 order to correspond to the prediction, or have 
 grown in the natural course of things out of 
 the prediction itself. These may be called 
 ilusive. Thirdly, those which are followed by 
 a fulfilment such as no human sagacity could 
 have anticipated, nor human ingenuity have 
 devised, nor the forecast itself have occasioned. 
 These form a distinct class in which alone the 
 evidence of a genuine prescience is to be found ; 
 and it is plain that for the purpose of our 
 argument it is forecasts of this last kind only 
 that are available. | 
 
 To put these distinctions in a clear light, I 
 once more beg the reader’s indulgence for a 
 homely illustration. 
 
150 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROFHECY. 
 
 Suppose that, from his early years, a man is 
 possessed by a persistent presentiment, that 
 after he has reached the middle of life a new 
 sphere of very wide and responsible action will 
 suddenly open before him, requiring in its 
 occupant large stores of knowledge and special 
 aptitudes and habits; and that under the 
 influence and pressure of this anticipation, 
 constantly present to his mind,. he steadily 
 shapes his life, during many laborious years, so 
 as to prepare himself to enter on the high 
 vocation whenever the call shall come. 
 
 Now it may turn out that the call never does 
 come. The opportunity to which he has so 
 long been looking forward may be altogether 
 denied him; the labour of preparation may be 
 entirely thrown away; and thus the presenti- 
 ment which shaped the man’s life would be 
 proved to have been unfounded. In that case 
 the forecast would have been simply a false 
 one. 
 
 Or it may happen that the very fact of his 
 having sedulously qualified himself for high 
 and important office leads to his being selected 
 for and appointed to some such well-known 
 office, which happens to fall vacant or to want 
 an occupant at the time at which he is ready 
 for it; and thus his early presentiment brings 
 
FORECASTS CLASSIFIED. 151 
 
 about its own fulfilment by a merely natural 
 sequence of events. In this case the forecast 
 may be called illusive; it is fulfilled, but it 
 fulfils itself; the case furnishes an instance of 
 sagacious prudence, or of the power of the 
 human will to work out its purpose by ordinary 
 means; but there is no real prescience of the 
 future in it. | 
 But a third issue may be supposed. Th 
 presentiment might be realized in a way which 
 it was impossible for any one to have antici- 
 pated ; by some extraordinary occurrence out 
 of the range of all probable calculation, and 
 through some strange combination of the most 
 unlikely events, which are as much a surprise 
 to the man himself as to every one else. The 
 call might come like a thunderclap out of a 
 clear sky; and as if by the waving of an 
 enchanter’s wand the dream, when apparently 
 furthest from fulfilment, might be suddenly 
 realized. In this case, and only in this, there 
 would be something mysterious and impressive ; 
 we should be unable to explain it by any known 
 laws of human knowledge or thought; the 
 forecast so firmly rooted in the mind for many 
 years before, and so unaccountably proved 
 true at last, would assume in our eyes the 
 character of a real prophetic glance into the 
 
152 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 future, a genuine prescience of things to 
 come. 
 
 What I wish, by means of this illustration, 
 to make plain is this: that when we base an 
 argument, for the reality of a Divine interven- 
 tion or inspiration, on the great forecasts which 
 characterized Hebrew prophecy, it is incumbent 
 on us, not only to prove that those forecasts 
 have been actually realized in historical events, 
 but also to show that the fulfilments of them 
 have been of such a kind, and brought about in 
 such ways, as to exclude the explanation of 
 mere human sagacity in the prophets, or of 
 ingenious contrivance in those who were actors 
 in the supposed fulfilments, or of a tendency in 
 the forecasts to fulfil themselves by a natural 
 evolution of events; and to shut us up to the 
 acknowledgment of an agency above the order 
 of nature—a direct intervention of God Him- 
 self. 
 
 Such is the task now before us, and to ap- 
 proach it satisfactorily it will be advisable to 
 restate the case, and get it distinctly before our 
 minds. 
 
 In the infancy of civilization, ages before 
 Greece and Rome rose as lights in the firma- 
 ment of humanity, and while the earliest 
 organized communities were slowly struggling 
 
THE CASE RE-STATED. T¥e 
 
 out of primitive barbarism and ignorance, there 
 came into existence a small Eastern tribe which 
 settled down in a land of rocky fastnesses on 
 the edge of the vast Asiatic continent, isolated 
 by deserts on one side, and the sea on the other, 
 from the surrounding nations. Dwelling apart, 
 and jealously preserving their isolation, this 
 people viewed themselves as being specially 
 consecrated to God, and placed under a theocratic 
 government, so as to be in direct connexion 
 with the supernatural and Divine. Under the 
 influence of this position, and this conception 
 of their national constitution and calling, they 
 developed the strongest and most elevated 
 religious instinct that has ever manifested 
 itself in our race, and became marked out from 
 all contemporary peoples by what may be called 
 a unique genius for godliness. By this their 
 institutions and laws were moulded, and their 
 literature formed ; and out of this, as its organ, 
 and the means of its sustenance and growth, 
 rose the remarkable line of prophetic teachers, 
 who were from age to age the living witnesses 
 for the consecration of their land and people, 
 the zealous defenders of the theocratic principle, 
 the preachers of righteousness, and the indignant 
 denouncers of idolatry and all other heathenish 
 superstitions and practices. 
 
154 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 The part sustained by these teachers in the 
 little commonwealth was of the highest impor- 
 tance, not to their own countrymen alone, but 
 also indirectly to the progress of humanity at 
 large, as contributing to the formation of a pure 
 morality and an enlightened religion ; indeed, 
 it stands by itself without any parallel in 
 history. They emerged individually out of the 
 ranks of the people, neither by hereditary 
 succession nor professional education and call- 
 ing, but spontaneously and irregularly, just as 
 the political or religious circumstances of the 
 country created a need for their voice and 
 ministry. If the sense of the nation’s Divine 
 consecration waned and was in danger of expir- 
 ing, and the people were hankering after foreign 
 alliances and customs; if the purer worship of 
 Jehovah was becoming adulterated by an 
 admixture of heathenish superstitions, or being 
 thrust out by the importation of false gods and 
 idolatrous rites; if religion was being choked 
 under the pressure of formalism and external 
 ceremonial, or the lower classes were groaning 
 under the oppression of the rich and powerful, 
 or perils from without were threatening the 
 independence or very existence of the people 
 of the Divine covenant; then, in every such 
 emergency, the prophet mysteriously started up 
 
 ee Oe eee 
 
THE CASE RE-STATED. 155 
 
 as the bearer of a Divine message, and in the 
 name of God denounced or instructed, en- 
 couraged or consoled, with more than human 
 authority and power. The effect of this unique 
 ministry was not barely to keep alive, and hand 
 on to posterity, the religion embodied in the 
 written laws and organized institutions of the 
 nation, but also to refine and develope it by 
 infusing wider meanings into existing forms, 
 adding new and more spiritual elements, and 
 continually urging the people along the path 
 of progress to a fuller knowledge and a higher 
 life. 3 
 
 There was, however, another and very peculiar 
 feature of this prophetical teaching. It was 
 not confined to sustaining and stimulating the 
 moral and religious growth of the nation: in- 
 fused into it, and wrought into its substance, 
 was a mysterious outlook towards the ages to 
 come. The prophets were more than preachers 
 of righteousness, religious patriots, and spiritual 
 advisers ; they professed to raise a corner of the 
 veil that shrouds the future, and give glimpses 
 of the march of providence, and the destinies of 
 Israel and the world. We have their utterances 
 before us, in a literature which, for moral force 
 and noble aspiration, is unrivalled and unap- 
 proached by anything else that the ancient 
 
156 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 world has bequeathed to us; and examining 
 these records of their teaching, as we have done 
 succinctly in the preceding sections, we find 
 them pervaded and animated by three leading 
 forecasts of the future development of religion. 
 Although intensely patriotic, and keenly 
 alive to the peculiar dignity and sacredness of 
 their own people, the Hebrew prophets foretold 
 the establishment of a universal religion, which 
 should embrace all nations, and fill the world 
 at last with righteousness and peace. 
 Themselves leaders in the battle of the Lord 
 against idolatry, oppression, and wickedness, it 
 was not to their own labours, or the future 
 efforts of their successors, that they looked for 
 the final victory, but to a greater than any 
 of them, a mysterious Personage whom they 
 declared God would raise up as His anointed 
 Servant and chosen King, in whom alone Israel 
 should be exalted and should glory, and the 
 Gentiles should find salvation. Yet with this 
 vision of a conquering Messiah they mingled 
 strains of sadness; their prescience of His 
 greatness and victorious progress was clouded, 
 contrary to every natural wish and hope, by a 
 dim but not doubtful presentiment of an un- 
 belief and rebelliousness in their own nation, 
 through which He would be subjected to humi- 
 
 ——_— a 
 
SUPPOSED FAILURE OF FORECASTS. 157 
 
 hation and rejection, ere He became crowned 
 with glory and honour. 
 
 Nevertheless, in spite of all hindrances, the 
 triumph shone bright and clear at the far end 
 of the vista down which their gaze travelled. 
 In the Messiah’s days it would surely arrive ; 
 and they were cheered with the assurance that 
 the work of purifying and elevating religion 
 from gross and degrading conceptions, which 
 they themselves were ceaselessly labouring at 
 under many difficulties, would be crowned with 
 complete success; men should everywhere wor- 
 ship the universal Father with a pure worship, 
 and the knowledge of the Lord should fill the 
 earth as the waters cover the sea. 
 
 Such were the great forecasts which were en- 
 twined with the teaching of the Hebrew pro- 
 phets, and largely contributed to impress on it 
 its form and complexion. 
 
 Now let uS pause here for a moment to 
 imagine what our feelings would be, if after 
 listening to those fervent protests against evil, 
 those burning calls to righteousness, those soar- 
 ing aspirations towards a purer religion, those 
 bright hopes of the world’s regeneration, which 
 lightened the gloom of a thousand years of 
 struggle and progress, we found nothing to 
 follow, no realization, no fulfilment, nothing 
 
158 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 but the blank of an absolute failure and nega- 
 tion. In other words, let us suppose that with 
 the fall of Israel from their place among the 
 nations, all their magnificent theism, the advance 
 gained by them in moral and spiritual culture, 
 their strong grasp on the unseen and future, 
 had utterly perished and left no mark in the 
 world, and borne no fruit for humanity; that 
 the gross polytheism and superstition of the 
 rest of the nations had closed over the blank 
 left by the disappearance of Judaism, and 
 remained in undisputed possession of mankind. 
 Would not this have been, to every believer in 
 a wise and fatherly God, an inexplicable and 
 confounding conclusion to a dispensation of 
 such manifest power and glorious promise ? 
 Would it not have seemed as if God had aban- 
 doned the world, and as if righteousness, 
 spirituality, and divine aspiration, were nothing 
 better than idle dreams ? 
 
 T call attention to this reflexion, because, if 
 it be just, it shows how inevitably theism leads 
 us to see the Divine hand and guidance in that 
 great religious development of which the 
 Hebrew prophets were the chief instruments. 
 If God be at all in the world’s history, caring 
 for and directing its course, it would surely be 
 unreasonable to exclude from the sphere of His 
 
 at as tt ine” 
 
THE FORECASTS FULFILLED. 159 
 
 supervision and direction the line of noblest 
 growth and richest promise in all that history. 
 Without going at present so far as to infer any 
 distinctly supernatural intervention, by the way 
 of revelation or inspiration, we are irresistibly 
 led by the general conception of God’s moral 
 government and paternal care to associate His 
 will and purpose with the whole development 
 of Hebrew prophecy and its world-wide results, 
 and therefore, at least in some appreciable 
 degree, with the great forecasts of the future, 
 which breathed into that body of prophetical 
 teaching a peculiar life and vigour. 
 
 But our faith in the Divine government of 
 the world is not put to the confusion which 
 would have come upon it, from the failure and 
 extinction of all that Judaism had struggled 
 for and achieved in the cause of spiritual truth 
 and religious progress. The great prophetic 
 forecasts have certainly been fulfilled. Nothing 
 in all the past is plainer and surer than that. 
 As we accompany them in their unfolding, step 
 by step, watching them grow fuller and com- 
 pleter in their proportions, and firmer in their 
 hold on the Jewish mind, at last the consum- 
 mation, to which they have for ages been point- 
 ing onwards, rises in majestic grandeur on our 
 sight. The Christianity of the New Testament 
 
160 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 and of the Holy Catholic Church stands before 
 us; the realization of all the hopes, the satistac- 
 tion of all the aspirations, the fulfilment of all 
 the prophecies; the glorious City of God, to 
 which all the lines of progress converge; the 
 kingdom of heaven, in which the Law and the 
 Prophets find their completion. 
 
 Here is the universal religion, free from all 
 ties of place, and limitations of nation or tribe. 
 “Go ye, and make disciples of all nations,” ’ 
 was the commission given by the ascending 
 Jesus to the apostles who should bear forth His 
 name to the world; “preach the Gospel to 
 every creature.” * In His name repentance and 
 remission of sins were to be preached among all 
 nations.2 The apostles were to be “ His wit- 
 nesses unto the uttermost part of the earth.” 
 Under Christianity no longer is “any man 
 common or unclean.” *® The “middle wall of 
 partition” is broken down, and “peace is 
 preached unto them which were afar off, and to 
 them that were nigh.”*® The mystery is made 
 known, “that the Gentiles should be fellow- 
 heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of 
 God’s promise in Christ by the Gospel.”’7 Here 
 
 1 Matt. xxviii. 19. 2 Mark xvi. 25. 3 Luke xxiv. 47. 
 # Acts i. 8. 5 Acts x. 28. 6 Eph. ii. 14, 17. 
 7 Eph. iii. 6. 
 
THE FORECASTS FULFILLED. 161 
 ‘there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision 
 nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond 
 nor free; but Christ is all, and in all.’”’* With- 
 in the courts of the temple of the hving God, 
 there is room for “all nations, and kindreds, 
 and people, and tongues.” ° 
 Again, in the doctrine of this world-wide 
 Christianity respecting its Divine Founder, the 
 conflicting elements of the Messianic forecast, 
 that the Anointed Deliverer should be triumph- 
 ant yet rejected, glorious yet put to humilia- 
 tion and reproach, are wonderfully harmonized 
 and completely fulfilled. In the “agony and 
 bloody sweat, the cross and passion, the pre- 
 cious death and burial, the glorious resurrection 
 and ascension,’’’ of the Jesus of the Gospels, is 
 realized all that the Hebrew prophets mysteri- 
 ously mingled together in their portraiture of 
 the elect servant of the Lord, despised and re- 
 jected of mén, bruised for their iniquities and 
 cut off out of the land of the living, yet destined 
 to be exalted very high, and be for a light to 
 the Gentiles, and salvation unto the ends of 
 the earth. Here is “the Stone which was set at 
 nought of the builders, which is become the 
 head of the corner.”? Here the Anointed of 
 8 Col. iii, 11. 9 Rey. vii. 9. 
 1 Litany. 2 Acts iv. 11. 
 M 
 
162 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 God, “against whom the kings of the earth 
 stood up, and the rulers were gathered 
 together,’’*® but to whom,God gave the heathen 
 for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of 
 the earth for His possession. Here the Holy 
 One of God, whose “‘ soul was not left in hell, 
 neither did His flesh see corruption.” * Here 
 the meek Sufferer, who was betrayed and sold, 
 mocked and scourged and pierced; here the 
 Shepherd who was smitten,’ and laid down 
 His life for the sheep ;*° here ‘‘ the Lamb of God 
 that taketh away the sin of the world.” ’ 
 
 Yes, in the Jesus proclaimed in Christianity ; 
 “crucified through weakness, yet living by the 
 power of God ;” § “ made a little lower than the 
 angels for the suffering of death, yet crowned 
 with glory and honour ;’”*® made perfect through 
 sufferings,” ? and “declared to be the Son of 
 God with power by the resurrection from the 
 dead,” ? and “exalted to be a Prince and a 
 Saviour ;’’* ‘delivered for our offences, and 
 raised again for our justification :”* “put to 
 death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit,” 
 and who is now “gone into heaven, and is on 
 
 3 Acts iv. 26.’ 4 Acts ii. 81; xiii. 35—37. 
 5 Matt. xxvi. 31. 6 John x. 15: 7 John i. 29. 
 8 2 Cor. xiii. 4. 9 Heb. ii. 9. 1 Heb. ii. 10. 
 
 2 Rom. i. 4. 3 Acts vy. 31. 4 Rom, iv. 25. 
 
THE FORECASTS FULFILLED. 168 
 
 the right hand of God, angels and authorities 
 and powers being made subject unto Him :” *— 
 in this Jesus, the centre and sun of Christianity, 
 the Divine Prophet, Priest, and King of His 
 universal Church, to whom ascend the unceasing 
 adorations of Christendom, “ When Thou hadst 
 overcome the sharpness of death, Thou didst 
 open the kingdom of heaven to all believers: 
 Thou sittest at the right hand of God, in the 
 glory of the Father ;”,—in Him all the scattered 
 fragments of Messianic prophecy fit harmoni- 
 ously together, and find their appropriate place 
 and their perfect realization. 
 
 Once more, Christianity answers to and fulfils 
 the remaining forecast of Hebrew prophecy, that 
 namely which foreshadowed and prepared the 
 way for the introduction of a spiritual religion. 
 
 It is to utter a truism to say that the religion 
 which rests on the Person, the Office, and the 
 teaching of Jesus Christ is, above and before all 
 else, a spiritual one, in contrast to an external 
 ceremonial and national one like Judaism, the 
 service of which stood, as the writer of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews says, “in meats and 
 drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordi- 
 nances, imposed on them until the time of 
 reformation.” ° Christianity is “the ministration 
 
 S01) Pets iv. 185,22: Gy Hen it. 10, 
 M 2 
 
1464 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 of the Spirit.”7 Its worship is “in spirit and 
 in truth.’’* Its characteristic life is a life in 
 the spirit. To be carnal, not spiritual, is the 
 reproach of its unworthy adherents.’ To become 
 spiritual is the Christian calling.’ Here local 
 and national distinctions are of no account, and 
 “there is no difference between the Jew and the 
 Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich unto 
 all that call upon Him;”* and “God puts no 
 difference between them, purifying their hearts 
 by faith.’’* Here ritual and external distinctions 
 are equally disregarded, “for in Christ Jesus 
 neither circumcision availeth anything, nor 
 uncircumeision, but faith which worketh by 
 love.”*® Here it is taught, that to burden the 
 conscience with the observance of “days and 
 months and times and years,” instead of walking 
 in the freedom of the sons of God, is to turn 
 back to bondage under “ the weak and beggarly 
 elements”? of the Past;® and Christians are 
 warned against becoming subject to fleshly 
 ordinances, such as “ touch not, taste not, handle 
 not,”’ because they “‘ are dead with Christ from 
 the rudiments of the world,’ and ‘the 
 
 7 2Cor. iii. 8. 8 John iv. 23. 9 Gal. v. 16. 
 1 1 Cor, iii. 1. 2 1 Cor. ii. 15. Gal. vi. 1. 
 3 Rom.ex, 12k 4 Acts xv. 9. 5 Gal. v. 6. 
 
 6 Gal, iv. 9, 10. 7 Col, ii. 20, 21. 
 
THE FORECASTS FULFILLED. 165 
 
 Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but 
 righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy 
 Ghost.” * The supreme graces of Christianity, 
 ripened by its holy influences in the hearts of 
 believers, are ‘faith, hope, and charity, these 
 three, but the greatest of these is charity ;” ° 
 and the vision of God is reserved for “ the pure 
 in heart.’ ? 
 
 Thus Christianity, by the whole tenour of its 
 doctrine and ethical instruction, lifts its disciples 
 above the region of formalism and rigid precept 
 and austere external morality, to the heights 
 where the free air of the Spirit is breathed, and 
 the sacredness of the individual conscience is 
 recognized, and the purified soul offers itself a 
 willing sacrifice to the God and Father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that was purest 
 and most spiritual in the teaching of the Hebrew 
 prophets is here gathered up, enlarged, and 
 adorned with fresh lustre; the revelation of the 
 eternal, invisible God reaches its climax of 
 moral beauty and grace; and men are called to 
 take up the noblest standing of which they are 
 capable, as sons in their Father’s house, heirs 
 of God, and joint heirs with Christ ;? assured 
 “that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor 
 
 8 Rom. xiv. 17. 9 1 Cor. xiii. 13. 
 1 Matt. v. 8. 2 Rom, viii. 16, 17. 
 
166 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 principalities, nor powers, nor things present, 
 nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor 
 any other creature, shall be able to separate 
 them from the love of God which is in Christ 
 Jesus our Lord.” * 
 
 But there is no need to elaborate the proof 
 that in a large and true sense Christianity, as 
 a universal religion of the spirit, centering in 
 its crucified and glorified Head, answers to and 
 realizes those great forecasts which we have 
 traced in Hebrew prophecy. No one who has 
 drunk into the spirit of the prophetic lterature 
 on the one hand, and of the Christian develop- 
 ment of faith and morality on the other, can 
 fail to perceive the organic connexion that 
 exists between them. The earlier is the mani- 
 fest germ of the later. New elements indeed 
 are introduced; veils are withdrawn which 
 covered the face of God; things are revealed 
 which prophets and kings under the older dis- 
 pensation in vain desired to see and hear.* But 
 they are on the same line of progress; and the 
 preacher of Christianity is justified in affirming 
 with St. Paul, that he declares “none other 
 things than those which the prophets and Moses 
 did say should come; that Christ should suffer, 
 and that He should be the first that should rise 
 
 3 Rom. viii. 38, 39. 4 Luke x. 24. 
 
THE FULFILMENT SUPERNATURAL. 167 
 
 from the dead, and should show light unto the 
 people and to the Gentiles.” ° 
 
 Having reached this stage of the discussion, 
 the reader’s attention must now be invited to 
 some further considerations which are neces- 
 sary to the completion of our argument. The 
 point at which we have arrived is this, that 
 Christianity really answers to and substan- 
 tially fulfils the prophetic foreshadowing of 
 the future which was exhibited in Judaism. 
 That is a great undeniable fact, but in this 
 general form it does not necessarily lead to the 
 conclusion at which we are aiming, namely, 
 that Hebrew prophecy was supernaturally in- 
 spired, and its fulfilment in Christianity su- 
 pernaturally brought about and constructed. 
 Recollecting the distinction already made 
 between different kinds of forecasts, when 
 viewed in relation to their eventual fulfilments, 
 it will be seen that the nature of the alleged 
 fulfilment, and the way in which it is related 
 to the prophecy which foretold it, enter mate- 
 rially into the question whether human and 
 natural forces alone may be considered suffi- 
 cient to account for the correspondence be- 
 tween the two parts of the sequence, or whether 
 the only adequate solution is to be found im the 
 
 § Acts xxvi. 22, 23. 
 
168 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 direct intervention and operation of God. We 
 must proceed, therefore, to investigate the 
 nature, the quality, of the relation in which the 
 fulfilment in Christianity stood to the forecast 
 in Judaism, in order to ascertain whether the 
 sequence was such as may with probability be 
 attributed to the action of the human faculties, 
 working spontaneously and without Divine 
 assistance and guidance ; or whether its peculiar 
 character indicated the presence of a superior 
 agency, and warrants our seeing in it the te 
 of God. 
 
 The answer to the question here raised will 
 turn on two features of the case which now call 
 for special examination; first, the elevation 
 of the sphere in which the subject-matter of 
 the debate lies; and secondly, the peculiarity 
 of the forms in which the fulfilments of the 
 prophetical forecasts were moulded. 
 
 The sphere, within which the great line of 
 facts under consideration is contained, gives 
 them a peculiar significance. Weare certainly 
 not dealing with trivial matters, such as might 
 engage the curiosity of dilettanti, or stimulate 
 the researches of antiquaries. Neither is it in 
 the domain of matters of purely secular interest, 
 whether material or intellectual, that our sub- 
 ject lies. Ifin those lower regions of human 
 
SPHERE OF FORECASTS. 169 
 
 thought and activity some prediction of a future 
 event happened to emerge, and go forward to 
 fulfilment, puzzled as we might be to account 
 for it, we should certainly be justified in feeling 
 an extreme reluctance to concede to it any of 
 the mysteriousness or sanctity of a supernatural 
 phenomenon. That God should mix Himself 
 up with any such matter by a special interven- 
 tion, or that He should communicate by revela- 
 tion knowledge which, however useful or 
 interesting, had nothing to do with our spiritual 
 training, could scarcely appear to us otherwise 
 than in the highest degree improbable. Con- 
 stituted as our minds are, I think it might 
 safely be pronounced to be almost impossible 
 for us to bring ourselves seriously to account 
 for any phenomenon of the kind, by an hypo- 
 thesis of such enormously disproportioned 
 magnitude, except under the pressure of evi- 
 dence which amounted to absolute demonstra- 
 tion. 
 
 But the subject with which we are dealing, 
 the line of facts which we are passing under 
 review, lies in the very highest region of human 
 thought and emotion; in that sacred region 
 where all the springs of morality and religion 
 take their rise, where the momentous struggle 
 between good and evilis waged, and the eternal 
 
170 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 character and destiny of each individual are 
 determined. It certainly is here, if anywhere, 
 that striving, suffering, feeble men have need 
 of God’s teaching and assistance; here that 
 they are nearest to the heart of God; here, if 
 anywhere, that God may be expected to meet 
 with them, and speak to them. That in the 
 pursuit of science or art, in the growths of 
 civilization, the subjugation of the physical 
 world, and in all the secularities of human life 
 and endeavour, men should be left to fight 
 their way onwards by means of their own un- 
 aided faculties, would be no cause of wonder. 
 But that in the solemn struggle of humanity 
 to find its God, and to rise through the baffling 
 distractions of sense into fellowship with the 
 Divine, no whisper of guidance should be vouch- 
 safed from above, and no sympathetic help be 
 granted, does surely seem to be scarcely con- 
 sistent with the love of a Father, who has 
 created His children in His own image. 
 
 When therefore the theist—for be it re- 
 membered it is to him that our argument is 
 addressed,—with his mind possessed by a sense 
 of God’s presence in the world, ordering the 
 course of‘ mankind, and working out His Divine 
 purpose, looks back on the illustrious succession 
 of prophets standing forth, one after another, 
 
SEHERE OF FORECASTS. 171 
 
 in the Divine name, and observes them fighting 
 each in his generation, the battle of truth and 
 righteousness, and guiding the struggling ad- 
 vance, not of their own people alone but of the 
 entire world, along the path of moral and 
 spiritual culture; he cannot but feel sure, with 
 the deepest and most impregnable conviction, 
 that it was in the truest sense God’s work that 
 was being done by them, and that with them 
 in their arduous labours the Divine sympathy 
 and interest, to speak humanly, must in the 
 highest degree have rested. And now suppose 
 that while watching the progress of that ancient 
 conflict in its historical record, and listening 
 as it were to the burning words in which the 
 prophets declared the name and will of God, 
 and instructed, rebuked, or encouraged the 
 children of men, he seems to discern traces of 
 some power or influence superior to any that 
 nature can boast, some signs of direct inspira- 
 tion or revelation from above; what will be the 
 feeling likely to arise within him, and to find a 
 justification in his moral judgment? Will it 
 be that this appearance of Divine intervention 
 and teaching must be illusive and misleading ; 
 that it is too strange, too much out of harmony 
 with the instincts of humanity, and too foreign 
 to the ascertained course of man’s higher life, 
 
L%2 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 to be admissible by his reason; and that to 
 reduce it within the limits of probability the 
 phenomenon must be dragged down to the 
 natural level, and all its mysteriousness and 
 its savour of the supernatural be explained 
 away and got rid of? Surely, in this high 
 region of man’s aspiration after God and God’s 
 sympathy and fatherhood towards man, such a 
 feeling as that would be a jarring discord, at 
 variance with all the finer sensibilities of our 
 moral nature! A thousand times rather would 
 the signs and traces of God’s gracious inter- 
 vention appear to the cultivated spiritual in- 
 telligence to fall in harmoniously with the 
 general idea of His fatherly rule over His 
 reasonable creatures, and afford new occasion 
 to “praise the Lord for His goodness and for 
 His wonderful works towards the children of 
 men.” ° 
 
 I urge, then, that the sphere in which He- 
 brew prophecy moved renders its apparent 
 element of supernaturalism both credible and 
 probable ; and I proceed to point out that this 
 result is supported by the peculiarity of the 
 forms in which the fulfilments of the prophetical 
 forecasts were moulded. 
 
 Here I beg the reader to pause with me for 
 
 re Ps. evii. 8. 
 
TENOUR OF ARGUMENT. 173 
 
 a moment to recall the general tenour of our 
 argument. 
 
 The supernatural and Divine quality of 
 Christianity is the thing in debate. Those 
 against whom we are arguing take up the posi- 
 tion, that excellent as the Christian system is 
 on the whole, in its advanced morality and 
 general spirituality of tone, being in fact the 
 purest and best religion as yet formulated, it is 
 nevertheless nothing more than a product of 
 human development, growing out of the play 
 of man’s reason, imagination, and other natural 
 faculties, and has-nothing supernatural in it, 
 and contains no revelation from God. Well, we 
 join issue with them, and undertake to main- 
 tain thesupernatural origin and Divine authority 
 of Christianity by a particular argument, which 
 affirms a manifestly supernatural element in 
 the preparation made for Christianity by means 
 of the prophetical teaching recorded in the 
 Old Testament Scriptures. To meet this argu- 
 ment, the rejoinder is made that we are in 
 error in ascribing any supernatural character 
 at all to the prophetical element in Judaism ; 
 that the entire religion of Israel was as purely 
 natural and exclusively human as Christianity 
 itself is alleged to be, and that both together 
 form an organic sequence which requires no 
 hypothesis of Divine intervention to explain it. 
 
174. THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 The stress, then, of the argument at this 
 stage rests on the character which the facts of 
 the case compel us to assign to Hebrew 
 prophecy. Granting it to have received an 
 actual and generally exact fulfilment in Chris- 
 tianity, can it without violence to the facts be 
 reduced to the level of a natural phenomenon ? 
 If the rise of Christianity was indeed such an 
 event that the prophets of Israel could have 
 anticipated it by their own sagacity many cen- 
 turies before it happened, or that the mere 
 influence of their prophecies on the human 
 mind could have occasioned it; in either case 
 the ground for attributing to them a superna- 
 tural inspiration would disappear. But if, on 
 the contrary, the way in which Christianity 
 rose out of Judaism, and fitted on to it as the 
 fulfilment of its prophetic foreshadowings, was 
 manifestly beyond the reach of probable conjec- 
 ture, and incapable of being accounted for by 
 the existence of the prophecies in the sacred 
 literature of the Jews; then we are inevitably 
 thrown back on the explanation which involves 
 a Divine inspiration in the prophets, and a 
 supernatural agency in the events which ful- 
 filled their forecasts of the future.? 
 
 7 «Tf such a series of characteristics, traced out hundreds 
 of years before the person appeared in whom they were to be 
 exemplified, could have at once originated in human conjec- 
 
TENOUR OF ARGUMENT. 175 
 
 That the latter is the only reasonable view is 
 what we have now to show. 
 
 In endeavouring to make this point good 
 against the sceptic, it must be recollected that 
 we are limited to the use of such materials for 
 the construction of the argument as he will 
 admit to be valid. Neither the historical truth 
 of the Gospel narratives, nor the reality of the 
 Christian miracles, may be taken for granted. 
 Our common ground is the fact that Christianity 
 exists. On both sides it is allowed that under 
 the impulse impressed on the minds of His 
 disciples by Jesus of Nazareth a religion arose 
 out of the bosom of Judaism, which claimed to 
 be the fulfilment of its prophecies and the sub- 
 stance of its shadows, and which was instinct 
 with such vitality and persuasive power that it 
 gathered all civilized nations under its sway. 
 What this religion was and is, and how it was 
 related to the system out of which it sprang, 
 we learn from its authorized and standard 
 documents contained in the New Testament. 
 Placing, then, the two religions, as we know 
 them, side by side for comparison, the question 
 
 ture, and received, as. they have done, the seal of the Divine 
 providence, then it may be justly affirmed there are no certain 
 Jandmarks between the human and the Divine.”—Zuirbairn 
 on Prophecy, p. 226. 
 
176 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 we have now to resolve is this: Can the manner 
 in which the later system grew out of, and 
 was fitted on to, the earlier be reasonably as- 
 cribed to the natural operation of the human 
 faculties, or does it require for its explanation 
 the informing and guiding inspiration of God ? 
 
 To arrive at an answer let us first see what 
 can be said for the naturalistic scheme; what 
 account can ke given of the way in which 
 Judaism was developed into Christianity, on 
 the supposition that there was no power at 
 work but the unassisted energies of human 
 nature. 
 
 The explanation must take some such form 
 as the following. 
 
 There being, by the supposition on which 
 the explanation proceeds, nothing of revelation 
 or supernatural inspiration in Hebrew prophecy, 
 the expectation of a Messiah which it fostered 
 could have originated in no higher source than 
 theindomitable patriotism and sanguine self-con- 
 fidence of the Jewish race. Believing ina high 
 destiny for their nation, the prophets must 
 be conceived to have embodied their hopes of 
 its glorious expansion and supremacy in the 
 anticipation’ of a heaven-sent Deliverer, who 
 should arise out of the line of David their na- 
 tional hero, and lead them to conquest and 
 
NATURALISTIC THEORY. LVF 
 
 dominion. While this expectation was dominat- 
 ing all minds in Israel, there happened to rise 
 up in their midst a young, ardent teacher and 
 reformer, who drew round himself a band of 
 enthusiastic disciples; but whose teaching pro- 
 voked such antagonism from the ruling class, 
 that he was prematurely cut off by a violent 
 and shameful death. Whether he had ever 
 identified himself with the expected Messiah 
 may be doubtful; but after his death his 
 disciples, if they did not originate, at any rate 
 adopted the idea, and proclaimed him as the 
 Christ for whom the nation was looking. 
 
 So far, then, we have on one side an expec- 
 tation which had grown up in the minds of 
 the people, without any real warrant or founda- 
 tion ; and on the other an attempt on the part 
 of a small band of enthusiasts, undertaken it 
 may be in all sincerity, to make use of the 
 expectation, and turn it into account, by 
 inyenting a fulfilment for it in the person of 
 their crucified teacher. But there were obvious 
 difficulties in the way, which it must have re- 
 quired no little boldness and ingenuity to over- 
 come. To surmount these they must be sup- 
 posed to have put on the prophetical literature 
 of their nation a new interpretation, hitherio 
 unheard of, which assigned to the expected 
 
 N 
 
178 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 Messiah a preliminary career of humiliation 
 and. rejection; and then to have invented for 
 their deceased Master a resurrection and ascen- 
 sion into heaven, to correspond with the Mes- 
 siah’s predicted exaltation and glory. But it is 
 obvious that even thus the case they had to pre- 
 sent to the world was far from being an adequate 
 realization of the popular hope; and as they 
 could not alter the notorious facts, all they could 
 do was to transfer, in their scheme of fulfilment, 
 the scene of Messiah’s rule from the land of 
 Palestine to the invisible heavens, and resolve it 
 into a viewless supremacy in the world of spirit; 
 and to substitute for a triumphant and glorious 
 Israel in the home of their fathers a world- 
 wide community of the Gentiles, without tem- 
 poral rule or visible organization, and bound 
 together only by the tie of a common faith. 
 Such a singular transformation of the popu- 
 lar Messianic idea, in order to fit it to an 
 obscure teacher whom his nation had disavowed 
 and ignominiously slain, might have been sup- 
 posed certain to appear so weak and fanciful, 
 not to say revolting to Jewish feeling, as to, 
 insure it general rejection and speedy oblivion, — 
 a fate which the baseless dreams of enthusiasts, 
 however ingenious, scarcely ever escape. But 
 the strange thing is that it must be believed to 
 
NATURALISTIC THEORY. 179 
 have met with the most astounding success. 
 The curious fable, for on the naturalistic 
 hypothesis it was nothing better, took posses- 
 sion of the world, and rooted itself permanently 
 in the convictions of all civilized nations; and 
 thus the towering structure of Christianity 
 must be held to have arisen out of Judaism, 
 by a process of the most fanciful and baseless 
 human invention, in the success of which no- 
 thing but natural causes had any part. 
 
 Will not the reader agree with me in esteem- 
 ing it very marvellous, that any such explana- 
 ‘tion as this, of the grafting of Christianity on 
 _ Judaism, should be accepted as adequate by any 
 one who is capable of thinking about the mat- 
 ter? Had the religion preached by the apos- 
 tles been nothing more than a system of specu- 
 lative thought, like Gnosticism, for example, 
 begotten of some intellectual eccentricity, to 
 perish without bearing fruit in the next 
 advance of the human mind to new fields of 
 activity, one could conceive of its being con- 
 structed by this kind of fanciful invention. 
 But Christianity as we know it, and history 
 has unfolded it; the practical regenerating 
 force of the world; the creator of Christendom; 
 the source of light and hope to countless 
 millions of our race; the mighty instrument 
 
 N 2 
 
180 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 in the hand of the Divine providence, of im- 
 parting to mankind the most effective impulse 
 that ever launched them victoriously along the 
 path of the highest and purest culture :—that 
 this should have been the product of an inge- 
 mious attempt to palm off on the world a 
 scheme of baseless facts and notions, which 
 should simulate a fulfilment of equally base- 
 less prophecies, is an idea so charged with 
 improbability, a solution of the grand problem 
 so ludicrously insufficient, that to propound it 
 I am bold to pronounce is little less than an 
 insult to reason. 
 
 But the naturalistic’ explanation failing and 
 proving hopelessly inadequate, there is nothing 
 left except the alternative of confessing a had 
 above man’s in the bringing forth of Chris- 
 tianity, and, by consequence, a more than 
 human prescience in the prophecies which were 
 fulfilled in it. And when we examine into the 
 peculiar nature of the correspondence of the’ 
 new religion with the ancient prophecies, we 
 shall discern, I think, fresh reason to acknow- 
 ledge the Divine intervention in the shaping of 
 the Christian scheme. 
 
 As I have ‘already pointed out, the several 
 great forecasts of prophecy were undoubtedly 
 fulfilled in a general way in Christianity. They 
 
FORECASTS FULFILLED IN THE spirit. 181 
 
 foreshadowed a religion which should be catholic 
 and spiritual, and should centre in a suffering 
 and glorified Messiah. Christianity fulfilled 
 them by being such a religion. But this is 
 only a part of the truth. As we look further 
 into the matter, we discover that the fulfilment 
 transcended the forecasts. It was not limited 
 to realizing them in the letter, according to 
 the narrow Jewish conception of them; it 
 translated them into the loftier, wider region of 
 the spirit, and fitted them with an accomplish- 
 ment which by its originality and spiritual 
 glory attests a divine Author, 
 
 Let us observe how, in each case, the fulfil- 
 ment overpassed the forecast, while truly corre- 
 sponding to it. 
 
 Christianity fulfils the forecast of a universal 
 religion, free from local and national restrie- 
 tions. But instead of exhibiting the lower and 
 more earthly form in which the prophets clothed 
 their vision of it, with its head-quarters in 
 Zion, and Israel supreme in rank as a priestly 
 order,*® through whose ministration the blessing 
 should flow forth to the Gentiles; the New 
 Testament presents us with a kingdom not of 
 this world,’ a kingdom of heaven without 
 earthly centre or visible pomp, a holy Catholic 
 
 8. Isa. Ixi. 6. 9 John xviii. 36. 
 
182 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. | 
 Church pervading all nations with a spiritual 
 presence, and finding its home in every tribe 
 and family of mankind. 
 
 Again, Christianity fulfils the forecast of a 
 suffering and glorified Messiah: But instead 
 of the temporal king of David’s line, depicted 
 by the letter of Hebrew prophecy, who should 
 raise the nation to a glorious supremacy, and 
 administer a righteous empire over the whole 
 world from a visible throne in Jerusalem ; the 
 New Testament sets before us a far nobler 
 conception, in which the lineaments, remaining 
 substantially true to the original, are spiritually 
 transfigured and glorified. Here for the Christ of 
 God we behold the Eternal Son, who “ for us men 
 and for our salvation came down from heaven,’’ ! 
 and ‘‘ humbled Himself and became obedient 
 unto death, even the death of the cross;”? and 
 who “when He had by Himself purged our 
 sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty 
 on high,” * where “He ever liveth to make | 
 intercession for us,’”’* and is “the Head over 
 all things to the Church, which is His body, 
 the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.” ° 
 
 Once more, Christianity fulfils the forecast 
 of a spiritual religion. Yet even here the idea 
 
 1 Nicene Creed. vip tied er] Ry Tab + Heb. ia: 
 # Heb. vii. 25. 5 Eph. i, 22, 23, 
 
FORECASTS FULFILLED IN THE spirit. 183 
 of the ancient prophets is signally heightened, 
 and carried to an elevation of which they 
 could have had no conception. Such a loosing 
 of ceremonial fetters and prohibitions, such a 
 lifting up of men into fellowship with God, 
 such a filial freedom of the spirit,.as enter into 
 the New Testament conception of redemption 
 - in Christ, transcend the most soaring aspira- 
 tions and glowing predictions of the greatest of 
 the ancient seers, to whom visions of the future 
 were granted. We find ourselves on a different 
 level when even from their most rapturous 
 anticipations we pass to the apostolic doctrine, 
 and read of Christians being begotten of God 
 to be His sons, raised up to sit together m 
 heavenly places in Christ Jesus,’ and built 
 together into an holy temple for an habitation 
 of God through the Spirit,* and are assured 
 that “ God is love, and he that dwelleth in love 
 - dwelletli in God, and God in Him.”” 
 
 Thus in Christianity was truly fulfilled, and 
 yet more than literally fulfilled, fulfilled with 
 the highest spiritual emphasis and most glorious 
 amplification, all that the Hebrew prophets had 
 foreshadowed of the Messiah who should come, 
 and of the setting up of His kingdom upon 
 
 6 1Jobn y. 1. 7 Eph. ii. 6. 
 S Eph. ii. 21, 22. 8 1 John iv. 16. 
 
184 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 earth. And what I contend for is this, that 
 the relation thus established between the pro- 
 phetic forecasts and the Christian realization is 
 so peculiar, so foreign to Jewish modes of 
 thought, so real and at the same time so original 
 and spiritual, and in harmony with our best 
 conceptions of Divine truth, as to render it in a 
 very high degree improbable that it could have 
 sprung out of any conjunction of natural causes, 
 or been fashioned by any hand but that of God 
 Himself. 
 
 Will the sceptic say that the forecasts were 
 nothing more than vague, indefinite aspirations 
 or presentiments, such as might well have arisen 
 in, and been breathed forth by, ardent patriotic 
 souls, as they strove to guide their country to a 
 purer faith and a brighter destiny? Not so, 
 surely! Hragmentary as the forecasts were in 
 their origin, and shaped in Jewish moulds of 
 thought, they grew up during nearly a thousand 
 years of gradual development into clear, un-, 
 mistakeable outlines of a great future; and that 
 future was one of which the general complexion 
 and character was far from being in harmony 
 with the narrow lines of Judaism. 
 
 Or, foiled in that endeavour to elude the 
 pressure of the facts which point to a super- 
 natural element in ancient prophecy, will 
 
FULFILMENTS NOT NATURAL. 185 
 
 the sceptic now turn to the other element of the 
 case, and urge that Christianity was just sucha 
 scheme as might have been evolved out of the 
 supposed prophetical forecasts, by the brooding 
 over them of speculative and enthusiastic minds, 
 which discerned in their outlines a basis for the 
 construction of an ideal religion ; and that this 
 is the most credible explanation of the rise out 
 of Judaism of a system of belief, which corre- 
 sponded in the main with the hints of prophecy, 
 and might easily be taken for a divinely- 
 ordered realization or fulfilment of them? 
 Again we must reply, Surely not! Christianity 
 was far more than an artificial scheme, ingeni- 
 ously fitted to pre-existing ideas, by minds of a 
 speculative cast. It was a grand outburst of 
 spiritual light and heat, pouring its creative 
 energies into all the departments of human 
 activity, and filling the ages with its rich and 
 varied. products. Besides, even if the broad 
 facts of the case would allow us to wrench 
 Christianity away from its historical basisandde- 
 velopment, and sublime it into a mere speculative 
 or theosophic system of thought, like religions 
 that are purely subjective and_ theoretical, 
 still this difficulty would remain insoluble, that 
 it is very far indeed from being such a system 
 of doctrine, as would naturally have suggested 
 
186 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 itself to Jewish minds as the fulfilment of 
 Hebrew prophecy. It was too spiritual, too 
 comprehensive, too unearthly, too contradictory 
 of the dearest desires and hopes of the contem- 
 porary Judaism, to permit us for a moment to 
 conceive of it as hatched in Jewish brains, to 
 simulate a fulfilment of the promises made of 
 old to the fathers of Israel. 
 
 We are, then, at last shut up to this account 
 of the case:—That out of Hebrew prophecy, 
 which flowed like a mighty stream through 
 many ages, ever gaining in volume and strength, 
 there emerged at least three great and true 
 forecasts of the future of religion and of God’s 
 dealing with the world, of such a kind as to 
 indicate the presence and activity of some 
 informing element which was not native to the 
 national mind and genius; and that these 
 forecasts prepared the way for, and were after- 
 _wards realized in, the wonderful rise and spread 
 of Christianity, which in its world-wide 
 catholicity, its lofty spirituality, and its doctrine 
 of salvation through the passion and exaltation 
 of its divine Founder, fulfilled all the expecta- 
 tions which the prophets had long before ex- 
 pressed, yet in a manner which transcended — 
 the mere letter of their predictions, and was 
 more in accordance with the highest reality and 
 
ITS RESULT. 187 
 
 the most universal truth than any barely literal 
 accomplishment could have been. 
 
 We have therefore this great phenomenon 
 to account for and explain; the existence of a 
 prolonged and complex line of true prophecy, 
 bound up with the course of man’s moral and 
 spiritual growth, and issuing at last in a 
 transcendently grand and glorious fulfilment, 
 which has been the best heritage of all 
 succeeding generations. 
 
 Whether this unique and vast phenomenon 
 can be best explained by referring it to the 
 unassisted action of the natural faculties of 
 mankind, or by supposing the intervention of 
 God’s inspiring Spirit and supernatural 
 guidance, the candid reader must decide for 
 himself. 
 
 Only let me entreat him to bear in mind the 
 momentous fact; that if the forecasts of Hebrew 
 prophecy cannot be reasonably accounted for, 
 except on the supposition that they were 
 divinely inspired intimations of a divinely 
 ordered future, then we are shut up to the 
 conclusion that the alleged facts on which 
 Christianity, as a religion, is based, are real 
 and true; and that Jesus Christ is the only- 
 begotten Son of God, who for us men and for 
 our salvation came down from heaven, and was 
 
188 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 made man, and was crucified, and on the third 
 day rose again, and ascended into heaven, 
 where He sits on the right hand of God the 
 Father Almighty, from whence He shall come 
 to judge the quick and the dead. 
 
RETROSPECT. 189 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 CORROBORATIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE 
 ARGUMENT. 
 
 In the argument which has been pursued 
 through the foregoing pages, the reader’s at- 
 tention has been strictly confined to the con- 
 sideration of three great forecasts which are 
 found pervading Hebrew prophecy, and of 
 their signal realization and fulfilment in Chris- 
 tianity. Moreover, the evidence of the reality 
 of these forecasts, that is, of their actual exist- 
 ence in the Old Testament Scriptures, has been 
 drawn almost exclusively from the prophetical 
 literature, , without taking account of such 
 corroborations and illustrations as might pos- 
 sibly have been furnished by various typical or 
 suggestive incidents, personages, and institu- 
 tions recorded in the sacred history. 
 
 This restriction of the ground covered by the 
 argument may perhaps appear to have un- 
 duly narrowed the field of evidence, and excluded 
 certain historical elements which would have 
 
190 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 1 a ASSN 0 D.Sc LSU UDP ec Corer 
 
 helped to support the conclusion. But on the 
 whole I have thought the narrower and more 
 definite course the best suited to our purpose. 
 We are arguing against the position, that m 
 the Old Testament there is no genuine prophetic 
 element at all, and that everything found there 
 is purely and entirely of human origin. The 
 proof of the opposite view must rest mainly on 
 the evidence already adduced. If that does 
 not convince the gainsayer, nothing else will. 
 If in those great outlines and chief streams of 
 prophetic utterance, which have been displayed 
 in the foregoing argument, he is unable to dis- 
 cern the presence of a true prophetical spirit, 
 he certainly will not discover it in the more 
 indistinct and shadowy allusions and hints 
 conveyed by emblems and types. These weaker 
 parts of the case derive their force from the 
 stronger; and if mixed up with the main. line 
 of the reasoning, would be more likely to 
 embarrass than assist it. 
 
 Nor will the sceptic, who holds his ground 
 - against the pressure of the three forecasts which 
 have been urged against him, be af all lkely 
 to yield to the cogency of a fourth, which is 
 very commonly combined with them in the 
 argument; that, namely, which had in view 
 the dispersion of the Jewish people among all 
 
FORECAST OF DISPERSION. 191 
 
 nations. To some persons, indeed, the predic- 
 tions of this remarkable event seemed in former 
 times to furnish one of the most convincing 
 and unanswerable proofs of supernatural pre- 
 science in the prophets of Israel; but there can 
 be no doubt that the effect of modern critical 
 research has been materially to weaken its evi- 
 dential force. 
 
 It is to be observed that, with the exception | 
 of two very rhetorical and minatory, rather 
 than predictive, chapters in the Pentateuch,’ 
 the idea of the ejection by foreign arms of the 
 chosen people of God from their own land, to 
 be scattered as exiles over the world, does not 
 occur in the prophetical literature till after 
 the deportation of Israel by the Assyrian 
 power. It was then that hints and warnings 
 of a similar fate began to be uttered by the 
 prophets to the feeble kingdom of Judah, which 
 was in manifest peril of being overrun and laid 
 waste by the threatening and aggressive. 
 empires, first of Assyria, and afterwards of 
 Babylon. In regard, moreover, to those two 
 passages of the Pentateuch which form an 
 apparent exception to this statement, it is to be 
 remarked that they are among the foremost of 
 those to which modern critics, on historical 
 
 1 Ley. xxvi.; Deut. xxviii, 
 
192 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 and philological grounds, have most con- 
 fidently assigned a date posterior to the fall of 
 the kingdom of Israel. Hence, when the 
 prophets of Judah threatened their perverse 
 and rebellious people with being carried away 
 captive, and dispersed among the heathen, it 
 may be plausibly argued that they were not 
 predicting the future with any supernatural 
 prescience, but only looking forward to a 
 catastrophe which their natural sagacity saw 
 to be probable, and making use of a warning 
 to which the alarming political circumstances 
 of their time gave extraordinary point and 
 force. Whatever be the precise value of this 
 explanation of the case, it is sufficient to blunt 
 the edge of the argument founded upon these 
 predictions, and to deprive it of much of its 
 polemical efficiency. ; 
 On this account I have abstained ‘from 
 including the forecast of the dispersion among 
 these great forecasts of the future, on which I 
 have endeavoured to build up the proof of a 
 Divine inspiration resting upon the Hebrew 
 prophets, and revealing through their utter- 
 ances a true and genuine, though in some 
 respects dim and indistinct, outline of the 
 dispensation to come. Those who are already 
 convinced, that the prophets were organs of 
 
CORROBORATIONS. 193 
 
 Divine teaching to the chosen people, will 
 probably not hesitate to connect their inspira- 
 tion with this part of their message, as much 
 as with any other part. But the case with the 
 sceptic is different. He has all to learn, and 
 he cannot be expected to make the least move- 
 ment towards belief, except under the compul- 
 sion of evidence which defies his attempts to 
 explain it away. 
 
 But although much that might seem, to one 
 mind and another, to be pertinent and weighty, 
 may have been excluded from the foregoing 
 line of argument, it isnot meant that none of 
 those outlying portions of the subject, which 
 have been passed over, furnish anything of 
 evidential value towards the support of the 
 conclusion. yen if not suited to be a portion 
 of the foundation, they may play the part of 
 buttresses to the structure; they may corro- 
 borate ‘and illustrate the position which has 
 been established by direct evidence, and contri- 
 bute to the confidence and the satisfaction with 
 which the mind reposes in it. 
 
 For as soon as we have accepted, and incor- 
 porated among our settled convictions, the idea 
 that the atmosphere of the Old Testament is 
 instinct with prophecy in its widest and 
 worthiest sense, and that the whole Jewish 
 
 ) 
 
194 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. — 
 history and religious development exhibit a 
 divinely ordered course of preparation for the 
 Gospel; it becomes natural for us to be on the 
 look out for prophetic allusions and fore- 
 shadowings in a thousand things, where we 
 should never have dreamed of seeking them 
 before. Reviewing, then, the ancient story of 
 Israel, with its eventful vicissitudes and singu- 
 lar institutions, in this mood of expectation and 
 spiritual sensibility ; when we perceive how it 
 becomes luminous in the light of that idea, and 
 many of its varied features lend themselves, by 
 mystic correspondences and typical pre-figura- 
 tions, to foreshadow or illustrate the Christian 
 mysteries, our grasp on the idea which pro- 
 duces these effects becomes firmer, and the con- 
 ception of a Divine purpose and spiritual unity 
 running through the two covenants, and linking 
 them organically together, roots itself more 
 deeply, and spreads itself more widely, in our 
 minds. 
 
 Here it is especially requisite to bear in mind 
 that prophecy, in its most comprehensive and 
 spiritual sense, is very far from being adequately 
 represented by prediction. A whole dispensa- 
 tion might be stamped with a_ prophetical 
 character, and be alive with genuine forecasts 
 of the future purposes of God, without contain- 
 
CORROBORATIONS. 195 
 
 ing a single definite prediction within its whole 
 compass. 
 
 Christianity exhibits a system of doctrines 
 or truths which cluster round and centre in 
 the adorable Person of the Son of God, the 
 Divine Word, incarnate and manifested as a 
 Man among men. Heis presented to our faith 
 as anointed by the Spirit for His mediatorial 
 office, offering Himself as a spotless Sacrifice to 
 God for our sins, bruising by His cross the 
 powers of evil, justifying us by His resurrection 
 from the dead, lifting us into abiding fellowship 
 with God by His ascension, interceding for us 
 as a royal Advocate, governing us as our 
 almighty and infinitely gracious Lord and 
 Head. Such a system of truth as this is ob- 
 viously not to be taken in at once, by minds 
 which have not enjoyed any preparatory 
 training to understand it, and have hitherto 
 moved exclusively in an outer region of worldly 
 thoughts and cares. 
 
 Now Christianity being such a system, and 
 needing to have its way prepared in the hearts 
 of mankind, suppose that, on looking back to 
 the course of events which preceded its pro- 
 mulgation, we found the previous thousand 
 years and more to have been occupied by 
 another system of religious thought and wor- 
 
 0 2 
 
196 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 ship, standing to it in a certain relation of 
 preparatory discipline and instruction. Sup- 
 pose that this more ancient religion, while being 
 of a lower order in the spirituality of its con- 
 ceptions, and the purity of its ethics, yet 
 manifestly embodied the germs of Christian 
 ideas, contained rude sketches and_ outlines 
 suggestive of the more perfect revelation to 
 come, and on the whole laid a foundation on 
 which the future fabric might be fitly built. 
 in such a case the earlier system might justly be 
 regarded as prefigurative, and instinct with the 
 spirit of prophecy. Even if we failed to discover 
 in it a single explicit promise or prediction, 
 which we could independently recognize as 
 pointing to a future and more advanced system, 
 it would none the less be of a truly prophetic 
 character, by reason of its foreordained relation 
 to the dispensation to which it served as an intro- 
 duction. And when the future had come, and 
 Christianity had been inaugurated and had 
 grown up to maturity, and the evolution of 
 events had made it evident that the older 
 system had all the time been really working 
 towards this higher manifestation of God, and 
 familiarizing men’s minds with conceptions in 
 which Christian doctrines could root them- 
 selves; then a flood of light would be poured 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 197 
 
 back on the nature of the Past, and the earlier 
 dispensation would be recognized by the 
 spiritual understanding as a genuine fore- 
 shadowing of, and preparation for, the higher 
 and more perfect religion. 
 
 That Judaism was really thus related to 
 Christianity has been the almost universal 
 belief of Christians. No more competent judge 
 of both could be found than St. Paul, and he 
 views them in this light when he says, “‘ Before 
 faith came, we were kept under the law, shut 
 up unto the faith that should afterwards be 
 revealed. Wherefore the law was our school- 
 master to bring us unto Christ;”? and again 
 when he calls the Jewish institutions ‘‘ a shadow 
 of things to come.” * On the same view the 
 whole argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 is. based. To a like conclusion the inquiry 
 of the preceding pages distinctly leads up. If 
 our induction of a supernatural element per- 
 vading Hebrew prophecy be valid, Judaism in 
 ~ general, with its literature, its institutions, its 
 laws, its personages and incidents, can hardly 
 be deemed less than a grand historical prepara-. 
 tion ordained by God, and extending through 
 many ages, to make ready the world for the 
 manifestation of His gracious purposes in Christ. 
 
 2 Gal. iii. 23, 24. 3. Col. iis 17. 
 
198 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 Hence, wherever we find in it things which 
 wonderfully fit in with, and lend themselves to 
 shadow forth and suggest, the facts and truths 
 of Christianity, we are justified in recognizing 
 in these, not indeed a literally predictive 
 element, but one which is impregnated with a 
 prophetic character and meaning. Apart from 
 the ascertained presence of God’s will and 
 purpose in the unfolding of Judaism, such 
 interpretations would of course be liable to 
 serious question, and on that account they have 
 little solid argumentative value in the debate 
 with the unbeliever. But to the believer they 
 open out interesting fields of inquiry, and 
 bring important confirmations of his faith ; and 
 as he thus traces the Divine dealings with the 
 fathers of Israel, he is led to exclaim with 
 St. Paul, “O the depth of the riches, both of 
 the wisdom and knowledge of God !”* 
 
 How rich Christian theology is in such uses 
 of the Old Testament it is almost superfluous to 
 point out. Inthe mystic Seed promised to the 
 woman in paradise; in the ark sheltering the 
 righteous family from the destruction poured 
 out on the ungodly world; in Abraham’s 
 promised seed, the destined channel of blessing 
 to the nations; in Isaac mysteriously laid on 
 
 4 Rom. xi. 33. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 199 
 
 the wood for sacrifice; in Melchisedek, king of 
 Peace, priest of the most High God; in the 
 Aaronic priesthood ordained to stand as medi- 
 ators between Jehovah and His people; in 
 the entire sacrificial system, with its expiations 
 and cleansings, its passover, its daily offerings 
 and solemn yearly atonement; in the mystic 
 arrangements of the sanctuary, with its ark 
 and mercy-seat and veil; in the brazen serpent 
 lifted up that the stricken people might be 
 healed; in the manna that fell from heaven to 
 feed them in the wilderness, and the rock that 
 was smitten to yield them living waters for 
 their thirst; in the order of prophets raised up 
 to reveal the Divine will; in heaven-sent de- 
 liverers who rolled back the tide of oppression, 
 and anointed kings who ruled the people in 
 righteousness :—in these and many other features 
 of the Hebrew annals and institutions Evan- 
 gelists and Apostles, and Christian divines, and 
 devout believers have delighted to trace dim 
 foreshadowings of Him that should come, the 
 Christ of God, and faint outlines of His office 
 and work. And although to persons who 
 resolve both Judaism and Christianity into 
 merely natural or organic outgrowths of the 
 human mind, such uses of the Old Testament 
 Scriptures will be sure to appear fanciful and 
 
900 THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 USUI Tack IN AiO PAM NE Sa ok aa 
 frivolous; to the spiritual mind, already con- - 
 vinced of a divine agency in the development 
 of the two great religions to which the world’s 
 advance in the knowledge of God is exclusively 
 due, this method of tracing correspondences 
 between the earlier and later parts of the 
 sequence will sufficiently approve itself, as rest- 
 ing on the unity of God’s design, and the 
 historical order of His revelation of Himself to 
 the children of men. 
 
 In concluding my task, I commend the fore- 
 going argument to the ‘reader’s candid and 
 serious consideration, entreating him to re- 
 member what was pointed out at the beginning, 
 that the argument from prophecy is by no 
 means the main support on which Christianity 
 rests, but is subsidiary to the proof furnished 
 by Christianity itself. The doctrine of Christ 
 Himself is the holy of holies of the temple of 
 Divine truth ; while prophecy may be considered 
 as one of the portals by which the devout 
 inquirer is admitted, to behold the beauty and 
 glory of the Lord in the midst of His chosen 
 sanctuary. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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